TEXT: THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
  OF JAPAN
  General editors
  JOHN W. HALL, MARIUS B. JANSEN, MADOKA KANAI,
  AND DENIS TWITCHETT
  Volume 6
  The Twentieth Century
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE CAMBRIDGE
  HISTORY OF
  JAPAN
  Volume 6
  The Twentieth Century
  Edited by
  PETER DUUS
  CAMBRIDGE
  UNIVERSITY PRESS
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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  © Cambridge University Press 1988
  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
  and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
  no reproduction of any part may take place without
  the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
  First published 1988
  8th printing 2005
  Printed in the United States of America
  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
  The Cambridge history of Japan.
  Contents: v. 6. The twentieth century / edited by Peter Duus.
  I. Japan - History. I. Hall, John Whitney, 1916 -
  DS835.C36 
  1988 
  952 
  88-2877
  ISBN-13 978-0-521-22357-7 hardback
  ISBN-10 0-521-22357-1 hardback
  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
  the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
  third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
  and does not guarantee that any content on such
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  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE
  Since the beginning of this century the Cambridge histories have set a
  pattern in the English-reading world for multivolume series contain-
  ing chapters written by specialists under the guidance of volume edi-
  tors. Plans for a Cambridge history of Japan were begun in the 1970s
  and completed in 1978. The task was not to be easy. The details of
  Japanese history are not matters of common knowledge among West-
  ern historians. The cultural mode of Japan differs greatly from that of
  the West, and above all there are the daunting problems of terminol-
  ogy and language. In compensation, however, foreign scholars have
  been assisted by the remarkable achievements of the Japanese scholars
  during the last century in recasting their history in modern conceptual
  and methodological terms.
  History has played a major role in Japanese culture and thought,
  and the Japanese record is long and full. Japan's rulers from ancient
  times have found legitimacy in tradition, both mythic and historic,
  and Japan's thinkers have probed for a national morality and system of
  values in their country's past. The importance of history was also
  emphasized in the continental cultural influences that entered Japan
  from early times. Its expression changed as the Japanese consciousness
  turned to questions of dynastic origin, as it came to reflect Buddhist
  views of time and reality, and as it sought justification for rule by the
  samurai estate. By the eighteenth century the successive need to ex-
  plain the divinity of government, justify the ruler's place through his
  virtue and compassion, and interpret the flux of political change had
  resulted in the fashioning of a highly subjective fusion of Shinto,
  Buddhist, and Confucian norms.
  In the nineteenth century the Japanese became familiar with West-
  ern forms of historical expression and felt the need to fit their national
  history into patterns of a larger world history. As the modern Japanese
  state took its place among other nations, Japanese history faced the
  task of reconciling a parochial past with a more catholic present. Histo-
  rians familiarized themselves with European accounts of the course of
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  vi 
  GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE
  civilization and described Japan's nineteenth century turn from mili-
  tary to civilian bureaucratic rule under monarchical guidance as part
  of a larger, worldwide pattern. Buckle, Guizot, Spencer, and then
  Marx successively provided interpretative schema.
  The twentieth-century ideology of the imperial nation state, how-
  ever, operated to inhibit full play of universalism in historical interpre-
  tation. The growth and ideology of the imperial realm required cau-
  tion on the part of historians, particularly with reference to Japanese
  origins.
  Japan's defeat in World War II brought release from these inhibi-
  tions and for a time replaced them with compulsive denunciation of
  the pretensions of the imperial state. Soon the expansion of higher
  education brought changes in the size and variety of the Japanese
  scholarly world. Historical inquiry was now free to range widely. A
  new opening to the West brought lively interest in historical expres-
  sions in the West, and a historical profession that had become cau-
  tiously and expertly positivist began to rethink its material in terms of
  larger patterns.
  At just this juncture the serious study of Japanese history began in
  the West. Before World War II the only distinguished general survey
  of Japanese history in English was G. B. Sansom's Japan: A Short
  Cultural History, first published in 1931 and still in print. English and
  American students of Japan, many trained in wartime language pro-
  grams, were soon able to travel to Japan for study and participation
  with Japanese scholars in cooperative projects. International confer-
  ences and symposia produced volumes of essays that served as bench-
  marks of intellectual focus and technical advance. Within Japan itself
  an outpouring of historical scholarship, popular publishing, and his-
  torical romance heightened the historical consciousness of a nation
  aware of the dramatic changes of which it was witness.
  In 1978 plans were adopted to produce this series on Japanese his-
  tory as a way of taking stock of what has been learned. The present
  generation of Western historians can draw upon the solid foundations
  of the modern Japanese historical profession. The decision to limit the
  enterprise to six volumes meant that topics such as the history of art
  and literature, aspects of economics and technology and science, and
  the riches of local history would have to be left out. They too have
  been the beneficiaries of vigorous study and publication in Japan and
  in the Western world.
  Multivolume series have appeared many times in Japanese since the
  beginning of the century, but until the 1960s the number of profession-
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  GENERAL EDITORS* PREFACE 
  vii
  ally trained historians of Japan in the Western world was too small to
  sustain such an enterprise. Although that number has grown, the
  general editors have thought it best to draw on Japanese specialists for
  contributions in areas where they retain a clear authority. In such
  cases the act of translation itself involves a form of editorial coopera-
  tion that requires the skills of a trained historian whose name deserves
  acknowledgment.
  The primary objective of the present series is to put before the
  English-reading audience as complete a record of Japanese history as
  possible. But the Japanese case attracts our attention for other reasons
  as well. To some it has seemed that the more we have come to know
  about Japan the more we are drawn to the apparent similarities with
  Western history. The long continuous course of Japan's historical
  record has tempted historians to look for resemblances between its
  patterns of political and social organization and those of the West. The
  rapid emergence of Japan's modern nation state has occupied the
  attention of comparative historians, both Japanese and Western. On
  the other hand, specialists are inclined to point out the dangers of
  being misled by seeming parallels.
  The striking advances in our knowledge of Japan's past will con-
  tinue and accelerate. Western historians of this great and complex
  subject will continue to grapple with it, and they must as Japan's
  world role becomes more prominent. The need for greater and deeper
  understanding of Japan will continue to be evident. Japanese history
  belongs to the world, not only as a right and necessity but also as a
  subject of compelling interest.
  JOHN W. HALL
  MARIUS B. JANSEN
  MADOKA KANAI
  DENIS TWITCHETT
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CONTENTS
  General editors' preface 
  page v
  List of maps, figures, and tables 
  xiv
  Preface to Volume 6 
  xvii
  Introduction
  by PETER DUUS, Department of History, Stanford
  University 
  ' 
  i
  Japan and the outside world: from autonomy to
  dependence 
  6
  Domestic economic change: from success to success 
  14
  Domestic politics: from instability to stability 
  30
  PART I. DOMESTIC POLITICS
  The establishment of party cabinets, 1898-1932
  by TAICHIRO MITANI, Faculty of Law, Tokyo
  University
  Translated by PETER DUUS 
  55
  The ambiguity of the Meiji constitution 
  59
  The establishment of the Seiyukai 
  66
  Conditions for party cabinets 
  76
  Conclusion 
  96
  Politics and mobilization in Japan, 1931-1945
  by GORDON M. BERGER, Department of History,
  University of Southern California 
  97
  Introduction 
  97
  Challenges to party power, 1929-1936 
  105
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  CONTENTS
  Prelude to national mobilization, 1936-1937 
  118
  The challenge of the reformists, 1937-1939 
  126
  Japan's new political order, 1940-1945 
  137
  Postwar politics, 1945-1973
  by HARUHIRO FUKUI, Department of Political
  Science, University of California, Santa Barbara 
  154
  The politics of adjustment: the Occupation and its
  immediate aftermath 
  155
  The politics of developmentalism: high economic
  growth and its consequences 
  184
  PART II. EXTERNAL RELATIONS
  5 The Japanese colonial empire, 1895-1945
  by MARK R. PEATTIE, University of Massachusetts,
  Boston 
  217
  Circumstances and motivations 
  217
  The empire assembled, 1895-1922 
  224
  Evolution of the empire, 1895-1941 
  229
  Japanese colonial policy: concepts and
  contradictions 
  237
  Administering the empire 
  244
  The Japanese colonial economy: development and
  exploitation 
  252
  The Japanese colonial presence: emigration,
  settlement, and the colonial life-style 
  260
  The indigenous response to Japanese colonialism 
  266
  6 Continental expansion, 1905-1941
  by IKUHIKO HATA, Takushoku University
  Translated by ALVIN D. COOX 
  271
  Greater Japan or lesser Japan? 
  271
  World War I and Japan 
  277
  The Versailles-Washington system 
  282
  Shidehara diplomacy versus Tanaka diplomacy 
  285
  Was Manchuria a lifeline? 
  290
  The occupation of Manchuria 
  295
  The quest for autonomy 
  299
  The China conflict 
  302
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  CONTENTS 
  xi
  The aborted peace with China 
  306
  To the Pacific War 
  309
  7 The Pacific War
  by ALVIN D. COOX, Department of History, San
  Diego State University 
  315
  Hypothetical enemies
  The morass in China
  Collisions with the Soviet Union
  The ascent of Tojo
  Fumbling for direction
  The persimmon theory
  The south beckons
  The Yamamoto scheme
  Japan under new management
  Weighing war versus diplomacy
  Diplomacy founders
  "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
  The Nagumo controversy
  First-phase euphoria
  Victory fever continued
  What next?
  The Midway and Aleutians operations
  Retaining the initiative
  Tightening the perimeter
  Exit Tojo
  The Koiso-Yonai phase: Philippines to Iwo
  The struggle for Okinawa
  The Suzuki cabinet and intensification of the
  air war
  Toward a decisive battle
  Japan in extremis
  Overview
  315
  319
  321
  323
  325
  326
  328
  330
  332
  333
  337
  340
  343
  345
  347
  349
  351
  354
  358
  361
  364
  366
  368
  370
  372
  376
  PART III. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  Industrialization and technological change, 1885-1920
  by E. SYDNEY CRAWCOUR, The Australian National
  University 
  385
  Economic growth, 1885-1920 
  385
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  Xll 
  CONTENTS
  Building infrastructure, 1885-1913 
  391
  The traditional sector, 1885-1913 
  403
  The modern sector, 1885-1913 
  421
  World War I 
  436
  The role of the state 
  444
  9 
  Depression, recovery, and war, 1920-1945
  by TAKAFUSA NAKAMURA, College of General
  Education, Tokyo University
  Translated by JACQUELINE KAMINSKY 
  451
  Introduction 
  451
  The era of recessions 
  454
  Recovery 
  467
  War 
  480
  Conclusion 
  492
  10 The postwar Japanese economy, 1945-1973
  by YUTAKA KOSAI, Tokyo Institute of Technology
  Translated by ANDREW GOBLE 
  494
  Postwar economic reform and recovery 
  495
  Macroeconomic performance 
  502
  The changing industrial structure 
  516
  Characteristics of Japanese enterprises 
  527
  Economic policy 
  533
  PART IV. SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHANGE
  11 The transformation of rural society, 1900-1950
  by ANN WASWO, St. Antony's College, Oxford
  University 
  541
  Rural society in the late nineteenth century 
  545
  The roots of protest 
  555
  The tenant movement 
  576
  Ndhonshugi 
  589
  Epilogue 
  604
  12 Economic development, labor markets, and industrial
  relations in Japan, 1905-1955
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  CONTENTS 
  Xlll
  by Kojl T AIRA, Institute of Labor and Industrial
  Relations, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana 
  606
  Introduction 
  606
  The development of a wage labor market 
  607
  The emergence of dualism in the labor market 
  621
  Labor conflict and industrial relations, 1920-1945 
  629
  Postwar labor relations, 1945-1955 
  646
  13 Socialism, liberalism, and Marxism, 1901-1931
  by PETER D U U S , Department of History, Stanford
  University, and I R W I N SCHEINER, Department of
  History, University of California, Berkeley 
  654
  The emergence of socialism 
  657
  The collapse of the socialist movement 
  666
  Minponshugi 
  673
  Toward radicalism 
  681
  The revival of socialism 
  687
  Osugi Sakae and anarchosyndicalism 
  692
  Yamakawa Hitoshi and the "change in direction" 
  698
  Whose Revolution Is It? Fukumoto versus
  Yamakawa 
  702
  Ideological dialectics: the paradox of Japanese
  Marxism 
  708
  14 Japanese revolt against the West: political and cultural
  criticism in the twentieth century
  by TETSUO NAJITA, Department of History, University
  of Chicago, and H. D. HAROOTUNIAN, Department of
  History, University of Chicago 
  711
  Introduction 
  711
  Restorationist revolt 
  713
  Culturalism 
  734
  Cultural particularism 
  741
  The debate on modernity 
  758
  Epilogue 
  768
  Works cited 
  775
  Glossary-index 
  827
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES
  MAPS
  Map of modern Japan 
  page xi x
  5.1 
  The Japanese colonial empire, 1895-1945 
  219
  6.1 
  Areas of China penetrated by Japan, 1941 
  272
  7.1 
  Pacific theater in World War II 
  316
  FIGURES
  2.1 
  Political parties, 1889-1940 
  58
  4.1 
  Political parties, 1945-1974 
  163
  9.1 
  Fluctuations in foreign trade, the exchange rate,
  GNE, and prices 
  463
  9.2 
  Shipping capacity and shipment of goods during
  World War II 
  487
  12.1 
  The relationship between real wages and
  employment in Japanese factories, 1909-1956 
  614
  12.2 
  The number of operatives and the number of
  factories by size of factory 
  630
  12.3 
  Index of real wages and number of work stoppages,
  1910-1945 
  634
  TABLES
  2.1 
  Japanese cabinets, 1885-1932 
  57
  3.1 
  Japanese cabinets, 1929-1945 
  100
  4.1 
  Japanese cabinets, 1945-1974 
  160
  9.1 
  Growth rates of real spending and income,
  1900-1944 
  452
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  MAPS, FIGURES, TABLES 
  XV
  9.2 
  International comparison of real growth rates 
  453
  9.3 
  Employed population by industry 
  460
  9.4 
  Increases in real gross national expenditure 
  469
  9.5 
  The progress of chemical and heavy
  industrialization 
  471
  9.6 
  Production targets in the five-year plan for key
  industries 
  479
  The balance of international trade in the 1930s 
  483
  Figures on the Pacific War and ocean-going
  transport 
  486
  Wartime production indexes 
  489
  Price trends, 1946-1973 
  500
  Changes in population 
  503
  Changes in the labor force 
  503
  Wartime damage to national wealth 
  506
  Productive capacity at time of defeat 
  507
  International balance of payments 
  509
  Distribution of national income 
  511
  Increase in middle-class consciousness 
  513
  Increases in demand items 
  513
  Household expenses of urban workers 
  514
  Diffusion of consumer durable goods 
  515
  Technological imports 
  521
  Rate of liberalization 
  523
  Production and exports, classified by heavy and
  light industries 
  524
  Major export items 
  525
  Major import items 
  526
  Flow of funds during rapid economic growth - 1965 
  529
  Labor unions and labor disputes 
  531
  Wage differentials between large enterprises and
  small and medium enterprises 
  532
  Fiscal investment and loan program 
  536
  Farm households by status and scale of cultivation
  (excluding Hokkaido and Okinawa) 
  548
  9
  9
  9
  10
  10
  10
  10,
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.
  10.;
  11.
  •7
  .8
  •9
  .1
  .2
  •3
  •4
  •5
  .6
  •7
  8
  9
  10
  11
  12
  13
  14
  15
  16
  17
  18
  19
  20
  1
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  XVI 
  MAPS, FIGURES, TABLES
  11.2 
  Landowning households by size of holding
  (excluding Hokkaido and Okinawa) 
  549
  11.3 
  Tenant unions and tenancy disputes, 1920-1941 
  585
  12.1 
  Employment by sector, industry, and status, for
  selected years 
  610
  12.2 
  Japanese employment by sex and occupational
  status, for selected years, 1920-1950 
  620
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  PREFACE TO VOLUME 6
  The twentieth century poses a problem for the historian. The actors
  on the historical stage are in the midst of an ongoing drama, and our
  observation of this drama, to say nothing of our understanding of it,
  is also in flux. Research on the history of twentieth-century Japan,
  much of it in the social sciences, seems to be expanding at an almost
  exponential rate. The study of the Japanese economy alone has be-
  come a major academic cottage industry in the past decade, engaging
  specialists both inside and outside the field of Japanese studies. By its
  very nature, then, a volume of this sort, concentrating on the twenti-
  eth century, is an exercise in obsolescence. Like the later volumes of
  the first Lord Acton's Cambridge Modern History, this volume is the
  most likely among those of the Cambridge History of Japan to require
  early revision.
  Given this reality, it seemed wiser to plan the volume as a discursive
  guide to twentieth-century Japan than as a complete Baedeker with
  each site and vista along the way properly noted and catalogued. For
  example, there is less space, and hence less detail of coverage, devoted
  to political and diplomatic history than there might have been. But as
  there are many excellent monographs in English on these subjects,
  readers will not have trouble filling in the obvious gaps in the record.
  It may be more difficult for them to find succinct accounts of other
  subjects, particularly in economic, social, and intellectual history, and
  hence the contents err in their favor.
  The volume is divided into four main sections: The first provides a
  general guide to the development of domestic politics, particularly the
  politics of representative institutions; the second deals with external
  relations, with the most emphasis on Japan's territorial expansion and
  aggrandizement on the Asian continent, as well as the consequences
  that flowed therefrom; the third section provides an overview of eco-
  nomic development during the twentieth century; and the final section
  deals with changes in the working and farming classes, which consti-
  tuted the majority of the Japanese population until recently, as well as
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  XViii 
  PREFACE TO VOLUME 6
  the conceptual or theoretical lenses through which intellectuals viewed
  these and other long-term changes. Clearly, much has been left out of
  this volume, not the least of which is a comprehensive treatment of
  changes in education, higher culture, the fine arts, and literature. But
  time is short, history long, and such truncation inevitable.
  This volume uses conventional romanization for Japanese and Ko-
  rean terms, but it stands by the old Wade-Giles system of romaniza-
  tion for Chinese terms. Because many scholars in Chinese studies now
  prefer to use the pinyin system, this practice may appear retrograde, if
  not outright imperialistic. However, most Japan specialists have not
  yet caught on to the new system, and hence all six volumes of the
  Cambridge History of Japan will rely on the old one. An alternative
  would have been to provide both Wade-Giles and pinyin romaniza-
  tion, but that seemed unnecessarily cumbersome. Chinese studies
  scholars offended by reliance on the Wade-Giles system should re-
  member that it is also being used in the Cambridge History of China.
  Throughout the text, values expressed in billions are in American
  billions.
  References mentioned in the footnotes or in the source notes of
  tables and charts will be found in the list of Works Cited at the end of
  the volume. The list comprises most major works in English on mod-
  ern Japanese history.
  We wish to thank the Japan Foundation for grants that covered
  costs of manuscript fees, translation of chapters by Japanese contribu-
  tors, editorial expenses, and meetings.
  PETER DUUS
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Map of modern Japan
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CHAPTER 1
  INTRODUCTION
  Writers of contemporary history face a curious paradox. Because they
  have lived through the period they describe, they should have an easy
  time writing about it. But in fact, the contemporary historians' task is
  far more intractable than is that of the medievalists who have no direct
  experience of the world they study. The medievalists' task is made
  easy by the fact that moth and rust have destroyed much of the evi-
  dence for their period. By contrast, evidence at the contemporary
  historians' disposal is, for all practical purposes, limitless. For every
  volume of Kamakura ibun, for example, there are shelf miles of official
  papers, private papers, books, periodicals, photographs, and films
  documenting even a single year of the twentieth century. This embar-
  rassment of riches provides contemporary historians with an amount
  of material that the medievalists cannot hope for even in their wildest
  dreams, yet this abundance limits what contemporary historians can
  confidently understand in a lifetime. Contemporary historians can
  explore a narrow problem definitively in a way that medievalists can-
  not, but they have more difficulty grasping the larger context of that
  problem.
  In a sense, contemporary historians know too much but understand
  too little. Although the medievalists may never really be sure how
  Minamoto Yoritomo died, they can have few doubts about Yoritomo's
  place in history. On the other hand, even though the health and
  political problems of a contemporary politician like Tanaka Kakuei
  are chronicled in the daily press, the contemporary historians cannot
  be entirely confident about their assessment of Tanaka, if only because
  he is still alive and his biography not yet complete. The contemporary
  historians' difficulties in finding the proper purchase on the history
  they study were aptly summarized by Geoffrey Barraclough:
  The very notion of contemporary history, it has been maintained, is a contra-
  diction in terms. Before we can adopt a historical point of view we must stand
  at a certain distance from the happenings we are investigating. It is hard
  enough at all times to "disengage" ourselves and look at the past dispassion-
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  2 
  INTRODUCTION
  ately and with the critical eye of the historian. Is it possible at all in the case of
  events which bear so closely upon our own lives?1
  Contemporary historians, like physicians who treat themselves, are
  simultaneously subject and object. Even if they participated only as
  observers in the events they describe, they are still part of them. The
  immediate past is likely to have affected their lives in a way that the
  remote past has not, and the mood of their own time is intertwined
  with that of the period they are studying. Historians are likely to think
  about World War II quite differently in 1980 than they did in 1950 or
  will in 2010 if they live that long. And their change in view will be
  affected not simply by the discovery of new evidence or a more sophis-
  ticated synthesis of monographic studies, as it might be if they were
  thinking about the Gempei War. Rather, it will have been affected by
  the passage of time. What has happened since the end of the war will
  color their perceptions of why it happened and what it meant.
  The difficulty of establishing perspectives on contemporary history
  complicates the problem of periodization. There are obvious historical
  punctuation points, but the shape of the whole text is not always clear.
  This volume, for example, deals with "twentieth-century Japan."
  Twenty-five years ago, historians of Japan might have questioned
  whether this constituted a coherent historical period at all. Although it
  probably would have made some sense to see the years from 1895 to
  1945 as a chronological unit, unified by the rise and fall of the Japa-
  nese empire, what was to be done about the postwar period? How
  could it have been made to fit with the preceding half-century? Some
  would have answered: "It does not fit. The Japanese have made a clear
  break with their militarist and expansionist past. Postwar Japan is a
  new society, peaceful and democratic, and it is entirely different from
  prewar Japanese society." Others would have been quick to doubt
  whether Japan had really changed or whether many of the forces at
  work in prewar Japan were not still active and influential in the post-
  war period too. And such historical assessments would have reflected
  political judgments about the direction of Japan's future rather than a
  dispassionate attempt to chart the trajectory of Japan's development.
  There is a strong and obvious case to be made that the twentieth
  century is not a coherent historical unit. The year 1945 constitutes a
  major dividing point in modern Japanese history, second in im-
  portance only to 1868. It is easy to see on one side of that divide a
  1 Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (Harmondsworth, England:
  Penguin, 1967), pp. 14-15-
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  INTRODUCTION 
  3
  Japan ridden with internal conflict, plagued by economic fluctuations,
  feared and hated by its Asian neighbors, and locked in a confrontation
  with the advanced capitalist nations; and on the other side, a Japan
  unified by a national political and social consensus, enjoying sustained
  economic growth and affluence, and at harmony with both its Asian
  neighbors and other capitalist nations. In short, on the one side of that
  divide is Imperial Japan, and on the other is Japan Incorporated. The
  contrast, we are aware, is a caricature, but as someone once observed,
  a caricature often resembles its subject more than a photograph does,
  for it captures an essence, not a likeness. Certainly, many Japanese
  would testify to the importance of postwar change. The generation of
  Japanese alive in 1945 witnessed a dislocation in their own lives, and in
  that of their society, as radical as any before or since. In 1968, the
  centennial year of the Meiji Restoration, two out of three persons
  responding to an Asahi shinbun opinion survey considered the Pacific
  War the most important event in the preceding century-only 14 per-
  cent mentioned the Meiji Restoration. Clearly, 1945 will remain for
  many a decisive turning point in modern Japanese history.2
  Yet as we enter the final decades of the twentieth century, the dimen-
  sions of that divide seem less and less formidable. The continuities
  between prewar and postwar Japan are clearer than they were in the
  immediate postwar period. Much contemporary history has been writ-
  ten not by historians but by social scientists, and the hegemonic histori-
  cal paradigm in most social sciences is an evolutionary model, stressing
  long-term developmental trends. This model has indeed shaped our
  understanding of twentieth-century history. To be sure, the model
  comes in several varieties- that of the Marxists, of the "modernization"
  theorists, and of the developmental economists-each offering different
  interpretations of twentieth-century Japan. The Marxist view stresses
  the growth of a society dominated by monopoly capital, riven by class
  struggle, and propelled into territorial expansionism before the war,
  and characterized by neocolonialism and "managerial fascism" after the
  war. The more bland and less dramatic view of the modernization
  theorists has seen Japan developing steadily into a secular mass society,
  increasingly bureaucratic in character, and converging toward a pattern
  of impersonality and equality in social relations characteristic of West-
  ern society. Finally, the developmental economists-who can no longer
  2 The survey was conducted in August 1968 and reported in the September 20, 1968, edition of
  the Asahi shinbun. Cited in Akio Watanabe, "Japanese Public Opinion and Foreign Policy,
  1964-1973," in The Foreign Policy of Modem Japan, ed. Robert A. Scalapino (Berkeley and
  Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), p. 111.
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  4 
  INTRODUCTION
  be accused of practicing a "dismal science" - have charted basic continu-
  ity in Japan's modern economic growth, interrupted but not broken by
  the political and military upheavals of the mid-century. All these views,
  whether optimistic or pessimistic in their assessment of twentieth-
  century Japan, share the assumption that beneath the surface pattern of
  change, the historical process is a seamless web spun on an evolutionary
  loom.
  Change and continuity are themes with which contemporary histori-
  ans must deal more often than do other historians. In broad terms it is
  possible to see the social, economic, and political patterns that link the
  Japan of 1980 with that of 1900, yet what gives twentieth-century
  history its texture are the subtle variations, and the sometimes-not-so-
  subtle transformations, within those patterns. When to emphasize
  change-the variations and transformations-and when to emphasize
  continuity - the overall patterns-is to some degree an arbitrary choice
  for historians, depending on the scale, duration, and purpose of their
  project. As the several chapters of this volume indicate, social or
  economic historians are more likely to argue for continuities than are
  political or diplomatic historians. Yet the important thing to bear in
  mind is that either emphasis is likely to yield insight into the overall
  shape of twentieth-century history.
  But where does the twentieth century begin, and where does it end?
  Collective human behavior, always unruly and unpredictable, is not
  easy to fit into the tidy compartments we use to mark the passage of
  time. Periodization is arbitrary, especially when historians are in me-
  dias res, as contemporary historians always are. Curiously, it is easier
  to set a terminal date than a beginning date for this volume's coverage.
  The two "shocks" of 1972-3, the sudden revaluation of the yen and
  the equally sudden leap of world oil prices, marked the end of the
  postwar era of rapid economic growth. Although in the long run the
  Japanese managed to overcome many of the economic and political
  problems created by these two shocks, it is convenient to set a bound-
  ary there.
  The beginning is less easy to define. A strong case can be made that
  the "twentieth century" began well before the turn of the century, in
  that certain long-term problems and trends that have affected Japan
  well into the twentieth century were already visible then. Certainly
  many of the authors of this volume would agree. Professor Crawcour
  begins his discussion of economic change in the mid-i88os; Professor
  Peattie begins his discussion of the colonial empire in the mid-1890s;
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  INTRODUCTION 
  5
  and Professor Mitani begins his discussion of political parties in the
  late 1890s. Others have suggested that the 1890s saw a remarkable
  shift in the mood of Japan. 3
  We shall probably be not too wrong if we adopt 1895 as the beginning
  of the twentieth century. Whereas the victory over China was a "shock"
  different from those that Japan experienced in 1972-3, it had a decisive
  impact on the subsequent history of the country's relations with the
  outside world. In regard to the economy, the end of the war was also an
  important turning point. For the first time, many Japanese leaders
  began to think of Japan as an industrial and commercial nation, not as
  an agricultural one. The sudden inflow of Chinese indemnity money
  helped finance Japan's development of heavy industry, especially iron
  and steel; the indemnity also enabled Japan to shift to the gold standard;
  the opening of the China market provided an additional stimulus for
  Japan's textile industry; and the government began to promote more
  actively the export of Japanese manufactured goods. By 1895 there was
  no question that an industrial revolution was well under way.
  In politics too, the year 1895 marks the beginning of a shift away
  from rule by the Meiji oligarchs to a new generation of political lead-
  ers. In December 1895 the Jiyuto reached an entente with the Ito
  cabinet, the first of a series of temporary alliances between oligarchic
  prime ministers and political parties in the lower house of the Diet
  during the late 1890s. When Ito Hirobumi resigned from the premier-
  ship six years later, he was the last of the Meiji oligarchs to serve in
  that office. Even though the oligarchs continued to play an important
  role as genrd (elder statesmen), their influence gradually receded dur-
  ing the next two decades. Power passed into the hands of younger
  leaders drawn from the military, the civil bureaucracy, and the politi-
  cal parties. As we shall see, their authority was narrower and less
  stable than that of the oligarchs, and the shift that began in 1895 was
  therefore of considerable significance.
  3 As Kenneth Pyle observed, "Somewhere in the terrain of the late 1880s and early 1890s lies a
  major watershed in modern Japanese history. On one side lies a Japan occupied with domestic
  reform; a curious, self-critical, uncertain Japan; a Japan still in the making, preparing for the
  future, impelled by a robust and often naive optimism; above all, an experimental Japan, open
  to the world, trying new institutions, testing new values, intent on reordering her society and
  government. On the other side lies a Japan with a renewed sense of order and discipline in her
  national life; a Japan less tractable, less hospitable to social reform, less tolerant of new values;
  a self-esteeming Japan, advertising her independence and destiny; above all, a Japan with a
  heightened sense of her own unity and exclusiveness." Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation
  in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
  1969), p. 188.
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  INTRODUCTION
  JAPAN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD:
  FROM AUTONOMY TO DEPENDENCE
  Without doubt it is in Japan's relations with the outside world that the
  most striking historical discontinuities are to be founds The end of
  World War II looms as a major historical marker. Before 1945 the
  leaders of Japan were consumed by an obsession with national defense
  and with preserving freedom of action in international affairs. Al-
  though they cooperated with other world powers through alliances or
  treaties, they did not wish to be subordinate to or dependent on any
  foreign nation. The drive for national autonomy began with the drive
  to end the "unequal treaties" in the 1890s and accelerated in the 1920s
  and 1930s. By contrast, after 1945, independent action in world poli-
  tics nearly disappeared as an option for the national leadership, and
  until the early 1970s, the dependence of Japan on a foreign power, the
  United States, was palpable and undeniable. No prime minister was
  willing to take a foreign policy initiative considered contrary to the
  interests of the United States, and few leaders advocated the creation
  of a truly autonomous military force able to defend the country with-
  out outside support, such as Japan possessed before 1945.
  This dramatic shift in Japan's relations with the outside world-
  from autonomy to dependence-was part of a broader change in that
  world. At the beginning of the twentieth century, European expansion
  was at its peak. European colonial domination had been extended over
  much of the non-Western world; balance-of-power politics in Europe
  affected the state of politics in the world; and decisions over the fate of
  hundreds of millions of non-European peoples were made in the Euro-
  pean capitals. Just two generations later, the European colonial em-
  pires had been toppled and supplanted by complex networks of trade,
  foreign aid, and security agreements; an international market domi-
  nated by European capital, products, and technology had been re-
  placed by one governed by several regional economic systems; and a
  world in which Europe was the cultural center had become one of
  enormous cultural diversity. The imperialist order dominated by the
  nations of the European peninsula had given way to a complex multi-
  polar international system dominated by two great superpowers, the
  United States and the Soviet Union.
  As the first non-Western nation to emerge as a world power, Japan
  4 A survey of prewar Japanese foreign policy may be found in Ian Nish, Japan's Foreign Policy,
  1868-1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1977).
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  JAPAN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 
  7
  played a significant but complicated role in bringing about these great
  changes in the international order.5 Because it was the only world
  power to have experienced imperialist intrusion, however briefly, in
  the late nineteenth century, Japan's prewar foreign policy acquired a
  peculiar ambivalence. On the one hand, having successfully resisted
  Western political encroachments and negotiated its way out of the
  unequal treaty system imposed on the country in the 1850s, Japan
  served as a model and inspiration to anticolonialist movements in all
  parts of Asia, even as far away as India. On the other hand, as Japan
  acquired its own colonial territories in Taiwan, Korea, and southern
  Sakhalin, established a sphere of influence in southern Manchuria,
  and enjoyed the privileges of a treaty power in China proper, its
  leaders came to share the same anxieties, aspirations, and ambitions as
  those of the Western imperialist nations. (For example, the first inter-
  national diplomatic gathering attended by Japanese representatives
  was the Peking Conference of 1900, convened to deal with the settle-
  ment of the Boxer Rebellion, an outburst of popular xenophobic
  antiimperialism.)
  These conflicting aspects of Japan's peculiar international position at
  the turn of the century led its leaders to practice a curious form of
  antiimperialist imperialism. They could run with the hare or hunt with
  the hounds, as external circumstance and internal interests dictated. As
  the first Asian nation to modernize, Japan attracted the interest of
  anticolonial and antiimperialist political movements throughout Asia.
  Even before the turn of the century, a handful of would-be reformers in
  Korea and China looked to Japan for the secrets of national wealth and
  strength. The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 made it clear to
  other non-Western peoples that the Europeans were neither omnipo-
  tent nor invincible. It is no accident that during the first decade of the
  twentieth century, Indochinese anticolonial nationalists like Phan Boi
  Chau and Chinese nationalist reformers like Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Sun
  Yat-sen sought refuge or support in Tokyo, nor is it surprising that
  Japanese sympathizers tried to encourage them. The Pan-Asianist idea
  that Japan, as the first successful non-European modernizer, was obli-
  gated to assist the uplift of less fortunate neighboring peoples enjoyed
  wide currency from the beginning of the century onward.6
  5 Richard Stony, Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia, 1894-1943 (New York: St. Martin's
  Press, 1979).
  6 For a pioneering work on Japanese Pan-Asianism, see Marius B. Jansen, The Japanese and Sun
  Yat-sen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954). Another informative work is by
  Joshua A. Fogel, Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naito Konan (1866-1934) (Cambridge,
  Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).
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  8 
  INTRODUCTION
  But if victory over Russia gave hope to anticolonialist movements
  around the world, it also intensified the Japanese quest for freedom of
  action. Japan's acquisition of colonies on the Asian mainland, espe-
  cially on the Korean peninsula, was intended to reduce Japan's de-
  fense vulnerability, but ironically it had the opposite effect of increas-
  ing its concerns over national security. As its boundaries of empire
  expanded, so did its zone of vulnerability. After Japan's triumph over
  Russia in 1905, the army general staff demanded more manpower to
  defend the new colonial possessions, and the navy asked for a larger
  fleet. Far from allaying strategic anxieties, an imperialist foreign pol-
  icy fed them, and military expenditures continued to grow.
  The contradiction between imperialist foreign policy and antiim-
  perialist Pan-Asianist rhetoric became all too apparent during World
  War I. The withdrawal of Western power prompted Japanese leaders
  to pursue the country's interests, unconstrained by concern over West-
  ern reaction. Japan's declaration of war against Germany licensed the
  Japanese seizure of the German concessions on the Shantung penin-
  sula as well as its Pacific territories, and the absence of countervailing
  Western power emboldened new attempts to secure a hegemonic posi-
  tion in China, first through the Twenty-one Demands and then
  through the Nishihara loans. And at the Versailles conference, the
  Japanese delegation assiduously protected its newly acquired hold
  over its Shantung and German Pacific colonies. It thus became increas-
  ingly clear to many Asian nationalists that Japan was as much a threat
  as a model. In 1917 Phan Boi Chau, the Indochinese patriot who had
  based his anti-French movement in Japan shortly before the Russo-
  Japanese War, declared that Japan had superseded all the European
  powers as the most dangerous enemy of Asia and that Japanese policy
  toward its Asian neighbors-Korea and China-was cut from the same
  cloth as that of the European colonial powers.7
  At the beginning of the century the Meiji leaders had accepted the
  imperialist order as normal, and they had dealt with the European
  colonial powers within a framework of international law and balance-
  of-power politics. But their successors in the 1920s and 1930s had to
  deal with a world in which imperialism was increasingly under attack.
  Wilsonian internationalism trumpeted the right of national self-
  determination; Leninist antiimperialism called for the oppressed peo-
  ples of the world to light the spark of world revolution; and indigenous
  7 Cited in David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
  University of California Press, 1981), p. 16, n. 2.
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  JAPAN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 
  9
  nationalism throughout the non-Western world challenged colonial
  regimes. The post-World War I leadership faced a far different set of
  policy options than their Meiji predecessors had. It was no longer
  necessary to accept the old imperialist order and all that came with it.8
  The first alternative was to follow the lead of the Western powers
  but to insist that Japan was the paramount regional power in East
  Asia, with needs and interests that required special recognition or
  concessions from the European powers. For example, Foreign Minis-
  ter Shidehara Kijuro, a pro-Western diplomat who advocated close
  cooperation with the Anglo-American powers, never lost sight of the
  fact that Japan needed an independent military capacity and that its
  interests, particularly in East Asia, did not always jibe with those of
  the Western powers. The second alternative was to assert that Japan,
  because of its proximity to East Asia and its growing political and
  economic interests there, should act with little concern for the atti-
  tudes or reactions of the European powers there. The foreign policy of
  Tanaka Giichi, described by Professor; Hata, best represented this
  alternative. The third alternative was to assert that Japan had a vital
  historical mission to overturn the existing international status quo,
  dominated by the European imperialists, and to pave the way for the
  construction of a new international order based on a new set of moral
  and political principles. Kita Ikki, for example, called on Japan to
  raise the "virtuous banner of an Asian league and take the leadership
  in a world federation which must come."9
  During the 1920s, Japanese foreign policy shifted back and forth
  between the first and second alternatives. Hoping to forestall renewed
  imperialist rivalry in East Asia and fearful of a naval arms race, the
  Japanese government cooperated with the attempt at the Washington
  Conference (1921-2) to establish regional collective security arrange-
  ments in East Asia. But during the rest of the decade, Japanese leaders
  periodically asserted their inclination to treat Japan as a regional
  power with interests in East Asia that overrode the imperative of
  internationalist cooperation. Covert dabbling in Chinese warlord poli-
  tics in Peking and in the provinces, as well as Japan's independent
  position at the Peking Tariff Conference in 1925 and Japan's two
  Shantung expeditions in the late 1920s, gave notice that Japanese
  interests were not completely served by multilateral cooperation. The
  8 A standard account of the period is by Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New
  Order in the Far East, /03/-/94/(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).
  9 George M. Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki, 1883-tgjj (Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 1969), chap. 4.
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  10 
  INTRODUCTION
  shifts in Japanese foreign policy between cooperation and indepen-
  dence prompted both domestic and foreign observers to characterize it
  as "dual diplomacy."10
  After 1931, however, Japanese foreign policy turned toward the
  third alternative-the assertion of complete autonomy from the other
  imperialist powers." The occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung
  Army, Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, the difficulty
  of reaching an agreement on naval arms limitations at the London
  Conference, and the increasingly frequent assertion of slogans like
  "Asia for the Asians" reflected the Japanese leadership's desire to
  loosen its moorings to the European imperialist camp. Those moor-
  ings were finally and irrevocably cut by the unanticipated, though not
  unwelcome, outbreak of war with Nationalist China in 1937. The Pan-
  Asianist ideas that had enjoyed currency at the turn of the century
  acquired new vigor in the notions of a "New Order in East Asia" and
  the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." Although both of these
  visionary conceptions of Japan's historic role in world politics were
  rationalizations for a policy of expansion already under way, they did
  reflect a widespread belief that the imperialist order established by the
  European powers in the nineteenth century had come to an end and
  that the world system would be reorganized into economically self-
  contained and politically autonomous supranational regional blocs.12
  Even though the Japanese were not successful in establishing their
  Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, they did manage to destroy
  the foundations of European colonial domination throughout East
  and Southeast Asia. If the European war represented the turning
  point in the transition from an old world order dominated by the
  10 Cf. Akira Iriye, After Imperalism. See also Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso-lin in Northwest
  China, 1911-1928: China, Japan and the Manchurian Idea (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
  sity Press, 1977), pp. 119-26.
  11 There are many excellent works on the foreign policy of Japan during this period: James B.
  Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-1938
  (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966); James W. Morley, ed., Japan Erupts:
  The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, 1928-1932 (New York: Columbia
  University Press, 1984); James W. Morley, ed., The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on
  the Asian Continent (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); James W. Morley, ed.,
  Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan, Germany and the USSR, 1935-1940 (New York: Columbia
  University Press, 1976); and James W. Morley, ed., The Fateful Choice: Japan's Advance into
  Southeast Asia, 1939-1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). The four works
  edited by Morley are translations from the multivolume series Taiheiyo sensb e no michi: kaisen
  gaikoshi published by the Asahi shinbun press in 1962-3.
  12 See William Miles Fletcher III, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in
  Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), chap. 7; Gordon Mark
  Berger, Parlies Out of Power in Japan, 1931-1941 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
  Press, 1977), chap. 4-
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  JAPAN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 
  II
  colonial powers to a new postwar order dominated by the superpow-
  ers, a parallel transition was taking place in East Asia under Japan's
  initiative. Japan's military expansion after 1941 toppled colonial re-
  gimes in the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, the Philippines, and eventu-
  ally French Indochina. The Japanese occupying forces had no diffi-
  culty in finding collaborators who saw the Japanese, initially at least,
  as liberators, and Japan's encouragement of anticolonialist national-
  ists in Southeast Asia paved the way for the wave of antiimperialist
  revolutions, civil wars, and liberation movements, successful and
  unsuccessful, that swept the region after 1945. In China too, the
  Japanese invasion prompted the European powers to end the last
  vestiges of the "unequal treaty" system.
  With the defeat in 1945, the leaders of Japan found themselves in a
  new world, under new circumstances that did not admit the possibility
  of autonomy in diplomatic action. The postwar "new order in East
  Asia" was quite different from what the prewar leaders had antici-
  pated. First, the destruction of Japan's military capability and the
  surrender of its colonial empire severely reduced its international sta-
  tus and narrowed its range of action. Second, the prostration of China,
  which had spurred the development of a "continental policy" since the
  turn of the century, was at an end, and the country came under a
  unified regime established by the Chinese Communist Party. Third,
  the ruthless and brutal policies of Japanese military forces in China
  and Southeast Asia, to say nothing of its long colonial rule in Korea
  and Taiwan, left most of its Asian neighbors with hostile feelings
  toward Japan. Finally, the major Western European powers involved
  in prewar regional politics, most notably Great Britain, had lost or
  were losing their influence there, and a new triumvirate of non-
  European powers-the United States, the Soviet Union, and eventu-
  ally the People's Republic of China-dominated regional politics. This
  new configuration radically altered the range of policy alternatives
  open to Japan and radically reduced its capacity to act as a free agent in
  international politics, even if its leaders had wanted to.
  The postwar leaders, however, no longer conceived of Japan as a
  great power nor expected that it would play a central role in world
  politics. '3 Indeed, during the first decade or so following the war,
  Japan's leaders were at pains to live down the nation's reputation as a
  disruptive expansionist power. The new constitution ratified by the
  13 Cf. John W. Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience,
  1878-19S4 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Shigeru Yoshida, The
  Yoshida Memoirs (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
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  12 
  INTRODUCTION
  Diet in 1946 renounced Japan's sovereign right to wage war or to
  maintain a war-making potential, and in the late 1940s some Japanese
  leaders proposed that Japan remain a weak but neutral power whose
  security would be protected by some sort of international guarantee by
  the major powers. Its national self-image had shrunk considerably
  since the prewar days when the majority of the Japanese public had
  actively or passively supported expansion, proud that Japan was
  ranked as a first-class power, with powerful armies and fleets, a pros-
  pering overseas empire, and no serious regional rivals. In 1951, toward
  the end of the American Occupation, a Yomiuri shinbun poll found that
  47 percent of the respondents responded affirmatively when asked
  whether they thought Japan was inferior to "civilized countries" like
  the United States and Great Britain, the bitter enemies of a decade
  earlier.1* It is no wonder that some foreign observers concluded the
  Japanese suffered from a national inferiority complex and that both its
  leaders and the public saw Japan powerless to choose any course of
  action in foreign policy that did not involve dependence.
  During the immediate postwar years, Japan's first priority was to
  end the American Occupation and regain formal sovereign indepen-
  dence, and the second was to restore the country to international
  respectability. After the peace treaty with the United States had been
  signed in 1951, the debate reopened on the direction of Japan's foreign
  policy.'5 The range of alternatives, however, was much narrower than
  in the prewar period, and the assumptions behind the debate were
  quite different. The sense of threat from the outside, so palpable since
  the Meiji period, no longer obsessed Japanese leaders or the Japanese
  public as it once had. Neither was the quest for prestige as a military
  and diplomatic power a central consideration in foreign policy deci-
  sions. Recovery, prosperity, and stability at home were more impor-
  tant than were foreign adventures or high international visibility. At
  one end of the debate were those who proposed a policy of "true
  neutrality" of noninvolvement in the international struggle between
  the two superpowers and their satellites; at the other were conservative
  leaders who wished to reestablish a more or less independent military
  capability that would enable Japan to act once again as an international
  free agent; and in between were those who proposed to become a
  14 See Watanabe, "Japanese Public Opinion," p. 119.
  15 Donald C. Hellmann, Japanese Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: The Peace Agreement with
  the Soviet Union (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969); George R.
  Packard III, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Crisis 0/1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
  sity Press, 1966).
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  JAPAN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 
  13
  dependent or satellite of one of the superpowers, through either a
  military alliance with the United States to guarantee Japan's security
  or a "positive neutrality" that aligned Japan's foreign policy with that
  of the Soviet Union and its allies.
  Given Japan's growing economic linkages with the United States
  and the presence of American military forces in Japan, the easiest (and
  most pragmatic) alternative was alignment with the United States.
  Although Japan's ability to build a first-class military and naval force,
  including nuclear weaponry, grew as its economy recovered in the
  1950s and 1960s, leaders like Yoshida Shigeru, Kishi Nobusuke, and
  Ikeda Hayato continued to calculate that the best interests of Japan
  would be served by close ties with the United States. Neutrality held
  no advantage, and accelerated rearmament would divert resources
  from economic recovery and growth. During the 1950s and 1960s the
  Japanese government consciously adopted a "low posture" in relations
  with the outside world, making the pivot of its foreign policy its
  economic and security ties to the United States. Indeed, apart from its
  alignment with the United States, Japan really had no foreign policy
  except, perhaps, its opposition to nuclear weapons, as expressed in the
  three "nonnuclear principles" proclaimed by Prime Minister Sato
  Eisakuin 1968.
  What concerned Japanese leaders was making subtle shifts in the
  relationship that would bring Japan into a less asymmetrical relation-
  ship with its superpower mentor. The creation of the National Self-
  Defense Force and limited rearmament in the 1950s, the revision of
  the Mutual Security Treaty in i960, the initiation of regular cabinet-
  level meetings between representatives of both countries in the early
  1960s, and the long drawn-out negotiations over the reversion of
  Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands to Japanese sovereignty in the late
  1960s and early 1970s all were directed to this end. As the relative
  strength of the United States as a world power began to dwindle, an
  element of "partnership" was introduced into the United States-Japan
  relationship in the 1960s. Curiously, public support for the alliance, as
  reflected in public opinion polls, grew stronger, as if to show that the
  Japanese preferred to be dependent on a weaker than on a strong
  United States.
  The transformation of Japan from a country seeking equality and
  acceptance by the imperialist powers into a country content under the
  patronage of a major superpower could not have been predicted at the
  turn of the century. The Meiji leaders had fought hard to escape the
  constraints of the unequal treaty system imposed in the 1850s and
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  14 
  INTRODUCTION
  1860s, but Yoshida Shigeru had little choice in 1951 but to accept a
  Mutual Security Treaty that seriously compromised Japan's sover-
  eignty by requiring a kind of "extraterritorial" right for American
  military personnel to be stationed in Japan and by permitting the
  country to be used as a base for American military forces over which
  the Japanese government had no control. The treaty's more egre-
  giously unequal elements were eliminated in i960, but it was not until
  1972 that Okinawa was returned to Japan's sovereign control.16
  By the early 1970s, Japanese leaders were emboldened to begin
  asserting some independence in foreign policy. This was made possi-
  ble by external events over which they had little control. The collapse
  of the Bretton Woods system of fixed foreign exchange rates cut the
  yen free from the dollar, and the oil crisis of 1973 brought home the
  reality that continued economic growth required greater freedom of
  action in dealing with the producers of essential raw materials and
  resources. By the mid-1970s, Japanese foreign ministers could speak
  of "cutting the umbilical cord" binding Japan to the United States or
  of pursuing an "omnidirectional diplomacy." Much of this new asser-
  tion of independence was rhetorical, and there appeared to be little
  change in the basic assumptions of Japanese foreign policy (let alone
  the emergence of a coherent global strategy). But in small ways-by
  independent overtures to the People's Republic of China, by increases
  in external investment in primary resource developments, by efforts to
  distance itself from American Middle Eastern policy-the Japanese
  government moved cautiously toward greater freedom of action. But
  in no sense did this represent the quest for great-power status that had
  moved the oligarchs at the turn of the century.
  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE:
  FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS
  If there has been change and discontinuity in Japan's external rela-
  tions, the most striking continuity in contemporary Japanese history is
  its steady growth into one of the largest and most productive industrial
  economies in the world. In 1900, Japan's industrial revolution was just
  getting under way, but by 1973 its output of goods and services sur-
  passed that of every advanced market economy except the United
  States, and its per-capita GNP was higher than that of the United
  16 A useful summary of foreign policy discussion in the 1960s is provided in Donald C. Hell-
  mann, Japan and East Asia: The New International Order (New York: Praeger, 1972).
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  15
  Kingdom, the first industrialized nation. Although these facts may
  seem to argue more for change than for continuity, the phenomenon of
  change itself has been constant. The curve of growth, sloping more
  sharply upward as the century unrolled, was unbroken except during
  the war years, and the economists' statistical extrapolations chart it as
  a continuous line.
  Only in recent decades, however, has the continuity of Japanese
  economic growth attracted much attention. Even in the mid-1950s, as
  Japan was about to begin its remarkable spurt of postwar growth, it
  was still widely regarded as a less developed country, far behind the
  world's other industrial powers. In 1955 its GNP was one-fifteenth
  that of the United States and only half that of Germany; its per-capita
  income ranked thirty-fifth among the capitalist bloc nations; nearly 40
  percent of its work force was engaged in agriculture; and it was the
  second largest borrower from the World Bank. At best Japan appeared
  to be a third-rate economic power, far behind the Western nations and
  even weaker than its neighbor China, then undergoing a major push
  toward industrial growth and economic modernization. In 1957 Edwin
  O. Reischauer observed, "The economic situation in Japan may be so
  fundamentally unsound that no policies, no matter how wise, can save
  her from slow economic starvation and all the concomitant political
  and social ills that situation would produce."17 Far from being idiosyn-
  cratic, this observation was a mainstream view, shared by foreign and
  Japanese observers alike.
  The origins of such a view are not difficult to discover. It mirrored
  pessimistic images of the economy pervasive in the prewar period.
  Whereas the century had begun with a flush of optimism about Ja-
  pan's economic future, more sober assessments had become common-
  place by the 1920s. Orthodox economists, mindful of widespread
  symptoms of economic slowdown, emphasized Japan's backwardness
  and vulnerability, and foreign observers often echoed them. In 1930
  John E. Orchard noted, "[Japan's] possibilities for industrialization
  are limited and there seems to be no prospect that Japan can attain a
  position of major importance as a manufacturing nation. . . . The past
  has been beset with difficulties; the prospect for the future none too
  brilliant."18 The country was poorly endowed -with industrial re-
  sources like iron ore and coal; its dense and rapidly growing popula-
  17 Edwin O. Reischauer, The UnitedStaies and Japan, rev. ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1957),
  p. 51.
  18 John E. Orchard, Japan's Economic Position: The Progress of Industrialization in Japan (New
  York: McGraw-Hill, 1930), pp. 482,489.
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  16 
  INTRODUCTION
  tion was pressing against limited arable-land resources; it faced serious
  shortages of capital; and it was a latecomer in the struggle for
  markets-its only assets were cheap labor and proximity to the Asian
  market. At best it could become a supplier of inexpensive light manu-
  factures to its slightly more backward neighbors. Orchard thought
  that Japan might be the "forerunner of a new and saner industrial
  order" based on decentralized small-scale enterprises supplied with
  abundant electrical power rather than based on the highly concen-
  trated industrial centers characteristic of the West, with all their atten-
  dant social evils. Other Western observers expressed alarm at the
  possibility of Japan's becoming a "yellow industrial peril." During the
  1930s it was common for foreigners to view Japan as a vicious competi-
  tor, making its way into markets once dominated by the advanced
  industrial nations, especially Great Britain, by means of "cheap
  wages" and "social dumping."
  Marxist economists and other critical observers in Japan took a
  more catastrophic view, seeing the economy teetering on the verge of a
  systemic crisis that would bring the collapse of capitalism in Japan.
  Japan's problem, they argued, sprang not from poor factor endow-
  ments but from basic structural weaknesses. Theorists like Yamada
  Seitaro pointed out that Japan's economic development had been de-
  formed by the militaristic character of its industrial growth and the
  existence of a vast poor rural population laboring under semifeudal
  conditions. Other Marxists disputed the particulars of Yamada's argu-
  ments, but they agreed that the economy was fundamentally flawed.
  Such views also found a sympathetic Western audience. In her bril-
  liantly polemic Japan's Feet of Clay (1937), Freda Utley portrayed the
  Japanese economy as on the verge of collapse:
  How precarious then is the Japanese national economy. Even in peace time
  she can only make ends meet by a feverish expansion of cheap manufac-
  tures. . . . All this . . . has only been made possible by means of inflation,
  reduced wages, a shrunken home market, and acute agrarian distress. Japan's
  export has been a hunger export, a desperate effort to make ends meet, to
  keep afloat her almost bankrupt national economy. . . . the whole top-heavy
  economic structure rests on the narrow foundation of a primitive small scale
  agriculture which is now too weak to bear the great burdens placed upon it
  and threatens at any moment to crack and bring the whole vast superstructure
  crashing to the ground.1'
  Despite this structural weakness, or perhaps because of it, Utley con-
  cluded, Japan was about to expand overseas.
  19 Freda Utley, Japan's Feet of Clay (New York: Norton, 1937), pp. 53, 201.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  17
  To be sure, even before war broke out in 1941, some observers did
  not think Japan's economic future so dim, but the wartime destruc-
  tion encouraged a return to pessimism. The economy's structural
  "backwardness"-its relatively low per-capita income, the large pro-
  portion of the population engaged in agriculture, and the peculiar
  "dual structure" in which large modern factories existed side by side
  with flimsy and unstable small workshops-still persisted. Growth
  during the 1950s was often regarded as anomalous, the product of a
  catching-up process of economic reconstruction rather than an indica-
  tor of stable long-term performance. The persistence of "backward"
  characteristics made it difficult for many foreign observers to grasp
  the "economic miracle" in the making.
  Breathlessly optimistic assessments of Japan's economic future,
  and hence a positive evaluation of its economic past, emerged only in
  the 1960s. This new view was stimulated not only by the emergence
  of developmental economics as an academic subdiscipline but also by
  the increasingly impressive performance of the Japanese economy
  and the growing visibility of Japanese manufacturing exports in the
  world market. The admission of Japan into the Organization for
  Economic Cooperation and Development in 1964 marked an "offi-
  cial" recognition of Japan's new economic status, and new modes of
  comparative econometric analysis revealed that even in the prewar
  period the economy had neither stagnated nor verged on collapse but
  in fact had been one of the fastest growing in the world. Statistics
  were marshaled to show that Japan had enjoyed an extraordinarily
  high economic growth rate for several generations. Many structural
  features once labeled as "backward" came to be regarded as the
  foundation for the ongoing "economic miracle." By the early 1960s,
  scholars and public officials began to speak of a "Japanese model" of
  economic growth for "late developing countries" to follow, and by
  the early 1970s, Japan was being touted as an example for the ad-
  vanced industrial economies as well. In 1970 Herman Kahn pre-
  dicted that by the year 2000 Japan would achieve the world's largest
  GNP and surpass even the United States in industrial productivity
  and standards of living.20
  Against this changing perception of Japan's economic development
  since the turn of the century, it has become easier to discern the long-
  run patterns of continuity in growth. The concept of "modern eco-
  20 Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response (Englewood Cliffs,
  N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
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  l8 
  INTRODUCTION
  nomic growth"-that is, internally generated development based on
  the assimilation of modern technology, a permanent and stable infra-
  structure, and continuing international contacts-has underlined the
  overall continuity in the economic history of contemporary Japan. The
  irregularities in this growth, once regarded as moments of crisis or
  near collapse, came to be interpreted as transient episodes. For ex-
  ample, Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky portrayed twentieth-
  century economic growth as a series of developmental "waves" charac-
  terized by a spurt of rapid growth followed by less rapid growth.21
  Although they identified "long swings" in the GNP growth rate,
  marked by "peaks" and "troughs," they emphasized "trend accelera-
  tion," the long-term tendency for the growth rate to rise. The overall
  pattern has been rapid development from the end of the Russo-
  Japanese War to the end of World War I, followed by a slowdown in
  the 1920s; another period of growth in the 1930s, abruptly terminated
  by the outbreak of World War II; and the period of spectacular post-
  war growth beginning with the end of the American Occupation and
  continuing until the slowdown of the early 1970s. As this periodization
  suggests, internal political change and relations with the outside world
  have played key roles in the economic history of twentieth-century
  Japan. Growth itself has to be explained by internal economic dynam-
  ics, but its timing or pacing has been much affected by noneconomic
  factors.
  The main point, however, is that the new emphasis on the pattern of
  long-term economic growth in prewar Japan has pointed to a major
  continuity in contemporary Japanese history, one that can be demon-
  strated with an assuring array of statistical information. The argument
  for continuity in twentieth-century economic history rests on nonquan-
  tifiable evidence as well.22 Certain features in the sociopolitical environ-
  ment of growth have persisted from the prewar through the postwar
  periods: a tolerance of the government's flexible involvement in pro-
  moting economic growth; a disinclination to cling to pure market
  models for the economy; a predilection for oligopolistic organization; a
  tempering of market relationships by indigenous social traditions or
  21 Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth: Trend Acceleration in the
  Twentieth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973).
  22 The following works stress continuity of the economy before and after 1945: Angus Maddi-
  son, Economic Growth in Japan and the USSR (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969); Kunio
  Yoshihara, Japanese Economic Development: A Short Introduction (Tokyo: Oxford University
  Press, 1979); Kazushi Ohkawa and Miyohei Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic
  Development: A Quantitative Appraisal (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979);
  Takafusa Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure (Tokyo:
  Tokyo University Press, 1981).
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  19
  customs; and a continuing orientation toward external markets. Even
  though the postwar economy was much larger in scale, it inherited
  many features of the prewar economy.
  Government and the economy
  As Professor Crawcour points out in his chapter, the government has
  actively intervened in the economy since the beginning of the Meiji
  period. Government officials, unconstrained by a commitment to
  laissez-faire ideas, have been willing to promote selected aspects of
  economic growth, and private business leaders have been willing to
  accept or tolerate such official intervention when it suited their needs
  or interests. The classic pure market model, in which the profit-
  maximizing private entrepreneur provides the main impetus to growth
  and the invisible hand works smoothly and infallibly, has not found an
  enthusiastic audience in twentieth-century Japan. Rather, the Japa-
  nese ideology of economic growth has emphasized collective or na-
  tional interests, whether seen in terms of national strength and secu-
  rity or popular prosperity, and has assumed a central role for state
  involvement. 23
  Prewar policymakers, corporate leaders, and many intellectuals
  were attracted to the economic doctrines of the later developing Euro-
  pean industrial countries, especially the ideas of the German historical
  school, introduced to Japan around the turn of the century.2i» The
  appeal of these ideas undoubtedly was reinforced by their resonance
  with traditional conceptions of the role of the state, appropriate social
  relations, and distributive justice, but they also suggested how Japan
  might exploit the "advantages of followership." Marxist economics
  was introduced into Japan in the 1920s but did not gain influence until
  the 1930s when the success of the Soviet Union's Five-Year Plans and
  the production crisis in the advanced Western economies enhanced its
  credence. As a result, even non-Marxist bureaucrats and intellectuals
  in the 1930s came to advocate increased state management and central
  planning.
  Although the government's role in promoting economic growth has
  23 For a useful discussion of the government's role in the economy, see William W. Lockwood,
  The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
  ton University Press, 1954), chap. 10; William W. Lockwood, The Stale and Economic
  Enterprise in Japan: Essays in the Political Economy of Growth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1965).
  24 Kenneth B. Pyle, "Advantages of Followership: German Economics and Japanese Bureau-
  crats, 1890-1925," Journal of Japanese Studies 1 (Autumn 1974): 127-64.
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  20 
  INTRODUCTION
  rarely been questioned, its mode of intervention has altered subtly over
  time. The Meiji leaders assumed that once industrialization had begun,
  the government would move to the sidelines. Private initiative, private
  profit, and private property would provide the main incentives for
  growth. The state was expected to play a facilitative rather than a mana-
  gerial or entrepreneurial role. During the early decades of the twentieth
  century, the hand of the government remained visible, tempering mar-
  ket conditions to promote specific industries, to expand overseas trade,
  and to induce investment in newly acquired colonial territories, but its
  involvement was limited largely to carefully selected large-scale capital-
  intensive enterprises deemed essential to national interests-iron and
  steel, shipbuilding, the national rail network, and arms production.
  Economic policy was sectoral rather than macroeconomic.
  The government rarely intervened to promote growth in industries in
  which the private sector had comparative advantage. Until the 1930s
  the modern sector was governed largely by market forces and private
  initiative. Light industry (cotton textiles, ceramics, food products,
  soap, and other consumer goods) was largely on its own, and so were the
  heavy industries that grew up during Japan's "second industrial revolu-
  tion" during World War I (chemicals, electrical goods, machine tools,
  and fertilizer). And when one looks at the "traditional" sector, the
  absence of government intervention is even more striking. The small
  factory owner, the shopkeeper, the self-cultivating farmer, and even the
  small landlord all were at the mercy of market forces- the ebb and flow
  of demand, prices, and interest rates. Although foreign observers con-
  tinued to be struck by the extraordinary degree of collusion between the
  government and modern enterprises, those inside the economy often
  had a quite different perspectiye. The majority of the working popula-
  tion was operating in a pure market context, in which the government
  adopted a hands-off policy and did little to promote production except
  through diffusion of technical information or limited regulation. In
  other words, government intervention in the economy was skewed to-
  ward large-scale capital-intensive enterprise, whereas the majority of
  entrepreneurs, investors, and workers had to confront the vagaries of
  the marketplace.25
  During the 1930s, reformist bureaucrats, intellectuals, and politi-
  cians called for an end to a "liberal economic structure" and the estab-
  lishment of a "controlled economy." The worldwide post-1929 eco-
  25 For post-World War I economic developments, see Takafusa Nakamura, Economic Growth
  in Prewar Japan, trans. Robert A. Feldman (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
  1983), pt. 2.
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  21
  nomic crisis revealed the weakness of laissez-faire capitalism. There
  was a concerted bureaucratic effort to expand the government's role in
  the economy from facilitative and regulatory activities toward more
  directive and managerial activities. As Professor Nakamura suggests
  in his chapter, when the country moved from a state of "semi-
  emergency" to "full emergency" during the middle of the decade, a
  whole new repertoire of techniques for government intervention
  developed-central planning, industrial targeting policy, wage and
  price controls, and rationing of both raw materials and consumer
  goods-in order to build up a "national defense state." Although a full-
  blown "controlled economy" was never imposed on the country, even
  during the war, the sphere of autonomous business decision making
  shrank considerably.26
  During the postwar period, many of these same mechanisms were
  used to promote economic recovery and growth. In 1946 the Eco-
  nomic Stabilization Board was established to bring order to the post-
  war economic chaos created by the wartime destruction, and by 1955
  it had evolved into the Economic Planning Agency responsible for
  economic forecasting and overall indicative economic planning. More
  important, two powerful agencies, the Ministry of Finance and the
  Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), used a wide
  range of incentives and controls (for example, import restrictions, tax
  advantages, accelerated depreciation schedules, low-cost credit, and
  "administrative guidance") to channel investment into high-growth
  industries. As Professor Kosai argues, when the rate of growth acceler-
  ated, economic controls were relaxed, especially in foreign trade and
  foreign exchange restrictions, but government ministries continued to
  work closely with large corporations, exchanging information and en-
  gaging in other kinds of informal cooperation.
  The political economy of twentieth-century Japan has thus rested
  continuously on a shifting balance between reliance on market forces
  and resort to government intervention. As Ohkawa and Rosovsky put
  it, "Japan retained some advantages of capitalism, i.e. efficient produc-
  ers, while reaping the benefits of socialism, i.e. considerable govern-
  ment control over the economic effort and direction."2? Although the
  government's regulatory role has tended to increase, perhaps most dra-
  matically in the labor market, its principal role has been developmental.
  26 Jerome B. Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis: University of
  Minnesota Press, 1949); Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of
  Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
  1982), chaps. 4, 5. 
  27 Ohkawa and Rosovsky, Japaneie Economic Grozw/i, p. 225.
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  22 
  INTRODUCTION
  The reason, as Professor Crawcour points out, has been an acute aware-
  ness that as an industrial latecomer with a limited industrial raw mate-
  rial base, Japan could survive international competition only through
  the external economies provided by government policy.
  The social organization of production
  Just as there was little resistance to government intervention in the
  economy, so too there has been a persistent belief in twentieth-century
  Japan that market relationships did not operate in quite the same way in
  Japan as in the Western economies. With the exception of socialists,
  Marxists, and other social reformers, most political or intellectual lead-
  ers have been reluctant to admit that exploitation or unfairness might
  exist in the social organization of Japan's economy. Whereas market
  relationships in the "individualistic" West were based purely on the
  cash nexus, it was argued, in Japan they were modified by a sense of
  cooperation and deference among economic actors. Mutual trust rather
  than binding legal obligation was the model for economic behavior; and
  the village, the household, the traditional workshop, and the patriar-
  chal family provided templates for economic relationships.
  These ideas first surfaced in the debate in the late 1890s over
  whether or not to institute factory legislation. Although business lead-
  ers were willing to entertain government intervention in other aspects
  of the economy, they wished to keep the conditions of employment
  and the wage contract outside its writ. Businessmen who opposed
  factory legislation were quick to point out that the natural bonds of
  affection, harmony, and loyalty that bound workers to their employers
  made it unnecessary. "In our country," the Tokyo Chamber of Com-
  merce contended, "relations between employers and employees are
  just like those within a family. The young and old help one another
  and consult together in both good times and bad, and they are envel-
  oped in a mist of affectionate feelings."28 The workplace ethic in
  Japan, in other words, was entirely different from that of the advanced
  economies of the West.
  At the turn of the century, social realities in the factories, mines,
  and workshops were at considerable variance from this conception.
  Muck-raking journalists like Yokoyama Gennosuke revealed the pov-
  erty and squalor of Japan's "lower classes," and later social exposes
  28 Byron K. Marshall, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business
  Elite, 1868-1941 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 58.
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  23
  revealed the exploitative character of employment in the textile indus-
  tries, in which adolescent female factory operatives were often kept in
  prisonlike confinement. The "mists of affection" touted by the Tokyo
  Chamber of Commerce were belied by the behavior of employers who
  increased their profit margins by cutting labor costs and by the authori-
  tarian employer-labor relationships to which Professor Taira alludes
  in his chapter.
  Yet it would be wrong to dismiss the notion of a "familistic"
  workplace ethic as simple hypocrisy or pure ideology. By the 1920s
  many large corporate enterprises, particularly in the capital-intensive
  heavy industries, systematically pursued policies of company paternal-
  ism aimed at keeping workers docile and content. Workers were re-
  cruited young and trained in company-run schools; a system of "life-
  time" employment was introduced; wage scales were increasingly
  linked to seniority; works councils or other consultative bodies were
  set up to resolve workshop disputes; and company welfare programs
  were established to provide health care and other nonwage benefits.
  These new employment practices were instrumental rather than ideo-
  logical in intent, designed in part to retain the services of skilled
  workers in demand by competitors and in part to ward off pressure
  from the militant and activist labor movement that emerged in the
  post-World War I years. But the corporate managers, to explain and
  justify their paternalistic policies, returned to the idea that social rela-
  tionships in Japan were unique, reflecting a deeply embedded cultural
  concern for harmony, cooperation, and mutual trust.29
  At the same time, it should be remembered, the ideology of labor-
  employer harmony was accepted by many workers as well. In the
  1920s a militant labor movement, distrustful of capitalism and commit-
  ted to adversarial tactics, had emerged in Japan, and for the first time
  there were large-scale strikes in many key industries. But the move-
  ment remained limited in size and never managed to capture the alle-
  giance of the majority of workers, even in the most developed indus-
  trial sectors. Although there are many reasons for the "failure" of the
  prewar labor movement, undoubtedly the most important had to do
  with the character of the work force itself. Leaving aside the female
  factory operatives in the textiles industries, who were inherently diffi-
  cult to organize, most male industrial workers came from backgrounds
  29 Ronald P. Dore, British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Indus-
  trial Relations (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), pt. 3; An-
  drew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-19SS (Cam-
  bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
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  24 
  INTRODUCTION
  that militated against involvement in labor unions. Often they were
  recruited when quite young, still in their late adolescence fresh from
  an elementary education that drilled into them the familistic or com-
  munitarian values that were part and parcel of corporate management
  ideology. Moreover, as Gary Allinson noted, workers often came from
  a rural environment in which labor relationships were diffuse, produc-
  tion was undertaken for collective goals, and age hierarchy prevailed.3°
  Given this background, they were likely to accept the idea that labor
  and capital were not adversaries but collaborators engaged in a com-
  mon enterprise with common goals and interests.
  Paternalistic ideology and employment practices, limited to a few
  large enterprises in the prewar period, became more widely diffused in
  the 1950s and 1960s. Some Western observers argued that the persis-
  tence of these practices indicated a lack of "rationality" in Japanese
  management. But the publication of James Abegglen's The Japanese
  Factory*1 in 1958 led to a wider appreciation outside Japan of their
  economic utility. Leading Japanese businessmen and officials often
  pointed out that the "Japanese employment system"-lifetime employ-
  ment, seniority wage scales, and enterprise unionism - contributed sub-
  stantially to high-speed economic growth by cutting worker time lost
  through labor disputes, by encouraging innovation from below, by
  facilitating quality control, and by generally enhancing worker produc-
  tivity. Critics attacked the "Japanese employment system" as a social
  myth, as only a minority of workers-permanent workers in large
  enterprises-received its benefits. But it is true that the system has
  produced a peculiar sort of industrial proletariat, whose members are
  seemingly committed to an ideology of mutual obligation and who are
  not inclined to disrupt social harmony by unseemly protest. Indeed,
  aside from those in the early postwar years, there were no major labor
  disputes in the leading growth industries such as electronics, heavy
  machinery, or automobiles but only in the public-service sector such as
  national railroad workers or in declining industries such as coal mining.
  Japan in the world economy
  The twentieth century has also witnessed Japan's deepening involve-
  ment in world markets, making its domestic economy sensitive and
  30 Gary D. Allinson, Japanese Urbanism: Industry and Politics in Kariya, 1872-1972 (Stanford,
  Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), chap. 5.
  31 James C. Abegglen, The Japanese Factory: Aspects of Its Social Organization (Glencoe, 111.:
  Free Press, 1958).
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  2$
  responsive to external changes. For example, the ratio of exports and
  imports to GNP, a simple and obvious measure of a country's economic
  dependence on the outside world, rose sharply from 1900 until World
  War II. Increased dependence on foreign trade has characterized indus-
  trialization in many countries, but the initial rate of increase was ex-
  tremely high in Japan because of its limited resource base. The Meiji
  leaders were well aware that the country's power and prestige were
  hostage to its ability to promote foreign trade. Thus unless Japan could
  sell its goods in the world market, it could not acquire the armaments
  needed to protect its expanding empire or fulfill the needs of its growing
  manufacturing sector. Because the Japanese could not hope to export
  either agricultural products or mineral resources-the path taken by
  many non-Western economies-the only remaining avenue was to ex-
  pand its trade through the export of manufactured goods.
  By the turn of the century, political and business leaders had ac-
  quired a kind of "export-or-die" psychology. Determined to make the
  best of the country's disadvantages, the government actively encour-
  aged trade expansion by establishing the Yokohama Specie Bank to
  facilitate foreign exchange transactions, by strengthening consular eco-
  nomic reporting, by subsidizing the construction of an ocean-going
  merchant marine, and by encouraging the formation of export associa-
  tions or cartels. Private industry, initially led by the cotton textile
  manufacturers, engaged in an aggressive export-promotion drive that
  accelerated steadily. By the 1930s, for example, Japan had become the
  world's major exporter of cotton manufactures, making inroads into
  regional markets once dominated by the British.32
  From the Japanese perspective, the world market was divided into
  two major spheres, each requiring a different trade strategy. In trade
  with the advanced Western economies, the Japanese sought imports of
  machinery, arms, semimanufactures like pig iron, chemicals, and
  other industrial goods. In return they exported primary goods (raw
  silk and tea), silk woven goods, and labor-intensive craft products.
  The pattern of Japanese trade with the less developed economies was
  rather different. Here Japan enjoyed certain advantages-cheaper la-
  bor, lower transportation costs, better commercial intelligence and
  knowledge of the culture, and more aggressive marketing-that en-
  abled its manufactures to compete with those of the West. In Asian
  markets, and more generally in the less developed world, Japan sold
  32 For the development of prewar foreign trade, see Lock wood, The Economic Development of
  Japan, chaps, 6,7; Ohkawa and Shinohara, Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, chap.
  7-
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  26 
  INTRODUCTION
  inexpensive light industry products like cotton yarns, cotton textiles,
  and other assorted manufactures such as soap and matches, and it
  bought raw materials (e.g., iron ore and other mineral ores) or food-
  stuffs (e.g., rice).
  Although trade with the advanced Western economies took place in
  a multilateral free-trade structure, Japan dealt with the less advanced
  countries in a political framework characterized by bilateral and asym-
  metrical imperialist relationships. In China, the largest and most prom-
  ising Asian market until the 1930s, Japan operated within the "un-
  equal treaty" system. On the one hand, the treaty system impeded the
  growth of Chinese competition and, on the other, constrained the
  Japanese from acquiring special economic privileges not shared with
  the Western powers. The acquisition of the Kwantung (Liaotung)
  territories and the South Manchuria Railway Line in 1905, however,
  facilitated the commercial penetration of the three northeastern prov-
  inces, which supplied Japan with agricultural goods like soy beans and
  important industrial raw materials. The Japanese also enjoyed privi-
  leged markets in their colonial possession of Taiwan and Korea, where
  they had little difficulty squeezing out the foreign competition.
  The China market loomed large in the eyes of Japanese political and
  business leaders, who saw a natural complementarity between its vast
  potential demand and Japan's burgeoning manufacturing capacity.
  Trade with China initially dwarfed trade with the colonies. In 1910 the
  total volume of commodity trade with China, including the Kwantung
  territories, was about five times that of Korea and Taiwan combined.
  Japanese exports made their strongest advance in north China rather
  than the Yangtze Valley or south China where Western business was
  well entrenched. But trade with the colonies increased until it ab-
  sorbed nearly one-quarter of Japan's exports in 1935.
  Japan's trade with the outside world, as well as its share of world
  trade, grew steadily during the first three decades of the century.
  During the 1930s, however, there were major disruptions in Japanese
  markets in both the advanced and less developed countries. In part,
  these disruptions had political causes. Japan's seizure of Manchukuo
  in 1931-2 had an immediate and dramatic impact on its trade with
  China, and its growing aggression on the continent alienated its major
  Western trading partner, the United States. But equally important
  was the rise of economic nationalism. Tariffs in the Western econo-
  mies had already begun to rise in the 1920s, first in the United States
  and then in Europe, and the onset of the world depression accelerated
  this long-term movement as Western markets shrank and as Western
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  2J
  governments adopted beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies. As the
  1930s wore on, administrative controls over trade proliferated, and the
  multilateral patterns of trading characteristic of the pre-1929 period
  gave way to the emergence of economic blocs centering on the British
  Commonwealth, the United States, France and the Low Countries,
  and Germany. The rise of economic nationalism affected not only the
  European metropolitan countries but also their colonies.
  Japan's reaction to this fundamental shift in the character of the
  world economy was conditioned by its desire to revive a lagging domes-
  tic economy and by a growing feeling that the world was moving away
  from the international free-trade system. In the early 1930s, as Profes-
  sor Nakamura states in his chapter, the Japanese government adopted
  "proto-Keynesian" policies that enabled its economy to recover more
  quickly than could the industrialized countries in the West, but appre-
  hension of the future of free-trade principles persisted among political,
  bureaucratic, and business leaders. While attempting to improve com-
  petitive advantages in the shrinking world market, these policies also
  moved toward creating a Japan-centered yen bloc that would reduce
  Japan's dependence on the advanced countries. Plans were launched
  for the rapid economic development of the puppet state of Man-
  chukuo, and industrial investment shot upward in the older colonies,
  particularly in Korea. Efforts were also made to gain privileged access
  to the rich resources of north China. Strategic considerations played a
  large, perhaps dominant, role in this aspect of Japanese policy, whose
  initiative came from the army, but it ultimately rested on a consensus
  that Japan had to establish economic as well as political autonomy
  from the West. Autarkic thinking of this sort eventually led to the
  vision of a "new economic order in East Asia."
  The attempt to create an exclusive autarkic economic sphere in East
  Asia to counteract Japan's dependency on the West was self-contra-
  dictory. Without the import of technology, critical raw materials, and
  producer durables from the advanced Western economies or their
  colonies, Japan could not hope to become economically independent.
  In no way was this contradiction more poignantly demonstrated than
  by the American economic sanctions imposed on Japan to dissuade it
  from expansionism. The petroleum embargo of July 1941 forced the
  Japanese to resolve the contradiction by military means. But Japan
  lacked the naval strength to protect the autonomous economic sphere
  it sought to carve out in East and Southeast Asia, and the collapse of
  the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere underlined the impossi-
  bility of seceding from the world market.
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  28 
  INTRODUCTION
  After 1945 the degree of Japan's dependence on the world market,
  as measured by the ratio of exports and imports to GNP, declined. In
  part this change occurred because foreign trade came to a virtual
  standstill in the late 1940s and in part because the domestic market
  expanded at a much more rapid rate than did the external markets in
  the 1950s and 1960s. But qualitatively, Japan's dependence on access
  to raw materials and technology from abroad remained important, and
  the drive to promote exports to keep the economy going did not
  slacken. In contrast with the prewar period, however, Japan's eco-
  nomic relationships with the outside world were in far greater har-
  mony with its political relations. As indicated earlier, the postwar
  political leaders accepted that Japan's economic dependence involved
  a degree of political dependence and indeed managed to turn that
  political dependence to economic advantage.
  In the postwar period the shape of the world market was quite
  different from what it had been before the war, and so was Japan's
  relationship to it.& Gone were the privileged colonial markets in Ko-
  rea and Taiwan, and the Chinese economy was closed off after the
  revolution in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War. Lingering
  hostility toward Japan in areas that had been under Japanese control
  during the war made it difficult to reenter these markets until the
  1960s. On the other hand, the advanced countries of Western Europe
  and North America were committed to the reconstruction of a postwar
  international economy in which goods and services could flow freely
  across national boundaries and nations would not be tempted to pro-
  mote their gain at the expense of others, as in the 1930s. With the
  onset of the cold war the Soviet Union and its satellite economies
  withdrew from participation in the system of relatively unrestricted
  free trade, and the institutions established to promote it, such as the
  International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on
  Trade and Tariffs (GATT), were used to shore up the weaker econo-
  mies in the non-Communist bloc of developed countries. The new
  international economic order worked very much to the advantage of
  Japan.
  During the 1950s the United States acted as a sponsor for Japan's
  reentry into the world market. Despite European distrust, based on
  memories of the prewar competitiveness of Japanese exports, the
  United States backed Japan's membership in the GATT and IMF.
  33 Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky, eds., Asia's New Giant: How the Japanese Economy
  Works (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1976), chap. 6.
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  DOMESTIC ECONOMIC CHANGE 
  29
  More important, the United States allowed Japan to maintain adminis-
  trative controls on imports of American goods while giving unre-
  stricted access to Japanese products in the American market. And it
  made no attempt to restrict the flow of American technology to Japan,
  even at bargain prices. The resulting transfer of technology played a
  key role in the subsequent recovery and growth of the Japanese econ-
  omy. During the 1960s, when it became increasingly evident that the
  yen was seriously undervalued at the exchange rate set in 1949 (¥360
  to $1.00), the United States put no pressure on Japan to revalue its
  currency. This favorable political context, coupled with the economy's
  basic strength and a carefully calibrated system of trade regulation,
  enabled Japan to continue its prewar policy of enhancing exports and
  limiting imports.
  By the time Japan's economic growth moved into high gear in the
  early 1960s, foreign trade had risen dramatically. Between 1961 and
  1971, imports increased eightfold and exports ninefold, and after 1964
  the economy enjoyed regular positive trade balances for the first time
  in its modern history. During the 1960s the external environment
  continued to be favorable, with world trade and the world GNP on the
  rise and a trend toward the reduction of tariffs on manufactured goods
  exported by the developed nations. In most of Japan's principal mar-
  kets, tariffs dropped by an average of 35 percent in the 1960s. Owing
  to a decline in raw materials costs, increased labor productivity, infla-
  tion abroad, and a fixed exchange rate for the yen, Japanese manufac-
  turing prices fell relative to those of other economies, making Japanese
  exports increasingly competitive. Japanese firms invested aggressively
  in the development of new manufactured products to sell in the ad-
  vanced countries. In 1970, in contrast with the prewar period, over 90
  percent of Japan's exports were the products of its manufacturing
  sector (chemical products 6.4 percent; machine goods, 40.5 percent;
  and other manufactured goods, 46.8 percent).
  The export drive of the 1950s and 1960s was marked by a reluctance
  to remove administrative controls on foreign imports and by a disincli-
  nation to borrow from abroad. Japanese business and political leaders
  continued to fear that the economy might be overwhelmed by foreign
  goods and capital. In i960 a decision was finally taken to open up the
  economy more fully, but "liberalization" was phased in only gradu-
  ally. Balanced budgets and a high domestic savings rate meant there
  was little need to import foreign capital. By the same token there was
  little Japanese overseas investment until 1969 when controls were
  eased in response to positive foreign exchange balances. Some overseas
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  30 
  INTRODUCTION
  investment flowed into labor-intensive industries like textiles-as
  wages rose and plant sites became less available in Japan-but most
  went into the development of natural resources such as oil, coal, ura-
  nium, iron ore, and nonferrous ores consumed by Japanese industry.
  Indeed, nearly half of Japan's foreign investment in the early 1970s
  was in mining operations.
  DOMESTIC POLITICS: FROM INSTABILITY TO STABILITY
  When we turn to the political history of the twentieth century, the
  question of change and continuity becomes more difficult to sort out.
  A strong case can be made for fundamental discontinuity. Constitu-
  tional change in 1947, for example, decisively reformulated the rules
  of the political game. Even more striking has been the rapid circula-
  tion of elites and the almost kaleidoscopic change in the governing
  regimes. The stability of political leadership that prevailed through
  the early Meiji period began to crumble at the turn of the century. The
  first generation of postoligarchic leaders-like Katsura Taro, Saionji
  Kimmochi, Yamamoto Gonnohyoe, and Terauchi Masatake-had far
  less control over their cabinets than the oligarchs had had. In the
  1920s they were replaced by the leaders of the major political parties in
  the Diet; and in the 1930s and 1940s, shifting coalitions of high civil
  bureaucrats, military and naval leaders, and party leaders came to
  power. It was only in the mid-1950s, with the consolidation of the
  conservative political parties into the Liberal Democratic Party, that
  stability of authority and consistency in policy returned to the political
  scene.
  The structural instability of the prewar constitutional system re-
  sulted from a deep ambivalence in the oligarchic generation's political
  outlook. On the one hand, their conception of government was shaped
  by a powerful intellectual tradition-the notion of keisei saimin- which
  assumed that public officials, dedicated to maintaining morality and
  order, should govern the "people," who were inclined to follow petty,
  narrow, and selfish impulses rather than the public good. On the other
  hand, the oligarchs were aware that pure bureaucratic rule was neither
  possible nor desirable in the modern world. Even a strong bureau-
  cratic-monarchical country like Imperial Germany tolerated some de-
  gree of popular political participation. Although probably not commit-
  ted to notions of popular wisdom or power sharing, the oligarchs
  created a popularly elected House of Representatives in die Imperial
  Diet as a means of uniting society behind the government. The
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  31
  house's function was, in effect, plebiscitary, a mode of creating or
  testing the consensus behind national policy.*»
  The difficulty with this configuration of institutions, as Professor
  Mitani comments, was that it tended toward political fragmentation
  rather than bureaucratic integration. Ironically, in pre-1945 Japan
  there probably was more consensus on national goals-development as
  a world power, the maintenance of an overseas empire, promotion of
  economic growth-than there was on who should carry them out. At
  fault was the constitutional system itself. As R. P. G. Steven re-
  marked, it was a "hybrid" system that frustrated the emergence of a
  strong cabinet because it placed veto power in the hands of so many
  other organs of state. 3* Not only did appointed officials have to con-
  tend with a House of Representatives whose check-and-balance func-
  tions overrode its integrative functions, but also the notion itself of a
  nonpartisan bureaucracy proved a sham. Far from presiding over af-
  fairs and staying aloof from petty politicking, high officials intrigued
  enthusiastically and shrewdly for sectional interests.
  The constitutional changes initiated by the American Occupation
  after 1945 brought to an end the structural instability of this political
  system. The postwar reforms eliminated many autonomous prewar
  loci of power-the Privy Council, the independent naval and army
  high commands, and the House of Peers-that had checked (and even
  defied) the cabinets. The revised constitution also mandated clear
  rules for the transfer of power. The head of the government was to be
  elected by the lower house of the National Diet, thus eliminating the
  prewar system of institutionalized irresponsibility that placed this func-
  tion in the hands of an agent-the emperor-who never exercised it.
  The choice of a cabinet no longer rested on the discretion of an inner
  circle of imperial advisers like the genro and the jushin who attempted
  to pull together coalitions of powerful veto groups. Rather, it rested on
  control of the House of Representatives and, beyond that, on a popu-
  lar electoral base. By simplifying the constitutional structure, these
  reforms eliminated much of the prewar political volatility.
  Nevertheless, for most of the twentieth century, political conflict
  34 On the development of the Meiji constitutional system, see George M. Beckmann, The
  Making of the Meiji Constitution: The Oligarchs and the Constitutional Development of Japan,
  1868-1891 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1957); George Akita, Foundations of
  Constitutional Government in Modern Japan, 1868-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
  sity Press, 1967); Joseph Pittau, Political Thought in Early Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 1967).
  35 R. P. G. Steven, "Hybrid Constitution in Prewar Japan," Journal of Japanese Studies 3
  (Winter 1977): 183-216.
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  32 
  INTRODUCTION
  among fractured elites, internally divided and competing among them-
  selves, has shaped the pattern of Japanese domestic politics. Contem-
  porary observers, and later scholars and historians, have often charac-
  terized this conflict as moral drama. Some, focusing primarily on the
  political elites, have seen change as a consequence of the clash of
  political principles-"liberalism versus authoritarianism," "democracy
  versus totalitarianism," or "civil-military conflict." Others have tried
  to analyze political change in terms of class struggle: a rising bourgeoi-
  sie pitted against an entrenched absolutist regime, landlords and capi-
  talists against rising peasants and workers, finance capital and its bu-
  reaucratic minions against a burgeoning socialist movement, and so
  forth. And still others have reduced political conflict to a meaningless
  struggle for power, fueled by ambition and self-interest. The stress, as
  in all good drama, has been on conflict and confrontation.
  The historiography of twentieth-century politics has also been col-
  ored by a tendency to see political conflict moving toward a "normal"
  or natural outcome. Contemporary observers and historians often tac-
  itly assume that political change should move in a particular direction
  or toward a particular outcome. This has led them to ask such ques-
  tions as Why did democracy fail in prewar Japan? Why was there no
  strong socialist or proletarian movement in prewar Japan? Why did
  the Communist Party remain weak? Why did the American Occupa-
  tion abandon its attempts to "democratize" Japan and instead adopt a
  "backward course" later pursued by the conservative political parties?
  In other words, political history asked why something did not happen
  rather than why something else did.*6 This line of inquiry is perfectly
  legitimate, especially for those wishing to learn from experience, but it
  reverses the historians' usual quest, which is to understand what did
  happen and why.
  As it has become possible to place Japan's modern political experi-
  ence in a broader comparative perspective, cross-cultural as well as
  temporal, dramatic dichotomies and conflict paradigms have been sup-
  planted by a more complex, less dramatic understanding of contempo-
  rary political history. Before the 1960s the Japanese political system
  was usually placed at one end of a spectrum that extended only a short
  distance to the older democracies in the advanced industrial societies
  36 Representative of this approach are such works as Robert A. Scalapino, Democracy and the
  Party Movement in Prewar Japan: The Failure of the First Attempt (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
  University of California Press, 1962); George Oakley Totten III, The Social Democratic Move-
  ment in Prewar Japan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966); Stephen S. Large,
  "Perspectives on the Failure of the Labour Movement in Prewar Japan," Labour History 37
  (November 1979).
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  33
  of Western Europe and North America at the other end. But as a tier
  of one-party states appeared on the periphery of the Soviet Union and
  as more and more independent postcolonial regimes emerged in the
  less developed world, the length of the comparative perspective al-
  tered radically. Lines of continuity between prewar and postwar Japa-
  nese politics became more obvious, and the Japanese political system
  began to resemble more closely the Western constitutional parliamen-
  tary states with which it had once been constrasted. As one American
  political scientist observed, "In contrast to many late modernizers,
  Japan . . . resembled far more a Madisonian-Montesquieuian state
  than a Leninist or a Rousseauian monolith."&
  Alternative perspectives on the prewar Japanese political system
  stress its "pluralistic" character. As suggested earlier, much of the
  struggle and conflict of prewar politics was generated less by dramatic
  clashes over political principle or class interests than by a constitu-
  tional check-and-balance system that compartmentalized the power of
  various political elites but did not provide a strong mechanism to
  referee their struggles. In this sense, pluralism is identified with the
  fragmentation and circulation of elites struggling for control of the
  government. But attempts to apply the concept of pluralism in its
  more usual sense-the competition among social and economic inter-
  ests for influence over the formation of national policy-have been less
  common, and studies of interest politics have usually focused on the
  postwar period. It is clear that prewar Japanese politics was pluralistic
  in this sense as well, though obviously not to the same degree as were
  more fragmented and less centralized constitutional states like the
  United States and Great Britain.
  Insofar as the political history of twentieth-century Japan is defined
  by changes in regime and the instability of the political elite, its poli-
  tics have been far more volatile than have those of older and more
  stable representative systems in North America, Western Europe, and
  the British Commonwealth. On the other hand, compared with the
  rest of the world, especially those societies like Japan that had no
  premodern representative tradition, Japanese politics looks fairly sta-
  ble. The country has not been affected by the kinds of popular revolu-
  tions that shook Russia in 1917 or China in 1949, nor has it been
  subject to the anticolonial struggles and upheavals of decolonization
  that have troubled many of the less developed countries. In some
  37 T. J. Pempel, "Political Parties and Social Change: The Japanese Experience," in Political
  Parties: Development and Decay, ed. Louis Maizel and Joseph Cooper (Beverly Hills, Calif.:
  Sage Publications, 1978), p. 314.
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  34 
  INTRODUCTION
  measure, this relative stability must be attributed to the timing of
  Japan's decision to modernize. Its modernizing revolution-the Meiji
  Restoration-had already resolved many of the issues that bedeviled
  other non-Western countries in the twentieth century. And although
  one can argue that the telescoped modernization that followed in the
  wake of the Restoration "distorted" Japan's political development be-
  fore 1945, it is equally plausible to suggest that the post-Restoration
  reforms-the creation of a civil bureaucracy, the commitment to indus-
  trialize, and the promulgation of a constitution that included represen-
  tative institutions-were less responsible for those distortions than was
  the ill-fated attempt at continental expansion. Such an argument be-
  comes persuasive if one looks behind the volatility of prewar cabinets
  to the long-run continuities that have characterized Japan's political
  system.
  Political parties
  The history of political parties offers plausible evidence for strong
  continuities in twentieth-century politics. Parties have attracted the
  attention of historians more than have other actors in the political
  process, with the possible exception of the military services. The pre-
  war confrontations in Japan between its cabinets and the parties in the
  House of Representatives had dramatic appeal, and the fortunes of the
  parties provided a useful way of charting the changes among the vari-
  ous elements in the political elite. Then, too, Western historians have
  tended to identify politics with parliamentary politics and to ignore the
  less visible forms of political competition within bureaucracies. In any
  event, the development of party politics provides a means of tracing
  political change and continuity in the twentieth century.38
  During roughly the first two decades of the century, as Tetsuo
  Najita and others found, the main focus of political conflict was the
  political parties' attempt to diminish and dislodge the influence of
  oligarchic-bureaucratic factions (the so-called hanbatsu), in particular
  that led by Yamagata Aritomo, who harbored a keen and enduring
  38 The standard works on the development of political parties in Japan are by Tetsuo Najita,
  Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, /905-/9/5 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
  Press, 1967); Peter Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taisho Japan (Cambridge,
  Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); Berger, Parlies; Robert A. Scalapino and Junnosuke
  Masumi, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
  California Press, 1962); Haruhiro Fukui, Party in Power: The Japanese Liberal Democrats and
  Policy-Making (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1970); Nathaniel B. Thayer,
  How the Conservatives Rule Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969).
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  35
  distrust of political parties. But the politics of the period cannot be
  reduced to a simple confrontation between two well-defined sets of
  opponents. The struggle was complicated, first, by internal divisions
  among the oligarchs and the impatience of younger members of the
  hanbatsu factions to assume full control over the government. This led
  men like Ito and Katsura to cross the line of confrontation between
  party and hanbatsu by striking temporary alliances with party leaders
  or by forming their own political parties. There was also intense divi-
  sion and rivalry among party politicians. These had less to do with
  principles and platforms than with power and influence, access to
  ministerial positions in the cabinet, and the interests of local voters.
  The two major parties-the Seiyukai (organized in 1900) and the
  Doshikai (organized in 1913; later reorganized as the Kenseikai in
  1916 and as the Minseito in 1927)-probably diverged less on stated
  policy and principles than did parliamentary parties in any other ad-
  vanced industrial society (including Imperial Germany where an active
  and vocal Social Democratic Party clashed ideologically with more
  centrist and conservative parties).
  Party rivalry was often regarded by contemporary and later observ-
  ers as a reason for party weakness, but it also made possible cabinet-
  Diet coalitions that paved the way to party rule. Indeed, between 1905
  and 1918, with one exception, no cabinet took power that did not
  enjoy the support of the majority party or a majority coalition in the
  House of Representatives. Concomitantly, the number of political
  party leaders holding ministerial portfolios increased. By the 1910s it
  was so clear that the political parties would eventually assume full
  control over the government that a number of important high-ranking
  officials resigned their official posts to become party members, a prac-
  tice familiar in postwar politics as well.
  The emergence of party cabinets after 1918, then, did not mark a
  dramatic break in political practice, but a delicate shift in the balance
  of political power away from the oligarchic factions to the House of
  Representatives. The shift took place for several reasons: First, there
  were fewer and fewer members of the oligarchic factions willing or
  able to organize an effective government; second, oligarchic leaders
  like Yamagata, though preferring a weak and divided Diet, decided
  that the political party leaders were neither as radical nor as irresponsi-
  ble as they had once seemed; and third, by 1924, all the Meiji oligarchs
  were dead, save for Saionji Kimmochi, a man disinclined by tempera-
  ment or principle to resist the trends of the times. The accession of
  party cabinets represented neither a fundamental change in the institu-
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  36 
  INTRODUCTION
  tional configuration nor the triumph of the principle of representative
  democracy. Rather, it resulted from a pragmatic decision that ratified
  political reality.
  During the decade and a half following World War I, the political
  parties emerged as the hegemonic elite in the political system, dominat-
  ing the cabinet, the formulation of national policy, and, to a lesser
  degree, the execution of policy. With the exception of three short-
  lived "transcendental cabinets" in 1922-4, party leaders served as
  premiers and cabinet ministers until 1932. By contrast, the civilian
  and military bureaucracies saw their political influence, though not
  their prestige and popular status, dwindle. A token of this shift was
  the increasing number of officials who allowed themselves to be co-
  opted by the political parties. The most dramatic defection was that of
  Tanaka Giichi, cultivated by Yamagata to assume leadership of the
  "Choshu lineage" in the army, who agreed to become president of the
  Seiyukai in 1925.
  Control over the cabinet had an effect on the political parties that is
  often overlooked. Accession to power forced the parties' leaders to
  grapple with national problems and to shoulder responsibility for solv-
  ing them. It was no longer sufficient for the party leaders simply to
  bargain for a place at the table; they had to prepare and serve the meal.
  Marked differences over a wide range of policies-the expansion of
  suffrage, the introduction of labor and social legislation, the budget
  and tax policy, military expenditures, and the China policy-deepened
  and sharpened party rivalry. Although both parties relied on rural
  constituencies for electoral support and turned to large business con-
  cerns for political funds, they differed on many issues. The Seiyukai
  tended to adopt a free-spending fiscal policy, a conservative position
  on social issues, and a hawkish view of foreign policy. By contrast, the
  Kenseikai favored fiscal retrenchment, a constructive response to so-
  cial problems, and an internationalist orientation in foreign policy.
  There has been far too little study of policy formation during the
  period of party hegemony, however, to speak with assurance about the
  significance of these policy differences.
  Even during the years of their hegemony, however, the political
  parties remained suspect in the public eye. Even though the two major
  parties managed to capture the votes of the enfranchised electorate,
  they were not the objects of deeply felt political commitment. (A voter
  willing to die for the emperor would surely not have done the same for
  the Seiyukai or the Minseito.) The frequent revelation of public scan-
  dals in the press-the trading of political or economic favors for politi-
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  37
  cal funds-eroded the parties' moral authority, and within the parties
  as well, reform-minded members often harbored contempt for their
  colleagues. As crises began to shower down on the country after 1927,
  doubt spread not only among the public but also among the other
  elites about the suitability of party leaders as national leaders. The
  assassination in 1932 of Inukai Tsuyoshi, the last prewar party prime
  minister, was the immediate reason for the end of the political parties'
  hegemony. But given the overwhelming sense of internal disorder and
  external threat that spread in the early 1930s, the end might have come
  less dramatically, by the same kind of subtle shift in the balance of
  power that took place in 1918.
  During the early 1930s, Saionji, assisted by a group of informal
  advisers known as xhejushin (senior ministers), decided to promote the
  organization of nonpartisan "national-unity cabinets" (kyokoku itchi
  naikaku). These drew support from all the major political elites: the
  parties, the military services, the civilian bureaucracy, and even the
  House of Peers. This effort to achieve a balance of power among the
  major political elites collapsed after the February 26 incident in 1936,
  and the army leadership, divided though it was, assumed an even
  larger role in forming the cabinet. It used informal pressure as well as
  its power to prevent the nomination of a war minister, so as to thwart
  the formation of governments it opposed. But even after General Tojo
  Hideki assumed power as prime minister in late 1941, the army high
  command was neither unified nor omnipotent, and the political par-
  ties, though formally dissolved in 1940, were never systematically
  suppressed, nor was the functioning of the Diet suspended.
  It was not until postwar constitutional revision that the political par-
  ties once again moved to the center of the political stage. Even so, the
  stabilizing effects of the new constitution were not immediately evident.
  The prewar conservative parties were in disarray, deprived of key lead-
  ers by the Occupation purges and flooded with "new men" in the
  postwar elections. The parties on the left had developed considerable
  strength. In contrast with the last prewar election when the largest left-
  wing party, the Social Mass Party, won only 9.1 percent of the popular
  vote, in the 1947 election the Japan Socialist Party won 26.3 percent,
  and the Japan Communist Party 3.7 percent, of a much larger elector-
  ate. The parties of the left benefited from the people's disillusionment
  with the entrenched conservative leadership, widespread economic
  hardship and deprivation, and the sudden growth of an organized labor
  movement. Their appearance introduced the possibility of a new kind
  of conflict and a new kind of instability in Japanese politics, despite the
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  38 
  INTRODUCTION
  reordering and simplification of the political structure. The intense and
  bitter disputes between the parties of the left and those of the right over
  the American alliance, rearmament, and the "reverse course" during
  the early 1950s foreshadowed a type of political polarization so far not
  experienced in Japan. The growth of the left-wing vote in the early
  1950s seemed to mark a trend toward the eventual emergence of a left-
  dominated government, and many knowledgeable politicians and politi-
  cal observers assumed that the demographic change, the shift of more
  people into cities and more workers into industry, guaranteed the ulti-
  mate triumph of the socialists.
  As is so often the case, the long-term extrapolation of current events
  was not an accurate guide to the future. In 1955 the fragmented and
  bickering conservative political parties united to form the Liberal
  Democratic Party (LDP), which dominated the House of Representa-
  tives and controlled the cabinet for the next three decades. At its incep-
  tion the party was a coalition of factions, or small leader-oriented par-
  ties, often divided by intense personal rivalries and competition to
  secure control of the cabinet and ministerial posts. In a sense, the
  struggle over national leadership moved from the floor of the Diet to the
  Liberal Democratic Party headquarters. Even though it was divided by
  internal rivalry, the party always managed to stand behind the party
  president, whose selection for that office automatically assured him the
  office of prime minister. Party unity alone, however, cannot explain its
  continuity in power. Indeed, unity would have meant little if the party
  had lost control over the House of Representatives.
  In defiance of what seemed to be inevitable trends in the 1960s, the
  left vote declined and the electorate continued to return Liberal Demo-
  cratic majorities to the lower house of the Diet. This can be attributed
  to historical developments mentioned earlier. First, as Professor
  Fukui's chapter suggests, there was a broad-based consensus behind
  the LDP-supported goals of achieving a high growth rate and raising
  the country's standard of living. As long as the economy's overall
  performance was improving, the Liberal Democratic Party continued
  to gain or hold its own at the polls. Voters gave less weight to the
  issues of social justice or fair distribution of wealth raised by the left.
  Second, foreign policy issues also receded in importance after the
  renewal of the Mutual Security Treaty in i960. The reduction of
  American forces and bases in Japan removed a visible source of popu-
  lar hostility to the alliance with the United States, and the fragmenta-
  tion of the so-called progressive bloc of countries during the Sino-
  Soviet split confused and fractured the left wing as well. The left
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  39
  wing's faltering grip on public support of domestic and foreign policy
  issues, coupled with the collapse of unity in the Communist bloc, led
  the moderate wing of the Japan Socialist Party to split and form the
  Democratic Socialist Party in i960. This fragmentation of the princi-
  pal opposition party was a final factor in the continued domination of
  the Liberal Democratic Party.
  Although the political parties have consistently played a key role in
  twentieth-century politics, it is clear that their experience has been
  rather different from that of parties in the older and more stable
  parliamentary countries. It is only in the latter half of the century that
  they became the dominant force in control of government. The prac-
  tice of party politics and the processes of voting, bargaining, and
  compromise that lie at the heart of any functioning parliamentary
  system had to acquire a legitimacy that they lacked at the turn of the
  century when the constitutional structure was only a decade old.
  The civil bureaucracy
  By contrast, the professional bureaucracy, especially the higher civil
  service officials occupying the top positions in the government minis-
  tries, had little need to acquire legitimacy. Regarded by the Meiji
  oligarchs as their true heirs, bureaucrats constituted a privileged and
  protected elite. They were to provide the stability and continuity in
  government that the contentious and factious party politicians could
  not. The professional bureaucracy was a creation of the civil service
  examination system established in the late 1880s.39 The educational
  system was designed to funnel the brightest and the best-as deter-
  mined by academic performance-into its ranks. In 1900 an ambitious
  young man aimed not at becoming a lawyer or a businessman or a
  politician but at making his way through the "dragon gate." The pre-
  Meiji notion that the official was a gentleman and a scholar, possessed
  of superior intelligence and cultivation, afforded a respectability to
  bureaucratic service that other professions did not have. If there was
  much public resentment, and even ridicule, of bureaucratic arrogance,
  there was also deference to and respect for those in the higher reaches
  of the official hierarchy.
  The intent of the civil service examination system was to create a
  39 On the prewar bureaucracy, see Robert M. Spaulding, Jr., Imperial Japan's Higher Civil
  Service Examinations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967); Robert M.
  Spaulding, Jr., "The Bureaucracy As a Political Force, 1920-1945," in Dilemmas of Growth
  in Prewar Japan, ed. James W. Morley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
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  40 
  INTRODUCTION
  politically neutral administrative service dedicated to the national
  good rather than to sectarian or partisan interests. Officials, after all,
  were "servants of the emperor." The professional elan of the higher
  civil service rested on a sense that they were indeed better arbiters of
  the national interest than were elected officials or private citizens.
  When party leaders attempted to secure high ministerial posts for their
  followers in the late 1890s, Yamagata Aritomo did his best to insulate
  permanently the bureaucracy from partisan influence. Most civil ser-
  vice recruits remained aloof from politics, spending their careers in
  public administration and managerial roles. During the first decade of
  the century, especially after 1905, they made their way into the highest
  echelons of the ministerial bureaucracies, serving as vice-ministers and
  ministers.
  Ambitious officials who reached the top of the career civil service
  looked for political careers beyond it. Anxious to use the technical
  skills and personal connections of high civil service officials, party
  leaders often actively recruited promising senior officials. As Tetsuo
  Najita showed, Hara Takashi attempted to bring younger members of
  the Home Ministry bureaucracy into the Seiyukai, and prefectural
  governors used their offices as stepping-stones to electoral politics.-*0 A
  number of leading officials from the Ministry of Finance, notably
  Wakatsuki Reijiro and Hamaguchi Osachi, also became top leaders of
  the Kenseikai-Minseito. But even in the 1920s this "partisanization of
  the bureaucracy" affected only a tiny minority of the professional civil
  service.
  Perhaps it is more important to emphasize other trends affecting the
  higher civil service during the prewar period. First, the bureaucracy
  was becoming more and more compartmentalized. Senior officials usu-
  ally began and ended their careers within a single ministry. Lateral
  transfer from one ministry to another, though possible, was not the
  norm. As a result, officials developed strong loyalties to their minis-
  tries, or even the bureaus within the ministries to which they be-
  longed. Although this had the advantage of encouraging specialization
  and familiarity with the ministry's functions-whether it was to draft
  budgets, operate the national railway system, or regulate religious
  institutions-it also encouraged sectional rivalries among and within
  the various ministerial bureaucracies, especially over a share of the
  national budget. Second, as society grew more complex and the func-
  tions of the government expanded, there were frequent jurisdictional
  40 Najita, Hara Kei.
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  41
  squabbles among the various ministries as they sought to co-opt new
  responsibilities. Sometimes these disputes were resolved through the
  creation of new ministries, such as the splitting of the Ministry of
  Commerce from the Ministry of Agriculture in 1925 or the elevation of
  the Social Affairs Bureau of the Home Ministry into the Welfare
  Ministry in 1938. Often interministerial disputes involved struggles
  over the formulation of policy. When a militant labor movement ap-
  peared in the 1920s, the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Com-
  merce drafted competing labor law legislation and in the 1930s contin-
  ued to struggle over how to deal with the labor question. In short, the
  higher civil service was neither monolithic nor above politics, and its
  members constantly tried to expand their spheres of administrative
  competence and control.
  The collapse of party rule in the 1930s provided an opportunity for
  reformist or activist bureaucratic leaders to strengthen their political
  role. The decade saw the emergence of what the press called "the new
  bureaucrats" (shinkantyo), an elastic term that summarized a number of
  developments. On the one hand, there was a group of officials, mainly
  in the Home Ministry and the most "partisanized" of the ministerial
  bureaucracies, who worked to end the consequences of "party abuses"-
  the spread of electoral corruption, the erosion of bureaucratic control
  over the countryside, the penetration of party influence into the ministe-
  rial bureaucracies, and so forth. These men were behind the "election
  purification" campaigns of the early 1930s. At the same time, younger
  officials, mainly in the economic ministries - Commerce, Agriculture,
  and Transportation-aimed at increasing bureaucratic control over the
  economy and society in order to boost production while reducing social
  tension. Disillusioned with the market system as a result of the post-
  1927 collapse of the economy, and often under the influence of Marxist
  or national socialist ideas, these economic bureaucrats wanted to re-
  place de facto laissez-faire policy with centralized economic decision
  making. They viewed bureaucratic rationality as preferable to market
  rationality. Interestingly, these technocratic reformers found ready al-
  lies among not only the military bureaucrats who wanted to create a new
  national mobilization structure in preparation for a major war but also
  the parties of the moderate left, who favored a basic restructuring of the
  economy.41
  The emergence of reformist elements in the higher civil service
  represented a reaction against both party rule and the conservatism of
  41 Cf. Berger, Parties; Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle.
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  42 
  INTRODUCTION
  the regular ministerial bureaucracies. To circumvent the old-line min-
  istries, new centralized coordinating bodies such as the Cabinet Re-
  search Bureau (Naikaku chosakyoku), the Cabinet Planning Agency
  (Kikakucho), the Cabinet Planning Board (Kikakuin) were organized
  to cut across normal boundaries of ministerial jurisdiction. But it was
  external crisis that accelerated the proliferation of bureaucratic con-
  trols and the creation of new extraministerial bureaucratic mecha-
  nisms. During the middle of the 1930s, but particularly after the
  outbreak of war with China in 1937, legislation placed sweeping ad-
  ministrative control over the economy in the hands of the civilian
  bureaucracy. With a greater or lesser degree of self-consciousness,
  many of these "new bureaucrats" attempted a managerial revolution
  that would end the "anarchy" of the market by substituting the bureau-
  cratic manager for the corporate executive or the private entrepreneur
  in economic decision making.
  The "new order movement" of 1940 offered the occasion for further
  expansion of bureaucratic controls. Although the movement itself was
  backed by a curious coalition of political forces-army leaders intent
  on building a home-front mobilization structure, politicians intent on
  reforming and strengthening the parties by consolidation, moderate
  left politicians and activists intent on social reform, and right-wing
  elements hoping for the establishment of a totalitarian structure-its
  ultimate beneficiaries were the civilian bureaucrats. The Home Minis-
  try, whose power over the countryside had been diluted by the rise of
  party governments, used the structure of the Imperial Rule Assis-
  tance Association and its various adjunct organizations to place local
  communities under tighter supervision and control. Its powers for
  social management were far greater than they had ever been. Grandi-
  ose plans for an "economic new order" were also floated in 1940, and
  though never put into effect in their more radical form, bureaucratic
  control over the war economy increased. To be sure, the civilian
  bureaucracy was no more a monolith than it had been before, and
  jurisdictional infighting, complicated by the involvement of the mili-
  tary services and corporate business, continued, but the run of the
  bureaucracy's writ had expanded substantially by the end of the
  Pacific War.
  Ironically, it was under the American Occupation, whose goal was
  the democratization of the political system, that the civilian bureau-
  cracy enjoyed unprecedented influence. As Chalmers Johnson wrote,
  "From approximately 1948, the beginning of the occupation 'reverse
  course,' until the conservative merger of 1955, the answer to who
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  43
  governs Japan is clearly the bureaucracy."*2 The reasons for this up-
  surge in the power of civilian bureaucrats are in part structural and in
  part related to policy. Despite the frontal assault of the American
  Occupation on Japan's prewar political and constitutional structure,
  the civilian bureaucracy remained relatively in tact.« The Home Minis-
  try and certain other centralized agencies were abolished; the police
  and local government systems were decentralized; and efforts were
  made to reform the Ministry of Education; but for the most part the
  ministerial bureaucracies continued to function as before. Lacking the
  manpower to impose direct military government on a defeated Japan,
  the American Occupation chose to govern through this existing admin-
  istrative structure. The Americans also imposed economic controls far
  more sweeping than even the Japanese wartime government had, and
  it shifted responsibility for their administration from the business-
  dominated wartime "control associations" to ministerial bureaucra-
  cies. Public corporations were set up to manage various key sectors of
  the economy. Business leaders, already conditioned by wartime con-
  trols, went along with these new arrangements, and the political par-
  ties, their leadership weakened by the Occupation's administrative
  purges and divided on policy questions, relinquished the initiative in
  many areas of policymaking.
  Only with the consolidation of the conservative parties into the
  Liberal Democratic Party in 1955 did the power of the civilian bureau-
  cracy begin to recede. The party's growing involvement in national
  policy decisions reduced the relative autonomy of high bureaucratic
  officials. The LDP Political Affairs Research Committee, made up of
  Diet members and organized into subcommittees corresponding to
  important ministries and administrative agencies, began to play a
  larger role in policy formulation. Ministerial bureaucracies, now rou-
  tinely consulting with this body, had to respond to its members' con-
  cerns and interests. Masumi Junnosuke, an eminent political scientist,
  even went so far as to observe that central government agencies had
  become no more than "business offices for the Liberal Democratic
  Party's Political Affairs Research Bureau."44 At the same time the
  durability of the LDP's control over the Diet and the cabinet, and
  42 Chalmers Johnson, "Japan: Who Governs? An Essay on Official Bureaucracy," Journal of
  Japanese Studies 2 (Autumn 1975): 1-28.
  43 A useful work on the postwar bureaucracy is by Akira Kubota, High Civil Servants in Postwar
  Japan: Their Social Origins, Educational Background, and Career Patterns (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1969).
  44 Quoted in Ito Daikichi, "The Bureaucracy: Its Attitudes and Behavior," The Developing
  Economies 6 (December 1968): 447.
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  44 
  INTRODUCTION
  hence over the budgetary process, made the ministerial bureaucrats
  equally susceptible to informal pressure from Diet members acting on
  behalf of local or national interest groups. To a degree this represented
  a return to patterns prefigured if not established in the 1920s, and so
  too did the tendency for ambitious civil service officials to run for
  political office or to assume leadership positions in the Liberal Demo-
  cratic Party after retiring from the bureaucracy. From 1957 until 1972
  every Liberal Democratic Party president, and hence every prime
  minister, was a former official.
  In contrast with the political parties' volatile fortunes, the civilian
  bureaucracy has endured in twentieth-century politics. Despite the
  postwar American-sponsored constitutional and structural reforms,
  the administrative structure has remained highly centralized. Even the
  concessions to the American notion of a more democratic decentral-
  ized or federal structure-that is, the establishment of popularly
  elected prefectural governors and increased powers for prefectural
  assemblies-foundered. These local bodies remained weak in contrast
  with either the national Diet or the central ministerial bureaucracies.
  The postwar political structure was as Tokyo centered as it had been
  since the Meiji period, and the central ministerial bureaucracies contin-
  ued to devise the policy and legislative alternatives presented to govern-
  ments as well as to implement policy decisions. The only major
  change, perhaps, was that the civil bureaucracy became more tightly
  integrated into the politics of interest articulation and interest represen-
  tation than it had been before the war.
  Interest politics
  Since the turn of the century the interstices between the political
  parties and the bureaucracy, on the one hand, and the general popula-
  tion, on the other, gradually have been filled by pressure- or interest-
  group activities. Pressure-group politics emerged in Japan for most of
  the same reasons that it arose in the other capitalist parliamentary
  countries. First, by its very nature, the parliamentary system legiti-
  mized the principle of representation of interests. If voters in a particu-
  lar district were given the right to return a representative to the na-
  tional Diet, then it was equally natural for particular economic or
  occupational groups to seek representation of their interests as well.
  (Already in the 1880s, prefectural assembly members had begun lobby-
  ing for particular local or economic interests.) Second, as society be-
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  45
  came more complex, the bureaucracy expanded its jurisdiction. State
  authority penetrated deeper and deeper into society, and new laws or
  official regulations dealt with activities heretofore free from govern-
  mental interference. In response, those affected often organized to
  influence the exercise of state authority. Third, accelerating economic
  development generated conflicts between new and old economic inter-
  ests. Decisions made about the economy-concerning taxes, budget,
  tariffs, subsidies, or state investment-were bound to benefit some
  sectors of society and hurt others. Pressure groups thus provided a
  means of mediating or resolving such conflicts.
  To be sure, a residual traditional distrust of "private" or sectional
  interests persisted. In his official commentary on the constitution, for
  example, Ito Hirobumi presented the view that even members of the
  lower house of the Diet were "representatives of the whole country"
  rather than delegates "commissioned merely to attend to matters en-
  trusted to them by their own constituents."45 The parts were expected
  to act on behalf of the whole. This self-contradictory notion of repre-
  sentation was not very different from contemporary views of represen-
  tation in the West, but it was bolstered by the tradition of bureaucratic
  elitism. Although public attitudes remained influenced by such ideas,
  political practice quickly diverged from them. By the beginning of the
  century, even Ito had come to recognize the necessity of representing
  particular interests as well as the public good.
  Local chambers of commerce, agricultural associations, and indus-
  trial associations had already come into being in the 1870s and 1880s in
  response to official prompting.1*6 The government encouraged their
  formation to promote domestic solidarity in the face of Western eco-
  nomic competition. Such groups were more like semicorporatist agen-
  cies of the state than like the political voluntary associations that had
  emerged in Western Europe and North America. Generally they did
  not function as lobbying or pressure groups. For example, before
  1890, business lobbying took the form of discrete compacts arrived at
  by business and political leaders out of the public view and without
  public debate.
  After the Diet opened, however, organized interest groups represent-
  ing a group of firms or a whole industry almost immediately made their
  45 ltd Hirobumi, Commentaries on the Constitution of Empire of Japan, trans. Miyoji Ito (Tokyo:
  Chuo daigaku, 1906), pp. 73-4.
  46 On the development of interest groups, see Ishida Takeshi, "The Development of Interest
  Groups and the Pattern of Political Modernization in Japan," in Political Development in
  Modem Japan, ed. Robert E. Ward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
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  46 
  INTRODUCTION
  debut. So did the competition of interests and pressure-group politics.
  Particular industries began to lobby for legislation or policy changes
  designed to protect or increase their profits. In the early 1890s, for
  example, the Greater Japan Cotton Spinners' Association mounted an
  aggressive campaign to end import duties on its raw material-raw
  cotton-and to end export duties on its main product-cotton yarn.
  Such a policy, however, conflicted with the desire of agrarian interests
  to protect the domestic cultivation of cotton and to keep land taxes low
  by keeping import and export duties high. The antitariff campaigns
  demonstrated to the cotton spinners, and to business leaders more
  generally, that business had a distinct and definable set of interests
  quite different from those of other economic groups and that consider-
  able pressure and bargaining were required to protect them. It also
  made them aware of their political weakness.
  By the late 1890s the business community became more militant in
  advancing its political claims vis-a-vis rural interests. There was to be
  no alliance of "rice and textiles" in the Japanese Diet like the alliance
  of "rye and iron" in the German Reichstag. As Professor Mitani states,
  business groups bombarded the cabinet, the Diet, and the political
  parties with resolutions calling for an increase in land taxes to finance
  the growing budget, and landowning interests fought hard against it.
  The movement to increase land taxes quickly turned into a movement
  to change the electoral law so as to increase urban (and therefore
  business) representation in the Diet. The two movements not only
  demonstrated the growing political self-consciousness of business lead-
  ers but also achieved a high degree of success. During the first two
  decades of the century, pressure-group and interest-group politics be-
  came routinized at several levels. The political parties in the Diet
  became the vehicle for the articulation of both local and national inter-
  ests. As several scholars have demonstrated, the leadership of the
  Seiyukai attempted to bring top business leaders into their parties and
  used Diet powers over the budget and ministerial power over the
  prefectural bureaucracy to engage in pork-barrel politics, particularly
  after the Russo-Japanese war. Local public works projects such as
  building branch railroad lines, roads and bridges, and irrigation sys-
  tems and improving harbors were levers to raise local electoral sup-
  port. Although rival parties often railed against such abuses, by the
  1920s this kind of political logrolling had become routine.
  As the relative importance of the modern sector grew and the co-
  operation of business leaders became crucial to the success of certain
  national policies, the central government systematically solicited the
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  47
  opinions of business leaders. At the turn of the century the need for
  business backing of an expansionist foreign policy was critical, but
  other policy issues also became important as time went on. In 1896,
  1897, and 1898 the government convened three Higher Agriculture,
  Commerce, and Industry Commissions to discuss a wide range of
  postwar economic problems: the expansion of foreign trade, the shift
  to a gold standard, the introduction of foreign capital, the establish-
  ment of overseas banking facilities, the treatment of factory workers,
  and even immigration policy. These high-level conferences brought
  leading bankers, foreign traders, shipping company executives, and
  manufacturers together with representatives from the ministerial bu-
  reaucracies. Although the government's purpose was undoubtedly to
  create consensus rather than to debate policy, the business representa-
  tives were candid in expressing their views, often to the frustration of
  the bureaucratic participants. These conferences established prece-
  dents for official "investigative commissions" {chosakai) or "delibera-
  tive councils" (shingikai) intended to give representatives of business a
  formal role in policymaking. Several key bodies were convened during
  the 1910s and 1920s: the Seisan chosakai (1910-12), the Keizai
  chosakai (1916-17), the Rinji kokumin keizai chosakai (1918-19), the
  Shoko shingikai (1927-30), and the Rinji sangyo shingikai (1930-5.)
  Even though their function may often have been ritualistic, these
  formal bodies implicitly recognized the practicality, if not the legiti-
  macy, of securing behind the national policy the support of a powerful
  interest group.
  As the economy grew more complex, interest-group organizations
  proliferated. Most were specialized associations representing specific
  business, trade, or occupational groups (for example, the Shipbuilders
  Association), geographical regions (for example, the Osaka Manufac-
  turers' Association), or specific regional industries (for example, the
  Hokkaido Colliers' Association). Although their interests were often
  parochial, they often formed alliances or coalitions when a single issue
  affected a number of groups. During the 1920s, for example, the
  cotton spinners' association allied with local chambers of commerce at
  home and merchant associations abroad in order to protest anti-
  Japanese activities in China. There also emerged important "peak
  associations" representing the general interests of a particular occupa-
  tion or economic group. Agricultural interests, particularly those of
  the landowning elements, for example, were represented by the Impe-
  rial Agricultural Association, established in 1910 with government
  encouragement, and local business was represented nationally by the
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  48 
  INTRODUCTION
  Japan Chamber of Commerce, organized in 1922. Particularly strik-
  ing, however, was the rise of peak associations representing large
  modern manufacturing firms-the Japan Industrial Club (1916), the
  Japan Economic Federation (1922), and the National Federation of
  Industrial Associations (1931). Industrial leaders felt that the opinions
  of bankers and financiers, on whom the government relied heavily,
  did not necessarily represent the views of business as a whole.
  During the 1920s there were also attempts to build interest organiza-
  tions representing economically weaker and politically less powerful
  segments of the population, such as wage labor (Japan Federation of
  Labor, 1920) or tenant farmers (Japan Peasants Union, 1922). Al-
  though these organizations tried to advance the interests of their puta-
  tive constituents, for example, through the legalization of trade unions
  or the reduction of rents, they developed in fundamental opposition to
  the sociopolitical status quo. Leaders were often drawn not from the
  ranks of ordinary workers or peasants but from the intelligentsia com-
  mitted to a global transformation of society. As Professors Duus and
  Scheiner indicate, the post-World War I labor movement participated
  in both the universal manhood suffrage movement and the proletarian
  party movement, and its leaders often advocated socialism in one form
  or another. Given the overwhelmingly conservative character of public
  sentiment, nurtured as it was by the indoctrination of traditional val-
  ues through the elementary education system, these pressure groups
  representing the less privileged strata remained small in size and politi-
  cally weak. Their leaders were accused of advocating dangerously
  disruptive alien philosophies of class struggle, and their political activi-
  ties were frequently the object of official suppression.
  During the 1930s, "reformist bureaucrats" as well as many civilian
  politicians in both the established and the proletarian political parties
  proposed curbing the prevalence of pork barrel politics, pressure-
  group activities, and interest politics through the imposition of state
  controls over key economic or occupational groups. These corporatist
  proposals were part of a more general effort to replace the liberal
  economic structure with a controlled economic structure, but they also
  reflected a craving to return to a social harmony and national unity
  thought to have been shattered by class conflict and political partisan-
  ship in the 1920s. Bureaucratic attempts to impose restraints on
  interest-group activities ranged from plans to introduce central eco-
  nomic planning to the establishment of new official mechanisms to
  resolve labor disputes. Many outside the ministerial bureaucracies,
  including party politicians as well as right-wing activists, called for a
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  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  49
  totalitarian system to discipline the unruly interests and to subordinate
  private gain to public interest. In 1940 the "new order" movement
  tried to bring all interest associations into hierarchical structures dedi-
  cated to "national profit" (kokueki). The new order failed to material-
  ize, but the pressure of war curbed overt pressure-group activities.
  The rapidity with which interest groups were reconstituted after the
  war illustrates the degree to which they had become embedded in politi-
  cal practice. Although big business organizations were the first to re-
  vive, usually based on a framework provided by prewar associations,
  the American Occupation authorities actively encouraged the growth of
  labor unions and agricultural cooperatives. By the 1950s a whole new
  set of pressure groups- those representing particular occupations (e.g.,
  physicians), those seeking assistance from the government (e.g., mili-
  tary veterans and pensioners, postwar repatriates, or war-bereaved fam-
  ilies), or those advocating particular policy positions (e.g., opponents of
  nuclear weapons), became active players in the political process. Eco-
  nomic interest groups, powerful peak associations, and protest organi-
  zations clamored for government attention and public support on a far
  wider scale and on a far wider range of issues than the prewar groups
  had.
  The most powerful voices, however, have been those of national
  peak associations with large and expert staffs, a smoothly functional
  organizational structure, and a high degree of representativeness. As
  Pempel and Tsunekawa asserted, the development of these organiza-
  tions has not been even from one sector of society to another.*? By the
  late 1960s virtually all major industries had been organized into power-
  ful hierarchical associations, and about one hundred of these trade
  associations, together with several hundred large industrial firms,
  were organized into the Federation of Economic Organizations, whose
  leader was often as powerful and frequently more respected than was
  the prime minister. Nearly all farm families also belonged to branches
  of the National Association of Agricultural Cooperatives, a body able
  to present a powerful united front to politicians and ministerial bureau-
  crats. By contrast, despite a sudden burst of organization in the imme-
  diate postwar period, the labor force employed in secondary and ter-
  tiary industry has remained relatively unorganized. Only 34.5 percent
  of the labor force was unionized in 1970. The intrusion of deep ideo-
  logical differences and disputes among national labor leaders also frag-
  47 T. J. Pempel and K. Tsunekawa, "Corporatism Without Labor? The Japanese Anomaly," in
  Trends Toward Corporaiisi Intermediation, ed. P. C. Schmitter and G. Lehmbruch (Beverly
  Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979).
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  50 
  INTRODUCTION
  merited the labor leadership. In any case, labor pressure groups have
  had far less political bargaining power than have the interest groups
  representing either big business or the farm population.
  To some extent, the weakness of the conservative political parties'
  organizations, with their limited party memberships and weak ties
  between national party headquarters and local constituencies, strength-
  ened farm and business interest groups. Interest groups with large
  mass organizations, such as the National Federation of Agricultural
  Cooperatives, could mobilize crucial voter support for Diet candidates
  in a way that the national party headquarters could not, and in return
  they expected continuation of rice price supports and other legislation
  favorable to farming interests. In the upper house of the National
  Diet, national peak associations with large national constituencies of-
  ten nominated and elected their own candidates without the mediation
  of party endorsement. The conspicuous efforts of the Liberal Demo-
  cratic Party in the late 1950s to win the support of major national
  occupational associations illustrates the degree to which conservative
  leaders consciously cultivated interest-group support in an attempt to
  offset their organizational weaknesses. By the same token, large busi-
  ness enterprises and the national business peak associations supplied
  conservative party candidates and the national headquarters with po-
  litical funds in return for greater access to policymakers and influence
  over public policy.
  Ironically, the large national labor federations, by linking their po-
  litical fortunes to the parties of the left-the Socialist Party, the Com-
  munist Party, and eventually the Democratic Socialist Party-cut
  themselves off from access to the inner circle of power. The choice was
  deliberate, reflecting ideological commitment as well as prewar politi-
  cal connections, but it had important tactical implications. Instead of
  trying to exercise pressure on national politics through petition or
  behind-the-scenes negotiation, the large labor federations took to the
  streets in overt campaigns to influence public opinion by mass demon-
  strations, sit-ins, and acts of civil disobedience. Intended to influence
  the government from the outside, these protest tactics were more
  symbolic than instrumental. During the 1950s when confrontational
  politics was at its postwar peak, mass demonstrations and public pro-
  test imposed significant psychological boundaries beyond which na-
  tional policy could not stray (e.g., massive rearmament). But as the
  political fervor declined, public demonstrations became almost ritualis-
  tic, prompting complaints from intellectuals and pushing student radi-
  cals toward tactics of violent confrontation.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  DOMESTIC POLITICS 
  51
  Successful interest groups realized that their efforts to change na-
  tional policy or to gain access to state resources had to be focused on
  the Liberal Democratic Party. One political scientist characterized
  them as "beggar groups," parasitic and submissive to authority rather
  than forthright in their defense of principle. It is more usual, however,
  to liken the triangular relationship among pressure groups, the ministe-
  rial bureaucracies, and the Liberal Democratic Party to the children's
  game of jan-ken-pon (like the American game of "scissors-paper-
  stone"). This is a game in which no player has a preponderant advan-
  tage and any player can win and lose simultaneously. Pressure groups
  have tended to be submissive to bureaucracies but aggressive in put-
  ting pressure on the Liberal Democratic Party. The Liberal Demo-
  cratic Party has been solicitous of pressure groups able to deliver votes
  or political funds, but it can exercise leverage over ministerial bureau-
  cracies through control of the national budget. And the ministerial
  bureaucracies have been careful not to offend ruling party politicians
  while remaining aware of how their own discretionary administrative
  powers can affect the fortunes of particular interest groups. Although
  obviously this metaphor is more elegant than the reality, it does sug-
  gest the peculiarly close relationships among conservative party politi-
  cians, ministerial bureaucracies, and interest-group associations.
  On the other hand, the jan-ken-pon metaphor understates the com-
  plexity of postwar interest politics. None of the main actors is mono-
  lithic in nature. As we have already seen, the Liberal Democratic
  Party is a coalition of factions, not all of them in full agreement.
  Although party factions did not often initiate policy, antimainstream
  factions sometimes vetoed or obstructed the policies of other factions.
  Powerful ministerial bureaucracies such as the Ministry of Interna-
  tional Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Finance were
  often at loggerheads on key policy issues, and sometimes ministerial
  bureaucracies were internally divided as well, with one bureau oppos-
  ing the policies advocated by another. And most obviously, the claims
  of interest groups conflicted, particularly over economic policies such
  as industrial restructuring, in which declining industries had interests
  different from those of growing industries, or over competition for
  access to government funds and protection. On rare occasions, conven-
  tional boundaries between conservative and left broke down, as when
  Keidanren and Sohyo joined against the Liberal Democratic Party and
  the Japan Medical Association in a dispute over increases in health
  insurance medical fees, which meant higher costs for both employers
  and employees. In sum, as one political scientist put it, there have
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  52 
  INTRODUCTION
  been no "simple and permanent" coalitions among the major actors
  who dominated policymaking in postwar Japan.
  It does, nevertheless, seem indisputable that a complex system of
  interest bargaining and interest representation has grown up in Japan
  since the turn of the century, as it has in most Western parliamentary
  systems. Whether interest politics has encouraged "structural corrup-
  tion" or organized "interest articulation" in a manner highly beneficial
  to economic growth, it seems no different in kind from what goes on in
  other capitalist political economies. Concomitantly, the notion that
  party politicians or state bureaucrats work on behalf of the public inter-
  est has lost plausibility and has perhaps contributed to a structural
  malaise in politics. Indeed, from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s,
  public opinion polls showed a steady decline in the number of respon-
  dents who felt that the Diet represented the "will of the people."
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  PART I
  DOMESTIC POLITICS
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CHAPTER 2
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY
  CABINETS, 1898-1932
  The year 1924 marked a turning point in the history of Japanese
  domestic politics. In January, Kiyoura Keigo, the incumbent presi-
  dent of the Privy Council, was nominated as prime minister and chose
  all his cabinet except for the military service ministers from the mem-
  bership of the House of Peers. The House of Representatives had been
  bypassed in the selection of cabinets since the fall of the Takahashi
  Korekiyo cabinet in June 1922. Angered by this, the leaders of the
  three major opposition parties in the lower house -Kato Takaaki
  (Kenseikai), Takahashi Korekiyo (Seiyukai), and Inukai Tsuyoshi
  (Kakushin Club)-met in February 1924 to organize a united front to
  bring down Kiyoura's "cabinet of peers." Because the first Labour
  Party government had been organized in England just a few weeks
  before, the general public as well as many party politicians felt that the
  Kiyoura government was swimming against the tides of history.
  In the general election of May 1924, the three-party coalition, bran-
  dishing the slogan of "protecting constitutional government," won a
  majority in the House of Representatives. Faced with the prospect of
  intransigent opposition in the lower house, Kiyoura chose to resign. In
  June the three opposition parties formed a coalition cabinet under the
  premiership of Kato Takaaki, president of the Kenseikai, the plurality
  party in the House of Representatives. The formation of this "cabinet to
  protect constitutional government" (goken sanpa naikaku) was of great
  significance. For the first time in modern Japanese history, the result of
  a general election, that is, a change in the majority in the House of
  Representatives, had brought about a change of cabinets in Japan.
  From June 1924 until May 1933 the country was alternatively gov-
  erned by six political party cabinets, a time known as the period of
  party cabinets or party governments. Only two of the five prime minis-
  ters (Hamaguchi Osachi and Inukai Tsuyoshi) held seats in the House
  of Representatives during this period, but all were presidents of politi-
  cal parties who assumed office while leading either the majority party
  or the next largest party in the lower house. In his Kenpo satsuyo
  55
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  56 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  (Outline of constitutional law) written in 1926, Minobe Tatsukichi,
  professor of constitutional law at Tokyo Imperial University and the
  most important ideological spokesman for party government, sug-
  gested that Japan was following the model of responsible party cabi-
  nets provided by England:
  Since its promulgation, our constitution has developed in a manner com-
  pletely contrary to the expectations of its authors. Institutionally the system of
  cabinets responsible to the Diet has no place in the constitution, but it has been
  firmly established as a customary practice. It is now recognized as a natural
  principle that when there is a loss of Diet confidence [in the cabinet], especially
  in the House of Representatives, [the cabinet] must dissolve the lower house
  and appeal to public opinion, or it must offer a general resignation. •
  Thus, in both theory and fact, party cabinets had become politically
  orthodox (see Table 2.1).
  The establishment of party cabinets is particularly significant given
  the antiparty biases of the Meiji leaders who drafted the constitution.
  One of their purposes was to ensure that there would be no connection
  between the establishment or duration of the cabinets and the will of
  the Diet, especially the lower house. It is well known that ltd Hiro-
  bumi, the principal author of the Meiji constitution, felt that party
  cabinets were not appropriate for Japan in the 1880s. As he observed
  in a speech after the promulgation of the constitution, "It is difficult to
  avoid the emergence of parties or factions in the Diet or in society,"
  but it is "troublesome to have them influence the government."2 Politi-
  cal parties might be inevitable, but it was not necessary to give them a
  share of the power (see Figure 2.1).
  To be sure, even before the promulgation of the constitution or the
  opening of the Diet in 1890, some Meiji leaders wanted to form a
  powerful progovernment political party in the Diet. Inoue Kaoru, Ito's
  close political ally, together with Mutsu Munemitsu, Aoki Shuzo, and
  several other higher officials, hoped to organize a Jichito (Self-
  Government Party), a national political party supported by provincial
  administrative officials and local landlords - in Inoue's words, the "pro-
  vincial aristocracy." They wanted to ally this party of provincial aristo-
  crats with the Kaishinto, whose leader, Okuma Shigenobu, was serving
  as foreign minister and negotiating a revision of the unequal treaties.3
  The majority faction within the Meiji leadership opposed Inoue's
  1 Minobe Tatsukichi, Kenpo saisuyo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1926), pp. 129-30.
  2 Sashihara Yasuzo, ed., Meijiseishi, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Fuzanbo shoten, 1893), pp. 1941-3.
  3 Mikuriya Takashi, Meiji kokka keisei to chiho keiei 1881-1890 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shup-
  pankai, 1980), pp. 195-8.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  57
  TABLE 2 . 1
  Japanese cabinets, 1885-1932
  Prime
  minister
  Ito Hirobumi
  Kuroda Kiyotaka
  Yamagata Aritomo
  Matsukata Masayoshi
  ltd Hirobumi
  Matsukata Masayoshi
  Ito Hirobumi
  Okuma Shigenobu
  Yamagata Aritomo
  Ito Hirobumi
  Katsura Tare
  Saionji Kinmochi
  Katsura Taro
  Saionji Kinmochi
  Katsura Taro
  Yamamoto Gonnohyoe
  Okuma Shigenobu
  Terauchi Masatake
  Hara Takashi
  Takahashi Korekiyo
  Kato Tomosaburo
  Yamamoto Gonnohyoe
  Kiyoura Keigo
  Kato Takaaki
  KatoTakaaki
  Wakatsuki Reijiro
  Tanaka Giichi
  Hamaguchi Osachi
  Wakatsuki Reijiro
  Inukai Tsuyoshi
  Cabinet
  number
  1st
  1st
  1st
  2nd
  2nd
  3rd
  1st
  2nd
  4th
  1st
  1st
  2nd
  2nd
  3rd
  1st
  2nd
  2nd
  1st
  2nd
  1st
  2nd
  Cabinet term
  22 December 1885 to 30 April 1888
  30 April 1888 to 24 December 1889
  24 December 1889 to 6 May 1891
  6 May 1891 to 8 August 1892
  8 August 1892 to 18 September 1896
  18 September 1896 to 12 January 1898
  12 January 1898 to 30 June 1898
  30 June 1898 to 8 November 1898
  8 November 1898 to 19 October 1900
  19 October 1900 to 2 June 1901
  2 June 1901 to 7 January 1906
  7 January 1906 to 14 July 1908
  14 July 1908 to 30 August 1911
  30 August 1911 to21 December 1912
  21 December 1912 to 20 February 1913
  20 February 1913 to 16 April 1914
  16 April 1914 to 9 October 1916
  9 October 1916 to 29 September 1918
  29 September 1918 to 13 November 1921
  13 November 1921 to 12 June 1922
  12 June 1922 to 2 September 1923
  2 September 1923 to 7 January 1924
  7 January 1924 to 11 June 1924
  11 June 1924 to 2 August 1925
  2 August 1925 to 30 January 1926
  30 January 1926 to 20 April 1927
  20Aprill927to2Julyl929
  2 July 1929 to 14 April 1931
  14 April 1931 to 13 December 1931
  13 December 1931 to 16 May 1932
  plan for a progovernment party. Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka,
  Privy Council President Ito Hirobumi, and Home Minister Yamagata
  Aritomo did not want the cabinet to be dependent on a single party in
  the Imperial Diet. They also cautioned against linking the local gov-
  ernment system to party politics. In 1889, after the promulgation of
  the constitution, Kuroda made his well-known pronouncement about
  "transcendental government" (chozenshugt) to a conference of prefec-
  tural governors: "The government must always take a fixed course. It
  must stand above and outside the political parties [chozen to shite seito
  no soto ni tate] and cleave to the path of supreme fairness and supreme
  justice. "4 This was clearly a rejection of Jichito or a Jichito-Kaishinto
  4 Sashihara, Meiji seishi, p. 1931.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Shakai Shugi Kenkyukai
  ISocialisi Study Society)
  Oct. 1898
  Shakai Shugi Kybkai
  {Socialist Association)
  Jan. 1900
  Daido Kurabu 
  Aikoku Koto
  (Union Club) 
  (Public Party of Patriots)
  May 1889 
  May 1889
  Rikken Jiyutd
  (Constitutional Liberal Party)
  Sept. 1890
  I
  Jiyutd
  [Liberal Party)
  Mar. 1891
  Daido Kyowakai
  May 1889
  TOyS Jiyutd 
  -.
  lOriental Liberal Party)
  Nov. 1892
  disbanded Dec. 1893
  Shakai Minshuto
  (Socialist Democratic Party)
  May 1901; proscribed after two days
  proscribed Nov. 1904 
  !
  r 
  1
  Nihon Shakaito 
  Nihon Heiminto
  (Japan Socialist Party) 
  (Japan Commoners' Party)
  Jan. 1906 
  Jan. 1906
  Nihon Heiminto
  (Japan Socialist Party)
  Feb. 1906
  I
  proscribed Feb. 1907
  Rikken KakushintO
  ». (Constitutional
  Renovation Party) May 1894
  Shimpoto
  (Progressive Party)
  Mar. 1896
  Kenseito
  (Consitutional Party)
  June 1898
  Taiseikai
  Aug. 1890
  Kokumin Kyokai
  (Nationalist Association)
  June 1892
  Kenseito
  (Constitutional Party)
  Oct. 1898 I
  Rikken Seiyukai
  (Friends of Constitutional
  Government Party)
  Sepl. 1900
  Kenzei Honto
  (True Constitutional
  Party)
  Nov. 1898
  N5min Rod6t5
  (Farmer-Labor Party)
  Dec. 1925
  proscribed on founding
  Seiyu Kurabu
  (Political Friends Club)
  Feb. 1913
  Chuseikai
  (Upright Party)
  Dec. 1913
  Rikken KokumintB
  (Constitutional
  Nationalist Party)
  Mar. 1910
  Nihon Kyosanto
  (Japan Communist Party)
  July 1922 
  RodS Ndmintd
  I 
  (Labor Farmer Party)
  dissolved 1924 
  M a'- 1*26
  reestablished underground 1926 
  proscribed Apr. 1928
  Rodosha Ndminto
  (Worker-Farmer Party!
  j 
  Nihon Rdndto
  I 
  (Japan Labor-
  I 
  Farmer Party)
  Dec. 1926
  Shakai Minshuto
  (Social Democratic Party)
  Dec, 1926
  Musan Taishutd
  (Proletarian Mass Party)
  July 1928
  Ronoto {Shin Rdnoto)
  (Worker-Farmer Party)
  Nov. 1929
  Nihon Taishutd
  (Japan Mass Party)
  Dec. 1928
  Zenkoku Minshuto
  (National People's Party)
  Jan. 1930
  Zenkoku Taishutd
  (National Mass Party)
  Dec. 1928
  } f
  Zenkoku Rono Taishutd
  (National Labor Farmer Mass Party)
  July 1931
  \
  Nihon Ndminto
  (Japan Farmers' Party)
  Oct. 1926
  Shakai Taishutd
  (Socialist Mass Party)
  July 1932
  Teikokutd
  (Imperial Party)
  July 1899
  I
  Daido Kurabu
  (Union Club)
  Dec. 1905
  Chud Kurabu
  (Central Club)
  Mar. 1910
  Rikken Doshikai
  (Constitutional Association of Friends)
  Feb. 1913
  Kenseikai
  * 
  » (Constitutional Association)
  Oct. 1916
  disbanded Sept. 1922
  Selyu Hontd 
  Kakushin Kurabu
  (True Seiyu Party) 
  (Reform Club)
  Jan. 1924 
  Nov. 1922
  May 1925 I 
  June 1927
  Rikken Minset'td
  (Constitutional Democratic Party)
  June 1927
  Shintd Kurabu
  (New Party Club) -
  Aug. 1928
  July 1929
  Nihon Musan td
  (Japan Proletarian Party)
  Mar. 1937
  disbanded 
  | 
  ,
  May 1942 
  proscribed Dec. 1937 
  disbanded July 1940
  Kuhara (action
  May 1937
  disbanded
  July 1940
  Nakajima faction
  Apr. 1937
  disbanded
  July 1940
  Kokumin Domei
  (Nationalist League)
  Dec. 1932
  Tohokai
  (Far East Society)
  May 1936
  I
  disbanded
  June 1940
  disbanded
  July 1940
  disbanded
  Aug. 1940
  Figure 2.1. Political parties, 1889-1940. (Based on Encyclopedia of
  Japan, vol. 6. pp. 208-9.)
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE AMBIGUITY OF THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION 
  59
  alliance, as was the ltd speech quoted earlier. Inoue, unhappy at his
  colleagues' reaction, criticized the majority faction in a letter to Mutsu
  Munemitsu: "I think that it is inept politics to make arrogant state-
  ments about the government's standing outside political parties."'
  The majority view nevertheless carried the day.
  How was it then that political party cabinets finally emerged within
  a constitutional framework that embodied the antiparty sentiments of
  the majority faction of the Meiji leadership? How was it, as Minobe
  put it, that the "ideas of the drafters [of the Meiji constitution] were
  betrayed in reality"?6
  THE AMBIGUITY OF THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION
  Let us first consider the ways in which the Meiji constitution hindered
  the formation of party cabinets.
  The constitution contained two kinds of checks on the emergence of
  party government. First, there was the concept of the emperor's sover-
  eign authority (tenno taiken). In Ito's view, the emperor's sovereign
  authority and the party cabinet system were fundamentally incompati-
  ble. In a letter he wrote from Germany during his investigation of
  European constitutional systems in 1882, he observed: "If one estab-
  lishes parliamentary government, then one must reduce the authority
  of the emperor [taiken]. If one emphasizes the authority of the em-
  peror, one cannot adopt parliamentary government."7 Thus in his
  view, the two could not coexist. However, this does not mean that Ito
  favored direct imperial rule. In 1877-9 he had helped thwart the
  efforts of certain court officials to establish direct imperial rule; in
  1885 he had supported the clear separation of the court (kyuchu) from
  the government (fuchu) by replacing the Dajokan (Council of State)
  with a cabinet system; and above all, he had favored the establishment
  of the emperor as a constitutional monarch through the promulgation
  of a constitution that defined the emperor's authority.
  Nevertheless, the emperor was more than a constitutional monarch;
  indeed Ito himself tried to make him so. For example, Ito stubbornly
  refused to equate the Japanese emperor with the English king. He
  argued that the Japanese monarch was different from other monarchs:
  "There is a great difference in our constitution compared with those of
  other countries. In no other country does a constitution specify as does
  5 Mikuriya, Meiji kokka keisei, pp. 204-6. 
  6 Minobe, Kempo satsuyo, p. 130.
  7 Hiratsuka Atsushi, ed., Zoku ltd Hirobumi hiroku (Tokyo: Shunju, 1930), p. 48.
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  60 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  Chapter I [of our constitution] that the sovereign authority of the
  monarch [kunshu no taiken] is the [same as] the sovereign authority of
  the state [shaken]."9 The idea of parliamentary sovereignty or popular
  sovereignty, one of the theoretical bases for party cabinets in liberal
  Western political systems, was specifically rejected in the letter of the
  Meiji constitution.
  The Meiji constitution's other check on party government was its
  system of divided powers. Because the official interpretation of the
  constitution rejected the practice of direct imperial rule, the establish-
  ment of imperial sovereign authority did not mean that the emperor
  would directly exercise administrative authority. The real meaning of
  Article 3-"The emperor is sacred and inviolable"-was simply that
  the emperor did not have the capacity to assume political responsibil-
  ity. He was placed beyond politics by being placed above it. The
  Meiji constitution, in somewhat ambivalent fashion, emphasized the
  emperor as the supreme constitutional monarch and granted him
  imperial sovereignty, yet at the same time it rejected the idea of
  direct imperial rule. The exercise of imperial sovereign power (tenno
  taiken) therefore had to be parceled out among the various organs of
  state. Ito explained this as a delegation of imperial sovereignty. But
  to the extent that all organs of state were premised on the absolute-
  ness of imperial authority, they lacked the power either to oppose or
  to represent the emperor. ltd emphasized this point with respect to
  the Imperial Diet:
  The restoration of monarchical rule [osei fukko] meant the restoration to the
  emperor of the right of sovereignty [tochi taiken]. We believe that neither in
  their hearts nor in their minds do the subjects of Japan wish to create a body
  that would usurp the right of sovereignty and bestow it directly on the people
  so that the imperial house would lose its right to rule, as it did during the days
  of the usurpatious bakufu. Indeed, this would be contrary to our national
  polity [kokutai]*
  Needless to say, the rejection of any "usurping power" (hafu) like the
  bakufu applied not just to the Diet but to all organs of state. The
  "restoration of monarchical rule" would permit no state organ to in-
  fringe on or usurp the absoluteness of imperial sovereignty.
  In this sense, all organs of state sharing the exercise of imperial
  sovereignty in varying degrees existed relative to one another. Each
  organ existed independently of the others; each was directly answer-
  8 Shunpoko tsuishokai, ltd Hirobumi den, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Shunpoko tsuishokai, 1940), p. 652.
  9 Hiratsuka Atsushi, ed., ltd Hirobumi hiroku (Tokyo: Shunju, 1929), p. 227.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE AMBIGUITY OF THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION 
  6l
  able only to the emperor; each had its own raison d'etre for acting in
  the name of the emperor; and each had the function of checking the
  others. The court (kyUchu) and the government (fuchu) had their own
  special spheres; the cabinet, the Diet, and the judiciary were inde-
  pendent of one another, and each insisted on its equality with the
  others as independent separate organs; the Privy Council, maintain-
  ing its independence as an advisory organ to the emperor, could
  restrain the cabinet; and the military, reporting directly to the em-
  peror, enjoyed an independence superior to that of all the other state
  organs.
  Within the cabinet itself, each minister of state was directly and
  separately responsible to the emperor, giving each considerable inde-
  pendence vis-a-vis the prime minister and often making it difficult to
  maintain cabinet unity. Within the Imperial Diet too, the powers of the
  two chambers-the House of Representatives and the House of Peers-
  were balanced against each other in a way that promised conflict.
  In sum, despite its emphasis on imperial sovereignty, or perhaps
  because of it, the Meiji constitutional structure embodied the separa-
  tion of powers to a high degree; hence it also embodied a high degree
  of political pluralism. Behind the facade of a centralized and unitary
  imperial sovereignty worked a mechanism by which autonomous state
  organs mutually checked and balanced one another. Statecraft aiming
  at a pluralistic balance of power among the various organs of state
  shaped the actual operation of the Meiji constitutional structure. This
  system of divided powers, and the political pluralism that resulted,
  was grounded in the rejection of responsible parliamentary cabinets,
  or at least party cabinets, able to coordinate the government's legisla-
  tive and administrative functions, as in the British system.
  The system of divided powers reflected the basic character of
  eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western constitutions on which
  the Meiji leaders modeled their own. For example, the drafters of the
  American Constitution had also tried to control the domination of the
  state by means of a parliamentary majority. This was why James
  Madison insisted so strongly on a bicameral system. The American
  Constitution's system of divided powers was intended above all to
  restrain tyranny by the majority. For the founding fathers of the
  United States, the highest purpose of the Constitution was the protec-
  tion of liberty, especially religious liberty. They regarded party govern-
  ment, which implied control of the state by special interests, as incom-
  patible with the claims of liberty. The highest purpose of the Meiji
  constitution, in contrast, was not the protection of liberty but the
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  62 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  protection of imperial sovereignty. The system of division of powers
  could serve that goal, too. Just as the drafters of the American Consti-
  tution adopted the separation of powers and rejected party govern-
  ment in order to protect liberty, so too the drafters of the Meiji consti-
  tution insisted on the division of powers and rejected party cabinets in
  order to protect imperial sovereignty.
  The concept of divided power sometimes was used ideologically in
  Japan to oppose the establishment of party cabinets. Hozumi Yatsuka,
  a professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University and well known as an
  ideological opponent of parliamentary rule, rejected English-style
  party cabinets as a kind of authoritarian political structure (sensei
  seitai), as they enabled one organ of state to dominate all the others. By
  contrast, he argued, constitutional government in Japan put into prac-
  tice an American-style separation of powers to the highest degree. For
  Hozumi, the "national polity" (kokutai) embodied in the concept of
  imperial sovereignty was inseparable from the "political structure"
  {seitai) embodied in the practice of constitutional politics, that is, a
  divided-powers system.10 In other words, the restraints on tyranny
  were as strong in the Japanese constitutional structure as they were in
  the American. Similarly, Uesugi Shinkichi, Hozumi's academic heir,
  emphasized that the basic principle of the Meiji constitution was the
  tripartite separation of powers. For example, in his interpretation of
  the constitution, Uesugi insisted that the judiciary was independent of
  the legislative power, and he argued for the right of judicial review
  (horitsu shinsaken) by the Japanese courts.11
  The prohibition of the publication of Minobe's Kenpo satsuyo (Out-
  line of constitutional law) in 1935, as a result of the "organ theory"
  controversy, and the republication of Hozumi's long out-of-print text-
  book on constitutional theory reinforced the use of the separation-of-
  powers theory as an ideological weapon against the party cabinet sys-
  tem. During the Hirota Koki cabinet, organized in 1936 under pressure
  from the army, members of the Army Military Affairs Section (Riku-
  gunsho gunmuka) and the Cabinet Research Bureau spearheaded ef-
  forts to put into effect the cabinet's slogan: "renovation of all aspects of
  government (shosei isshin)." One of their chief goals was to reform the
  Diet system.12 In October 1936, Lieutenant Colonel Sato Kenryo, chief
  of the Internal Affairs Group (Gunmuka naiseihancho) of the Military
  Affairs Section (Gunmuka naiseihan) in the War Ministry, was quoted
  10 Hozumi Yatsuka, Kempo teiyd (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1935), pp. 67, 74-5.
  11 Uesugi Shinkichi, Teikoku kempo chikujd kogi (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1935), pp. 164-5-
  12 Hata Ikuhiko, Gun fashizumu undoshi (Tokyo: Kawade shobo shinsha, 1972), p. 177.
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  THE AMBIGUITY OF THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION 
  63
  anonymously in the Tokyo asahi shinbun as a representative of "influen-
  tial reformist opinion" within the army:
  Because the present-day Japanese Diet derives from the English-style parlia-
  mentary cabinet system, it devotes most of its energy to exercising its right to
  oversee the government rather than to legislate and to approve the budget. As
  a result, the Diet has been transformed into an arena of competition for
  political power, and important matters of legislation and budget approval are
  neglected. Hence, at the present moment, the Diet and the government,
  following American practice, should be considered as organs independent of
  each other, thereby establishing the principle of the tripartite division of
  power into executive, legislative, and judicial functions; the practice of orga-
  nizing party cabinets based on a majority in the Diet should be abolished; and
  the party cabinet system should be completely rejected.'3
  Clearly, such views derived from Hozumi Yatsuka's theories regarding
  the Japanese political structure. The academic downfall of Minobe's
  theory, which had provided the most persuasive ideological support for
  party rule, marked the waning of party rule in practice.
  The division of powers written into the Meiji constitution, and the
  political pluralism that resulted in practice, were, as we have seen, a
  product of the "restoration of monarchical rule" which rejected the
  notion of a "usurping power" (hafu) ruling in the place of the em-
  peror, as the bakufu had. The existence of a political body resembling
  the bakufu remained consistently taboo under the constitution. In-
  deed, one of the reasons that the right wing later attacked the Impe-
  rial Rule Assistance Association in 1940-1 was that it resembled such
  a "bakufu-like body" (bakufuteki sonzai). The system of divided pow-
  ers was intended to check the emergence of such a force and hence
  was consistent with the Restoration principle of returning sover-
  eignty to the emperor.
  The diffusion of power under the Meiji constitution meant that
  despite its superficially centralized framework, the political system
  lacked any institutional means of providing real unity. During his stay
  in Europe, ltd noted that the German emperor served this function:
  "Although the emperor constitutionally appears to be one of the parts
  of the [constitutional] machinery, he is not so in fact. He is the presid-
  ing agent who directs this machinery so that it is unimpeded in all
  things."14 Ito tried to draw a parallel between the German emperor
  and the Japanese emperor. But because the Japanese emperor was
  supposed to be above politics, he could not become a "presiding
  agent" in the same way. Neither could the Japanese prime minister be
  13 Tokyo asahi shinbun, October 30, 1936. 
  14 Hiratsuka, ltd, p. 308.
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  64 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  likened to the German Reichskanzler. Under the system of joint minis-
  terial responsibility, the Japanese prime minister's power to control
  members of the cabinet was weak, and in making policy, he had to
  work under the constraint of extracabinet bodies like the Privy Coun-
  cil and the military high commands. During the first ten years of
  constitutional government, the prime minister's position was even
  further weakened by the fact that-with the exception of the first
  Okuma cabinet in 1898-no prime minister possessed a base of sup-
  port in the Imperial Diet, especially in the lower house. Just as the
  emperor could not act like the Kaiser, Ito could not act like Bismarck.
  If the formation of a balance of power among the fragmented organs
  of state making up the Meiji constitutional system were not to be left
  solely to chance, then some kind of extraconstitutional means had to
  be found to coordinate them so that the myth of imperial sovereignty
  (kokutai) could be reconciled with the constitutional reality of divided
  powers (seitai). The constitution had been drafted to prevent the emer-
  gence of a bakufu-like "usurping power" (hafu), but in order to make
  it run efficiently, there had to be an extraconstitutional force that
  would serve the function of such a power. The same, of course, was
  true of the American Constitution which also required an extra-
  constitutional element to make a highly fragmented constitutional sys-
  tem work. In the United States, this role was played by the two
  national political parties that controlled the national presidential elec-
  tions. It is paradoxical but significant that these national political
  parties were organized by the drafters of the Constitution, men who
  had originally opposed the idea of political parties. According to the
  American historian Richard Hofstadter, ". . .we may say that it was
  the parties that rescued this Constitution against parties and made of it
  a working instrument of government."15
  What emerged first in Japan as a "bakufu-like body" to coordinate
  the fragmented constitutional system was the hanbatsu, or "oligarchic
  clique." It was so called because most of its members came from either
  Choshu or Satsuma, the two major domains (Jhan) that had brought
  about the Meiji Restoration. The oligarchic clique could make the
  constitution work because its factional ties cut across the bureaucracy,
  the House of Peers, the Privy Council, the army, and the court. Its
  leaders were the genro, elder statesmen, who in fact exercised many of
  15 Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Parly System (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
  California Press, 1969), p. 71.
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  THE AMBIGUITY OF THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION 
  65
  the imperial prerogatives in the emperor's name. It was both historical
  irony and historical necessity that in order to run the constitutional
  system they had purposely created on the basis of a division of power,
  the very men who had attacked the legitimacy of the bakufu and
  overthrown it in 1868 should themselves become a bakufu-like body.
  The leaders of the oligarchic clique, however, were unable to domi-
  nate one key organ of state, the House of Representatives. They had
  already rejected the idea of political parties and had neither the inter-
  est nor the organizational means to gather electoral support in the
  lower house of the Diet. This task was left to anti-hanbatsu leaders,
  many of them veterans of the antigovernment jiyuminken (popular
  rights) struggles of the 1870s and 1880s, who organized political par-
  ties to fight electoral battles and win Diet seats in the national elec-
  tions. The two major political parties during the mid-i89Os were the
  Jiyuto (led by Itagaki Taisuke) and the Kaishinto, later renamed the
  Shinpoto (led by Okuma Shigenobu). It was they who controlled the
  majority of seats in the House of Representatives. Coming out of a
  tradition of opposition and resistance to oligarchic rule, the political
  parties acted as a fragmenting or decentralizing element in the constitu-
  tional structure. They threatened to use their constitutional power to
  block the passage of national budgets or national legislation. As long as
  the oligarchic leaders were committed to working within the Meiji
  constitutional structure, they could neither ignore nor reject the politi-
  cal parties if they wished to achieve internal political stability. On the
  contrary, they had to convert the parties into a tool for coordinating
  and centralizing power. To put it another way, the hanbatsu leaders
  had to develop links with the political parties.
  It was also clear to the political parties that if they wanted to acquire
  more power, they had to cooperate or make political alliances with the
  hanbatsu. A majority in the lower house was not itself a guarantee of
  access to political power. In order to respond to the demands of provin-
  cial economic interests through the budgetary or legislative processes,
  it was necessary for the political parties to reach an understanding with
  the hanbatsu leaders who controlled the House of Peers. The hanbatsu
  leaders realized the limits to their ability to provide central direction
  within the constitutional structure, and the political parties realized
  the limits to their ability to expand their power. As a result, after the
  Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 both political forces began to experi-
  ment with mutual alliances so as to overcome the limits under which
  each labored. This marked the first shift in the direction of party rule.
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  66 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYDKAI
  Between 1895 and 1900, four hanbatsu cabinets attempted to make
  alliances with political parties, through either coalitions or coopera-
  tion. All but one (the third Ito Hirobumi cabinet) of these attempts
  succeeded. Except during the first Okuma cabinet of 1898, party
  politicians, whether affiliated with the Jiyuto or the Shinpoto, tried to
  cooperate with the hanbatsu leaders rather than to join against them.
  At first temporary in character, these pzrty-hanbatsu alliances later
  turned into more stable long-term arrangements. The political parties
  not only cooperated in supporting hanbatsu cabinet policies, but they
  cooperated more directly by participating in the cabinets as well. None
  of this had characterized party—hanbatsu relationships before the Sino-
  Japanese War, especially during the first sessions of the Diet when
  both sides had been at loggerheads. The change shows how much of a
  transformation there had been in both the "transcendentalist" stance
  of the hanbatsu and the anti-hanbatsu stance of the "popular parties"
  (minto).
  The first step toward mutual rapprochement came at the end of the
  second Ito Hirobumi cabinet in November 1895 when the government
  struck an alliance with the Jiyuto. The Jiyuto's president, Itagaki
  Taisuke, became home minister in April 1896. Because this meant a
  major retreat from the principle of transcendentalism, its orthodox
  defenders reacted strongly. Most of the imperial appointees in the
  House of Peers, the Kokumin kyokai (a lower-house faction led by
  Shinagawa Yajiro, who as home minister had directed government
  interference against the minto opposition in the election of 1892), and
  some provincial governors serving directly under Itagaki responded to
  the Ito-Itagaki alliance with a sense of crisis. Looking to Yamagata
  Aritomo as a leader who could oppose Ito and the political party
  forces, they rallied to prepare for a Yamagata cabinet.
  When the second Ito cabinet fell in September 1896, Matsukata
  Masayoshi was nominated prime minister in accordance with the
  custom of alternating that office between Choshu and Satsuma men
  within the hanbatsu leadership. Since the inauguration of the cabinet
  system in 1885 when Ito Hirobumi, a Choshu man, served as the
  first prime minister, the prime ministership had alternated between
  representatives from the Satsuma and Choshu factions. In 1885 Ito
  was recommended for the office by Sanjo Sanetomi, the last imperial
  chancellor (dajo daijin), and the next three prime ministers-Kuroda
  Kiyotaka (Satsuma), Yamagata Aritomo (Choshu), and Matsukata
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYflKAI 
  67
  Masayoshi (Satsuma)-each were nominated by their predecessors.
  After the formation of the second ltd cabinet in August 1892, a
  meeting of the genro made up of representatives from both Satsuma
  and Choshu nominated the incoming prime minister, but the princi-
  ple of alternating between Satsuma and Choshu men was followed
  until 1898.
  The second Matsukata cabinet included not only representatives
  from Satsuma and Choshu, but also Okuma Shigenobu, president of
  the Shinpoto, who served as foreign minister. The influence of the
  Shinpoto on the cabinet was substantial. The party supported the
  government in the lower house, and two Shinpoto-affiliated factions in
  the upper house (the Sanyokai and the Konwakai) did too. Dubbed
  the Matsukata-Okuma cabinet (Showai naikaku), this government
  was the second major patty—hanbatsu alliance.
  Ito returned to the prime ministership again in January 1898. Ini-
  tially he proposed organizing a "national unity cabinet" (kyokoku itchi
  naikaku) which would include the two major parties in the lower
  house, the Jiyuto and the Shinpoto. Both parties favored cooperation,
  but the plan was ultimately frustrated by the breakdown of negotia-
  tions between them over the selection of cabinet ministers. In the end,
  the third Ito cabinet was organized on the principle of transcendental-
  ism, much to the relief of the antiparty elements who had been maneu-
  vering for a Yamagata cabinet. The cabinet lasted only six months,
  however. Both the major parties in the House of Representatives un-
  furled their banners as opposition parties when the cabinet introduced
  a bill to raise the land tax. The Kokumin kyokai and the Yamagata
  wing of the hanbatsu gave their absolute support to Ito, but the
  Shinpoto and the Jiyuto, in deference to provincial political interests,
  formed a coalition to defeat the bill. The antitax coalition in turn
  promoted a merger between the two parties to secure an absolute
  majority in the lower house. When Ito dissolved the House of Repre-
  sentatives because of opposition to the tax bill, the planned merger
  went forward. In June 1898 a new party, the Kenseito, was organized
  from the ranks of the Shinpoto and the Jiyuto, in effect reviving the
  tactics of "popular coalitions" that had characterized the first Diet
  sessions.
  The prospect of a powerful new opposition party shocked and upset
  all the hanbatsu leaders. But they were divided in their views on how to
  deal with it. A group of hard-liners favoring noncooperation wanted to
  resist the new party by strengthening the solidarity of the Choshu and
  Satsuma factions within the hanbatsu. They wanted to force through
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  68 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  the Diet a fiscal policy that included both increased military expansion
  and increased taxes to finance it, even if a suspension of the constitu-
  tion was required in addition to a dissolution of the Diet.
  A second group, taking up an idea that had been proposed by Ito and
  abandoned many times before, wanted to organize a progovernment
  party to oppose the Kenseito. The idea was that Ito, cooperating with
  Finance Minister Inoue Kaoru, would pull together a political organiza-
  tion made up of forces that directly or indirectly supported the land tax
  increase. As leader of the new party, Ito would fight the Kenseito in the
  ensuing election. But Yamagata and his supporters opposed this plan.
  Yamagata realized the necessity of having a political party able to strug-
  gle against the Kenseito, but he thought that it would violate the princi-
  ple of transcendentalism for Ito to lead such a party while he was still
  both a prime minister and a genro. He feared that such tactics would
  open the way to party cabinets.
  A third group proposed a course of action that Ito finally chose, to
  hand over political power to the Kenseito which was certain to control
  the House of Representatives after the coming general election. When
  an imperial conference (gozen kaigi) unanimously opposed the second
  proposal-the formation of a new party with Ito as its head-Ito of-
  fered his resignation. Because none of the other genro wanted to fight
  the new party, Ito recommended that Okuma and Itagaki, the two
  principal leaders of the Kenseito, be asked to form a cabinet. Inoue
  Kaoru argued that this alternative was preferable to forming a party
  under Ito's leadership. A Kenseito cabinet with no base of power
  outside the Diet would have limited ability to centralize control over
  the government and would soon disintegrate. In other words, by a nice
  irony, a political party cabinet would bury by its own hand the prac-
  tice of responsible government. Whether Ito agreed with Inoue's pre-
  diction is not clear, but there is no question that he took the initiative
  in proposing a Kenseito cabinet. It was the best course of action for
  both himself and the antiparty elements in the hanbatsu.
  As events turned out, Inoue's prognostication proved correct. The
  Okuma-Itagaki cabinet, formed in June 1898, probably should be
  called the first party cabinet in Japan. All its ministers, with the
  exception of the military service ministers, were members of the
  Kenseito, and the party secured an absolute majority in the lower
  house in the 1898 election, capturing 244 seats out of 300. Despite this
  apparently strong position, however, the cabinet was beset by fatal
  weaknesses. The two military ministers, War Minister Katsura Taro
  and Navy Minister Saigo Tsugumichi, both antiparty, made clear to
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYOKAI 
  69
  Okuma and Itagaki that they were entering the cabinet as "alien ele-
  ments." Both intrigued with antiparty forces outside the cabinet to
  hasten its downfall. According to Katsura's later comment, the two
  service ministers were able to "paralyze the cabinet."16 Beyond their
  intrigues, other factors generated by the internal politics of the Ken-
  seito worked against the longevity of the cabinet.
  First, there was the internal dispute within the Kenseito over the
  tax increase question. Although the Okuma-Itagaki cabinet, like all
  the cabinets after the Sino-Japanese War, was committed to plans for
  increased expeditures on military armaments and on expanded tele-
  graph, railway and steel-making capacities, it could not do so without
  a tax rise to increase government revenues. Because the Kenseito grew
  out of an alliance of two parties united against a land tax increase, the
  cabinet sought to raise other taxes. However, a powerful segment
  within the party reflecting urban industrial and commercial interests
  felt that the policy of increased expenditure should be pursued vigor-
  ously and effectively even if it meant higher land taxes. A representa-
  tive of this view was Hoshi Toru, leader of the Kanto faction of the old
  Jiyuto and a powerful member of the Tokyo mum'cipal assembly.
  Hoshi thought that party support should be broadened to include the
  urban mercantile and manufacturing classes as well as the well-to-do
  elements in the countryside. He also thought that a land tax increase
  was inevitable. But if he pressed these views, a rupture of the Kenseito
  would be inevitable. The tax increase issue thus was a dispute over the
  future of the party.
  There were also conflicts within the Kenseito over the division of
  internal party authority. Former Jiyuto members fought with former
  Shinpoto members over decisions about the establishment of branch
  offices, the selection of party officials, and the endorsement of official
  party electoral candidates. When the cabinet was organized, there also
  were conflicts over the distribution of ministerial posts and chokunin-
  rank official positions. Hoshi, taking advantage of the discontent gen-
  erated by these disputes, worked with other former Jiyuto members to
  bring down the cabinet in hopes of reviving the Jiyuto as an indepen-
  dent party with an absolute majority in the lower house.
  Opposed by powerful outside forces and riven by internal party
  conflict, the Okuma-Itagaki cabinet collapsed after a scant four
  months. The collapse of the cabinet demonstrated how weakened were
  16 Katsura Taro, "Katsura Taro jiden," vol. 3 (unpublished material in the Kokuritsu kokkai
  toshokan, Kensei shiryo shitsu).
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  7O 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  the bonds that had held together popular-party coalitions during the
  first Diet sessions. These coalitions had been brought together by the
  slogans "relief for the people" (minryoku kyuyo) and "reduction of the
  land tax" (chiso keigen). But as former Jiyuto and Shinpoto politicians
  committed themselves to the postwar expansion of armaments and
  economic infrastructure and as they voiced their cooperation with a
  policy of "national wealth and power" (fukoku kydhei), such slogans
  lost meaning. Opposition to the increase of land taxes had temporarily
  brought them together, but it would not have kept them together had
  either party succeeded in cooperating with the third Ito cabinet. Their
  relationship was not one of unity but of competition for hegemony in
  the Diet. Just as there were fragmentation and competition among the
  oligarchic forces, so too the fragmentation and competition grew more
  intense among the party politicians.
  Hoshi Toru moved most consistently toward an adversary relation-
  ship with rival party politicians. Indeed, he began to work actively for
  an alliance with the hanbatsu to increase the predominance of his party
  within the House of Representatives. After all, he was competing in
  the lower house not with the hanbatsu but with other party politicians.
  It was to position himself advantageously in this competition that he
  split the Kenseito in October 1898 and prepared to ally with the
  second Yamagata cabinet, successor to the doomed Okuma-Itagaki
  government.
  The orthodox transcendentalists, forced to the sidelines after the
  Sino-Japanese War, eagerly welcomed the formation of the second
  Yamagata cabinet in November 1898. It included members of the
  Yamagata faction as well as representatives of the Satsuma faction
  (Matsukata Masayoshi, Saigo Tsugumichi, and Kabayama Sukemori).
  It also excluded both party politicians and members of the Ito faction.
  But even such a cabinet had to secure cooperation from a majority in
  the lower house of the Diet to pass legislation and a budget to finance
  its industrialization and rearmament policies. Whatever its principles,
  in practice a transcendental cabinet like Yamagata's could not avoid
  cooperation with a political party. When Yamagata made overtures
  through Katsura Taro to the Kenseito, which now consisted mainly of
  former Jiyuto men led by Hoshi Toru, he was able to establish a
  working relationship. Confident of support in the lower house, Yama-
  gata introduced a tax increase bill, including a land tax increase, in
  November 1898.
  The Kenseihonto, which was composed of former Shimpoto mem-
  bers, naturally opposed the bill. But there were also divided counsels
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYCKAI 
  71
  within the progovernment Kenseito. Some members favored the bill,
  and others opposed it on hard practical grounds. "Reduction of land
  taxes" had been a slogan of the party in earlier sessions of the Diet.
  Opposition to land tax increases was a sine qua non for a party with a
  rural electoral base among the landowning classes. If the Kenseito
  supported the land tax increase but the bill failed, then the House of
  Representatives would be dissolved, leaving the Kenseito to face a
  hard battle in the following election. Hoshi built an internal party
  consensus in support of the tax bill by arguing that the future expan-
  sion of party power lay in building support among the urban mercan-
  tile and manufacturing classes, whose latent political power he had
  come to recognize. (Indeed, for that reason he had become a member
  of the Tokyo Municipal Assembly and the Tokyo Municipal Council.)
  Urban business interests, backed by provincial chambers of com-
  merce, had organized the League to Increase Land Taxes (Chiso zocho
  kisei domeikai) to lobby the government and the Diet membership.
  The Kenseito had made the nationalization of the railroads, a demand
  of the railroad interests, as a condition for cooperation with Yamagata,
  and for this a tax increase was also needed. These were additional
  reasons that it was to the Kenseito's advantage to support land tax
  increases and for Hoshi to win over opponents within his party. The
  final passage of the land tax increase bill in December 1898 marked a
  decisive stage in the rapprochement between the party politicians and
  the hanbatsu: It finally eliminated the land tax increase issue.
  In 1900, during its next session, the Diet approved a bill proposed
  by the government to revise the House of Representatives Election
  Law. Once again the Yamagata government and the Kenseito cooper-
  ated to meet the demands of the urban mercantile and manufacturing
  classes. The electoral revision had two key parts. First, the tax qualifi-
  cation on the right to vote in a lower-house election was lowered from
  ¥15 in direct national taxes to ¥10, a change that nearly doubled the
  number of eligible voters from 502,000 in 1898 to 982,000 in 1900;
  and the tax qualification on the right to stand for election was also
  eliminated. Second, the existing small electoral district (one member
  per district with a few districts returning two members) was replaced
  by a system of prefecture-sized rural electoral districts and inde-
  pendent urban electoral districts for cities with populations of over
  30,000. The new system favored the urban districts, where as few as
  30,000 could be represented by a Diet member, over the rural dis-
  tricts, where as many as 130,000 could be represented by one member.
  The passage of the electoral law revision reflected the great impor-
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  72 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  tance that both the government and the Kenseito attached to the de-
  mands of the urban merchants and manufacturers. In 1899 and 1900,
  city-based business groups had mounted a vigorous campaign to estab-
  lish independent urban electoral districts. The League to Revise the
  House of Representatives Election Law (Shugiin senkyoho kaisei kisei
  domeikai) formed in January 1899 proclaimed as its goal a revision of
  the election law "in order to expand the rights of our merchants and
  manufacturers and to achieve their full political enfranchisement." The
  president of the league was Shibusawa Eiichi, and its two chief secretar-
  ies were Okura Kihachiro and Yasuda Zenjiro, all powerful business
  leaders. The membership of the organization from the leadership down
  overlapped with that of the League to Increase Land Taxes, a clear
  indication that the tax revision movement was also a movement to
  increase business influence in politics. After late 1899, local chambers
  of commerce throughout the country also banded together to form the
  Joint Committee of the National Chambers of Commerce for the Revi-
  sion of the House of Representatives Election Law (Senkyoho kaisei
  kisei zenkoku kakushi rengokai). In the face of this movement, Hoshi
  Toru and other Kenseito leaders pursued the same logic as during the
  effort to raise the land tax. Backing election law revision gave the party
  an opportunity to gather support among the urban business class. In
  fact, the revised law increased the number of Diet members represent-
  ing urban districts, from 17 (about 5.7 percent), out of a total of 300, to
  61 (about 15.5 percent), out of 369 members.
  The same session that passed the electoral law also approved the
  government-sponsored Police Peace Law (Chian keisatsuho) which
  included regulations for the control of labor and tenancy disputes. In
  1898 and 1899 there had been a number of large strikes, and the labor
  unions had made some headway among skilled workers in the railroad,
  shipbuilding, machinery, and printing industries. The government
  bill was a legal response to these alarming social trends. The Yamagata
  government is said to have modeled its draft on a bill that failed in the
  German Reichstag in May 1899 owing to the opposition of the German
  Social Democratic Party. There was hardly any debate at all on the bill
  in the Japanese Diet, in which the rural landlord and urban business
  classes were represented but the working class and the tenant class
  were not. The passage of the law made the leaders of the embryonic
  labor movement painfully aware of its limitations. In 1901 the Japa-
  nese Social Democratic Party was organized on the model of the Ger-
  man party, but the government immediately prohibited it.
  There were limits to the 1898-1900 Kenseito alliance with Yama-
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYUKAI 
  73
  gata. Whereas members of the Yamagata faction wanted party coopera-
  tion from outside the cabinet, they did not want party members to join
  the cabinet. When Hoshi saw that the reward for cooperation did not
  extend to the distribution of ministerial portfolios, he decided to end
  the alliance. Determined to participate in the cabinet that succeeded
  it, he visited ltd Hirobumi with a request that the elder statesman
  become president of the Kenseito. This was in line with the strategy
  he had pursued consistently since the rupture of the Jiyuto-Shinpoto
  coalition. His goal was to make his party the government party so as to
  secure hegemony in the lower house. His aim in approaching ltd was
  to win political advantage over the Kenseihonto, his rival in the compe-
  tition for control of the House of Representatives.
  ltd, on the other hand, wanted to form a new political party to
  remedy the long-standing weaknesses of the existing political parties,
  and so he turned down Hoshi's request to become the Kenseito's
  president. The ever-resourceful Hoshi responded by offering to dis-
  solve the Kenseito and to merge its membership into Ito's new party.
  He thought that by hanging onto Ito's coattails, the Kenseito could
  expand its influence and move closer to control over the cabinet.
  The offer was attractive to Ito, whose consistent political goal since
  the end of the Sino-Japanese war had been the creation of a "national-
  unity" system that would include the political parties. From the spring
  of 1899, Ito had begun to think about organizing a party centering on
  his bureaucratic associates and drawing support from the urban mer-
  cantile and manufacturing classes. After negotiating with Hoshi, he
  also decided that it would be advantageous to his own political goals to
  absorb the Kenseito membership with its provincial electoral bases
  into the new party. So he agreed to Hoshi's proposal. In September
  1900 amid great fanfare, Ito announced the organization of the Rikken
  Seiyukai, a new political party. It was to dominate Japanese party
  politics for the next two decades. More immediately, however, the
  organization of the party can be seen as the result of the logical conclu-
  sions reached out of political necessity by elements within both the
  hanbatsu and the political parties.'7 The hanbatsu leaders wanted stable
  support in the Diet, and the party politicians wanted greater access to
  control over the government.
  17 Concerning the background of the Rikken Seiyukai's establishment, see Mitani Taichiro,
  "Seiyukai no seiritsu," in Iwanamikoza Nihon rekishi (Tokyo, Iwanami shoten, 1976), vol. 16
  (JKindai, vol. 3), p. 16. In English the standard work on the Seiyukai is by Tetsuo Najita,
  Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, 1905-1915 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
  Press, 1967). See also George Akita, The Foundations of Constitutional Government in Modern
  Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).
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  74 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  Although conceived by ltd as the political core body that could coordi-
  nate the fragmented Meiji constitutional structure, the Seiyukai did not
  completely absorb all the important actors in national politics. Within
  the hanbatsu it was opposed by the Yamagata faction, and within the
  Diet it was opposed by two smaller parties, the Kenseihontd and its
  offspring the Kokuminto. Of these two anti-Seiyukai forces, the
  Yamagata faction was the more important, as it controlled a majority in
  the House of Peers to counterbalance the Seiyukai's majority in the
  House of Representatives. This meant that cooperation between the
  hanbatsu and the parties, obviously needed to make the constitutional
  structure work as a coordinated instrument, took on a new form, espe-
  cially after Ito's resignation as the Seiyukai's president in July 1903.
  Between the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and the
  end of the Meiji period in 1912, power shifted back and forth between
  the two men who controlled the upper and lower houses of the Diet.
  Katsura Taro, who as Yamagata's proxy manipulated a majority in the
  House of Peers, headed three cabinets during this period; and Saionji
  Kinmochi, who succeeded as the Seiyukai's president, headed two.
  Hara Takashi, the most influential Seiyukai leader under Saionji,
  had concluded that political stability could be achieved only if two of
  the three major political elements-the Yamagata faction, the Sei-
  yukai, and the Kenseihonto-joined forces. He rejected the idea of a
  party coalition between the Seiyukai and the Kenseihonto (later the
  Kokuminto) and chose instead to strike an alliance with the Yamagata
  faction through negotiations with Katsura. This opened the way to
  alternating control over the cabinet between the Seiyukai and the
  Yamagata faction. Hara's strategy followed that of Hoshi, whom Hara
  had succeeded as leader of the Kanto faction within the Seiyukai after
  Hoshi's assassination in 1901. The strategy contrasted with that of
  Inukai Tsuyoshi, one of the principal leaders of the Kenseihonto, who
  consistently called for a party coalition with the Seiyukai.
  Even though the Yamagata faction chose to strike bargains with the
  Seiyukai, the largest party in the lower house, relations between the
  two were fraught with tension and conflict. The two political forces
  frequently fought over policy issues. From time to time Katsura urged
  the formation of an anti-Seiyukai coalition (including the Kensei-
  honto) to curb the Seiyukai's influence. The Yamagata faction, which
  controlled the House of Peers, wanted to free itself from the Seiyukai's
  grasp, and the Seiyukai, under Hara's initiative, sometimes challenged
  the dominance of the Yamagata faction in the upper house. Neverthe-
  less, both the Seiyukai and the Yamagata faction ultimately had to
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SEIYtTKAI 
  75
  cooperate in carrying out important national policies, especially the
  management of the country's finances. It was easy for the Yamagata
  faction to deal with the Seiyukai, as Hara and Matsuda Masahisa, the
  two main party leaders, could forge an internal party consensus. By
  working with them it was possible to achieve a stable and reliable give-
  and-take with the party. By contrast, even if the other Diet groups-
  the Kenseihonto and the various small factions linked to the Yama-
  gata faction such as the Daido Club, the Boshin Club, or the Chuo
  Club into which the first two eventually merged-were to form an anti-
  Seiyukai coalition, there would be substantial political differences
  among them. Furthermore, the Kenseihonto was split between those
  who wanted to ally with the Yamagata faction and those who wanted
  to ally with the Seiyukai. Hence it was no easy matter to work out
  compromises on national policy with an anti-Seiyukai coalition. The
  Yamagata faction had to rely on the Seiyukai; and as long as Seiyukai
  influence in the House of Peers was confined to a minority there, the
  party had to work with the Yamagata faction. This balance of power
  between the two houses in the Diet eventually fell apart as a result of
  the Taisho political crisis of 1912-13 when Katsura tried to break the
  hold of the Seiyukai on the House of Representatives, by organizing
  his own political party, the Rikken Doshikai.
  In any case, it is clear that after the Sino-Japanese War, the hanbatsu
  leaders had learned that if they wished to overcome constraints on
  their ability to control the constitutional structure, they had to collabo-
  rate with the party politicians, form alliances with them, or organize
  political parties of their own. Ironically, by pursuing these tactics, the
  hanbatsu leaders did not bring the parties directly under their control.
  Rather, hanbatsu leaders were co-opted into the party system. The
  hanbatsu was a closed group whose original cohesion lay primarily in
  regional ties, and it was difficult to expand or reproduce through a
  process of self-regeneration. Ties within the hanbatsu rested on the
  shared experience of carrying out the Restoration and building a new
  state. These ties could not be transmitted to younger leaders, and
  neither could the enormous prestige acquired by the genro in their
  service to the nation. The hanbatsu were used to being in the minority.
  When such a group attempted to transform itself into the majority
  because it needed the backing of numbers, it lost its rationale and its
  influence. In attempting to control a majority in the House of Repre-
  sentatives, the power of the hanbatsu leaders became attenuated, and
  in the end they were absorbed into the political party system.
  With the passing of the hanbatsu leadership-that is, with the death
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  76 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  of the genro-one can ask whether there was any force but the political
  parties capable of acting as a political core body able to coordinate the
  fragmented constitutional structure. Was there any other potential
  "bakufu-like body" that could create linkages among the various or-
  gans of state, bringing cohesion to the operation of the state? The
  army, the Privy Council, and the administrative bureaucracy all had
  strong power as veto groups able to check the political parties, but all
  were based in one organ of state. Even though each group was highly
  independent, none could create the kind of linkages needed to make
  the government work smoothly, and hence none could become a
  bakufu-like body. If the stabilization of the constitutional structure
  was not to be haphazard and if there was to be a coordinating element
  that the constitution failed to provide, then there was nowhere to look
  but to the political parties. It was inevitable that they serve as a
  bakufu-like body.
  To summarize, the party cabinets were paradoxically the inevitable
  product of a constitution shaped by antiparty sentiments. We can
  perhaps see this paradox as similar to the development in the Ameri-
  can Constitution, likewise drafted by men of antiparty sentiment, of
  national political parties to provide cohesion in a separation-of-powers
  system, and of a presidential electoral system based on these national
  parties.
  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS
  Now let us consider the actual conditions that enabled the establish-
  ment of party cabinets between 1924 and 1933. What were the politi-
  cal realities that led to a general recognition that political party cabi-
  nets were superior to other alternatives?18
  Relations between the House of Representatives and the
  House of Peers
  First there was the consolidation of the House of Representatives in a
  position superior to that of the House of Peers. As we have seen, the
  Seiyukai was unable to absorb all the contending forces in the hanbatsu
  and the political parties. It had established itself as an absolute major-
  18 Political developments between 1912 and 1927 are covered in Peter Duus, Party Rivalry and
  Political Change in Taisho Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  77
  ity party in the House of Representatives. But in the House of Peers
  the party had no more than unstable minority support. The upper
  house was dominated by the hanbatsu leadership, especially by Yama-
  gata, who continued to be hostile toward the Seiyukai. After Ito
  Hirobumi and his proteges left the party in 1903, the party's influence
  in the upper house declined even further.
  Hara Takashi, the real power in the party and its chief strategist
  under Saionji, tried in various ways to reverse this situation. He began
  by making a direct approach to Katsura Taro, Yamagata's chief lieuten-
  ant. Katsura, who became prime minister in June 1901, once boasted,
  "The House of Representatives may be Saionji's, but the House of
  Peers is mine."1' In January 1906 Hara proposed to support Katsura in
  the House of Representatives if in return the pro-hanbatsu forces cooper-
  ated with Seiyukai policy in the House of Peers. Katsura agreed. What
  was at stake, however, was not simply policy but control over the
  government itself. In effect Hara and Katsura had agreed to a give-and-
  take balance of power between the upper and lower houses of the Diet.
  But Hara was not content with such a balance of power. He wanted
  to challenge the pro-hanbatsu hegemony in the House of Peers. When
  he became home minister under the first Saionji cabinet, he twice (in
  1907 and 1908) introduced bills to abolish the gun (county).20 The gun
  was an administrative unit that directly supervised the towns (macht)
  and villages (mura) at the lowest level of the local government system.
  It was established in 1890 by Home Minister Yamagata on the model
  of the Prussian kreis, the self-governing unit of the Junker class. Al-
  though the gun occupied an intermediate position between the local
  communities and the prefecture, it was not in fact a self-governing
  unit; rather, it was the lowest level of the Home Ministry bureaucracy.
  During the last years of the Meiji period, the county chief (jguncho) was
  appointed by the home minister. Politically the gun was the provincial
  base of the Yamagata faction which enjoyed enormous influence in the
  home ministry after the establishment of the local government system
  in the 1880s. By proposing to abolish the gun as an administrative unit,
  Hara was attempting to free the towns and villages, the provincial
  bases of political party power, from the influence of the home ministry
  19 Hara Takashi, Hara Takashi nikki, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Fukumura shuppan, 1965), entry for April
  18,1909.
  20 Concerning the political process in the dissolution of the gun system, see Mitani Taichiro,
  Nikon seito seiji no keisi-Hara Kei no seiji shido tenkai (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai,
  1967).
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  78 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  and to increase the position and authority of the local officials, espe-
  cially the local mayors. At the same time the abolition of the gun would
  also strike a severe blow to the influence of the Yamagata faction.
  In order to win support for the gun abolition bill in the upper house,
  Hara arranged to bring two influential House of Peers members into
  the Saionji cabinet: One was Senke Takanori, member of the Moku-
  yokai, an organization of hereditary baron-rank holders; and the other
  was Hotta Masayasu, member of the Kenkyukai, the largest faction in
  the House of Peers, organized mainly of hereditary viscount-rank hold-
  ers. Hara knew that there was no unanimity regarding the preserva-
  tion of the gun system among Yamagata-linked imperial appointees in
  the House of Peers. He hoped that the debate over the gun abolition
  bill would split the majority factions in the House of Peers. Because he
  knew that there was support for the bill outside the Seiyukai, he felt
  that the issue was a good one to challenge the hanbatsu forces. "Public
  opinion" was on his side.
  The pro-hanbatsu majority in the House of Peers rested on coopera-
  tion between the Sawakai (the majority faction among the imperially
  appointed peers) and the Kenkyukai (the majority faction among the
  hereditary peers). To maintain this power base, Yamagata and hic
  lieutenants worked hard to turn the Kenkyukai and other fact>-
  against the gun abolition bill. At the same time, they tried to outfla
  the Seiyukai by creating an opposition majority in the lower house
  through the organization of an anti-Seiyukai coalition made up of the
  Kenseihonto and the Daido Kurabu, the second and third largest
  parties in the House. The clash between the Seiyukai and the hanbatsu
  forces ended in a draw, however. The gun abolition bill passed in the
  House of Representatives but failed in the House of Peers. The bal-
  ance of power remained unchanged. Nevertheless, the tactics that
  each side used were similar. Each tried to create a vertical linkage
  between the two houses by building majorities in both. These "vertical
  linkage" tactics were to be used again-in 1913 by the hanbatsu and in
  1920 by the Seiyukai.
  Katsura was no more content with the existing balance of power
  between the two houses than Hara was. During his first two cabinets
  (1901-6, 1908-n), Katsura had secured for some policies solid Diet
  support through negotiations with Hara. As a result, both cabinets
  were relatively stable and long-lived. Once a cooperative relationship
  with Hara was established, Katsura had no difficulty in getting his
  budgets approved, and he had no need to discipline the House of
  Representatives by dissolving it. But Katsura was still not satisfied. In
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  79
  the final analysis, the Seiyukai's support for his government rested on
  political horse trades. Hence it was neither permanent nor stable. If
  the Seiyukai wanted to go its own way, it would do so.
  For example, in 1911 during the second Katsura cabinet, when co-
  operation with the Seiyukai was touted as "unity of understanding" (joi
  togo), the party gave no support to Katsura's plan to convert to broad
  gauge the trunk railway line between Tokyo and Shimonoseki. The
  plan ran counter to the Seiyukai policy of giving budget priority to the
  construction of new provincial railway lines, a policy the party used to
  build local electoral support.21 From the end of the Russo-Japanese
  War into the 1910s, the Seiyukai maintained its position as the majority
  party by pursuing a "positive policy" that promoted electoral support in
  the provinces. Through its bargains with the Yamagata faction, the
  party was able to manipulate priorities in the distribution of national
  expenditures. The core of the Seiyukai's positive policy was increasing
  expenditures for the national transportation and communication net-
  work, by building railroads lines, improving harbors, damming and
  diking rivers, constructing roads, building bridges, and installing tele-
  phone and telegraph lines. Hara attached particular importance to rail-
  road construction and harbor improvement. By acting as a conduit for
  requests from local communities for such nationally financed projects,
  the Seiyukai managed to pick up support among the electorate. This
  "positive policy" was very much in contrast with the "negative policy"
  followed by the political parties before the Sino-Japanese War when
  they had called for "reductions in government expenditure" and a "re-
  duction of the land tax."22
  During the second Saionji cabinet (1911-12), the Seiyukai resisted
  demands by Yamagata and Katsura to increase the army by two divi-
  sions. The Seiyukai-supported cabinet naturally refused to go along
  with the army's request because it contradicted the cabinet's financial
  retrenchment policy aimed at dealing with import surpluses, increases
  in public indebtedness abroad, and the resulting large outflow of spe-
  cie. There were political considerations as well. An increased military
  budget would threaten the expenditures for railroad construction and
  harbor improvement pushed by Home Minister Hara. Furthermore,
  in hopes of using the navy and the Satsuma faction to curb the power
  of the army and the Choshu faction, Prime Minister Saionji and Jus-
  tice Minister Matsuda had agreed to an increase in the naval budget at
  21 For a discussion of the political struggle between the Seiyukai and the second Katsura cabinet
  over plans to broaden the gauge of trunk-line tracks, see Mitani, Nihon seito.
  22 Banno Junji, Taisho seihen (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1982), pp. 68-115.
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  80 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  the expense of the army's plan for expansion. Yamagata and Katsura
  were very much on guard against the possibility that the Seiyukai
  might join political forces with the Satsuma faction and the navy if
  both took the same position on the question of the military budget.
  As long as the Seiyukai controlled a majority in the House of Repre-
  sentatives, there were limits on the policy concessions that the Yama-
  gata faction would negotiate with Hara. To be sure, Katsura did not
  once dissolve the lower house during his years in office after 1905, but
  he was well aware that his ability to do so was directly or indirectly
  restricted by the political bargains he had struck with the Seiyukai. To
  maintain its majority in the House of Representatives, the Seiyukai
  always wanted the advantage of facing the electorate as the progov-
  ernment party. For this reason, the party leaders made Katsura prom-
  ise in return for their cooperation not to exercise his right to dissolve
  the Diet. When the first Saionji cabinet held a general election in May
  1908 (the full term of the Diet had expired), the progovernment
  Seiyukai won an absolute majority. Even so, the cabinet resigned only
  two months after the election. Many found it difficult to understand
  the reasons for this resignation, but probably it resulted from secret
  negotiations between Katsura and Saionji in which the Seiyukai's presi-
  dent agreed to turn over power to Katsura on the understanding that
  he would not dissolve the Diet during his period as prime minister. In
  other words, a deal was struck whereby the Seiyukai could maintain
  its majority position and the hanbatsu were given a smooth transfer of
  political power.
  If it is true that Katsura could not exercise his constitutional power
  to dissolve the Diet because of bargains struck with Hara or Saionji,
  then the disadvantages of such bargains were considerable. If the
  lower house could not be dissolved, then the Seiyukai majority re-
  mained unshakable, and the House of Representatives stayed under its
  control. The hanbatsu forces would continue to labor under this con-
  straint. For this reason Katsura attempted, just as Hara had, to chal-
  lenge the balance of power between the two houses.
  When the second Saionji cabinet fell after the army refused to pro-
  vide a war minister in retaliation for Saionji's refusal to increase the
  army by two divisions, Katsura was called back to office. In organiz-
  ing his new cabinet, he decided to abandon the tactics of cooperation
  with the Seiyukai he had followed since 1905. To secure hegemony in
  the House of Representatives, he organized a political party under his
  own leadership, the Rikken Doshikai. His main effort was to gather
  together anti-Seiyukai factions in the House of Representatives. These
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  8l
  scattered minority parties had long discussed the possibility of an anti-
  Seiyukai coalition to break its hold on the lower-house majority. Their
  interests meshed neatly with Katsura, who felt that the command of
  his own new political party would allow him to dissolve the lower
  house and preside over an election that would destroy the Seiyukai
  majority.
  A powerful segment of the political public thought that the organiza-
  tion of the third Katsura cabinet was a violation of the rules of constitu-
  tional government. Before his nomination as prime minister, Katsura
  had been serving as lord keeper of the privy seal and grand chamber-
  lain, the two most powerful posts in the imperial court. His direct
  move into the cabinet made it appear that he was disregarding the
  clear political lines drawn between "court" (kyuchu) and "govern-
  ment" (fuchu) in order to serve the political interests of the Yamagata
  faction. A nationwide political movement to protest the "unconstitu-
  tionality" of the Katsura cabinet gathered momentum in late Decem-
  ber 1912. Public rallies called for the "overthrow of hanbatsu govern-
  ment," and a vociferous press campaign was mounted against the new
  cabinet. In February 1913, bowing to the pressure of this first "move-
  ment to protect constitutional government" (kensei yogo undo), Kat-
  sura resigned from office. His plan to overturn the balance of power
  between the two houses had been thwarted by political turmoil. A few
  months later he died of cancer. But the new political party he had
  organized remained intact under the leadership of Kato Takaaki, and
  so did his design for curbing the power of the Seiyukai. Ironically, that
  design was carried out in 1915 under the second cabinet of Okuma
  Shigenobu, who was once regarded as the greatest enemy of the
  hanbatsu.
  Okuma in 1915 was no longer the man he had been in 1898, for his
  own political career as leader of the Kenseihonto had been thwarted by
  the subsequent rise of the Seiyukai. He had been nominated as prime
  minister by Inoue Kaoru, a genro of the Choshu faction. After the fall
  of the third Katsura cabinet in 1913, Inoue and Yamagata had become
  deeply concerned over the formation of the first Yamamoto Gon-
  nohyoe cabinet, headed by an admiral of the Satsuma faction and
  supported by the Seiyukai. They feared that the Satsuma faction
  (which had not produced a prime minister for fifteen years), sup-
  ported by an alliance between the navy and the Seiyukai, might seize a
  predominant position in the political world. When the Yamamoto
  cabinet fell in March 1914 as a result of a naval bribery scandal, the
  two genro tried to reverse matters by organizing an Okuma cabinet
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  82 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  supported by a coalition of the Doshikai, the army, and the upper-
  house majority led by the Yamagata faction. In effect, this was a
  revival of the strategy Inoue had conceived in 1888-9 when he had
  proposed to build majority support for the government in the House
  of Representatives, by organizing the progovernment Jichito and ally-
  ing it with the Kaishinto led by Okuma. In 1914 Inoue did not com-
  mand a party organization comparable to that of the Jichito, but the
  army and the Yamagata faction could be used in its stead.
  Although the genro decision to back Okuma was certainly ingenious,
  it was neither unexpected nor accidental. A few years earlier, around
  1911, Major General Tanaka Giichi, generally viewed as the rising star
  in the Choshu faction, had hoped to recruit Kokuminto support for a
  Terauchi Masatake cabinet. He tried to cultivate ties with Okuma,
  who was invited to give a speech to one of the regiments under Ta-
  naka's command as head of the Second Infantry Brigade. The invita-
  tion, extended by the putative heir of hanbatsu leadership to a man
  regarded as a symbol of the anti-hanbatsu forces, created quite a stir.
  But Okuma, who had withdrawn from the front lines of the political
  world after his ouster as president of the Kenseihonto in 1907, does
  not appear to have rebuffed Tanaka's approach. Indeed, Okuma was
  critical of the "movement to protect constitutional government" in
  1912-13, and he had shown himself friendly to Katsura's new party,
  the Doshikai. When the chance came to restore his political fortunes
  as prime minister in 1914, Okuma took it. Unlike Itagaki Taisuke,
  who had been forced out of political leadership with the formation of
  the Seiyukai in 1900 and never recovered his political career, Okuma
  was finally able to return to the office he loved so much.
  When nominated to form a,cabinet in 1914, Okuma turned to the
  Doshikai for support in the lower house. In the general election of
  1915, his government worked assiduously to defeat the Seiyukai. As a
  result of the election, the Seiyukai fell to the position of second place
  in the Diet for the first time since its formation. It lost not only the
  absolute majority held in the House of Representatives since the
  Russo-Japanese War but also the stable base of power sustained by the
  inability of the hanbatsu forces to dissolve the Diet. With the collapse
  of an absolute majority in the lower house, the balance of power
  between the two houses was thrown out of kilter. The stable pro-
  hanbatsu elements in the House of Peers regained a position of political
  superiority over the divided parties in the House of Representatives.
  In the lower house, where the Seiyukai had lost its absolute major-
  ity, the smaller political parties that had suffered at the hands of the
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  83
  Seiyukai since 1900 regained their relative political importance. The
  Terauchi cabinet, which succeeded the second Okuma cabinet in
  1917, therefore attempted to build Diet support by relying on neutral
  factions absorbed by neither the Seiyukai nor the Doshikai (renamed
  the Kenseikai in 1916). In other words, Terauchi tried to use the
  standoff between the two large parties in the House of Representatives
  to preserve his own political strength. This configuration in the lower
  house was very much to Yamagata's liking. In contrast with Katsura,
  he wanted no majority party in the House of Representatives, not even
  one under his own control. Instead, he preferred a multipolar balance
  among a number of weak minority factions. A fragmented lower house
  was a weak one, and to Yamagata that was desirable.
  Hara Takashi, who had become the Seiyukai's president in 1914,
  had not abandoned his goal of maintaining the Seiyukai's position as
  the absolute majority party, and he was willing to curry favor with
  Terauchi in order to do so. The Seiyukai leadership welcomed Tera-
  uchi's refusal to cooperate with Kato Takaaki of the Doshikai, despite
  the urging of both Okuma and Yamagata. Publicly announcing an
  attitude of "benevolent neutrality" toward the Terauchi government,
  the Seiyukai in reality acted informally as the progovernment party by
  supporting the prime minister, who had no lower-house majority of
  his own. When general elections were called in 1917, the Seiyukai had
  the advantage of influence with the government, and as a result, it
  regained a plurality position in the lower house.2' Once the election
  was over, the party leadership continued to pursue its public tactics of
  neutrality but privately sat waiting for the unpopular Terauchi's "self-
  destruction" and an opportunity to organize a successor cabinet based
  on the party's Diet plurality. 2/»
  The final emergence of a Seiyukai cabinet in 1918 rested not so
  much on the party plurality as on the absence of anyone but Hara
  Takashi to succeed Terauchi. To be sure, the outbreak of world war
  and the changing social conditions brought about by the 1918 riots
  played a role in the genro decision to nominate Hara. But more impor-
  23 While maintaining contact with Terauchi cabinet members, Goto Shinpei (home minister)
  and Den Kenjiro (communications minister), the Seiyukai received both direct and indirect
  government support in the election battle. Goto, as home minister, held the position of
  greatest responsibility in managing the election process. He accordingly instructed local
  governors to overturn the Kenseikai's "unnatural minority."
  24 Toward the end of the Terauchi cabinet, Hara attempted to distance himself from the cabinet
  in order to avoid sharing Terauchi's fate. Hara was, however, able to avoid a showdown with
  Terauchi. With the rice riots, the government's existence was endangered, and Hara assumed
  a posture of watchful waiting, anticipating the opportunity afforded by the Terauchi cabinet's
  "self-destruction."
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  84 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  tant was the fact that no one else could organize a cabinet with firm
  support in both houses of the Diet. Certainly none of the junior mem-
  bers of the hanbatsu leadership were up to the task. Oura Kanetake,
  Yamagata's chief political staff officer after Katsura's death, had been
  forced out of politics by involvement in an attempt to bribe Diet
  members.2s Kiyoura Keigo or Hirata Tosuke, two other Yamagata
  proteges, would have had difficulty in rallying majority support in the
  lower house. Indeed, if either had been nominated to succeed Tera-
  uchi, it was likely that the Seiyukai and the Kenseikai would unite in
  an opposition movement.
  By the time Hara came to power, the solidarity of the antiparty
  majority in the House of Peers led by Yamagata's followers had also
  been weakened, especially by the formation of the Doshikai in 1913.
  Some of the imperially appointed peers linked to the Choshu faction
  had joined the Doshikai, and others had drifted toward a pro-Seiyukai
  position. Kato Takaaki and Wakatsuki Reijiro, whose careers had
  been advanced by Katsura's patronage, became full-fledged party poli-
  ticians, and Goto Shinpei, whose ties were with Terauchi, was invited
  by Hara Takashi to join the Seiyukai. In other words, lower-house
  partisanship had been introduced into the House of Peers.
  Hara tried to take advantage of this "partisanization" (seitoka) of the
  House of Peers, especially among the imperially appointed members,
  to win over those hereditary peers who did not know where to turn for
  leadership. He succeeded in gaining support for the Seiyukai from
  both the Hakushaku doshikai, an organization of hereditary counts,
  and the Kenkyukai, the largest faction of hereditary peers in the
  house. In May 1920, on the recommendation of the Kenkyukai leader-
  ship, Oki Enkichi (from the Hakushaku doshikai) entered the Hara
  cabinet as minister of justice. This marked the final success of the
  "vertical linkage" tactics Hara had attempted but failed at in 1907-8.
  With this success came an even more pronounced division of the
  House of Peers into pro-Seiyukai and pro-Kenseikai elements. In the
  anti-Seiyukai camp were the Koseikai (an organization of hereditary
  barons), the Sawakai (an organization of imperially appointed peers
  linked to Yamagata), and the Kenseikai-affiliated Doseikai. The up-
  per house, once a united citadel of antiparty forces, had undergone
  extreme partisanization.
  While consolidating his alliances in the House of Peers, Hara also
  25 For the significance of the Oura incident from the perspective of political history, see Mitani
  Taichiro, Kindai Nihon no shihdken to seito: baishinsei setritsu no seijishi (Tokyo: Hanawa
  shobo, 1980), pp. 58-63.
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  85
  engineered the passage in the lower house of a bill to replace the
  existing large election district system with a small district system. The
  revision of the House of Representatives Election Law in 1919 came as
  the movement for universal manhood suffrage was reaching its peak.
  We can assume that Hara's intention in introducing the small electoral
  district (one to three members per district) was to prepare for the rapid
  change in the political situation that could be expected to accompany
  the eventual passage of universal manhood suffrage. By making the
  electoral districts smaller, Hara sought to forestall and soften the im-
  pact of a sudden "massification" (taishuka) of the electorate. To him,
  the small district was an indispensable precondition for universal man-
  hood suffrage. As home minister under the second Saionji cabinet, he
  had already tried to introduce the small district. At the time he had
  stressed to Yamagata, who feared universal suffrage, that the small
  district would be effective as a built-in stablilizer. The 1919 revised
  law also reduced the tax qualification on the right to vote, from ¥10 in
  direct national taxes to ¥3. The change doubled the size of the elec-
  torate, but it mainly benefited the small landlord class. Except for a
  few with very high incomes, urban residents who paid neither land
  taxes nor business taxes did not gain the right to vote. When an
  election was held under the new law in May 1920, the Seiyukai re-
  gained its old position as the absolute majority party in the lower
  house.26 The Hara cabinet thus became the first government in the
  history of modern Japan to enjoy a stable base of support in the Diet
  with pro-government majorities in both houses.
  Although the creation of alliances in the upper house by both the
  major parties in the lower house was an essential precondition for a
  party cabinet system, it was not a sufficient condition. As the parti-
  sanization of the upper house accelerated, there emerged the possibil-
  ity that a party-affiliated cabinet of peers might be organized with
  majority support in the House of Representatives or that a "neutral"
  (that is, nonparty) cabinet might be organized by taking advantage of
  the balance of power between the Seiyukai and the Kenseikai. After
  the assassination of Hara in 1921 and the resignation of his successor
  Takahashi Korekiyo in 1922, both these possibilities became realities.
  The Kato Tomosaburo cabinet (1922-4), based on Kenkyukai sup-
  port, was an example of the former alternative, and the second Yama-
  moto Gonnohyoe cabinet (1923), based on an alliance of the Satsuma
  faction, the old Terauchi faction, and the Kakushin Club, was an
  26 See Mitani, Nihon seito seiji, pp. 184-204.
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  86 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  example of the latter. If the political parties wished to end nonparty
  cabinets, they had to carry Hara's vertical linkage tactics to their
  logical conclusion and to establish the political superiority of the major-
  ity in the lower house. In other words, the political parties had to
  establish the precedence of the House of Representatives over the
  House of Peers.
  This goal animated the second "movement for constitutional govern-
  ment" which in 1924 unfurled its banner of opposition to the Kiyoura
  Keigo cabinet. To be sure, one faction of the Seiyukai led by Tokonami
  Takejiro in an attempt to maintain Hara's former ties with the upper
  house split from the main party to support the Kenkyukai-backed "cabi-
  net of peers." But Takahashi Korekiyo, the Seiyukai's president, gave
  up his own title as viscount, resigned from the House of Peers, and
  decided to stand for election to the lower house. His forthright oppo-
  sition to the "peers' cabinet" epitomized the significance of the second
  movement to protect constitutional government. When the anti-
  Kiyoura parties - the Seiyukai, the Kakushin Club, and the Kenseikai-
  collectively won a majority in the election, Kiyoura had no choice but to
  resign. His successor was Kato Takaaki, president of the Kenseikai,
  which held a plurality of seats in the lower house. This series of events in
  1924 marked the clear precedence of the House of Representatives over
  the House of Peers. Until the collapse of the Inukai cabinet in 1932, the
  House of Representatives became the chief arena for contests over con-
  trol of the cabinet. The process of political change, which began with a
  balance of power between the two houses at the time of the Russo-
  Japanese War and ended with the partisanization of the House of Peers,
  left the House of Representatives in a position superior to that of the
  House of Peers. This change was the most important precondition for
  the establishment of party cabinets.
  Constitutional theory
  Parallel to this trend in practical politics were important changes in the
  dominant political ideology. By the mid-1920s the constitutional inter-
  pretations of Minobe Tatsukichi, who provided theoretical legitimiza-
  tion for party cabinets, came to dominate not only the academic com-
  munity but also the highest levels of the bureaucracy. His Kenpo
  satsuyo, first published in 1923, carried his arguments to their logical
  conclusion. In contrast with Hozumi Yatsuka and Uesugi Shinkichi,
  who opposed the idea of party rule, Minobe claimed superiority under
  the Meiji constitution for the legislative branch:
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  87
  Our constitution, unlike the American Constitution, is not based on the
  principle that the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches occupy
  positions equal to one another. The actions of the legislative branch express
  the highest will of the state, and the judicial and the administrative branch are
  not equal to it but stand below it.2'
  According to Minobe, the Imperial Diet was not an organ of state
  empowered by the emperor, but an "organ representative of the peo-
  ple" grounded directly in the constitution. This interpretation of the
  constitution necessarily legitimized responsible cabinets or party cabi-
  nets, as the House of Representatives where the political parties were
  dominant was more typical of the Diet's characterization as "represen-
  tative of the people" than was the House of Peers.28 In his Chikajo
  kenpo seigi published in 1927, Minobe wrote as follows:
  The Diet is made up of two houses. However, even if it is assumed that they
  are both equal in law, when it comes to the question of political power, the
  two houses ought not to occupy an equal position at all. Of the two houses in
  the Diet, the one possessed of the main political power must be the one that
  depends on public election by the people.2'
  After the Kato cabinet was established in 1924, Minobe called for a
  reform of the House of Peers. He advocated abolition or reduction in
  the number of peers whose membership depended on status or prop-
  erty qualification, and he proposed that imperially appointed mem-
  bers be nominated by appropriate electoral groups rather than by the
  incumbent prime minister. His goal was clearly to depoliticize the
  House of Peers.
  The imperially appointed members of the House of Peers were
  unusually influential high officials who had risen to positions such as
  vice-minister, director of the Bureau of Legislation (Hoseikyoku),
  superintendent of metropolitan police (Keishichosokan), or director of
  the Police Bureau in the Home Ministry, in an outgoing cabinet. As a
  reward for their services, usually just before the end of the cabinet,
  they were recommended for peerages by the prime minister and ap-
  pointed by the emperor. Businessmen and scholars were also ap-
  pointed, but many of them also had close ties with the retiring govern-
  ment. Consequently, most imperial appointees had strong partisan
  connections. Minobe contended that the political coloring of the impe-
  rial appointees should be diluted by switching from a system of nomi-
  nation by the government to nomination by appropriate organizations
  27 Minobe, Kenpo sauuyo, p. 506. 
  28 Ibid., p. 317.
  29 Minobe Tatsukichi, Chikujd kenpo seigi (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1927), p. 435.
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  88 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  other than the government. The selection of peers by election among
  the members of the Imperial Academy (Teikoku gakushiin), man-
  dated by the revised House of Peers regulations in 1925, can be seen as
  a step toward modest peerage reform paralleling Minobe's position.
  According to Minobe's interpretation, political struggle should focus
  on the House of Representatives, and the House of Peers should sim-
  ply assume the passive function of exercising a check on party politics.
  Because Minobe's theories regarding the centrality of the Diet were
  used as the basis for questions on the official examinations for the
  higher civil service (kotokan) or for the judicial service (shihokan), his
  ideas were diffused widely and deeply throughout the bureaucratic
  structure of power. By the mid-1920s Minobe's constitutional theory
  thus had become authoritative doctrine. Because it provided an ideol-
  ogy for party rule appropriate to Japan, its acceptance was an impor-
  tant precondition for the establishment of party cabinets.
  The neutralization of the Privy Council
  The third condition for the establishment of party cabinets was the
  political neutralization of the Privy Council. As the highest formal body
  of advisers to the emperor, the council had had a strong voice in domes-
  tic politics since its establishment in 1888. By providing the emperor-
  really the cabinet-with opinions on the establishment or revision of
  major laws, the Privy Council came to have a considerable influence on
  the formation of national policy. Whenever the government presented
  major legislation to the Diet, it first had to seek the council's advice in
  the name of the emperor and receive its approval. In this sense the
  legislative process under the Meiji constitution was two tiered.
  The Privy Council also had the right to provide opinions on the
  ratification of international treaties and agreements. When the Meiji
  constitution was drafted, care was taken to exclude the Diet from
  participating in the treaty-making process. The right to conclude or
  ratify treaties was lodged solely in the emperor's sovereignty (taiken).
  But because the Privy Council was the body that exercised this right in
  the emperor's stead, its influence on foreign policy was necessarily
  substantial.
  The council's political importance in both domestic and diplomatic
  policy was clearly reflected in the choice of Privy Council presidents.
  From 1888 until 1924, during the entire period leading to the era of
  party rule, all but one of the presidents of the Privy Council were men
  who had served as prime minister. In the protocol of the imperial
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  89
  court, the president of the Privy Council ranked third behind the genro
  (formally, those had been decorated with the Grand Order of the
  Chrysanthemum) and the incumbent prime minister. The selection of
  the council's members was usually decided by consultation between
  the genro and the prime minister. Yamagata, whose tenure in the post
  lasted seventeen years, served continuously as the council's president
  from the death of I to Hirobumi in 1909 until his own death in 1922.
  During that time he brought ex-bureaucrats from his own faction into
  the Privy Council, just as he had brought them into the House of
  Peers, and with the same intent-to make the council an antiparty
  bastion. After Yamagata's death, the position went to his political
  protege, Kiyoura. But after Kiyoura became prime minister in 1924,
  the political importance of the office was deliberately diminished.
  The last of the genro, Saionji Kinmochi, tried to promote the coun-
  cil's political neutralization by advising governments to appoint to the
  presidency either scholars or former bureaucrats with few political
  ties. It is said that Saionji was more supportive of the reform of the
  Privy Council than of the reform of the House of Peers proposed by
  the Kato cabinet in 1925. According to Yokota Sennosuke, minister of
  justice in the Kato cabinet, Saionji told the government:
  The House of Peers is simple because it can be manipulated, but there is one
  thing that cannot be. That is the Privy Council. It is more important. The
  House of Peers can always be reformed, so dealing with it is easy. Instead of
  doing that, get to work on the Privy Council.3°
  Saionji advised the Kato government to appoint a scholar to the coun-
  cil's presidency. Hamao Arata, a former president of Tokyo Imperial
  University, was chosen to succeed Kiyoura; Hozumi Nobushige, a
  former professor in the law faculty of Tokyo Imperial University,
  succeeded him; and Kuratomi Yuzaburo, a former Ministry of Justice
  official, followed in office until 1934. This pattern of selection also
  applied to the vice-president. Between 1924 and 1926, the post was
  filled by Ichiki Kitokuro, Hozumi Nobushige, and Okano Keijiro, all
  former professors in the law faculty at Tokyo Imperial University.
  Hiranuma Kiichiro took the post in 1926. Although he was a former
  Ministry of Justice official and held a doctoral degree, he was clearly a
  bureaucrat with political connections, and so for the next eleven years
  he was not allowed to rise to the presidency of the council.
  Why did Saionji, who succeeded to Yamagata Aritomo's role in the
  court, take the initiative in neutralizing the Privy Council as a political
  30 Kojima Kazuo, Ichi ro seijika no kaiso (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1951), p. 222.
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  90 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  entity? One can speculate that he was trying to cut the close tie be-
  tween "court" and "government" (kyuchu and fuchu) that had devel-
  oped as a result of Yamagata's maneuverings, especially the recruit-
  ment of his faction members into the Privy Council. Perhaps fearful
  that the influence of the Satsuma faction might likewise penetrate the
  court, Saionji tried in every way to quash its attempt to have Yama-
  moto Gonnohyoe appointed as council president. His motives, it can
  be imagined, were similar in his exclusion of Hiranuma, a man not
  only connected with the Satsuma faction but also a promoter of the
  Kokuhonsha, an organization regarded by Saionji as fascist. In short,
  Saionji used all his political strength to guard against the court's mo-
  nopolization by any particular political faction. To that end he worked
  for the neutralization of the Privy Council, especially its dissociation
  from the hanbatsu factions. The ultimate benefit redounded to the
  advantage of the political parties, however.
  Party penetration of the bureaucracy
  The fourth condition for party cabinets was a growing accommoda-
  tion between the political parties and the higher reaches of the bu-
  reaucracy. This accommodation took many forms, but it was most
  evident in the recruitment of former officials into the ranks of the
  party leadership. By the mid-1920s both the major parties were led
  by ex-bureaucrats: Kato Takaaki was a former diplomat; Takahashi
  Korekiyo had been head of the Bank of Japan; and Tokonami Take-
  jiro had served long in the Home Ministry bureaucracy. In the late
  1920s the top leaders of the Kenseikai (reorganized as the Minseito in
  1927) were two former Finance Ministry officials, Wakatsuki Reijiro
  and Hamaguchi Osachi. The Seiyukai recruited men like Tanaka
  Giichi (a general and former war minister) and Suzuki Kisaburo
  (former superintendent of metropolitan police). Many incumbent offi-
  cials or ex-officials also advanced the interests of one or the other of
  the major political parties without formally joining them. It was a
  common practice for an incoming party cabinet to replace incumbent
  prefectural governors with officials sympathetic to the government
  party's interests and to furlough those who were not. The kind of
  partisanization that transformed the House of Peers also spread to
  the higher echelons of the local government bureaucracy.
  This partisanization of the bureaucracy had been foreshadowed by
  the personnel policies of Hara Takashi. While serving as secretary to
  Commerce and Agriculture Minister Mutsu Munemitsu in 1890, Hara
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  91
  had tried to weaken the Satsuma faction's influence in the ministry by
  emphasizing ability over personal connections in the employment of
  new officials, giving special preference to graduates of the law faculty
  of Tokyo Imperial University. After the Russo-Japanese War he had
  followed the same goal as home minister, promoting high officials
  within the ministry under the rubric of "selection of the up-and-
  coming" and "retirement of the old hands." In effect, he substituted
  managerial personnel practice based on achievement for ascriptive
  criteria of promotion. The result, probably intentional, was to weaken
  the influence of the dominant Yamgata faction and to nurture neutral
  or anti-Yamagata forces within the ministry. It goes without saying
  that high officials whose accomplishments were highly regarded by
  Hara and given preferential treatment became more sympathetic to
  the Seiyukai. The foremost example of such officials was Tokonami
  Takejiro, who later became home minister in the Hara cabinet.
  It can be hypothesized that this party-bureaucracy accommodation
  worked in several ways to the advantage of the establishment of party
  cabinets. First, the executive and judicial branches were kept in touch
  with the legislative branch through high officials or ex-officials in-
  volved in the parties. By co-opting the bureaucrats, the parties could
  provide a unifying element in the centrifugal Meiji constitutional struc-
  ture. Second, the parties were better able to establish their political
  superiority over the bureaucracy. By attracting bureaucratic special-
  ists and introducing their knowledge and experience into the legisla-
  tive branch, the parties could better coordinate the various specialized
  activities of the administrative branch. Minobe's constitutional inter-
  pretation of the superiority of the legislative function gave this practice
  theoretical legitimacy. Third, in a society in which officials recruited
  through the higher civilian service examination were given higher
  ranking in court protocol than were members of the House of Repre-
  sentatives, the accommodation between the parties and the bureau-
  cracy, especially the partisanization of the bureaucrats, helped en-
  hance the prestige of the political parties.
  The establishment of the jury system
  The fifth condition for party cabinets was the accommodation between
  the political parties and the judicial bureaucracy achieved through the
  establishment of the jury system in 1923.3' In a sense this was another
  31 See Mitani, Kindai Nihon no shihoken.
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  92 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  example of accommodation between the parties and the bureaucracy.
  But the judiciary with its ideology of the "independence of the judicial
  power" regarded itself as separate from the rest of the bureaucracy,
  and its hostile posture toward the parties was not unlike that of the
  army, which insisted on the "independence of high command." To-
  ward the end of the Meiji period (after 1907), the judiciary, especially
  the procuratorial authorities, emerged as an independent political
  force. Like the army high command at the time, they harbored a
  deeply rooted aversion toward the political parties. In the investigation
  of the so-called Sugar incident of 1909, when the Dai Nihon Sugar
  Refining Company attempted to bribe various members of the House
  of Representatives to extend a law that returned a portion of the
  import duties on raw sugar to the sugar companies, the antipathy of
  the judicial authorities toward the parties was especially marked.
  The parties, especially the Seiyukai, also tried to introduce the jury
  system, which had been under consideration in Japan since the begin-
  ning of the Meiji era, in order to restrain procuratorial attacks on
  party politicians. Popular participation in the trial process would
  diminish the impact of the judiciary's antiparty inclinations. In 1919,
  the Special Deliberative Council on the Legal System was set up as
  an advisory body directly under Prime Minister Hara. The govern-
  ment, following the council's recommendations, introduced legisla-
  tion to set up a jury system. In the process, Hara succeeded in
  securing the cooperation of Hiranuma Kiichiro and Suzuki Kisa-
  buro, two key officials who had contributed to the increased influ-
  ence of the procuratorial authorities.
  In order to control the judiciary from within and to win its coopera-
  tion on the introduction of the jury system, Hara extended strong
  political backing to both men. Hiranuma had distinguished himself as
  vice-minister and then as chief procurator, under Matsuda Masahisa,
  the justice minister in the second Saionji and the first Yamamoto
  cabinets. Hiranuma built for himself a powerful base of influence
  within the judiciary, and it was natural that of all the ministers he had
  served, he respected Matsuda the most. When Hara organized his
  government, he followed Matsuda's tactics regarding the judiciary,
  offering the post of justice minister first to Hiranuma and then to
  Suzuki. When both declined, he assumed the post concurrently him-
  self and made it a practice to rely on the two men's advice. Using the
  retirement system to ease elderly judicial officials out of office, Hara
  also opened the way for the appointment of Hiranuma as chief justice
  of the Supreme Court, and Suzuki as chief procurator. Hiranuma-
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  93
  who aspired to become an imperial court official, perhaps grand cham-
  berlain or keeper of the Privy Seal-took the post of chief justice,
  which meant that he was an ex-officio member of the Imperial House-
  hold Council. Hara suggested that it would be the best way to achieve
  his ambition. Suzuki, then serving as vice-minister of justice, was also
  nominated by Hara as an imperial appointee to the House of Peers.
  Both men had initially opposed the jury system, but ultimately both
  went along with Hara's plan. Suzuki became a member of the Seiyu-
  kai, and after the assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1932, he became
  president of the party. Although Hiranuma never entered the party,
  he supported it from the outside and played a role in pushing it to the
  right in the 1930s.
  Before its introduction to the Diet, the jury system bill was dis-
  cussed in the Privy Council, where antipolitical party forces strongly
  opposed it. But in 1922 after Hara's death, the council finally ap-
  proved the bill, and in 1923 it became law after passing the Diet. The
  jury system, less through its operation (from 1928 to 1943) than
  through the process by which it came into being, served to build
  relationships between the parties and the judiciary (especially between
  the Seiyukai and the judicial bureaucracy under Hiranuma and Su-
  zuki). These relationships contributed to the stabilization of the party
  cabinet system.
  Rapprochement between the parties and the military
  The final condition for the party cabinet system was the rapproche-
  ment between the parties and the military that accompanied the cre-
  ation of the Washington system. As the result of arms limitations
  agreed upon by Japan at the Washington Conference in 1921-2, the
  political parties were able to increase their ability to shape the national
  budget. Because the conference committed Japan to military cut-
  backs, the army high command could no longer insist, as it had be-
  fore, that the expansion of the military budget should not be ques-
  tioned. In 1922-3 the cabinet of Admiral Kato Tomosaburo, who had
  headed the Japanese delegation to the conference, curtailed the navy's
  construction program and reduced naval and army personnel strength.
  Although accepting a cut in the number of divisions, the army em-
  barked on a plan to modernize its tactics and weaponry. To maintain
  standards of national military strength during a period of retrench-
  ment, however, its leaders had to cooperate with the political parties.
  Both War Ministers Yamanashi Hanzo (1921-3) and Ugaki Kazushige
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  94 
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  (1924-7) worked with civilian politicians to create a leaner but techno-
  logically more advanced army.
  Bonds between the military leadership and the political parties also
  became closer with the decline in hanbatsu influence over the army
  after the death of Terauchi Masatake in 1919 and Yamagata Aritomo
  in 1922. Both men had been opponents of party influence over the
  government, but in the early 1910s Tanaka Giichi, who inherited the
  mantle of army leadership from Terauchi, began to develop close ties
  with the Seiyukai, especially with Hara. He first approached Hara in
  1914 hoping to obtain the majority party's support for the two-division
  increase that the army had called for since the Russo-Japanese War.
  As a result of their negotiations, both men came to realize the utility of
  future cooperation. Hara discovered that it was possible to establish
  communications through Tanaka with the army, especially with
  Yamagata. For his part, Tanaka realized that in order to achieve his
  long-standing aim of "popularizing the national defense" {kokubo no
  kokuminka), it was essential not only to continue expanding and
  strengthening the Reservists Association {zaigo gunjinkai) but also to
  secure the support of the political parties, especially the majority party
  in the Diet. But relations between Hara and Tanaka cooled during the
  second Okuma cabinet when the Seiyukai slipped from its position as
  the majority party in the Diet. The two-divisions bill passed the Diet
  without the Seiyukai's help, voted through by a new majority made up
  of the Doshikai and other progovernment parties.
  During the second Okuma cabinet and the succeeding Terauchi
  cabinet, Tanaka served as vice-chief of staff under Chief of Staff
  Uehara Yusaku. As the putative successor to the leadership of the
  army's Choshu faction, Tanaka held the real reins of control in the
  general staff headquarters. He also played a key role in promoting
  military intervention in the internal politics of both China and the
  Soviet Union, first in supporting Japanese opposition to the Yuan
  Shih-k'ai regime and then in urging Japanese participation in the
  Siberian expedition. Unlike Tanaka, Chief of Staff Uehara was not a
  member of the Choshu faction. Rather, he was leader of a group of
  officers who wanted to weaken Choshu's control over the service.
  However, he took the same position as Tanaka did in promoting a
  "positive continental policy." Indeed, at the time of the second Saionji
  cabinet, when Uehara was war minister and Tanaka was chief of the
  military affairs bureau (gunmukyokucho), both men had pushed for the
  two-division increase and cooperated in forcing the cabinet's resigna-
  tion when it opposed the measure.
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  CONDITIONS FOR PARTY CABINETS 
  95
  When Tanaka became war minister in the Hara cabinet on the
  recommendation of Yamagata Aritomo, he went along with Hara's
  policy of cooperation with the United States. This policy marked the
  beginning of a shift away from the imperialistic continental policy
  championed by the army. As a result, conflict deepened between
  Uehara and Tanaka, and Tanaka leaned more markedly toward the
  Seiyukai. Both Hara and Takahashi Korekiyo, his successor as party
  president, had a high regard for Tanaka's cooperative attitude toward
  the Seiyukai's diplomatic and defense policies. Tanaka, an astute op-
  portunist, was also keenly aware that it was necessary for the army to
  respond positively to the spread of international cooperation abroad
  and the growth of the parties' political role at home. Finally in 1925 he
  accepted an invitation to become president of the Seiyukai, an office in
  which he served until his death in 1929.
  Tanaka was not the only general to make his peace with the parties.
  Yamanashi Hanzo, who presided over the first round of arms reduc-
  tion in the 1920s, also joined the Seiyukai. Ugaki Kazushige, who
  presided over the second round, cooperated closely with the Kenseikai
  (later the Minseito), the Seiyukai's main rival in the Diet. Fukuda
  Masataro, a general belonging to the Uehara faction, leaned toward an
  anti-Seiyukai position as Tanaka moved toward the Seiyukai, and for a
  time he decided to join the Minseito.*2 The willingness of these high-
  ranking military officers to work with the political parties signifies
  how much the influence of the old hanbaisu had declined by the 1920s.
  If a military man harbored ambitions to head a cabinet, he could no
  longer rely on the patronage of a genro like Yamagata but had to have
  good relations with the party leaders.
  To be sure, party ties with the military forces were far more tenuous
  than were those with the civil bureaucracy or the judiciary. At all
  levels the officer corps remained jealous of its traditional autonomy
  from civilian control. The Uehara faction, mindful that its rival Ta-
  naka was not only a Choshu general but also close to the Seiyukai,
  continued to push for eliminating hanbaisu influence over the army
  and at the same time insisted the army be kept nonpartisan, free from
  ties to the political parties. Committed to putting into practice the idea
  of "the independence of the high command" (toshiken no dokuritsu),
  the Uehara faction tried to expand the army's political influence by
  reaffirming the need for a positive continental policy toward China
  32 Oka Yoshitake and Hayashi Shigeru, eds., Taisho demokurashii ki no seiji, Maisumoto Gokichi
  seiji nisshi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1959), p. 573.
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  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARTY CABINETS
  and the Soviet Union and by building a system for national general
  mobilization. Consequently, the partisanization of the military did not
  go very far. By the early Showa period, the Uehara faction produced a
  new generation of staff officers led by Generals Araki Sadao, Mazaki
  Jinzaburo, and Hayashi Senjuro, who eventually became the nucleus
  of antiparty factions in the army.
  On the other hand, as long as leaders like Tanaka and Ugaki were
  involved in cabinet decisions on critical issues of military and foreign
  policy, military objection to the advance of party power was less likely.
  Therefore, until the controversy over the London Naval Treaty in
  1930, both the military and the naval high command maintained a
  position of nonintervention in domestic political struggles.
  CONCLUSION
  This chapter outlined the six conditions that facilitated the establish-
  ment of the party cabinet system between 1924 and 1932: (1) the
  establishment of the superiority of the House of Representatives over
  the House of Peers, (2) the emergence of Minobe's constitutional
  theory as orthodox, (3) the political neutralization of the Privy Coun-
  cil, (4) party penetration of the civil bureaucracy, (5) party accommo-
  dation with the judiciary accompanying the introduction of the jury
  system, and (6) party rapprochement with the military.
  None of these conditions was irreversible, however. If any or all of
  them were altered, then the party cabinet system would be faced with
  a crisis. In other words, the system was a fragile one. Party domination
  of the government could be upset if it appeared that the parties could
  no longer coordinate the constitutional structure, if Minobe's theory
  was rejected as heterodox, if the Privy Council intervened in disputes
  between the parties, if strong antiparty feelings regained strength in
  the civil bureaucracy and the judiciary, or if increased international
  tension prompted the army to reassert its domestic power. It was
  precisely these changes in the political environment that accompanied
  the end of party cabinets in 1932.
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  CHAPTER 3
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN
  JAPAN, 1931-1945
  INTRODUCTION
  As Taichiro Mitani showed in Chapter 2, Japan's conservative political
  parties (kisei seito) surmounted the obstacles to parliamentary influ-
  ence in the Meiji constitution and during the 1920s occupied a promi-
  nent position in both the lower house of the Diet and the cabinet.
  From 1924 to 1932, the two conservative parties monopolized the
  premiership and extended their influence among other political elite
  groups. Between 1932 and 1940, however, party influence declined
  swiftly and steeply. In its wake, the opinions of administrative special-
  ists in the civilian and military bureaucracies, joined by the views of a
  newly emergent business elite, became paramount in the determina-
  tion of Japan's foreign and domestic policies.
  Ironically, both the successes and failures of party politicians in
  amassing political influence were predicated on the development of a
  political culture in late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan that supported the
  proposition that those with a demonstrated practical ability to govern
  should be given the reins of political power. This conviction was first
  manifested in the bakumatsu era, when the muffled ideological ten-
  sions erupted between the hereditary principle of power transfer and
  the Confucian concept of "rule by the talented." The leaders of the
  Meiji Restoration also believed in the principle of meritocracy. They
  recruited talented young followers into their personal political factions
  (hattbatsu) and established institutions of higher learning (Tokyo Impe-
  rial University, the Army and Navy war colleges) to teach future
  leaders the expertise requisite to Japan's survival in the modern world.
  By 1910, these institutions had become the primary sources for the
  nation's civilian and military administrative leaders.
  The Meiji legacy regarding the question of meritocratic rule was
  ambivalent. Many court noble and prominent daimyo houses of the
  mid-nineteenth century were given new patents of nobility in the
  1880s and thereafter enjoyed considerable political power through
  97
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  98 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  their families' hereditary rights to hold positions in the House of
  Peers and the court itself. The legitimacy of the entire Meiji political
  structure, moreover, rested on the emperor's inherited authority, and
  the political duty of the newly titled nobility was defined as insu-
  lating the throne from attack, by means of service in the House of
  Peers and mediation among other political elite groups. On the basis
  of this mission, Japan's hereditary nobles enjoyed a continuing role
  in twentieth-century politics and survived severe attacks during the
  Taisho era (1912-26) with only a minimal curtailment of their inher-
  ited prerogatives.
  Apart from the meritocracy represented by the Meiji leadership and
  its carefully educated successors, the hereditary nobility shared power
  in the early twentieth century with new political forces centered in the
  lower house of the Diet. By 1914, these forces had crystallized into
  two major political parties and several smaller splinter groups. In 1918
  Hara Takashi became the first Japanese prime minister to hold office
  solely on the basis of his power as party leader. Hara and succeeding
  party presidents received appointments as prime minister because
  they were able to develop important linkages between their parties and
  other important nonparty political elite groups who monopolized ac-
  cess to the state's several organs. Consequently, they could help con-
  solidate the dispersed political power of the ruling groups and obtain
  agreements among them on government policy. This ability proved
  crucial to the party politicians' fortunes. As molders of elite coalitions,
  they stabilized the fragile cabinet system created by the Meiji oligar-
  chy, and as dominating forces in the lower house, they ensured that
  the cabinet policy agreements to which they were a party would be
  approved by the lower house as well.
  The parties also had other abilities deemed essential to stable elite
  rule. At a time when the Meiji oligarchs and hereditary nobles feared
  that the impact of Japan's rapid economic and social transformation
  would cause discontented rural taxpayers and the rapidly emerging
  new business elite to challenge the institutional foundations of their
  power, the parties demonstrated their capacity to absorb these groups'
  political energies without disturbing the structure of the Meiji political
  settlement. By the early twentieth century, the principal form of politi-
  cal participation by big business was financial contributions to party
  campaign coffers. Meanwhile, political participation in the country-
  side was carefully controlled by local alliances between party politi-
  cians and traditional local political leaders (meiboka, or village head-
  men, landlords, schoolteachers, priests, and other local luminaries).
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  INTRODUCTION 
  99
  In return for pork-barrel legislation and party representation of local
  interests in negotiations with the national government, local leaders
  controlled their communities' voting behavior, supported friendly
  party politicians in elections, and defused local political movements to
  revise the institutions of government.
  The parties were thus increasingly able to fulfill the essential func-
  tions of elite mediation, harmonize cabinet-lower-house relations, and
  integrate the local energies into national politics. By the second decade
  of the twentieth century, the parties' political capabilities were further
  augmented by the recruitment of key figures from the nobility and the
  civilian and military bureaucracies into party membership or party
  alignment. Having obtained several important ministerial posts for
  their members in exchange for lower-house support of cabinet budget
  proposals, the parties were able to influence the appointments of ca-
  reer bureaucrats to senior positions in the ministries under their con-
  trol. Bureaucrats who aligned themselves with one or another party to
  gain such appointments were often recruited as party members after
  their official retirements. Similarly, from their position of strength in
  the lower house and cabinet, the parties gained the allegiance of impor-
  tant groups of hereditary nobles and imperial appointees in the House
  of Peers in exchange for an agreement to abstain from any far-reaching
  reform of that body's procedures of selection. And although they
  never had great influence over personnel selections in the armed ser-
  vices, their growing power obliged politically ambitious generals and
  admirals to court party support and even seek party membership after
  their military retirement. The influx of nonparty elite group members
  into the party camp provided essential linkages between party and
  nonparty elites, as well as specialized expertise within the parties for
  the conceptualization of future national policy proposals. So important
  to party fortunes were members of nonparty elite origin that all but
  one of the party leaders appointed as prime minister in prewar Japan
  were men who had successful careers in the civilian or military bureau-
  cracy before becoming party politicians (see Table 3.1).
  However, even at the zenith of party government in the mid-i92os,
  the efforts of party elite groups to wrest political control from the
  hands of their well-entrenched competitors were far from totally suc-
  cessful. The terms of the Meiji political settlement hindered the exten-
  sion of parliamentary influence. And even when the parties had pene-
  trated the bureaucracy, it was restricted by official regulations that
  limited the choice of senior officials to those who had demonstrated
  their talents through a series of highly competitive examinations. The
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  TABLE 3 . 1
  Japanese cabinets, 1929-1945
  Prime
  minister
  Hamaguchi Osachi
  Wakatsuki Reijiro
  Inukai Tsuyoshi
  Saito Makoto
  Okada Keisuke
  Hirota Koki
  Hayashi Senjurd
  Konoe Fumimaro
  Hiranuma Kiichiro
  Abe Nobuyuki
  Yonai Mitsumasa
  Konoe Fumimaro
  Konoe Fumimaro
  Tojo Hideki
  Koiso Kuniaki
  Suzuki Kantaro
  Cabinet
  number
  2nd
  1st
  2nd
  3rd
  Cabinet term
  2Julyl929tol4Aprill931
  14 April 1931 to 13 December 1931
  13 December 1931 to 16 May 1932
  16 May 1932 to 8 July 1934
  8 July 1934 to 9 March 1936
  9 March 1936 to 2 February 1937
  2 February 1937 to 4 June 1937
  4 June 1937 to 5 January 1939
  5 January 1939 to 30 August 1939
  30 August 1939 to 16 January 1940
  16 January 1940 to 22 July 1940
  22 July 1940 to 18 July 1941
  18 July 1941 to 18 October 1941
  18 October 1941 to 22 July 1944
  22 July 1944 to 7 April 1945
  7 April 1945 to 17 August 1945
  military was similarly insulated from overt political patronage by con-
  stitutional provisions ensuring virtual independence from the civilian
  branches of government on personnel matters. The social and political
  prerogatives defined for the peers made it difficult for the parties to
  attack them.
  In addition, the acceptance of parliamentary influence was tem-
  pered by an awareness that the extension of party power beyond the
  lower house meant a corresponding decrease in the autonomy of non-
  party elites. For example, although senior civil servants came to real-
  ize that their future appointments rested substantially on alignment
  with one or another party, their subordinates decried the growth of
  party influence on administration as an intrusion into an arena that
  they, as specialists trained at Tokyo Imperial University and by experi-
  ence, felt properly to be their own exclusive province. They also pro-
  tested the administrative turmoil that accompanied a shift from one
  party in power to its rival, for such shifts invariably brought the
  wholesale replacement of one set of party-aligned senior officials by
  another. In the armed forces, the "political generals and admirals"
  who cooperated with the parties were frequently criticized by their
  subordinates for compromising the military's sacred mission of na-
  tional defense, simply for the sake of political expediency. Within the
  House of Peers s nobles such as Prince Konoe Fumimaro argued that
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  INTRODUCTION 
  IOI
  the peerage's traditional mission was to transcend partisan alliances
  and alignments as a buttress of objective political judgment for the
  emperor. Even locally, village elites remained wary of any party effort
  to bypass traditional routes of mobilizing local political energies, and
  so they hedged their dependency on party linkages with ties to the
  bureaucracy in order to satisfy local interests and reinforce their own
  prestige and authority in the community.
  Nonparty attitudes toward the parties' role as channels for the politi-
  cal articulation of mass interests were also ambivalent. On the one
  hand, established nonparty elites preferred the parties to democrats,
  socialists, anarchists, and communists, who disapproved of the propri-
  ety of elite government altogether. On the other hand, the parties'
  alliance with traditional village leaders frustrated progressive journal-
  ists, intellectuals, and representatives of the nascent labor and tenant
  movements and spurred liberal and socialist "reformist" movements
  for an overhaul of the political system or the replacement of existing
  party forces by groups more representative of the body politic. From
  another ideological perspective, archly conservative "Japanists" saw
  the parties not as harmonizing agencies between the government and
  people but as Western-style, conflict-oriented organizations, which
  obstructed the unification of the public will with that of the emperor
  and corrupted the sacred bonds between ruler and subject through
  their pragmatic political compromises and preoccupation with pork-
  barrel interests.
  While parliamentary strength was thus in ascendance throughout
  the 1920s, the parties were still obliged to share power with several
  potent nonparty elite groups and to defend themselves against a wide
  variety of attacks on their position. To be certain, judgments at the
  dawn of the 1930s about the future of party influence generally con-
  curred with those of a distinguished Western student of Japanese
  politics, who wrote in 1932 that "party cabinets may fairly be assumed
  to have become the established rule."1 Nevertheless, the parties' suc-
  cesses during the 1920s required them to fend off the challenges of
  new political aspirants, and their control of the cabinet remained sub-
  ject to the efforts of nonparty elites to regain lost ground in the compe-
  tition for power.
  In fact, the parties' position was soon to be fatally weakened by
  cataclysmic changes in the international and domestic environment
  1 Harold S. Quigley, Japanese Government and Politics: An Introductory Study (New York:
  Century, 1932), p. 233.
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  IO2 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Rather than promoting the contin-
  ued expansion of party power, events in the 1930s fostered a significant
  diminution of party influence in national affairs, culminating in the
  dissolution of all formal party organizations in 1940. In China, the
  revitalized nationalist movement under Chiang Kai-shek posed an in-
  creasingly severe threat to Japanese economic and strategic interests in
  China and particularly in Manchuria. By the end of the 1920s, the
  Japanese had also begun to perceive a renewed menace to their position
  in Manchuria, and potentially to their own security, in the form of a
  reinforced Far Eastern military presence by the Soviet Union. Nanking
  and Moscow seemed disinclined to adhere to the Washington system's
  principles of peacefully resolving differences through multilateral con-
  sultation, as neither was a party to the Washington treaties of 1921-2.
  The Washington powers themselves showed little willingness to sup-
  port the Japanese government's request for an internationally coordi-
  nated response to the threats it perceived to Japan's continental inter-
  ests.2 Japan's faith in the "cooperative diplomacy" of the Washington
  order was further undermined by British and American threats of a
  bilateral naval alliance against Japan in 1930 if it did not abandon its
  insistence at the London Conference on maintaining 70 percent of their
  individual cruiser strengths. Finally, the economic underpinnings of
  "cooperative diplomacy" were snapped by the world depression and the
  growth of economic nationalism after 1929. Paralleling these changes in
  the international environment, confidence in the parties' ability to gov-
  ern was undermined at the beginning of the 1930s by both a prolonged
  agricultural depression in the Japanese countryside and shifting eco-
  nomic policies that appeared to benefit big business and financial specu-
  lators at the expense of the rest of the nation.
  Together these developments not only intensified earlier criticisms
  of party government but also generated a growing sense of national
  crisis in Japan. Impartial observers and antiparty spokesmen alike
  began insisting that parliamentary politicians lacked sufficient moral
  fortitude and intellectual expertise to guide Japan through this trou-
  bled period. Slowly at first and then with accelerating speed, public
  support for party government eroded. In May 1932, the parties lost
  control of the premiership, and thereafter they were steadily excluded
  from the ranks of key decision makers. By 1941, no party representa-
  2 See Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in East Asia (Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 1965).
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  INTRODUCTION 
  IO3
  tive sat in the cabinet. Throughout this decade, power devolved on
  those presumably talented to deal with pressing national problems.
  The technocrats of the government's civilian and military agencies
  became increasingly influential as they demonstrated their expertise in
  areas deemed essential to Japan's survival. Business leaders who spe-
  cialized in economic management also established an independent
  base of political influence as the nation struggled first to recover from
  the depression and subsequently to mobilize its resources for an ambi-
  tious foreign and defense policy of national autonomy.
  During the 1930s, all these groups sought to capitalize on their
  enhanced strength to broaden still further their political power and
  prestige. Their emergence, however, signified the establishment of a
  national leadership that had been narrowly educated and trained and
  lacked the breadth of vision characteristic of its Meiji predecessors. In
  the 1930s, each specialist elite group repeatedly insisted that its own
  vision of the future be adopted as the officially designated road to
  national survival and greatness. In the military, fierce debates over
  national defense and national mobilization rent the army's solidarity
  and placed the two services at odds with each other. Similar conflicts
  grew within and among the civilian ministries of government and
  between the government and business elites. None of the specialist
  elite groups possessed institutional or informal means of mediating
  elite conflict, and the cabinet's ability to choose among conflicting
  elite priorities thus declined with the growth of the specialists' influ-
  ence. Moreover, no specialist elite group had a foothold in the Diet
  that might ensure the passage of cabinet legislative proposals into law.
  And none of them could independently engender popular participa-
  tion in the affairs of state or strengthen citizen identification with the
  government at a time when the state was increasing its demands on the
  populace.
  As a consequence of these difficulties, the late 1930s and early 1940s
  were characterized by a series of political disputes over whether the
  Meiji political system remained appropriate in an era of national crisis.
  Both "reformists" in the political elites and outsiders seeking new
  means of penetrating the institutional barriers to their own political
  influence advocated a variety of sweeping reforms to restructure exist-
  ing mechanisms of allocating political power and mediating policy
  differences. On the other hand, the "conservative" forces among the
  elites responded to the challenges of national crisis within the existing
  framework of political institutions and tried to mitigate the debilitat-
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  104 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  ing effects of intraelite power struggles on Japan's national strength.3
  The highpoint of conflict between the reformist and conservative
  views occurred in the debate over establishing a "new political order"
  for Japan in 1940-1, and the aftershocks of this clash reverberated
  throughout Japanese politics during the ensuing years of war in the
  Pacific. Ultimately, none of the elite groups entrenched in the various
  institutions of government proved willing to surrender the political
  prerogatives they each had acquired under the existing institutions of
  state. Therefore, the political system continued to promote a pluralis-
  tic distribution of power, as it had since the establishment of constitu-
  tional government.
  There were unquestionably important and readily perceptible shifts
  in the locus of power among elites between 1931 and 1945, but no
  single elite group proved capable of monopolizing control of the state
  or manipulating the citizenry to its own purposes. Although the spe-
  cialist elites, and particularly the army, gained influence in national
  affairs, the institutionalized pluralism of the Meiji state continued to
  provide reduced but vital political roles for even the hereditary nobil-
  ity and party politicians as conflict managers. Thus, controversy and
  competition for power remained distinguishing characteristics of do-
  mestic politics during the early 1940s, and important decisions such as
  whether to go to war in 1941 and how to coordinate the military and
  home front responses to wartime conditions thereafter still called for a
  consensus among a multiplicity of elites, rather than the arbitrary
  decision of one or another group.
  Even though it proved possible in 1932 to exaggerate the degree to
  which the parties had secured a preeminent position in the cabinet,
  students of Japan's recent past have often overstated the extent and
  character of the changes in Japanese politics between 1931 and 1945.
  Only in recent years have historians begun to refine earlier and overly
  simplistic notions that the interests of monopoly capitalism deter-
  mined national policy during this era, that the bureaucracy established
  totalitarian control over the citizenry, and that the military "took
  over" the apparatus of state. It is now evident that although business
  leaders acquired a new and influential voice in setting national goals,
  they were unable to dictate what those goals should be. It is also clear
  3 The conflict between reformists and conservatives is treated pointedly in the historical writing
  of ltd Takashi, Japan's leading authority on early Showa politics. In English, see Takashi Ito,
  "The Role of Right-Wing Organizations in Japan," in Pearl Harbor As History: Japanese-
  American Relations 1931-1941, ed. Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (New York: Colum-
  bia University Press, 1973), pp. 487-509, esp. pp. 487-90.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  IO5
  that severe schisms within bureaucratic and military leadership groups
  prevented any individual or faction from achieving a dictatorship or
  degree of political control analogous to that of contemporaneous war-
  time regimes in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. Conservative
  forces in parliament, business, the bureaucracy, the right wing, and
  traditional local elites in the countryside blunted the reformists' at-
  tempts to reorganize the state, enhance their own power, and establish
  a monolithic system of governmental controls over all political and
  economic activities.
  To recapitulate briefly the political characteristics distinguishing
  the period from 1931 to 1945 from the previous era, the fortunes of the
  political parties and the nobility declined while crisis and war acceler-
  ated the growing influence of a meritocracy focused on the civilian and
  military bureaucracies and the new business elite. On the other hand,
  difficulties in shaping the competitive elite perspectives and ambitions
  into national policy at the cabinet level, harmonizing cabinet and par-
  liamentary views on vital legislation, and stimulating popular identifi-
  cation with national goals persisted and, indeed, intensified. The final
  years of political conflict in imperial Japan were highlighted by the
  reaffirmation of elitist pluralism, continuing efforts to overcome weak-
  nesses in the Meiji political settlement, and further acknowledgment
  of an earlier recognized need to integrate the citizenry fully into the
  political life of the state. The following survey of the period between
  1931 and 1945 thus concludes that the apparently sharp break in
  political development between the 1920s and 1930s was less abrupt
  than many have insisted and that the "dark valley" of politics in the
  early Showa era (1926-45) in many ways laid the foundation for the
  transformation of the Japanese political system in the years following
  the destruction of the empire.
  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER, I 9 2 9 - I 9 3 6
  Power began shifting from parliamentary elite groups to the specialist
  elites during the premiership of Hamaguchi Osachi, president of the
  Minseito. The Hamaguchi cabinet, which governed from 1929 to late
  1931, came under heavy criticism for Foreign Minister Shidehara
  Kijuro's reliance on arms limitation agreements and "cooperative di-
  plomacy" to defend Japan's home waters and continental interests.
  Despite public government pledges that Japan's negotiators at the
  London Conference would not accept any limit on the navy's heavy
  cruiser tonnage of less than 70 percent of the individual cruiser
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  strengths of the American and British fleets, the London treaty was
  based on a compromise among the three powers that was perceived in
  Japan as violating this commitment.4 Coupled with a growing army
  perception of threats to Japan's position in Manchuria from Chinese
  nationalism and a Soviet military buildup in Siberia, the London
  treaty controversy fueled an attack on the government's apparent will-
  ingness to risk the nation's security for the sake of a questionable
  fidelity to diplomatic harmony with the Anglo-American powers.
  The government's economic and fiscal policies, designed by Fi-
  nance Minister Inoue Junnosuke, focused on a return to the gold
  standard, deflation, tight money, and reduced national budgets. Al-
  though Japan was able thereby to return to the gold standard in 1930
  (in the midst of world depression), the Minseito's policies did little to
  mitigate the severity of prolonged agricultural distress and poverty,
  the tendency toward increasing concentrations of wealth and economic
  power among industrial and banking cartels, and the growing differen-
  tial in wages paid in large and small industries.5 To make matters
  worse, when Britain again abandoned the gold standard in September
  1931, the Minseito government continued its fiscal policies and al-
  lowed financial speculators to amass huge holdings of specie at fixed
  prices in anticipation of the inevitable moment when Japan would
  follow suit and allow the yen to sink to its actual value against gold and
  the dollar.
  The problems confronted by the Minseito cabinet were formidable
  and arose to a large extent from changes in the international environ-
  ment over which Japan had little control. Nevertheless, the political
  consequences of dealing with these issues were felt domestically. For
  example, a preponderance of the nation's leaders came to insist in the
  wake of the London treaty controversy that the army and naval gen-
  eral staffs be given a larger voice in determining defense policy than
  heretofore.6 This consensus greatly enhanced the voice of military
  specialists in the formulation of future national defense policies. The
  government's failure to deal effectively with national security and eco-
  4 James B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-
  1938 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), chap. 1.
  5 For details of these trends, see Takafusa Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan (New
  Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 194-233.
  6 Crowley, Japan's Quest, p. 79. The most thorough Japanese study of the political ramifications
  of the London treaty issue is by Ito Takashi, Showa shoki seiji shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo
  daigaku shuppankai, 1969); for a brief English treatment, see Takashi Ito, "Conflicts and
  Coalitions in Japan, 1930: Political Groups [and] the London Naval Disarmament Confer-
  ence," in The Study of Coalition Behavior, ed. Sven Groennings, W. W. Kelley, and Michael
  Leiserson (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970), pp. 160-76.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  107
  nomic issues also spawned desperate attempts by right-wing "double-
  patriots" to rid Japan of its leadership through assassination.7 Hama-
  guchi was shot late in 1930 and turned control of his cabinet and party
  over to Wakatsuki Reijiro before dying of his wounds in August 1931.
  In the meantime, young officers and civilian revolutionaries, con-
  vinced of the bankruptcy of the Minseito's leadership, planned abor-
  tive coups d'etat in March and October 1931, with clandestine support
  from a number of army leaders agitated by the failure of "cooperative
  diplomacy" to curb the Chinese and Soviet threats to Manchuria.
  Other officers, such as Colonel Itagaki Seishiro and Lieutenant Colo-
  nel Ishiwara Kanji, were equally convinced that the Minseito's "weak-
  kneed" continental policy would prove fatal to Japan's interests in
  Manchuria and in September 1931 unilaterally mobilized the Kwan-
  tung Army to carry out the Manchurian incident.8
  The terrorism and arbitrary military actions of the early 1930s were
  an extreme expression of the widespread public dissatisfaction with
  party influence. Though both of these forms of illegal defiance were
  censured publicly, their perpetrators were equally praised for their
  profound, if misguided, devotion to the nation's interests. The growing
  antiparty mood of late 1931 prevented the government from taking any
  severe punitive measures against the miscreants, and instead, the
  Wakatsuki cabinet resigned in December. Its replacement, a govern-
  ment led by Seiyukai party president Inukai Tsuyoshi, quickly aban-
  doned the gold standard and called new elections in which the Seiyukai
  overwhelmingly defeated the Minseito. But as the financial speculators
  cashed in on the government's new fiscal policy and the depression
  worsened, terrorism resumed in early 1932 with fatal attacks on ex-
  Finance Minister Inoue and industrialist Dan Takuma. Finally, on May
  l5> !9325 a group of naval cadets aided by civilians and young army
  officers struck down Inukai in his official residence.
  Inukai's untimely death left the last genro, Saionji Kinmochi, with
  the difficult task of recommending a new prime minister for imperial
  appointment. Clearly, Wakatsuki's Minseito was far too unpopular
  and weak to be returned to power at that time, but Saionji was also
  7 Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (Boston: Houghton
  Mifflin, 1957) is the standard survey of terrorist incidents in the 1930s.
  8 For a dissenting view, holding that the perpetrators of the incident had at least the tacit
  approval of their superiors in Tokyo, see Crowley, Japan's Quest, pp. 114-24. On the Manchu-
  rian incident, see Sadako Ogata, Defiance in Manchuria: The Making of Japanese Foreign
  Policy, ig3l-igj2 
  (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964); and Mark
  R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1975), chap. 4.
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  108 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  reluctant to assign the premiership to Inukai's successor as Seiyukai
  president, Suzuki Kisaburo. The enmity between Saionji and Suzuki
  was an old one, dating back to the efforts of the genro to foster party
  government as a means of mediating intraelite disputes without di-
  rectly involving the emperor in national politics. Suzuki was known to
  be an outspoken advocate of involving the emperor more actively as a
  unifying force in politics, and he had also been a vehement critic of the
  Washington order that Saionji helped fashion early in the 1920s.
  Against the backdrop of numerous terrorist incidents and a new mili-
  tary assertiveness in Manchuria, Saionji's antipathy for Suzuki's ideas
  encouraged the conclusion that the moment was inopportune for con-
  tinuing party government. To replace the fallen Inukai, therefore,
  Saionji recommended to the emperor the appointment of Admiral
  Saito Makoto.
  The Saito government came to power amidst the widespread feeling
  that the nation had entered a "period of emergency" (hijoji). In light of
  Japan's pressing problems in foreign relations and the domestic econ-
  omy, both conservative parties found it highly politic to support the
  new cabinet, even though the prime minister was not drawn from their
  ranks. Saito's coalition "national unity government" (kyokoku itchi
  naikaku) included five ministers selected from the two parties, along
  with several advocates of greater military and bureaucratic roles in
  national policymaking. The Minseito found its strength so shattered
  by the events of 1929-31 and its 1932 electoral defeat that it commit-
  ted itself to supporting national-unity government until it could regain
  its position in the lower house through new elections. Suzuki's Seiyu-
  kai, on the other hand, agreed to back Saito in the hope that the party
  would soon regain control of the cabinet after the crisis of the moment
  had passed.
  Contrary to Suzuki's hopes, however, the premiership passed to
  Admiral Okada Keisuke when Saito resigned in July 1934. To appreci-
  ate fully the factors that denied the Seiyukai the anticipated fruits of
  its cooperation with Saito and more generally frustrated a revival of
  political party influence, it is useful to review a number of important
  changes in the international and domestic environments during the
  1932-4 period. The establishment of the state of Manchukuo in 1932,
  though publicly supported by both conservative parties in the lower
  house, provoked a serious rift between Japan and the Western powers.
  This schism opened wider early in 1933, when Japan withdrew from
  the League of Nations in response to the League's disapproval of
  Japan's use of force on the continent. In the face of growing interna-
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  109
  tional criticism, Japan became increasingly isolated from the West and
  reacted by rejecting Anglo-American influences in its political, social,
  and cultural life. Because both parties were closely associated in the
  public mind with the "cooperative diplomacy" of the 1920s and be-
  cause the "Japanist" right wing had repeatedly condemned them as
  nothing more than Japanese emulations of the conflict-oriented and
  interest-articulating parties of the West, the Seiyukai and Minseito
  found it difficult to regain the political offensive in the new domestic
  environment.
  The government's attempts to cope with the crises besetting the
  country during this period likewise had adverse effects on party
  power. For instance, the Saito cabinet's economic recovery program
  undermined party influence by promoting greater bureaucratic intru-
  sion into the lives of the populace and by enlarging the role of civilian
  officials in the determination and implementation of national policy.
  First, the government adopted a "positive" economic policy, which
  focused on new and larger budgets to stimulate economic demand and
  pull the nation out of the throes of the depression. To resuscitate the
  shattered agrarian sector and generate larger tax revenues for the new
  budgets, it was necessary to restore the rural economy. Saito initiated
  an extensive program of public works construction to occupy unem-
  ployed labor and provide off-season work for the impoverished peas-
  ants. The power to approve and fund public works projects was vested
  with the prefectural governors, who were local agents of the home
  ministry.9 The government also implemented the "Plan for the Eco-
  nomic Resuscitation of Agrarian and Fishing Villages" (Noson gyoson
  keizai kosei keikaku), which was funded and supervised by the Minis-
  try of Agriculture and Forestry. Whereas the public works projects
  served to strengthen Home Ministry ties with the traditional local
  leadership, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sought to create a
  nationwide network of agricultural guilds (sangyo kumiai) as new foci
  for rural power linked tightly to its offices.Io
  Both of these programs placed the parties further on the defensive in
  9 Naimushoshi, 4 vols., ed. Taikakai (Tokyo: Chiho zaimu kyokai, 1970), vol. 1, p, 410; vol. 2,
  pp.506-9.
  10 Naimusho shi, vol. 1, pp. 410-11; vol. 2, pp. 509-16; Ari Bakuji, "Chiho seido (hotaisei
  hokaiki): Burakukai chonaikai seido," in Koza: Nihon kindai-ho haliaisu shi—Shihon shugi to
  ho no hatlen, vol. 6, ed. Fukushima Masao, Kawashima Takeyoshi, Tsuji Kiyoaki, and Ukai
  Nobushige (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1959), pp. 168-73; Ishii Kin'ichiro, "Nihon fuashizumu to
  chiho seido: 1943-nen no ho-kaisei o chushin ni," Rekishigaku kenkyu 307 (December 1965):
  2; Takeshi Ishida, "Movements to Protect Constitutional Government-A Structural Func-
  tional Analysis," in Democracy in Prewar Japan: Groundwork or Facade} ed. George O.
  Totten (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1965), p. 89.
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  IIO 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  the struggle for political influence. The Home Ministry's plan bypassed
  its representatives' role as distributors of local economic benefices,
  whereas the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's approach to eco-
  nomic recovery threatened the local monopoly of political power held
  by the parties' chief electoral agents, the traditional village leadership.
  When party spokesmen complained about these programs' "bureau-
  cratic despotism," they were put in the awkward position of seeming to
  resist national economic recovery in order to defend local interest
  groups and inhibiting national harmony in order to preserve their rural
  political machines. The burden of dispelling this impression and shed-
  ding their image as the protectors of big business while the agrarian
  economy foundered proved extremely onerous in the parties' effort to
  regain power.
  Significantly, the cabinet's concurrent implication of both minis-
  tries' economic recovery plans highlighted the difficulty that national-
  unity governments could have in establishing priorities among various
  specialist-elite group policy proposals. Deprived of the extracabinet
  forum of a ruling political party, in which contending elite positions
  had been harmonized under the guidance of the party leadership and
  translated into policy under a party prime minister, national-unity
  governments faced heavy pressure to acquiesce simultaneously to di-
  vergent elite priorities or to face an impasse in cabinet decision making
  and consequent collapse.
  Undaunted by this problem, the parties' bureaucratic opponents
  seized the opportunity to strike at parliamentary influence in several
  other ways during Saito's tenure as prime minister. Late in 1932, the
  Commission on the Guarantee of Officials' Status (Kanri mibun hosho
  iinkai) was created to review the retirement of officials, severely re-
  stricting the power of party members in the cabinet to cashier senior
  bureaucrats who were not politically aligned with them. In February
  1933, an imperial ordinance (junsa mibun hosho ret) extended similar
  protection to the police officials of the Home Ministry." These two
  measures, designed to reduce personnel turnover in important admin-
  istrative posts, strengthened bureaucratic autonomy vis-a-vis party
  influence and contributed measurably to the decline of parliamentary
  elites' power. The parties also suffered a severe attack on their moral
  credibility at the hands of Justice Ministry procurators, who at-
  tempted to demonstrate party and business corruption in a scandal
  11 Shiraki Masayuki, Nihon seitd shi: Showa hen (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1949), p. 154;
  Naimusho shi, vol. I, pp. 404-5.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  III
  involving a government-approved sale of stock in the Teikoku jinken
  company. Although the accused party leaders and businessmen were
  finally acquitted in 1937, the parties' public image greatly suffered
  during the three-year period of official inquiry and trial.12 A fourth
  blow was struck at the parties by Goto Fumio (minister of agriculture
  and forestry from 1932 to 1934 and home minister from 1934 to
  1936) and a coterie of former Home Ministry officials, who launched
  a series of "election purification movements" in the countryside in
  1934. These campaigns sought to curb several traditional, if morally
  questionable, techniques of voter mobilization, by prohibiting vote
  buying and strengthening punishments for other violations of the
  election law.'3
  The strength of the military grew in parallel with the extension of
  bureaucratic power. As noted earlier, many military officers were dis-
  satisfied with the party governments' "weak-kneed" approach to the
  defense and expansion of Japan's continental interests early in the
  decade. Antiparty sentiment was also strong in the services because
  officers sympathized strongly with the plight of the agrarian popula-
  tion and believed that parliamentary groups were the servants of "plu-
  tocratic interests." As indicated, some impetuous officers in both ser-
  vices had already expressed their political views through violence at
  home and in Manchuria. Most, however, confined their actions to
  legal channels and focused on devising new political, economic, and
  strategic plans for enhancing Japan's military strength.
  It was difficult for the army and navy to reach agreement through a
  national-unity government on the most appropriate means to this end.
  Moreover, strong differences of opinion over policy became entwined
  in both services with personal and factional rivalries throughout the
  period from 1931 to 1945.14 For example, all senior army leaders
  acknowledged as a lesson of World War I that modern weaponry and a
  strong socioeconomic foundation had become essential to the prosecu-
  tion of total war. However, the Imperial Way faction (Kodoha) at-
  tempted to strengthen the nation's spiritual readiness for war by em-
  phasizing the imminence of hostilities with the Soviet Union, but its
  12 Ichihara Ryohei, "Seito rengo undo no hasan: Teijin jiken o shdten to shite," Keizai ronsb 72
  (March 1955): 161-82; Arthur E. Tiedemann, "Big Business and Politics in Prewar Japan,"
  in Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, ed. James W. Morley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1971), pp. 267-316, esp. pp. 294-6.
  13 Naimusho shi, vol. 1, pp. 419-20; vol. 2, pp. 359-61.
  14 On army factionalism, see Crowley, Japan's Quest, pp. 244-79; Jacob Kovalio, "The Person-
  nel Policy of Army Minister Araki Sadao: The Tosa-Saga Theory Re-examined," in Tradition
  and Modem Japan, ed. P. G. O'Neill (Tenterden, Kent, England: Paul Norbury Publica-
  tions, 1981), pp. 102-5.
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  112 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  political rivals in the army (loosely grouped together as the Control
  faction, or Toseiha) concentrated less on preparing Japan for an imme-
  diate crisis and more on developing the infrastructure for economic
  mobilization and the production of modern weaponry for use over the
  long run.
  The knowledge in both factions that Japan's next war might well be
  decided on the basis of overall national strength led army planners to
  see a close relationship between military power and their country's
  political, social, economic, and spiritual condition. As Colonel Nagata
  Tetsuzan remarked in 1927, "National mobilization [kokka soddin] is
  the task of marshaling the entire society of the state in times of need,
  moving from a peacetime footing to a wartime footing. The state must
  then organize, unify and utilize all available resources, material and
  human, producing a maximum national strength as military power."1*
  From the perspective of preparing for total war, therefore, almost all
  spheres of national life became relevant to defense planning. Total war
  planning became particularly important following Japan's withdrawal
  from the League of Nations in 1933. In response to the nation's grow-
  ing isolation, the Saito government turned away from the discredited
  "cooperative diplomacy" to a new strategy of "autonomous strength"
  to protect Japan's international interests. This commitment was predi-
  cated on neutralizing "the influence of the Soviet Union, the National-
  ist government of China, and the Anglo-American nations by a diplo-
  macy rooted in the efficacy of Japan's military force."16 It implied a
  massive development of Japan's industrial and military strength, suffi-
  cient to deal with all of the empire's hypothetical adversaries on land
  and sea. Moreover, it provided the rationale for extending the mili-
  tary's political influence into areas of government previously reserved
  for civilian control, on the grounds that military participation in civil-
  ian administration was essential to the herculean task of mobilizing for
  total war.
  As seen earlier in regard to the government's adoption of two differ-
  ent economic recovery plans, the new defense policy was a product of
  the national-unity government's difficulty in establishing priorities
  among the competing viewpoints and aspirations of its specialist-elite
  supporters. By attempting to provide Japan with sufficient strength to
  deal simultaneously with the world's most formidable land forces (in
  China and the Soviet Union) and strongest navies (the British and
  15 Nagata Tetsuzan, Kokka soddin (Osaka: Osaka mainichi shinbunsha, 1928), p. 14.
  16 Crowley, Japan's Quest, pp. 195-9, 231.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  II3
  American fleets), the cabinet had endorsed the policy preferences of
  both the army and the navy, without establishing a sound sense of
  priorities between them.
  Nevertheless, having made its commitments to economic recovery
  and "autonomous defense," the government proceeded to create a
  series of new superagencies that cut across existing ministerial jurisdic-
  tions to harmonize policy planning and implementation among the
  specialist elites. These agencies had two important characteristics.
  First, they provided new channels for military participation in adminis-
  trative matters previously reserved for civilian supervision. For exam-
  ple, the army won the right to administer an important component of
  Japan's foreign policy when the Manchurian Affairs Bureau (Tai-Man
  jimukyoku) was created in 1934 to provide military supervision of
  Japan's relations with Manchukuo.I7
  Second, they reflected a growing appreciation of the deficiencies of
  the Meiji constitutional structure, which rigidly compartmentalized
  the jurisdiction of each ministry and insulated it from the pressures of
  other government institutions. Although most officials rejected the
  intrusion of outside influences into their areas of responsibility, the
  new superagencies generated a group of "revisionist" bureaucrats who
  advocated a higher degree of centralized direction, coordinated plan-
  ning, and policy implementation across ministerial boundaries.18 Be-
  cause the revisionists generally urged that their superagencies enjoy a
  larger voice in the determination of national policy, they encountered
  strong opposition from career officials entrenched in the ministries.
  But the revisionists found common cause with military officials, who
  favored the growth of the superagencies to circumvent barriers to their
  own participation in civilian affairs and to better prepare the state for
  national mobilization. Nowhere was this concordance of viewpoints
  better illustrated than in the establishment of the Cabinet Research
  Bureau (Naikaku chosakyoku) in 1935. This new agency, created by
  the Okada cabinet, brought together skilled technocrats for policy
  planning from both the civilian and military bureaucracies, furnishing
  another new channel for military participation in civilian administra-
  17 For a detailed discussion, see Robert M. Spaulding, Jr., "The Bureaucracy As a Political
  Force, 1920-1945," in Dilemmas ofGrowth, pp. 33-80, esp. pp. 67-76.
  18 On the revisionist bureaucrats, see Spaulding, "The Bureaucracy As a Political Force," pp.
  60-80; Robert M. Spaulding, Jr., "Japan's 'New Bureaucrats,' 1932-45," in Crisis Politics in
  Prewar Japan: Institutional and Ideological Problems of the 1930s, ed. George M. Wilson
  (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970), pp. 51-70; Hashikawa Bunzo, "Kakushin kanryo,"
  in Kenryoku no shiso, ed. Kamishima Jird, vol. 10 of Gendai Nikon shiso taikei (Tokyo:
  Chikuma shobo, 1965), pp. 251-73.
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  114 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  tion and a centralized forum for the administrative reform proposals of
  the revisionist bureaucrats.
  The linkages formed between the army and the revisionist bureau-
  crats were an important aspect of the political strategy of total war
  planners such as Nagata Tetsuzan to create a new network of in-
  terinstitutional relationships for the articulation and reconciliation of
  elite group views, centering on the army rather than the political
  parties. Nagata also developed a cordial relationship with court nobles
  such as Harada Kumao, Kido Koichi, and Konoe Fumimaro, whose
  political mediation could be a valuable asset in achieving the army's
  mobilization objectives. To build parliamentary support for his plans,
  Nagata won the backing of the Social Masses Party (Shakai taishuto)
  in 1934 and sought to mold a coalition of conservative Diet members
  in favor of mobilization legislation.I9
  Nagata did not live long enough to bring his ambitious political
  efforts to fruition. On August 12, 1935, he was hacked to death by an
  officer of the Imperial Way faction, who favored an immediate mobili-
  zation of the nation's energies for war over Nagata's more gradual
  fashioning of a political coalition to support long-term military and
  industrial development. Although Nagata's death threw the army into
  turmoil for several months, his plan to institute national mobilization
  reforms through an army-centered web of elite relationships, rather
  than by scare tactics and terror, ultimately became central to the
  army's strategy of preparing for total war.
  The growing importance of the civilian and military bureaucracies
  in dealing with Japan's economic and security problems thus impeded
  the parties' efforts to retain their pivotal position in harmonizing di-
  verse elite viewpoints into coherent national policies. By 1936, assassi-
  nation and attrition had robbed them of several key leaders, such as
  Hamaguchi, Inoue, Egi Tasuku, and Kawasaki Takukichi of the
  Minseito and Inukai, Mori Kaku, Takahashi Korekiyo, and Toko-
  nami Takejiro of the Seiyukai. Moreover, the growing legal insulation
  of senior officials from party patronage reduced the parties' ability to
  replenish their ranks with ex-officials aligned with them. The parties'
  loss of the premiership in 1932 and the Minseito's crippling defeat at
  the polls also made party membership a less attractive route to power
  for retiring officials and military leaders with political ambitions.
  These tendencies were exacerbated by the voluntary withdrawal of
  the Seiyukai from a meaningful role in Okada's national-unity govern-
  19 Sugihara Masami, Atarashii Showa shi (Tokyo: Shin kigensha, 1958), p. 74.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  II5
  ment. Disaffected by Admiral Saito's unwillingness to turn the cabinet
  over to Seiyukai president Suzuki, the majority party refused to co-
  operate with the new government and expelled renegade members
  who chose to accept appointments from Okada. In December 1935,
  the rebels organized an independent party, the Showakai, reducing
  further the attractiveness of membership in the isolated Seiyukai as a
  means to power. The recruitment of nonparty talent into the ranks
  thus became increasingly difficult. As one Minseito leader, Matsu-
  mura Kenzo, later recalled, the Minseito had little success bringing
  bureaucrats and financiers into the party after 1932, as they preferred
  to negotiate directly with other elites rather than working through
  party channels.20 Matsumura's observation is borne out by the declin-
  ing number of ex-officials, ex-military officers, and ex-businessmen
  and financiers elected to the Diet as conservative party members be-
  tween 1928 and 1936. Forty-one ex-officials were elected in 1928, but
  only twenty-seven in 1936. Four former military leaders were elected
  as party members in the 1928 election, none in 1936. Ninety-seven
  former businessmen and financiers joined the lower house as party
  members in 1928; only seventy-two were elected in 1936.
  Moreover, membership in one or the other of the two conservative
  parties became less attractive even among members of the lower
  house, a trend of serious concern to the Seiyukai and Minseito because
  their leverage with nonparty elites depended in large part on their
  ability to deliver lower-house support for cabinet compromises negoti-
  ated by their leaders. The number of successful lower-house candi-
  dates who remained independent of party affiliation rose from nine-
  teen (4 percent) in 1932 to eighty-seven (19 percent) in 1936 and 112
  (24 percent) in 1937.
  The parties' declining importance in intraelite relations was also
  reflected in criticisms by those earlier sympathetic to the parties' quest
  for power. For example, Minobe Tatsukichi, whose constitutional
  theories had provided the legal rationale for parliamentary ascen-
  dancy, wrote in 1934 that sophisticated economic and social policy
  planning required specialized knowledge sorely lacking among party
  politicians. The Diet, he concluded, was no longer qualified to serve
  as anything more than an agency of ratification for the policy proposals
  of more skilled servants of the state; and it was unwise to return to the
  practice of organizing cabinets based on lower-house majorities.21
  20 Nagai Ryutaro hensankai, Nagai Ryutaro, ed. Matsumura Kenzo (Tokyo: Seikosha, 1959),
  p. 310.
  21 Minobe Tatsukichi, "Waga gikai seido no zento," Chid koron 553 (January 1934): 9IT.
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  Even in their capacity as mediators between the state and the citi-
  zenry, the parties' functions came under new attack in the changing
  international and domestic environment of the early 1930s. Even
  though they continued to insist that they played an important role in
  "assisting the imperial rule" by articulating local demands, the party
  representation of rural elite interests ran counter to the government's
  growing interest in industrial and military mobilization. Whereas non-
  party leaders had grudgingly conceded earlier that the parties' ap-
  proach to mass political integration was preferable to more radical
  alternatives posed in the 1920s, the specialist elites' new preoccupation
  with economic recovery and the new defense policy fostered a search
  for new means of mass mobilization and control for reallocating and
  concentrating limited national resources on urgent national tasks.
  From this perspective, the parties' role in the countryside was per-
  ceived as inhibiting the economic recovery programs of the Home
  Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, whereas their
  advocacy of local pork-barrel legislation and tax relief of both rural
  and established business interests obstructed the enlargement of the
  military budget and the development of military industries.
  Hence, in addition to being criticized by supporters of the bureau-
  cracy, the parties were vilified by military spokesmen who asserted
  that the sacred bonds uniting the military with the people were being
  imperiled by the parties' resistance to national-defense budgets and
  taxation. Local chapters of the Imperial Military Reservists Associa-
  tion (Teikoku zaigo gunjinkai) took the lead in rural antiparty political
  agitation as one manifestation of the military's effort to reduce the
  parties' political importance. The reservists also spearheaded a viru-
  lent campaign in 1934 and 1935 against Minobe Tatsukichi, whose
  constitutional theories had for three decades provided a legal buttress
  for the growth of parliamentary elites' influence.22
  The parties' response to the challenges posed to their influence
  between 1932 and 1936 may be summarized briefly. With the excep-
  tion of Minseito's politician Nagai Ryutaro, no major party figure
  proposed revitalizing the parties' power by redefining their role in
  mediating between the state and the populace.23 They continued to be
  22 On the complexities of the Minobe affair, see Miyazawa Toshiyoshi, Tenno kikansetsujiken, 2
  vols. (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1970); Frank O. Miller, Minobe Tatsukichi, Interpreter of Constitu-
  tionalism in Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 196-
  253; Richard J. Smethurst, "The Military Reserve Association and the Minobe Crisis in
  • 935>" in Crisis Politics in Prewar Japan, pp. 1-23.
  23 Nagai Ryutaro hensankai, Nagai Ryutaro, pp. 304 ff; Gordon Mark Berger, Parties Out of
  Power in Japan, 1931-1941 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 219-20.
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  CHALLENGES TO PARTY POWER 
  117
  small elitist organizations, composed largely of members and former
  members of the lower house and aspirants for seats in the Diet, who
  relied for their political strength on linkages to local village elites
  rather than mass support-groups. The Minseito's official political strat-
  egy continued to consist of providing patient support for national-
  unity government until new elections could restore its parliamentary
  credibility; however the Seiyukai, as indicated earlier, shifted from a
  position of cooperation with the cabinet to outright confrontation fol-
  lowing the establishment of the Okada government.
  In 1933 and 1934, the dominant factions of both parties considered
  forming an alliance to counter attacks by their nonparty rivals on them
  and their supporters in the village and business elites. Likewise, minor-
  ity factions in both parties proposed a similar coalition to support civil
  and military advocates of continental expansion, larger military bud-
  gets, and more extensive management of the economy by the govern-
  ment. *4 Neither coalition plan proved successful, but the formation of
  Admiral Okada's cabinet in July 1934 and the parties' loss of the
  important Finance and Home Ministry portfolios prompted renewed
  negotiations for a merger of the parties. Factions in both parties ap-
  proached retired general Ugaki Kazushige and Prince Konoe with
  proposals to head a new party based on a merger of the Minseito with
  disaffected members of the Seiyukai, but Ugaki declined on the
  grounds that not all conservative party members would be included in
  the new organization, and Konoe later demurred on the grounds that
  any restoration of party influence required new parliamentary ap-
  proaches to mass mobilization.25
  Consequently, there were few concrete results from the parties'
  efforts to retrieve ground lost in the early 1930s. The parliamentary
  elites' rationale for sharing power remained what it had been for sev-
  eral decades. Seiyukai leader Hatoyama Ichiro wrote early in 1936:
  So long as the legitimacy of the parties' existence is undeniable, it is obvious
  that those who, through elections, represent the popular will - that is, Diet
  members - should be the central focus of politics. Bureaucrats and soldiers
  who have the slightest desire to become involved in politics should undergo
  24 For these parliamentary movements, see Ichihara Ryohei, "Seito rengo undo no kiban:
  'Zaibatsu no tenko' o shoten to shite," Keizai ronso 72 (February 1955): 106-22; and
  Ichihara, "Seito rengo undo no hasan," pp. 161-82.
  25 ltd Takashi, " 'Kyokoku itchi' naikaku-ki no seikai saihensei mondai: Showa jusan-nen
  Konoe shinto mondai kenkyu no tame ni," Shakai kagaku kenkyu 24 (1972): 60-1; Kiya
  Ikusaburo, Konoe-ko hibun (Wakayama: Koyasan shuppansha, 1950), p. 9; Harada Kumao,
  Saionji-ko to seikyoku, 9 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1950-6), vol. 4, pp. 389, 392-3;
  Iwabuchi Tatsuo, Yabururu hi made (Tokyo: Nihon shuhopsha, 1946), p. 74.
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  the baptism of elections and taste their bitterness before they are deemed
  spiritually qualified to be fused with the masses. . . . Politics should be left to
  the politicians, administrative matters to the bureaucrats, and national de-
  fense to the soldiers. We must once again establish our original system of
  divided responsibilities.2'
  Lamentably for the parties, their competitors no longer shared this
  vision. On February 20, 1936, in the first general election in four
  years, the Minseito leadership was rewarded for its patience with a
  plurality of 205 seats in the lower house (a gain of 59 seats). The
  Seiyukai strategy of confrontation with Okada backfired, as the party
  lost 126 seats and elected only 174 of its candidates. President Suzuki
  suffered the additional humiliation of defeat in his own bid for elec-
  tion. But despite the Minseito victory, neither party by this time
  commanded sufficient nonparty elite support to warrant the revival of
  party government. Although national-unity governments had already
  demonstrated their inability to make critical choices between compet-
  ing elite viewpoints and seemed incapable of establishing new mecha-
  nisms for strengthening citizen identification with their purposes,
  Prince Saionji as genro had little alternative but to advise that they be
  continued.
  PRELUDE TO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION, I 9 3 6 - I 9 3 7
  By the beginning of 1936, the crisis atmosphere created by interna-
  tional isolation and agrarian depression had intensified. As already
  indicated, one major consequence of the crisis mentality gripping the
  nation was a reallocation of power from the political parties to the
  civilian and military bureaucracies. A second major consequence was
  Japan's progressive withdrawal from the nexus of treaties and relation-
  ships with the Anglo-American powers known as the Washington
  order. The policy of autonomous defense initiated in 1933 was con-
  firmed in cabinet decisions of July and December 1934 and again in
  October 1935. By 1936, both the Washington and London treaties on
  naval arms limitations had lapsed, and Japan showed little interest in
  renewing them.
  The new defense policy carried with it heavy commitments to the
  development of military industry and weaponry, and government
  spending in these areas stimulated recovery in certain sectors of the
  economy. State intervention in the lives of the citizenry, which had
  26 Cited in Kawasaki Hideji, Yuki aru seijika-tachi (Tokyo: Sengoku shuppansha, 1971), pp.
  267-8.
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  PRELUDE TO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION 
  119
  begun to intensify with the government's agricultural relief programs,
  seemed certain to increase still further as the nation's resources were
  channeled toward national defense. The principal political issues of
  the late 1930s therefore focused on the extent of state controls over the
  economy, the most effective means of allocating scarce financial and
  material resources, and the most appropriate methods of reorganizing
  the state apparatus to coordinate national planning and mobilize popu-
  lar support for the defense effort.
  The issues emanating from the policy of autonomous defense were
  debated not simply on their merits but also in terms of how their
  resolution would affect each political elite group. We have seen, for
  example, that from 1932 to 1936 the military and civilian bureaucra-
  cies promoted and exploited a sense of crisis to nudge the parties from
  the cabinet's command. Between 1936 and 1941, these two groups
  pursued a similar strategy to strengthen their own positions in the
  councils of state. They portrayed the parties as stubborn adherents of
  an outmoded political order, and themselves as the instruments of
  necessary change. In fact, however, the conflict between the advocates
  of the status quo and the proponents of change was not synonymous
  with the cleavage between party and nonparty elite groups. In each
  group were reformists who sought to strengthen their political position
  by arguing that Japan's security required sweeping changes in its
  national institutions, and conservatives whose political interests led
  them to insist that radical reform would destabilize the state and
  weaken its defenses.
  The eighteen months between February 1936 and July 1937 marked
  an intensification of reformist pressure within each elite group to revise
  the Meiji political settlement. The reform issue was also frequently
  invoked by rising forces in the civilian and military bureaucratic elites,
  to dominate their own respective bailiwicks and to overcome other elites
  in the competition for political power. In the absence of the intraelite
  mediation functions previously performed by the parties, conflict be-
  tween the reformists and conservatives posed a serious threat to the
  political stability of elite government; and, in desperation, the elites
  turned to the imperial court and a group of hereditary nobles to recon-
  cile their differences.
  This turbulent interlude began with the mutiny of some fourteen
  hundred troops of the army's First Division on February 26,1936. Led
  by young officers associated with the Imperial Way faction, rebel units
  occupied the Diet, the Army Ministry, and the Tokyo Metropolitan
  Police Headquarters. They assassinated the privy seal (ex-premier
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  120 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  Saito), Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, and the inspector gen-
  eral of army education (General Watanabe Jotaro of the Control faction)
  and narrowly missed killing Prince Saionji, Admiral Suzuki Kantaro
  (the grand chamberlain), and Prime Minister Okada. At one level, the
  rebellion marked the culmination of factional rivalries within the army,
  which focused on how best to mobilize for war. More broadly, it consti-
  tuted an assault on the advocates of the status quo (conservative court
  officials, the finance minister, and the prime minister).27
  The outcome of the rebellion remained unclear until the emperor
  himself intervened with a forceful command that the young officers be
  brought to heel. By the afternoon of February 29, the uprising had
  been quelled, but Okada resigned immediately. Anxious to preserve
  the political inviolability of the throne, Saionji chose a successor who
  could weld the contending elite groups into a cohesive coalition with-
  out provoking further terrorism or rebellion. In the end, he con-
  cluded, "there is no one but Konoe."28 Prince Konoe declined the
  premiership, but his nomination marked a recognition by Saionji and
  others that court nobles such as Konoe, Kido, and Harada, who tran-
  scended partisan affiliations, represented the best prospect for concili-
  ating tensions within and among the elite groups.
  Frustrated in his first choice, Saionji recommended career diplomat
  Hirota Koki, who took office as prime minister on March 9, 1936. As
  Hirota was constituting his cabinet, the army leadership seized the
  opportunity to press for a reformist orientation in government by
  threatening to torpedo his efforts if the cabinet were too conservative.
  Although Hirota averted an early abortion of his cabinet by deft politi-
  cal compromise, he faced a vexing eleven months in office as a media-
  tor between the reformist and conservative viewpoints.
  In April 1936, revisionist bureaucrats in the Cabinet Research Bu-
  reau drafted an administrative reform proposal designed to reduce the
  importance of existing ministries and elevate the bureau to a position
  of preeminence in policy planning. By fall, the army and navy minis-
  ters had likewise proposed a series of drastic administrative reforms.
  Their plans called for the creation of an organ under the prime minis-
  ter's jurisdiction to deal with the budget and policy research, a person-
  nel agency subject only to the prime minister's control to centralize the
  power of official appointments, the merger of several government
  ministries, the transfer of offices from one ministry to another, and the
  27 For a detailed analysis of the rebellion, see Ben-Ami Shillony, Revolt in Japan (Princeton,
  N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973).
  28 Yabe Teiji, Konoe Fumimaro, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1952), vol. 1, p. 326.
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  PRELUDE TO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION 
  121
  expansion of agencies concerned with the regulation of trade, fuel,
  electricity, and the civilian aircraft industry. Their plan also proposed
  sweeping reforms in local government to parallel the centralizing of
  national administration.29
  In a word, this plan constituted the first effort by the services,
  particularly the army, to reorganize Japan's economic, political, and
  administrative structure into a "national defense state" (kokubo kokka)
  ready to mobilize for total war. Colonel Ishiwara Kanji, Nagata's heir
  as the principal architect of mobilization planning in the army, had
  already directed the preparation of a preliminary schedule of economic
  development to underwrite this effort, the "Five-Year Plan for the
  Empire's Income and Expenditures."30 Finance Minister Baba Eiichi,
  a supporter of the reform program, prepared a gigantic budget pro-
  posal for ¥3.13 billion to underwrite the implementation of Ishiwara's
  plan.
  Predictably, the reform package and budget met with an outraged
  reaction from business and the ministries, and Hirota gingerly con-
  signed them to two cabinet subcommittees for further consideration.
  In December, the Diet convened for formal deliberation of the propos-
  als. Though vanquished in the struggle for control of the cabinet,
  party politicians in the lower house found themselves supported
  against the military's plans by powerful conservative allies in the bu-
  reaucracy, business, and the local elites who felt threatened by the
  reforms. The army leadership publicly questioned the parties' patrio-
  tism and circulated rumors of another February 26 incident to intimi-
  date the lower house, but the politicians held their ground. Hamada
  Kunimatsu of the Seiyukai offered to commit ritual suicide (harakiri)
  if the army minister could substantiate the charges of disloyalty and
  dramatically advised the minister to follow a similar course of action to
  atone for the baseless blasphemy of the Diet. 3' The enraged army
  minister, knowing that the lower house was not prepared to approve
  the military's programs, resigned on January 23, 1937, bringing down
  the Hirota cabinet with him.
  The army's confrontation tactics peaked during the next few days.
  When the emperor designated the retired general Ugaki as the new
  29 Hirota Koki denki kankokai, ed., Hirota Koki (Tokyo: Chuo koron jigyo shuppan, 1966), pp.
  241-2; Ko-Baba Eiich-shi kinenkai, Baba Eiichi den (Tokyo: Ko-Baba Eiich-shi kinenkai,
  1945)) PP- 262-3; Nakamura, Economic Growth, pp. 271-2.
  30 Tsunoda Jun, ed., Ishiwara Kanji shiryo: Kokubo ronsaku (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1967), pp.
  •39-47-
  31 For the lower-house record of Hamada's exchange with the army minister, see Kanpo gogai-
  Showa 12-nen i-gatsu 22-nichi, Shugiingijisokkiroku dai-ygo, pp. 35-45.
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  122 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  prime minister, the army leadership refused to appoint a new army
  minister because they thought him too conservative to carry forward
  the reform program. The imperial mandate then fell on General Haya-
  shi Senjuro, a former patron of Nagata Tetsuzan. In his efforts to form
  a new government, Hayashi was initially assisted by associates of the
  mercurial Colonel Ishiwara, who seemed determined to push through
  the implementation of their economic and administrative reforms even
  if a dictatorial party in the lower house had to be organized to over-
  come parliamentary resistance. Conservatives throughout the national
  leadership were appalled by the Ishiwara group's actions and boycot-
  ted the cabinet-formation process. Hayashi thus found himself unable
  to develop a sufficiently broad base of support to assemble a slate of
  ministers for his government.32
  Having just forced the resignation of the Hirota cabinet and the
  abortion of an Ugaki government over the reform issue, the senior
  army leadership recognized that it did not yet have a sufficiently
  strong consensus of national reform. Once it became evident that the
  bureaucratic, party, and business elites would not cave in to Ishiwara's
  pressures, General Hayashi expelled Ishiwara's men from his cabinet-
  formation headquarters and signaled his readiness to proceed at a
  more moderate pace. To win business's support for the economic
  development program envisioned in mobilization planning, Hayashi
  asked Ikeda Seihin, the former managing director of the Mitsui Bank,
  to join the cabinet. Ikeda had taken an extremely dim view of the
  reform and budget proposals submitted to the Diet at the end of 1936.
  "The present plans," he had declared, "are simply the fruits of the
  program of the middle-echelon army officers and the Kwantung
  Army. We should be aware that they will have an extremely bad
  influence in financial circles."33 However, once Hayashi had formally
  disassociated himself from Ishiwara, Ikeda's position shifted:
  The Ishiwara plans present some difficult problems; the army's demand for a
  replenishment of national defense must obviously be dealt with in accord with
  the dictates of international conditions. The basis of the present economic
  structure must remain intact. . . . If we do exactly as the most powerful of
  the middle-echelon elements in the army wish, that structure will collapse
  and lead to chaos. On the other hand, however, we cannot disregard national
  defense. 34
  Indicating his willingness to work out an accommodation between the
  interests of business and the proposed mobilization program, Ikeda
  32 Berger, Parties Out of Power, p. 115. 
  33 Harada, Saionji-kd to seikyoku, vol. 5, p. 198.
  34 Ibid., pp. 254-5 (entry for February 10, 1937).
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  PRELUDE TO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION 
  123
  recommended that Yuki Toyotaro (formerly governor of the Indus-
  trial Bank of Japan) be appointed finance minister, and in February he
  himself became governor of the Bank of Japan.
  The entrance of Yuki and Ikeda into Hayashi's government initi-
  ated a brief era of greater cooperation between business and the armed
  forces. Contemporary journalists called the new accommodation "tie-
  up finance," as the viewpoints of business and the military were at
  least temporarily conjoined. As Ishiwara's influence receded, the re-
  form offensive assumed a more moderate tone. After Yuki had as-
  sumed control of the Finance Ministry, he pruned the budget from
  ¥3.13 billion to ¥2.77 billion and brought skilled technocrats Kaya
  Okinori, Ishiwata Sotaro, and Aoki Kazuo back into the ministry to
  maintain a liaison with the army leadership in formulating a new
  program of economic and military development. At the same time,
  Ikeda sent Izumiyama Sanroku of the Mitsui Bank to represent him in
  unofficial negotiations with the army over revisions of the "Five-Year
  Plan." By May 15, the negotiators had agreed on an overall plan for
  developing the military-supply industries of Japan and Manchukuo;
  and on May 29, the Army Ministry drew up to final revised program
  as "The Essentials of a Five-Year Plan for Key Industries." Most of
  the provocative administrative reform proposals of the previous year
  were scrapped in the first draft.35
  The "tie-up finance" arrangements of early 1937 were significant in
  several ways. First, they established the buildup of Japan's military
  strength as the highest priority of national policy. Henceforth, all
  proposals requiring governmental approval were evaluated in terms of
  their contribution to military preparedness. Tie-up finance also of-
  fered the prospect of a compromise approach among the elites to
  economic and defense policymaking, replacing Ishiwara's strategy of
  sharp confrontation with the bureaucratic and business elites. At the
  same time, business leaders virtually abandoned their dependency on
  the conservative parties to represent their interests and instead began
  participating and negotiating directly through Ikeda, Yuki, Izumi-
  yama, and others with the nonparty elites in government.
  Not surprisingly, conservative politicians felt themselves increas-
  ingly vulnerable after the loss of business support. Their sense of aban-
  35 Izumiyama Sanroku, Tora daijin ni naru made (Tokyo: Toho shoin, 1953), pp. 106-7; Nichi-
  Man zaisei keizai kaikyukai shiryo, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Nihon kindai shiryo kenkyukai, 1970);
  Nakamura, Economic Growth, pp. 268-85; Tsunoda, Ishiwara Kanji shiryo, pp. 148--50;
  International Military Tribunal for the Far East, "Proceedings," mimeograph, Tokyo, 1946-
  49, pp. 8260 ff.
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  124 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  donment was further provoked by General Hayashi, who excluded the
  parties from his cabinet. Although Hayashi invited three Diet politi-
  cians to serve as ministers, he made the appointments contingent on
  their resignations from party membership. Only Yamazaki Tatsuno-
  suke of the small Showakai acceded to this stringent demand. The
  prime minister also refused to appoint parliamentary vice-ministers,
  thereby denying the Diet even a perfunctory and symbolic role in his
  administration. Hayashi evidently hoped that he could force the parties
  to merge into a single new organization to overcome parliamentary
  opposition to administrative reform, but his plans came to naught.36
  When the prime minister abruptly called new elections for the second
  time in fifteen months, the two major parties campaigned vigorously
  against his government and successfully retained their dominance of the
  lower house. Conceding defeat, Hayashi resigned shortly after the re-
  sults of the election became known.
  His successor as prime minister was Prince Konoe, now firmly
  established as a prominent behind-the-scenes mediator of conflicts
  among the elites. Known to be a supporter of the emerging consensus
  on limited reform represented by tie-up finance, the popular Konoe
  had already been sought out as a possible party president by several
  parliamentary groups in 1934 and 1935. He was therefore regarded as
  more likely than any other leader to win lower-house support for
  reform legislation.
  Following the lead of the Hayashi government, Konoe's cabinet
  adopted a moderate tone in foreign policy. The government took the
  position that implementation of a new economic and military prepared-
  ness program would best be achieved by avoiding untimely conflicts
  with either the Anglo-American powers or the Chinese nationalist
  movement. In his domestic policy, Konoe was equally conciliatory.
  To mollify Ishiwara's reformist supporters, he invited Baba Eiichi
  back into the government as home minister, but to pacify Ikeda and
  Yuki, he gave the key Finance and Commerce ministry portfolios to
  career bureaucrats Kaya Okinori and Yoshino Shinji. Hayashi's ser-
  vice ministers retained their posts under Konoe, and Hirota was
  brought back into government as the foreign minister. Konoe also
  appointed two party members to ministerial positions and allowed
  them to retain their party affiliations.
  Konoe's national-unity government came into power on the basis of
  an emerging consensus among the nonparty elites on the broad outline
  36 See Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 108-20.
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  PRELUDE TO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION 
  125
  of a new policy of military and industrial development. As the govern-
  ment prepared to refine and implement its policies, however, it still
  confronted essentially the same political problems faced by preceding
  national-unity cabinets. That is, it still lacked any formal or informal
  mechanism for perpetuating the consensus it sought among the politi-
  cal elites; it still had no means of procuring lower-house support for
  the cabinet's program; and it had yet to devise any solution to the
  problem of mobilizing popular support and citizen identification with
  the goals and policies of the state.
  It was clear that the government would soon impose major new
  financial burdens on the people, for the implementation of the devel-
  opment program required a concentration on and a rigorous regula-
  tion of the use of the nation's resources. Anticipating opposition
  from the rural population and its lower-house representatives, Agri-
  culture and Forestry Minister Arima Yoriyasu urged that the govern-
  ment organize a new political party to mobilize the countryside,
  replace the ties between the rural elites and the conservative parties
  as a new vehicle for the articulation of local interests, and serve as a
  forum for the harmonization of those interests with the government's
  goals. If adopted, Arima's suggestion would have further under-
  mined the traditional village elites as leaders of rural opinion, and the
  lower-house party representatives as the principal linkage between
  the populace and the cabinet. However, because the parties had
  demonstrated considerable residual strength during the Hirota and
  Hayashi governments, Arima's proposal was politically unfeasible,
  and so the Konoe cabinet ignored it."
  Instead, the government launched a nonpartisan popular campaign
  encouraging increased savings and reduced consumption to free capi-
  tal for industrial development. Nevertheless, Arima's futile proposal
  had raised a fundamental issue: How could the government expect
  continuing popular support for a burdensome national defense policy
  when most of the population was still struggling with a depressed
  economy and looked to the village elites and parties to obtain govern-
  ment reliefr The Konoe cabinet and its successors had three options.
  First, the government might attempt to reform the established mecha-
  nisms for controlling the citizenry and articulating its interests, as
  Arima was implicitly recommending in his call for a new government-
  run political party. Second, the government might simply appeal to
  37 For an account of the cabinet meeting of June 15, 1937, see Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. 1,
  p. 392.
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  126 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  popular patriotism, emphasizing the overriding importance of subordi-
  nating citizens' individual welfare to the security of the state. And
  finally, if these two approaches failed, the government might stifle
  dissent by means of political repression, as it had in destroying the
  Japan Communist Party earlier.*8 All three options were pursued with
  varying success between 1937 and 1945, but the political struggles
  among the elites from mid-1937 to 1941 focused primarily on the
  wisdom of adopting the first option through the creation of a new
  mass-mobilization political party.
  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS, 1937-1939
  As the Konoe government stood poised to draft specific legislation for
  the five-year industrial development plans, Japan unexpectedly found
  itself at war. A skirmish near Peking between Chinese and Japanese
  forces on July 7, 1937, escalated into full-scale hostilities within six
  weeks. Colonel Ishiwara and his supporters feared that a protracted
  engagement on the continent would stymie the five-year plan and
  frustrate the long-range goal of establishing a secure position of hege-
  mony in East Asia.& But many military experts and civilian leaders
  saw the "China incident" as an opportunity to deal a swift and decisive
  blow to the Chinese nationalist movement. In the end, the latter view
  prevailed. Anticipating an early victory, the Konoe government sent
  Japan's forces racing through the cities of northern and central China
  in pursuit of the Nationalists' armies. By mid-December, the National-
  ist capital of Nanking had been seized and raped by the Japanese; in
  early January 1938, Konoe pledged to eradicate Chiang's government.
  Apart from Ishiwara and several other knowledgeable military special-
  ists, few national leaders believed that the prime minister's pledge
  would require many months to fulfill.
  Between 1937 and 1940, the hostilities in China had several signifi-
  cant implications for Japanese politics. Initially, the war defused the
  issue of reform, as responsible national leaders declined to disrupt the
  home front with struggles over the nature of the political system.
  While troops were in the field, moreover, the lower house supported
  them enthusiastically and mitigated its confrontation with the cabinet.
  38 On the suppression of Communism, see George M. Beckmann and Okubo Genji, The Japa-
  nese Communist Party 1922-1945 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), esp.
  chap. 9. Ideological suppression is more broadly discussed in Richard H. Mitchell, Thought
  Control in Prewar Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976).
  39 On Ishiwara's concerns, see Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, chap. 8; and Crowley, Japan's Quest,
  chap. 6.
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  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS 
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  The war also provided the government with a convenient issue on
  which to mobilize popular support and temporarily obviated the need
  to devise new organizations to strengthen mass identification with
  national goals and purposes. However, the cabinet soon decided to
  capitalize on its newfound strength by seeking legislative approval of
  the five-year plan; and by early 1938, it was purposefully patronizing
  the reform movement to pressure conservative legislators into sanction-
  ing its programs.
  Later, as the war dragged on beyond the government's original
  expectations, the military consumption of resources in the field began
  having an adverse effect on the nation's economy and threatened to
  impede the long-range program of military and industrial develop-
  ment, as Ishiwara had feared. In order to mobilize the resources and
  national determination to fight the war in China and still execute the
  five-year plan, reformists insisted on first establishing a dictatorial
  party in control of both the cabinet and the lower house and then
  restructuring the linkages of popular mobilization between the govern-
  ment and citizenry. Conservatives were able to blunt the reformists'
  challenge in late 1938 and throughout 1939. By 1940, however, with
  the war still draining away vital national resources and diminishing
  popular support of the government, the reformists appeared on the
  verge of establishing a new political order.
  When Konoe convened an emergency session of the Diet in late July
  1937, his primary interest was simply to set the stage for systematically
  implementing the five-year plan at a later date. Adopting a concilia-
  tory position toward the lower house, he announced that he would
  disassociate himself from any effort to undermine conservative-party
  domination of the Diet and that he would reinstate the parliamentary
  vice-minister system which had lapsed under Hayashi. The prime
  minister also carefully limited his reform proposals to the least contro-
  versial prerequisites of the five-year plan. In response, the Diet passed
  thirty-four of the cabinet's thirty-five legislative proposals, including
  the "Iron and Steel Manufacturing Law" it had rejected previously.
  On September 9, another special Diet session patriotically approved a
  huge ¥2.2 billion supplementary authorization for military expenses
  in China.
  The next regular Diet session was scheduled to begin at the end of
  December, at which time the cabinet judged that hostilities in China
  would soon end without interrupting its timetable for military and
  industrial development. Konoe thus saw the Seventy-third Diet as an
  excellent opportunity to exploit the war-generated patriotism in the
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  128 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  parties and to overcome the parliamentary hurdles that had frustrated
  earlier reform measures. He gave instructions to the Cabinet Planning
  Board (Kikakuin)- which had evolved from the Cabinet Research Bu-
  reau to become the principal government agency for mobilization
  planning-to speed its preparation of key legislation related to the five-
  year plan. As Commerce and Industry Minister Yoshino wrote frankly,
  The Government takes the view that we should utilize the China Incident as
  an opportunity to make another decisive stride in Japan's industry and econ-
  omy, and is desirous of obtaining some benefit for the future industrial and
  economic development of the country out of the measurefs] . . . adopted in
  connection with the Incident.«°
  Konoe's strategy also involved manipulating right-wing antiparty
  sentiment to weaken conservative resistance to the government's pro-
  posals in the Diet. Shortly before the Seventy-third Diet session
  opened, he gave the Home Ministry portfolio to Admiral Suetsugu
  Nobumasa, who was in the midst of a movement to unify the highly
  fragmented right wing into a cohesive political force against the par-
  ties. Many Japanist right-wing (kannen uyoku) groups rallied to Su-
  etsugu's cause because they abhorred the concept of competitive elec-
  tions among party candidates. Right-wing reformists (kakushin uyoko),
  on the other hand, hoped to use his movement to build electoral
  support for their efforts to seize control of the lower house from the
  conservative parties. Despite divergent attitudes toward the election
  system, both flanks of the right wing agreed that the Minseito and
  Seiyukai should be replaced in the lower house by a single party
  wedded to cabinet policies rather than the interests of local village
  elites or big business.41 For Konoe, however, patronage of the right
  wing's antiparty campaign was largely a device for pressuring the
  lower house to pass his government's legislative program.<*
  The cornerstone of the government's legislative package was the
  general mobilization bill, which crystallized military and revisionist-
  bureaucratic thinking on how to maximize the development and mobi-
  lization of Japan's resources for military preparedness."* The bill
  40 Shinji Yoshino, "Our Planned Economy," Contemporary Japan 6 (December 1937): 371.
  41 See Kinoshita Hanji, "Kokumin sbugiundo no gen-dankai," Chud Koron 615 (December
  1938): 216-23; Ito, "The Role of Right-Wing Organizations," pp. 487-509; Imai Seiichi and
  Ito Takashi, eds., Kokka sodain, vol. 2 oiGendai shi shiryo, 44 vols. (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo,
  1974). PP- 3-4-
  42 As part of his tactics, Konoe supported the antiparty activities of Nakamizo Tamakichi. See
  Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 147-9.
  43 Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. 1, pp. 473-4; Board of Planning, "On the National Mobilization
  Law," Tokyo Gazette 11 (May 1938): 1-9.
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  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS 
  129
  called for widespread official controls over the economy and political
  decision-making structure to ensure wartime military strength. In the
  event of war, the government was to be authorized to adjust the sup-
  ply, demand, and allocation of labor to maximize production, to draft
  labor into military industries, to control wages, and to extend working
  hours when conditions warranted such measures.
  The bill also empowered the government in wartime to control
  production, transportation, exports, imports, and the use of impor-
  tant buildings and land. It could also order private manufacturers to
  install new equipment to increase productive capabilities and could
  restrict such installations and expansion elsewhere when deemed det-
  rimental to military production. Control associations and cartels were
  to be established to facilitate government control of industry and
  finance, and the government was to be given a voice in setting overall
  production and financing policies. The power to institute price and
  profit controls, register the professions and abilities of citizens, com-
  pel schools to train additional technicians to meet anticipated war-
  time requirements, and subsidize military production could be exer-
  cised at the government's discretion, even in peacetime. In short, the
  bill was intended to free the government from Diet restraints on
  massive intervention into all aspects of national economic life during
  wartime.
  Konoe intimated that if the Diet rejected the bill, he would organize
  a new political party centered on the antiparty right-wing campaign.*•
  However, he also opened the way to compromise. Because the cabi-
  net's ultimate objective at this point was implementation of the five-
  year plan, rather than mobilization for a short-term conflict in China,
  Konoe indicated that the enabling legislation would not be used while
  fighting continued on the continent. He also agreed to appoint Diet
  members to a consultative mobilization council to be constituted when-
  ever the mobilization statute was invoked.« Thus reassured, the Diet
  yielded to the pressures on it and approved the bill on March 24.
  The government's second major legislative proposal during the
  Seventy-third Diet was a bill to establish state management over electric
  power generation and transmission facilities.*5 Debate over the bill
  44 Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. 1, pp. 478-9; Arima Yoriyasu, Seikai dochuki (Tokyo: Nihon
  shuppan kyodo kabushiki kaisha, 1951), p. 141; Harada, Saionji-ko to seikyoku, vol. 6, pp.
  245,253. 
  45 Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. I, pp. 476-8.
  46 For details, see Yoshida Kei, Denryohu kanrian no sokumen shi (Tokyo: Kotsu keizaisha
  shuppanbu, 1938); Nagai Ryutaro hensankai, Nagai Ryutaro, pp. 362-425; Hashikawa,
  "Kakushin kanryd," pp. 251-73; Okumura Kiwao, "Henkakuki Nippon no seiji keizai," in
  Kenryoku no shiso, pp. 274-90.
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  provoked a precedent-setting confrontation between its reformist adher-
  ents, who held that greater state control of the economy -
  approximating national socialism - was required to mobilize the empire
  in crisis, and the conservatives, who argued that Japan's economic
  strength could be maximized by adhering to the existing system of
  capitalist enterprise. On one side, military advocates of state economic
  controls insisted that the state assume the ownership and management
  rights over the electric power industry. Revisionist bureaucrats on the
  planning board, such as communications specialist Okumura Kiwao,
  likewise stressed the primacy of the state's interests over those of indi-
  vidual entrepreneurs, but they were willing to sanction continued pri-
  vate ownership as long as the state had management rights. The electric
  power companies' cartel disagreed vociferously, insisting that both own-
  ership and management rights be left in private hands. The cartel posi-
  tion was supported by conservative bureaucrats, such as Vice-Minister
  of Communications Hirazawa Kaname, who opposed extensive state
  intervention and instead called for government production incentives to
  the private power companies.
  Although Konoe's threats of alignment with the right wing under-
  scored his determination to see the electric power bill passed, the
  legislation could not gain Diet approval without extensive emenda-
  tion. In both the lower and upper houses, parliamentary supporters of
  conservative business interests secured revisions that allowed the exist-
  ing power companies to continue managing their enterprises under
  state supervision, to participate through a new electric power commis-
  sion in the management of the new public electric power generation
  company, and to receive handsome compensation for any facilities
  they transferred to the new public company.
  By the time the Seventy-third Diet ended its deliberations, it had
  approved 86 measures proposed by the government, as well as more
  than n o items related to the 1938-9 budget. As a result, the govern-
  ment had made significant inroads into the Diet's legislative preroga-
  tives and had obtained new state authority over private capital. More-
  over, because civilian and military technocrats staffed both the Cabinet
  Planning Board and the new state-run electric power company, the
  legislation opened new channels for their influence over the nation's
  economic and political affairs. Nevertheless, even though the political
  power of the business and parliamentary elites had been impaired by the
  new statutes, it was far from destroyed. The parties, for example, had
  forced the government to postpone implementation of the mobilization
  law until circumstances more serious than the conflict in China had
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  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS 
  131
  arisen, and they had also assured themselves of at least an advisory role
  in setting policy on the new mobilization council. The electric power
  law enabled business to retain a significant role in setting policy for the
  state-run electric power company and compensated owners well for
  their losses. The new law set a pattern for redefining the relationship
  of the state to private enterprise. Official controls over business re-
  mained much lighter than those over other aspects of the wartime
  economy, and the business elite henceforth became a full partner with
  the military and civilian bureaucracy in the economic management of
  the nation.47
  Consequently, the reformist camp was far from satisfied by the
  outcome of Konoe's encounter with the Diet. For example, Arima
  Yoriyasu complained that "while the Diet undoubtedly gave its careful
  consideration to the bills presented, and put on a show of affirming
  national unity and complete confidence in the government, its actual
  conduct represented a shocking departure from its words."''8 He then
  began organizing a new reformist party based on the agricultural
  guilds, aimed at overthrowing local elite dominance of the rural econ-
  omy, increasing production, reducing land taxes, and implementing
  state controls over financing and rental incomes.49 Some right-wing
  reformists pursued their own separate plan to create a new political
  party, to confront conservative party influence nationally and in the
  countryside.
  By fall, they and Arima were prepared to merge their efforts in the
  Dai Nipponto (Greater Japan Party), intended to become a dictatorial
  organ working with the government and the military in the formula-
  tion, ratification, and implementation of national defense state poli-
  cies. They were joined in this effort by the Social Masses Party, which
  by 1937 had abandoned its goal of social democracy in favor of sup-
  porting the army's program of state economic controls. They also
  found new support among a number of other Diet politicians, who
  either were linked politically with military industries that would flour-
  ish in a national defense state or were estranged from the Minseito and
  Seiyukai leaders and hoped to seize control of the lower house through
  the new party.50
  The new-party forces also received encouragement from allies in the
  military and revisionist-bureaucratic ranks, who saw the possibility of
  using a mass-based political organization both to undermine conserva-
  47 Tiedemann, "Big Business and Politics," p. 311.
  48 Cited in Adachi Gan, Kokumin undo no tai-shuppauu (Tokyo: Kasumigaseki shobo, 1940),
  pp. 14-16. 
  49 Ibid., pp. 92-3. 
  50 Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 164-73.
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  132 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  tive critics of economic controls and to spearhead widespread public
  participation in the mobilization of resources and national commit-
  ment to the war and five-year-plan efforts. At the outset of the China
  incident in 1937, the cabinet had converted its original plan for a
  citizens' savings campaign into the Movement for Mobilizing Popular
  Morale (Kokumin seishin sodoin undo). The movement was directed
  by a nonpartisan federation of organizations, including the parties,
  under the joint supervision of the Cabinet Information Commission,
  the Home Ministry, and the Ministry of Education.51 In response to a
  decided lack of public enthusiasm for the movement, the supervising
  government agencies began to study ways of strengthening the cam-
  paign in mid-1938.52 Each agency attempted in the process to seize
  exclusive control of the movement from the others, and the Ministries
  of Agriculture and Forestry and Commerce and Industry also tried to
  insinuate themselves into its management. By late 1938, therefore,
  bureaucratic rivalries had been superimposed on the clash between
  reformists and conservatives over the creation of a new mobilization
  party.
  The new-party movement reached a crescendo of activity in Octo-
  ber and November, when Konoe was rumored to be on the verge of
  assuming the party presidency. However, the Japanist right wing and
  Admiral Suetsugu were suspicious that the new-party campaign was
  actually a covert effort to establish a left-wing socialist regime.« They
  joined conservatives in opposing the movement and consequently re-
  duced the likelihood that a unified right-wing political force could be
  organized against the existing parties in the lower house. And al-
  though Prime Minister Konoe had patronized the reformists at the
  beginning of 1938, his enthusiasm for upsetting the balance of power
  among the elites waned progressively with each passing month. By
  May, Konoe realized that his government's short-term military com-
  mitment against Chiang Kai-shek had failed to achieve the expected
  results and that his cabinet's five-year plan, which was predicated on a
  sustained period of peace, faced serious problems.54 Economic projec-
  tions throughout the spring and summer confirmed the prime minis-
  ter's worst fears about the effects of the China war on the industrial
  51 Participating organizations are listed in Yokusan undo shi kankokai, ed., Yokusan kokumin
  undo shi (Tokyo: Yokusan undo shi kankokai, 1954), pp. 28-30.
  52 See "Kokumin seishin sodoin sai-soshiki no ken," in Kokka sodoin, pp. 4-7.
  53 Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. 1, pp. 568-9.
  54 As he conceded to Harada, "Until recently, while I don't say I didn't appreciate the need for
  peace, I wasn't too wise, was I. . . . In fact, Hirota and I were much too emphatic in calling
  for the downfall of the Chiang regime." Harada, Saionji-ko to seikyoku, vol. 7, pp. 5-6.
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  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS 
  I33
  development plans. In June, moreover, an American "moral" em-
  bargo on aircraft, armaments, engine parts, bombs, and torpedoes
  further impeded the task of adequately supplying the combat forces.
  The military demand for goods and services drew production away
  from the export market, denying Japan foreign currencies needed to
  pay for imports anticipated in the five-year plan. At length, the cabi-
  net decided that sections of the new mobilization law must be invoked,
  despite Konoe's earlier promises to the contrary.55
  Anxious to defuse the political consequences of these reversals,
  Konoe found it expedient to turn for support to conservatives who
  advocated mobilization within the existing political and economic
  framework. In May, he persuaded both the retired general Ugaki and
  Ikeda Seihin to join the government. Ugaki's difficult charge as for-
  eign minister was to effect a termination of hostilities in China without
  making any significant concessions on Japan's war aims; he resigned
  in frustration after less than five months in office. Ikeda's association
  with the Konoe cabinet lasted longer. Serving concurrently as finance
  minister and minister of commerce and industry, he was given wide-
  ranging power to supervise the government's economic mobilization
  program. When the military and its reformist supporters insisted that
  Article XI of the mobilization law be invoked, allowing the govern-
  ment to severely limit corporate dividends and compel banks to make
  loans for defense production, Ikeda was able with Konoe's support to
  gain substantial concessions for business in return for a generous gov-
  ernment limit of 10 percent on dividends.56 He thus played a crucial
  role in the conservatives' defense of the existing allocation of power
  among the elites.
  Thus Japan's involvement in the China war ultimately exacerbated
  political conflict among the nation's elite groups, rather than promot-
  ing the establishment of rigid totalitarian political controls. The politi-
  cal cleavages manifested in the 1938 struggles for control of the lower
  house and the popular mobilization movement presaged the battle
  lines that appeared two years later in the movement for a new political
  order (seiji shintaisei). But the influential Prince Konoe, who appeared
  committed to the reformist camp in 1940, was not prepared to subject
  the nation to disruptive political turmoil over reform during the wan-
  ing months of 1938. From late October, Konoe frustrated every re-
  55 International Military Tribunal, "Proceedings," p. 8492; Horiba Kazuo, Shina jihen sensd
  shidoshi (Tokyo: Jiji tsushinsha, 1962), pp. 170-2; Fujiwara Akira, Imai Seiichi, and Toyama
  Shigeki, Showa shi, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1959), p. 160.
  56 Tiedemann, "Big Business and Politics," pp. 310-11.
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  134 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  formist effort to challenge the existing balance of power among the
  elites or to gain control over popular mobilization.
  The prime minister also recognized that his cabinet's mission to
  implement the five-year plan remained severely jeopardized by the
  China war. Rather than moderate Japan's peace terms, however, the
  government chose to redefine the war as a struggle against "the old
  order of Western imperialism and its principal Chinese agent, Chiang
  Kai-shek." Hoping to create a new regional context in which the clash
  of Chinese and Japanese nationalism might be resolved, Konoe an-
  nounced in November that his nation's noble purpose was the con-
  struction of a "new order in East Asia" (Toa shinchitsujo) led by Japan.
  Because this ambitious undertaking would require a considerable pe-
  riod of persuasion and military pressure to obtain Chinese recognition
  and then peace on the continent, the prime minister had to acknowl-
  edge that his cabinet's original goals could not be attained in the near
  future. At the beginning of January 1939, he therefore stepped down
  from the premiership and became president of the Privy Council.
  Konoe's successor was Hiranuma Kiichiro, long considered the
  doyen of the Japanese right wing. Although earlier in the decade he
  had been a vitriolic opponent of the political influence of the conserva-
  tive parties and big business, Hiranuma now shared Konoe's view that
  the war in China required national harmony rather than elite conflict.
  He quickly let it be known that as premier he held little brief for the
  reformists' cause.57 Hiranuma's position dealt a fatal blow to the move-
  ment to unite the right wing and placed the Japanists resolutely in the
  ranks of the conservatives on the reform issue. The new prime minis-
  ter resisted pressures for sweeping institutional change as staunchly as
  his predecessor had. When his, cabinet reorganized the Movement for
  Mobilizing Popular Morale in April 1939, the net effect was to
  strengthen the movement's nonpartisan nature rather than to create a
  new political force against the parties. When it became necessary to
  invoke additional portions of the mobilization law, the cabinet care-
  fully obtained the approval of parliamentary representatives on the
  National General Mobilization Council and limited its mobilization
  policies to measures, such as the enhancement of worker productivity,
  that might benefit business interests as much as the state.*8
  57 See the interpellation of Ogawa Gotaro in the lower-house record for January 22,1939, Kanpo
  gogai-Showa 14-nen i-gatsu 22-nichi, Shugiin giji sokkiroku dai-j-go, pp. 32-3; Yokusan
  kokutnin undo-shi, p. 25.
  58 For a list of cases in which the mobilization law was actually invoked during this period, see
  Board of Planning, "Invocation of the National General Mobilization Law," Tokyo Gazette 2
  (March 1939): 20-1.
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  THE CHALLENGE OF THE REFORMISTS 
  135
  After the domestic reform issue had been defused, Hiranuma's ma-
  jor difficulties centered on whether Japan should ally itself militarily
  with Germany and Italy. To mitigate Japan's international isolation
  after withdrawing from the League of Nations and abrogating the
  Washington and London treaties, the Hirota cabinet had concluded an
  anti-Comintern pact with the Axis powers in November 1936. Faced
  two years later with growing Anglo-American criticisms of Japan's
  aggression in China and the renewed specter of Soviet power in the
  north, the army and its civilian supporters encouraged expanding the
  1936 accord into a full-scale military alliance. The navy, on the other
  hand, was still not prepared to meet the military responsibilities such
  an agreement might impose if the Anglo-American powers decided to
  confront the Axis on the seas. The Hiranuma cabinet agreed that a
  military pact with the Axis might neutralize Soviet power, but before
  the army and the prime minister could persuade the navy to accept the
  alliance, Germany abruptly concluded a nonaggression pact with the
  Soviet Union in September 1939. With the thrust of his foreign policy
  thereby undermined, Hiranuma immediately resigned in favor of Gen-
  eral Abe Nobuyuki.
  The Abe cabinet lasted less than five months. The new prime minis-
  ter attempted to continue Hiranuma's working relationship with con-
  servatives in the Diet leadership, business, and the senior civilian
  bureaucracy. But he also had to bear the brunt of widespread discon-
  tent over wartime economic dislocations. Severe drought and in-
  creased military demand created extensive food and power shortages
  at the end of 1939 and seriously eroded popular support for the govern-
  ment and its policies.59 Military anxiety over economic conditions and
  public morale prompted army officials once again to consider creating
  a new political party as a mobilization organ in the national defense
  state. For the growing number of politicians in the Diet opposed to the
  leaders of the Minseito and Seiyukai, the antigovernment mood came
  as a renewed opportunity to press for the implementation of their
  plans for a new party as well. Because the senior leadership of the two
  conservative parties supported Prime Minister Abe, many junior mem-
  bers of the parties tried to form a lateral alliance with independents
  and reformist right-wing forces in the lower house. They began a
  campaign with the dual objective of creating a new party to promote
  economic reforms and overturning the coalition between Abe and the
  59 Hayashi Shigeru, Taiheiyo senso, vol. 25 otNihon no rekishi (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1967), p.
  131; Fujiwara et al., Shotoa shi, pp. 174-5.
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  136 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  senior parliamentary leadership. On January 7, 1940, the new-party
  forces gained majority support for a lower-house resolution of no confi-
  dence in the government. Abe's options were to resign or dissolve the
  lower house, and because the army leadership was reluctant to risk an
  election with public morale at such a low point, he chose to resign.60
  Abe's withdrawal marked the third time in three years that the
  lower house had been instrumental in bringing down a cabinet. It was
  the second time that the victim of lower-house agitation had been a
  general. The message conveyed to the powerful army elite was that
  implementation of a national defense state would require a stronger
  and more stable base of support in the lower house than national-unity
  cabinets had hitherto been able to muster. Army leaders thus sought
  to ally with the dissidents in the lower house, who saw military patron-
  age as an opportunity to regain a share of the power the parties had
  progressively surrendered since 1932.
  The inability of senior parliamentary leaders to control the lower-
  house rank and file at the beginning of 1940 provided a stark warning
  that unless they reestablished themselves in a position of political
  patronage and provided their members with the power and prestige
  that had originally served to induce politicians to join the conservative
  parties, their membership would desert them and leave them without
  influence. At the same time, the loss of party discipline itself demon-
  strated that no party leader at that moment was strong enough to
  command serious consideration as Abe's successor. Irrespective of the
  lower house's capacity to break a cabinet's power, none of the existing
  parties had the internal cohesiveness or the following among nonparty
  elites to give birth to a new government. Conservatives in business,
  the bureaucracy, the navy, the court, and the parties therefore threw
  their support behind a nonparty figure, Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa, as
  the new prime minister.
  Yonai's appointment again demonstrated the residual political
  strength of the forces who favored maintaining the status quo that
  had existed since the middle of the Konoe government's tenure in
  office. At the same time, however, it firmed the resolve of reformists
  to create a new political party to eclipse the conservative influence.
  Throughout the first half of 1940, reformist pressures on the govern-
  ment mounted steadily, and as a new war in Europe progressively
  60 Shiraki, Nihon seitd shi, pp. 284-6; Sugihara, Atarashii Showa shi, pp. 173-6; Sugihara
  Masami, Kokumin soshiki no seiji-ryoku (Tokyo: Modan Nipponsha, 1940), pp. 23-4. The
  Asahi shinbun carried a complete list of those supporting the resolution of no confidence in its
  January 8, 1940, edition.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
  137
  transformed the international environment, Prince Konoe agreed to
  assume the premiership again and create a new political order.
  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER, 1940-1945
  When Admiral Yonai assumed office on January 16, 1940, inter-
  national politics in East Asia and the world were in a highly volatile
  state of flux. In China, Japan was pursuing yet another approach to
  establishing its primacy on the continent, through the creation of
  a new Nationalist regime under Wang Ching-wei. Because it was
  widely conceded in Tokyo that this strategy would make it impossi-
  ble for Chiang Kai-shek to sue for peace unless totally defeated on
  the battlefield, the Wang plan carried with it the strong likelihood of
  a long-term Japanese military presence in China. In the European
  conflict, which began in September 1939, Germany scored an impres-
  sive string of victories over Britain and its allies, and the United
  States soon began bolstering Britain's flagging strength with lend-
  lease assistance. In January, the Americans expanded their "moral
  embargo" on Japan into the abrogation of the United States-Japan
  Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. The possibility of a total Ameri-
  can embargo on strategic materials became a vital factor affecting
  Japan's autonomous defense policy. Another variable was added to
  the equation of international politics when Nazi successes between
  April and June 1940 opened the strategically located and resource-
  rich European colonies in Southeast Asia to whichever power was
  bold enough to seize them.
  Although Yonai's appointment represented a confirmation of conser-
  vative strength among the elites, the instability of the international
  environment led to a renewed focus on military preparedness, en-
  larged the influence of the military in policymaking, and reinforced
  reformist demands for institutional changes to permit the rapid domes-
  tic mobilization of national energies. While the two military services
  struggled with each other to reach agreement on foreign and military
  policies, the army ultimately took the lead in demanding new initia-
  tives abroad and sweeping reforms at home to ensure the protection
  and expansion of Japan's international interests. The degree to which
  turmoil abroad strengthened the military's political position at home
  was amply reflected by its ability to win new policy commitments to
  alliance with the Axis powers, expansion into Southeast Asia, and new
  approaches to the management of Japan's human and material re-
  sources. These commitments threatened to embroil the nation in a
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  138 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  military confrontation with the Anglo-American powers and alter fun-
  damentally the allocation of wealth and power in Japan itself.
  From the perspective of securing Japan's primacy in East Asia, the
  army's leaders saw in the rapidly changing world situation a number of
  new problems and opportunities. In China, they supported establishing
  the Wang regime while temporarily escalating military pressure on
  Chiang Kai-shek to end the thirty-month war. However, the army was
  equally prepared to delay recognition of Wang's government if that
  would facilitate a negotiated truce with Chiang. In the event that Chiang
  resisted both the Japanese offer of negotiations and the creation of a
  rival regime, the army argued that it must eventually abandon its all-out
  attacks on the Nationalists in favor of a long-term occupation of
  China.61 Late in the spring, the collapse of Western Europe under the
  German onslaught opened the possibility for Japanese expansion into
  Southeast Asia, as a potential staging ground for the short-term strategy
  of new attacks on Chiang and as a source of strategic materials-
  including oil - to reduce economic dependency on the United States. In
  order to move south, the army felt it wise to neutralize Soviet pressures
  in the north and possible Anglo-American resistance in the south, by
  concluding a military alliance with the Axis. The navy, which had been
  deterred from southern expansion only by fears of combined Anglo-
  American resistance, shared the army's view that the situation in Eu-
  rope represented a "golden opportunity" for Japan. Navy leaders thus
  grew more supportive of the army's advocacy of an Axis alliance to take
  advantage of the power vacuum in the south.62
  In the military's view, a long-term occupation of China, expansion
  into Southeast Asia, and continued military preparedness against the
  Soviet Union required the creation of a "high-degree national defense
  state" at home. To accomplish simultaneously their ambitious military
  and foreign policy goals, all national resources had to be tightly con-
  trolled and coordinated by a streamlined but powerful centralized
  administration in which military leaders held key positions of leader-
  ship. To enact the legislation authorizing such a high-degree national
  defense state, the army's political experts knew that they needed a
  powerful support group in the lower house as well as a sympathetic
  cabinet in power.
  The Yonai government hardly seemed an ideal vehicle for the real-
  61 Boeicho boei kenshusho senshishitsu, Daihon'ei rikugunbu, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Asagumo shim-
  bunsha, 1967-8), vol. 2, p. 7.
  62 See Sadao Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," in Pearl Harbor As History,
  pp. 225-59, esp. pp. 248-50.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
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  ization of these plans. Despite the navy's changing views on southern
  expansion and alliance with the Axis, Admiral Yonai had been a stub-
  born opponent of the campaign to align Japan with the Axis in 1939.
  His foreign minister, Arita Hachiro, also sought to minimize military
  inroads in the formulation of foreign policy and favored a China policy
  focused exclusively on recognizing Wang Ching-wei's regime. Yonai
  continued General Abe's attempts to accommodate business and the
  conservative senior leadership of the lower house by inviting four
  party politicians to serve in his cabinet.6* As the new government
  assumed office, therefore, the army was already watching carefully for
  opportunities to drive it from power and create a new political party to
  endorse its own domestic programs.
  One such opportunity arose two weeks after Yonai became premier.
  On February 2, Saito Takao of the Minseito delivered a sharp speech
  in the lower house, criticizing the moralistic hypocrisy of calling the
  China conflict a "holy war against Western imperialism."6<» In Saito's
  view, the war constituted a simple struggle for power between the
  strong and the weak, and Japan's position was undermined by the
  army's simultaneous approach to Chiang and Wang. Saito's cold-
  blooded analysis of the army's nuanced policy toward the Nationalists
  provoked enormous anger in the army, for it cast doubt on the mili-
  tary's mission of building a new order in East Asia, for which thou-
  sands of soldiers had already given their lives.6* The army leadership
  pressed the lower house to have Saito's criticisms stricken from the
  Diet record and to expel the veteran politician from its membership.
  The speaker of the lower house quickly had Saito's remarks deleted,
  on the grounds that the Minseito leader's comments might encourage
  the Chinese to doubt the firmness of Japan's resolve in the war.
  Within a month, the coalition of new-party advocates that had forced
  General Abe from office engineered Saito's expulsion from the Diet as
  well. On March 9, the lower house passed a resolution supporting the
  prosecution of the "holy war" in China (Seisen kantetsu ketsugi an),
  and the new-party coalition organized itself formally as the "League of
  Diet Members Supporting the Prosecution of the Holy War" (Seisen
  kantetsu giin renmei).
  63 Matsuno Tsuruhei, Shimada Toshio, Katsu Masanori, and Sakurauchi Yukio.
  64 For the complete text of Saito's speech, including segments expurgated from the official
  lower-house minutes, see Saito Takao, Saito Takao seiji ronshu (Izushi-machi, Izushi-gun,
  Hydgo-ken: Saito Takao sensei kenshokai, 1961), pp. 19-41.
  65 For the army's reaction, see Bdeicho boei kenshusho senshishitsu, Daihon-ei rikugunbu Dai
  Toa sense kaisen keii (Tokyo: Asagumo shimbunsha, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 270-6; Koiso Kuniaki
  jijoden kankokai, ed.,Kaisuzan koso (Tokyo: Koiso Kuniaki jijoden kankokai, 1963), p. 692.
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  The league was widely and correctly perceived as the prelude to a
  new political party backed by the army.66 Senior lower-house leaders,
  who found themselves confronted by the potential disintegration of
  their party organizations, turned to Prince Konoe for their salvation.
  Their hope was that Konoe would again blunt the challenge of the
  reformists, while still proving sufficiently acceptable to the military to
  permit the preservation of the political status quo. By the late spring of
  1940, a number of leading Minseito and Seiyukai figures had conveyed
  to Konoe their willingness to dissolve their own parties to join any new
  organization he would agree to create.67
  However, Konoe's earlier opposition to reform was greatly affected
  by the recent changes in the international environment. If anything, he
  was rather pleased by the growth of reformist pressures on the Yonai
  cabinet and the lower-house leadership in early 1940. Yonai had been
  the first prime minister appointed over his opposition since the Febru-
  ary 26 incident, and Konoe had less empathy with the government's
  policies than with the army's strategy of allying with the Axis, moving
  south, neutralizing the Soviet Union, and negotiating Chiang's surren-
  der in China. Konoe's views on domestic political reform also seem to
  have become congruent with those of many reformists. After eight
  years' experience with national-unity governments, Konoe had come to
  the conclusion that the diffusion of political power institutionalized by
  the Meiji constitution no longer served Japan well.68
  Konoe contended that neither the Diet nor elections dominated by
  party politicians and their local-elite allies were adequate to integrate
  the people into the life of the state, particularly when international
  crisis demanded extraordinary effort and sacrifice by the citizenry.
  Furthermore, bureaucratic squabbling over the prerogatives of formu-
  lating and implementing important national policies resulted, in his
  view, from the narrowly specialized viewpoints of officials protected in
  their ministries by the civil service codes and the additional protection
  afforded to bureaucratic appointees at the beginning of the decade.
  The infighting that had characterized reappraisals of the nation's popu-
  lar mobilization campaigns in 1938, and the disputes between the
  army and navy over the Axis alliance in 1939 and 1940, were character-
  istic of flaws in the constitutional order that might become fatal at a
  moment when international turmoil required a high degree of adminis-
  trative coordination for the formulation and implementation of Ja-
  66 Boeicho, Daihon'ei nkugunbu Dai Toa senso kaisen keii, vol. i, pp. 276-77.
  67 Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 250-1.
  68 The following discussion is based on Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 263-7.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
  141
  pan's foreign and domestic policies. Finally, Konoe argued that the
  institutional weakness of the premiership restricted the prime minis-
  ter's ability to monitor and control the political activities of the mili-
  tary. The Meiji political settlement had deprived the cabinet of the
  leverage to force a choice between army and navy priorities or to
  coordinate military perspectives on national policy with those of other
  elite groups.
  To deal with these problems, Konoe proposed in 1940 to establish a
  new political order in Japan. The keystone of the new system was to be
  a new political party, embracing all existing groups in the lower house
  but dominated by himself as president. Privately, Konoe calculated
  that the conservative parties would account for only 40 percent of the
  new party's membership; the majority of members would be "new"
  and "reform-minded" individuals. Popular energies would be inte-
  grated under the party's monolithic control through two hierarchically
  structured mass organizations: a nationwide network of guilds linking
  the party to the economic pursuits of the people and a second hierar-
  chy of youth groups, educational bodies, and cultural groups tying the
  party to popular life.
  By simultaneously holding the positions of party leader and prime
  minister, Konoe thought he could strengthen the prime minister's
  position in controlling the people, the lower house, the bureaucracy,
  and the military. Based on a mass organization, the new party would
  provide channels for mobilizing the people in the service of the cabi-
  net's policies. Political support from the new-party membership
  would permit the cabinet to obtain Diet approval for its policies and
  legislation. The political leverage that a prime minister could derive
  from the support of the new party would enhance his position in
  negotiating with both the bureaucracy and the armed services. In
  short, the party would become a new extracabinet mechanism for
  welding the elites into a cohesive governing coalition and linking the
  people with the formulation and execution of national policies.
  Konoe's plan rested on a shrewd appraisal of the deficiencies of the
  Meiji system as a framework in which to establish a national defense
  state, and it offered a radical prescription for solving the political prob-
  lems inherent in national-unity government. Konoe recognized that his
  proposal for a strong premiership and new party represented a funda-
  mental challenge to the institutional prerogatives of all elite groups. As
  the only political organization of the lower house, the new party would
  virtually eviscerate the functions of the lower house, by transferring
  them to the new party itself. The party's mass organizational base
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  would bypass the established rural leadership for the formal articulation
  of local interests and thereby undermine the traditional village elites.
  The multiple bureaucratic linkages of central ministries to the country-
  side also would be supplanted by the new popular organization. More-
  over, Konoe proposed establishing a centralized policymaking organ
  under the prime minister's jurisdiction that would further weaken the
  ministries' policy role, and he called for a reform of the civil service
  system that would permit the appointments of men from outside the
  bureaucracy to leading government positions. Finally, the new party
  would engulf the armed forces in its membership and mass organiza-
  tions and thereby bring them under Konoe's control as party president.
  Combined with this approach to controlling the military elites, the
  prince's reform plans provided for the establishment of a supreme de-
  fense council that would permit the prime minister to influence the
  military planning of the two service ministries and the general staffs.
  A proposal as sweeping as Konoe's new order was certain to evoke
  widespread opposition from all entrenched political forces. Konoe
  conceded privately that his plans would also require a fundamental
  reinterpretation of the Meiji constitution, which had been designed
  specifically to ensure a diffusion of power among several elite groups
  rather than a concentration of power in the hands of a single individual
  or political party. To avoid the instantaneous rejection of his ideas,
  Konoe presented them in muted and reassuring language. To the
  public, he promised that "we will faithfully respect our constitu-
  tion."69 To leaders in the lower house, he intimated that the new order
  would restore parliamentary influence and rescue them from losing
  power altogether with the disintegration of their party organizations.
  To the new-party activists in and out of the Diet, he presented his
  program as an opportunity to circumvent the domination of current
  parliamentary leaders and the exigencies of the existing electoral sys-
  tem, both of which had deprived them of a leading political role. To
  the military, he implied that the new order would provide the political
  framework for the ratification of the national defense state ideal, with
  strong centralized economic planning and tight political controls. The
  new order also seemed to open the way for military technocrats to
  assume important official positions denied them by the existing civil
  service code. To the revisionist bureaucrats, his institutional reforms
  offered positions of influence that far exceeded those of their current
  69 Yabe, Konoe Fumimaro, vol. 2, pp. 106-7; Oda Toshiyo, Yokusan undo to Konoe-ko (Tokyo:
  Shunpei shobo, 1940), p. 10.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
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  offices, and to more conservative officials, the new order was por-
  trayed as a vehicle for overcoming local elite resistance to the extension
  of government administration into the village.
  Impressed by the public presentation of Konoe's views and im-
  pelled by an increasing sense of urgency as the Nazi tide in Europe
  exposed the vulnerability of the colonies in Southeast Asia, in late
  spring, the army moved swiftly to replace Yonai with Konoe. On June
  16, Army Minister Hata Shunroku resigned, and the army brought
  down the government by refusing to provide a successor. Prince
  Saionji, who had once regarded Konoe as his protege in mediating
  political conflict, was now too infirm and appalled by the implications
  of Konoe's new-order plans to participate in recommending a new
  prime minister to the throne. Instead, the new privy seal, Kido
  Koichi, canvassed the views of all former prime ministers as senior
  statesmen (jushiti). They agreed quickly that the army's position left
  no room for the appointment of anyone but Konoe.
  Before formally accepting the premiership, Konoe held an extensive
  round of policy discussions at his residence with the men slated to hold
  key positions in his cabinet: Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke,
  Navy Minister Yoshida Zengo, and Army Minister Tojo Hideki.
  These talks were designed to maximize Konoe's leverage over his
  cabinet. They took place under the implicit threat that Konoe would
  decline the emperor's offer to lead the government if his key ministers
  were unwilling to support his policy views. Satisfied that this maneu-
  ver had resulted in accord, Konoe swiftly organized his cabinet.
  At the July 26 cabinet meeting, the government adopted an "Out-
  line of Basic National Policies" (Kihon kokusaku yoko) that laid out
  the framework for domestic reform. Predicated on the need to estab-
  lish a national defense state for the implementation of Japan's interna-
  tional goals, the "Outline" was a blueprint for the new political order
  and the creation of a planned economy, with stringent controls over
  finance, production, and consumption. The "Outline" called as well
  for the cultivation of a national morality that put loyal service to the
  state ahead of private interests and individual welfare.7° The following
  day, a joint meeting of the cabinet and the military command formal-
  ized the new regime's foreign policies. For the first time, the use of
  force was authorized in Japan's expansion into Southeast Asia, and the
  army's two-pronged strategy of intimidating Chiang while slowing
  70 For a text of the "Outline," see Gaimusho, ed., Nihon gaiko nenpyo narabi ni shuyo bunsho
  (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 436-7.
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  recognition of the Wang government in China was confirmed as na-
  tional policy.71 There was also a tacit understanding that the achieve-
  ment of Japan's objectives overseas would require the conclusion of a
  military alliance with Germany and Italy and the neutralization of the
  Soviet menace by either force or diplomacy.
  The political elites responded almost immediately to Konoe's plans
  for a new political and economic order. The Social Masses Party had
  already expressed commitment to the new order by dissolving on July
  6. The conservative party organizations all followed suit by August 15.
  Although their motives differed, both the senior lower-house leader-
  ship and the new-party adherents in the Diet seemed anxious to iden-
  tify themselves quickly with Konoe's new party. They hoped thereby
  to obtain party positions that would permit them to enlarge their own
  political influence and that of the Diet in the formulation and imple-
  mentation of national policy. On the other hand, Home Ministry bu-
  reaucrats sought to gain control of the popular organization that
  Konoe had proposed, in order to extend the ministry's reach into
  every hamlet and municipality. But the Ministry of Agriculture and
  Forestry resisted this initiative, fearing that the Home Ministry would
  undermine its supervision over local economic guilds in the name of a
  streamlined administrative approach to mobilization. The political
  party forces recognized that the Home Ministry's plans could shatter
  their preeminent role in linking the countryside politically to Tokyo,
  and army leaders also opposed the creation of a Home Ministry mo-
  nopoly over local mobilization because they preferred to launch a
  radical partisan movement to engender local support for the national
  defense state. Rather than placing party-allied village leaders or local
  government officials in charge of local mobilization, the army wanted
  Imperial Military Reservist Association members installed as local
  branch leaders of the popular organization. In other words, each politi-
  cal elite group hoped to use the new political order to expand its
  influence, without surrendering any of its existing power.72
  Before the political struggle over the new order was formally joined,
  the Konoe government swiftly implemented the agreements reached
  in July on the nation's foreign policies. In China, the Japanese armed
  forces intensified bombing and political maneuvers in hopes of per-
  suading Chiang to surrender. Plans for Japanese recognition of the
  71 See the official foreign policy document "Sekai josei no suii ni tomonau jikyoku shori yoko," in
  Nikon gaiko nenpyo, pp. 437-8. On the significance of this decision, see Robert J. C. Butow,
  Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 150-3.
  72 Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 275-85, 320.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
  145
  Wang regime were slowed to give Chiang time to come to the confer-
  ence table. Following negotiations with Vichy France, the government
  dispatched troops into northern Indochina to establish a foothold for
  southern expansion. To counter the anticipated resistance from the
  United States and Britain, the Konoe government concluded the mili-
  tary alliance with Germany and Italy so ardently sought by the army
  earlier.
  All of these steps were taken against the backdrop of a continuing
  military commitment in China and the heightened likelihood of eco-
  nomic embargo or possibly armed resistance from the Anglo-American
  powers. They carried with them a need for greater military prepared-
  ness, greater national commitment to the policy of autonomy and ex-
  pansion, and a more highly supervised utilization of the limited human
  and material resources available for their implementation. Hence, they
  served to strengthen the army's case for the establishment of the na-
  tional defense state and national mobilization.
  On August 28, 1940, Konoe convened at his official residence the
  first meeting of the Preparatory Commission for Establishing the New
  Political Order.?3 The commission was composed of thirty-seven prom-
  inent national leaders, drawn from each political elite group, and its
  mission was to advise the prime minister on the contours of the new
  political order. Along with many enthusiastic reformists, however, the
  group included numerous conservatives who believed that major re-
  forms would not only destroy their political and economic interests
  but also obstruct successful national mobilization. Many business lead-
  ers on the commission, for example, objected to the new economic
  order on the grounds that industrial management had to remain in
  private hands in order to maximize wartime production. Many senior
  bureaucrats, particularly those with careers in the Home Ministry,
  held that the state's existing administrative structure could accommo-
  date the requirements of national mobilization without major institu-
  tional reforms and that a new mobilization would create local political
  chaos at a time when administrative order and efficiency were essen-
  tial. Rural leaders sought to preserve their dominance of local affairs
  by insisting that the proposed reforms of political and administrative
  linkages to Tokyo would reduce their ability to mobilize communities
  and thus inhibit effective popular mobilization. The senior lower-
  house leadership, though obliged to explore the opportunities that
  73 For a summary and analysis of the commission's deliberations, see Berger, Parties Out of
  Power, pp. 300-8,311-13.
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  Konoe's new party might offer for resuscitating their national influ-
  ence, remained staunch supporters of the interests of the business and
  local elites. They, too, were disinclined to tamper with the existing
  mechanisms of controlling national wealth, productive capacity, and
  local politics. And finally, spokesmen for the Japanist faction of the
  right wing contended that the sacred ties binding the divine emperor
  to his subjects were strong enough to ensure prompt citizen compli-
  ance with government commands, provided that strong efforts were
  made to educate the citizenry in the "way of the subject." In the
  Japanists' view, the reforms propounded by the army and Prince
  Konoe violated the imperial constitution and threatened to create a
  new bakufu-usurping governing power from the legitimately consti-
  tuted organs of state.
  The clash of elite interests in the Preparatory Commission and the
  delicacy of Japan's international position during the early fall led
  Konoe to defer a fundamental resolution of the controversies evoked
  by his new-order plans. On October 12, 1940, he created the Imperial
  Rule Assistance Association (IRAA) (Taisei yokusankai) as the institu-
  tional embodiment of the new political order, but he postponed a
  definitive explanation of how the IRAA would be integrated into the
  state or how it would serve to mobilize the population. However, the
  organization's reformist character had already been compromised in
  several respects. Konoe's choices of IRAA officers, for example, re-
  flected his inclination to include representatives of all elite viewpoints,
  rather than simply those with reformist aspirations. Moreover, early
  plans to organize local IRAA branches and deliberative assemblies
  representing vocational and cultural group affiliation were abandoned
  in favor of the Home Ministry's recommendation that local branches
  be organized on the basis of existing prefectural, municipal, town, and
  village administrative units. The IRAA's capability to act indepen-
  dently as a local agency of political mobilization was further dimin-
  ished by an agreement to appoint local officials as IRAA branch
  chiefs. 74
  Reformists attempted to counter these losses by packing local IRAA
  branch office staffs with their supporters. The army directed reservists
  to flood the membership of the branches as well. But late in 1940,
  Konoe conceded the struggle to the conservative camp. In December,
  he replaced two reformist cabinet members with two prominent Ja-
  panists dedicated to limiting the scope of IRAA activity. In order to
  74 Yokusan kokumin undo shi, p. 136; Berger, Parties Out of Power, pp. 310, 322-3.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
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  secure an operating budget for the organization, Konoe agreed in early
  1941 to abolish the IRA A Diet bureau, eliminating a potential rivalry
  between that organ and the senior parliamentary leadership. Finally,
  in March, he purged the IRAA of all remaining reformist leaders and
  turned over the organization to the Home Ministry as an appendage of
  the state's existing administrative structure.
  Although Konoe's personal motives for abandoning the reformist
  cause remain open to speculation, the results of his actions in early
  1941 were decisive." Until its dissolution in June 1945, the IRAA
  served largely as a mobilization agency of the government. The Home
  Ministry controlled both the national and local offices of the organiza-
  tion and used the IRAA hamlet branches to strengthen its controls
  over the population. Within each local government unit, citizens were
  organized into neighborhood associations (tonarigumi or rinpohan), in
  which traditional community pressures to conform evoked wide-
  spread, if sometimes superficial, compliance with directives from To-
  kyo. The neighborhood associations also allocated rationing coupons
  as wartime shortages developed during the later stages of the Pacific
  War. Apart from these practical functions, the IRAA served during its
  short period of existence as the primary government agency for mobi-
  lizing popular morale in support of the state, as the Japanists had
  insisted it should.
  Reformist hopes for radically restructuring the nation's economy
  were also frustrated in late 1940. Throughout the fall, revisionist bu-
  reaucrats and army technocrats on the Cabinet Planning Board drew
  up new policies to establish a new economic order.?6 Their plans called
  for a dramatic increase of official intervention in the economy, includ-
  ing the transfer of management functions to the state from private
  owners of large industries. Spokesmen from the business community,
  the conservative parties, and the Japanist right wing charged that the
  nationalization of industrial management was tantamount to commu-
  nism and violated constitutional guarantees of private property rights.
  On the other hand, the planning board's proposals were endorsed by
  75 Konoe's somewhat disingenuous account of his intentions at the time is recorded in Konoe
  Fumimaro-ko no shuki: Ushinawareshi seiji (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1946). The remarkable
  coincidence of the waxing and waning of prospects for a negotiated settlement of the war in
  China with Konoe's shifting attitude toward the new political order suggests that in 1940, as
  in 1938, the prince was unwilling to provoke domestic political turmoil over the reform issue
  if Japan's troops were still engaged in military operations. See Berger, Parlies Out of Power,
  pp. 253-60,274-5,308-11,317-18,332.
  76 For a detailed study of these politics, see Nakamura Takafusa and Hara Akira, "Keizai
  shintaisei," in "Konoe shintaisef' no kenkyu (Nertpd seijigaku 1972), ed. Nihon seiji gakkai
  (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1973), pp. 71-133.
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  the military, the revisionist bureaucrats, anticapitalist right-wing re-
  formists, socialists and national socialists in the IRA A, and men such
  as Arima Yoriyasu, who wanted to right imbalances of wealth and
  political influence between the industrialized cities and the agrarian
  countryside.
  Konoe defused this controversy, which briefly threatened the life of
  his cabinet, by scrapping the most controversial features of the plan-
  ning board's legislation while gearing the economy toward the support
  of the military's defense program. The new economic policy adopted
  by the cabinet on December 7, 1940, recognized the need for a
  planned economy but assured the nation's entrepreneurs a prominent
  position in the agencies of economic planning. No mention was made
  of state management or official control over private enterprise.77
  Although the political parties remained dissolved, few other changes
  in the political landscape survived the reformist challenge of 1940 and
  1941. All state institutions legitimized by the Meiji constitution re-
  mained intact and retained their original functions. If anything, the
  power of those who maintained that the nation could best be mobilized
  by preserving, rather than reforming, the existing political system was
  enhanced. The reformist right-wing and new-party coalition in the
  lower house, for example, was severely weakened by the IRAA's failure
  to become a new political party. Konoe's compromises strengthened
  the position of conservative party leaders and allowed them to regain
  control over their rank and file. The Cabinet Planning Board, staffed by
  revisionist bureaucrats and military officials, continued to serve as an
  important agency for policy coordination, but it never became the
  prime minister's brain trust. The old-line ministries continued to func-
  tion during the war with little loss of power. Indeed, the Home Ministry
  strengthened and expanded its powers, as it assumed control of the
  IRAA's mobilization activities. Business, too, continued to play an
  independent role in determining how best to allocate national economic
  resources for wartime needs, and the army was unable to build stable
  support in the lower house or a large organized partisan following in the
  countryside.
  Thus, although the Japanese government made decisions in 1940
  and 1941 that led inexorably to war with the Anglo-American powers,
  pluralistic elite politics persisted as it had during the previous decade
  of policymaking. As the moment of decision for war in the Pacific
  approached, the cabinet's tendency to heed the views of experts contin-
  77 Berger, Parties Out of Power, p. 331.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
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  ued unaltered. The voice of the military, and of bureaucrats skilled in
  mass control and mass mobilization, grew larger in the councils of
  state. It would be wrong, however, to assert that the nation fell unwill-
  ingly under the control of these elite groups or was dragged into war
  by them. Less than two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl
  Harbor, the lower house was aflame with patriotic speeches against the
  pernicious Anglo-American powers, and Diet leaders appealed to the
  cabinet to issue a call to arms to rally the people. Such sentiments
  dramatically demonstrated the willingness of party and nonparty elites
  to entrust the empire's destiny to their experts on military affairs.
  Indeed, the major schism over whether or not to go to war in the
  Pacific was a difference of opinion between the army and navy over the
  likelihood of defeating the American Pacific Fleet. Ultimately, the
  army placed the burden of responsibility for making this important
  judgment on the navy, which would bear the brunt of the fighting.
  When the navy conceded that Japan had good prospects to win a
  short-term war (of eighteen months or less), representatives of the
  high command, the cabinet, the Privy Council, the Diet, and the court
  were sufficiently reassured to accept a policy of war.
  Prince Konoe, whose foreign policies in 1937 and 1940 had contrib-
  uted so much to the diplomatic impasse between Japan and the Anglo-
  American powers, was one of the few national leaders to disapprove of
  this line of action. Believing that war in the Pacific could not work to
  Japan's advantage, he attempted to avert conflict through a summit
  conference with American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt dur-
  ing the late summer of 1941. The Americans, however, insisted that
  all Japanese gains in China and Southeast Asia be renounced before
  coming to the conference table, and the British, embattled in Europe,
  worked assiduously to stiffen the American position in the Pacific.
  Konoe thus found himself with as little room to maneuver internation-
  ally as at home, where a growing consensus favoring war had begun to
  develop. Frustrated in his efforts to ward off the outcome that his own
  policies had made inevitable, Konoe resigned in October. His succes-
  sor was General Tojo, the army minister since 1940. Less than two
  months later, Japan was at war.
  Apart from the problems of waging war, Tojo faced the same politi-
  cal tasks as his predecessors had. He had to mold the ministries,
  business, and the Diet into a cohesive coalition to guarantee stable
  government and a coordinated national mobilization program. Ini-
  tially, he attempted to resolve some of his political difficulties by
  retaining his position as army minister and taking over the post of
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  150 
  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  home minister as well. In February 1942, he yielded the Home Minis-
  try portfolio to career bureaucrat Yuzawa Michio but continued to
  serve concurrently as army minister until his cabinet resigned in July
  1944. Ironically, as his power waned, Tojo acquired more posts, tak-
  ing over as minister of munitions in November 1943 and chief of the
  army general staff in February 1944. However, this strategy did not
  measurably enhance his ability to bend other elite groups to his will.
  Competition between the army and navy over strategic priorities and
  materials, for example, continued throughout the war, and civilian
  ministries competed intensely as well over budgets and raw materials.
  A special wartime administrative law (Senji gyosei shokken tokureiho)
  in March 1943 authorized the prime minister to issue orders regarding
  production to ministries dealing with economic mobilization, but this
  measure failed to end the endemic struggles among the elites.78
  The military continued to make significant inroads into administra-
  tive areas previously closed to their representatives. Military officers sat
  on the Cabinet Planning Board, the Cabinet Information Board, the
  Asian Development Board (later the Greater East Asia Ministry), the
  Ministry of Munitions (established in 1943 to replace the Ministry of
  Commerce and Industry), and the semigovernmental control associa-
  tions that monitored business activity. Although civilian leaders re-
  sented military intrusions into their spheres of operation and strongly
  opposed them on occasion, they tolerated a limited military presence in
  their midst as a temporary wartime necessity. The presence of military
  officers helped synchronize the work of civilian offices with cabinet
  policy but was insufficient to institutionalize military control over civil-
  ian affairs even in wartime.
  The lower house had for years been the object of army and reformist
  attack, and under Tojo, opponents of the conservative party leader-
  ship renewed their attempts to undermine lower-house influence. Fol-
  lowing the initial series of military victories in the Pacific, Tojo called
  a parliamentary election in early 1942 to create a Diet membership
  loyal to the army. The general stressed that political participation
  through voting constituted a patriotic duty and hoped that the election
  would itself serve to mobilize popular morale. The army channeled its
  political campaign efforts through the Imperial Rule Assistance Young
  Adults' Corps (Yokusan sonendan), a cluster of local groups under the
  joint supervision of the Home Ministry, the Ministry of Education,
  78 Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press,
  1980), p. 31.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
  151
  and the army. It sought first to establish a monopoly of control over
  the organizations and then to use them in the election campaign on
  behalf of reformist candidates. By relying on the sonendan, the army
  hoped to bypass the conservative village elites and weaken the politi-
  cians' traditional power bases. Tojo had a semigovernmental commis-
  sion (Yokusan taisei seiji kyogikai) designate officially sponsored candi-
  dates, and the sonendan were instructed to campaign for them against
  conservative incumbents throughout the country.
  There is little evidence to suggest that Tojo's electoral objectives
  were attained. The voters do not appear to have regarded the exercise
  of the franchise as different from that of previous elections. The army
  was unable to strip the Home Ministry of a voice in controlling the
  sonendan, and the nominating commission was led by General Abe
  Nobuyuki, who as prime minister had favored working with conserva-
  tive party politicians. Predictably, the most active members of Abe's
  commission were the very parliamentary leaders that Tojo had hoped
  to oust from the lower house. Through their influence, 234 incum-
  bents received official nomination; 100 other incumbents ran without
  endorsement. In fact, only 85 incumbents failed to win either the
  commission's nomination or the voters' approval, and only 1 major
  party figure was defeated in the election. The total of 199 new Diet
  members was higher than in the elections of 1930 (127), 1932 (123),
  and 1936 (125) but was not significantly different from the 181 new
  members elected in 1928; and in part, the high number of new faces
  was attributable less to the reformists' successes than to the unique
  five-year lapse between the 1937 and 1942 elections. In the end, the
  army and its reformist allies were forced to acknowledge that the plan
  to create a pliant Diet had been a failure.79
  In late 1942 and early 1943, the army attempted to establish yet
  another new political force based on the sonendan. However, the lower
  house was able to block the formation of a central headquarters for the
  loose federation of local groups, and the Home Ministry prevented the
  army from allowing the sonendan to disrupt its local apparatus. Ulti-
  79 Figures compiled from Asahi shimbunsha, ed., Yokusan senkyo taikan (Tokyo: Asahi shim-
  bunsha, 1942). On the army's disappointment, see Sato Kenryo, Dai Toa senso kaikoroku
  (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1966), p. 287; for a reformist assessment, see Tsukui Tatsuo, ed.,
  Nippon seiji nenpo: Showa jushichi-nen (Tokyo: Showa shobo, 1942), vol. 1, pp. 235-6. See
  also Edward J. Drea, The 1942 Japanese General Election: Political Mobilization in Wartime
  Japan (International Studies, East Asian Series Research Publication 11) (Lawrence: Center
  for East Asian Studies, University of Kansas, 1979). For a different evaluation of the 1942
  election, See Robert A. Scalapino, "Elections and Political Modernization in Prewar Ja-
  pan," in Political Development in Modern Japan, ed. Robert E. Ward (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 283.
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  POLITICS AND MOBILIZATION IN JAPAN
  mately, Tojo was obliged to turn over control of the sonendan to the
  Home Ministry, as Konoe had done with the IRAA in 1941.80 Thereaf-
  ter, the prime minister worked to conciliate, rather than challenge, the
  Diet leadership. In April 1943, two lower-house leaders were ap-
  pointed to cabinet posts, and another party leader joined them in
  1944. Five lower-house leaders held cabinet portfolios in the Koiso
  and Suzuki cabinets, which succeeded Tojo's after 1944, and the par-
  liamentary vice-minister system, which had again lapsed under Konoe
  in 1940, was reinstated. Although the wartime Diet appeared to do
  little more than rubber-stamp cabinet legislative and budget propos-
  als, parliamentary unanimity was a product of the widespread desire to
  avoid any public appearance of discord in wartime and was achieved
  by the government only through extensive behind-the-scenes negotia-
  tions and compromises with the Diet leadership.
  War therefore generated extraordinary pressures for popular and
  elite conformity to government policy goals, but it did not permit the
  reconstruction of the political order along the totalitarian lines advo-
  cated by reformist proponents of the national defense state. Beneath
  the veneer of national unity, political competition remained intense
  among and within the political elites, and the Meiji political order
  strained to confine conflicts within boundaries permitting stable gov-
  ernment. When at last the nation faced the difficult decision of
  whether to surrender in the summer of 1945, the system designed to
  insulate the throne from political responsibility buckled and finally
  failed. Even though Tokyo and other Japanese cities lay in ashes, and
  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic explosions, the
  national political elites represented in the Supreme War Leadership
  Council were still divided on the question of surrender. It remained,
  finally, for the emperor to intervene directly into the political process
  and declare that the time to "endure the unendurable" had arrived,
  before the government could decide to surrender on August 15, 1945.
  Hence, as Japan girded for the occupation of its territory by the
  victorious Allied forces, its leadership was acutely aware of deficien-
  cies in the existing political system. Although vested political interests
  in the institutions of state and emotional attachment to them remained
  strong, the wartime experience paved the way for an acceptance of
  constitutional revision in the postwar years. Moreover, war and na-
  tional mobilization had exacerbated the tensions arising originally
  from Japan's transformation from an agrarian to a highly industrial-
  80 See "Dai Nippon yokusan sonendan shi," in Yokusan kokumin undo shi, pp. 893-926.
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  JAPAN'S NEW POLITICAL ORDER 
  153
  ized urban nation, and the desire for reform by forces underrepre-
  sented in the allocation of power under the Meiji constitution contin-
  ued to grow. Although the Japanese had not lost confidence in the
  ideal of rule by the meritocracy, they were prepared by their wartime
  experiences to examine and accept a new context for the insulation of
  the throne from political responsibility, the harmonization of party
  and nonparty elite groups' views and aspirations, and the integration
  of the political energies of the citizenry with the goals of the state. This
  readiness, along with the sobering experience of defeat in total war,
  had a decisive impact on shaping Japan's receptivity to the reforms of
  the Allied Occupation and to the creation of a new and democratic
  form of government in postwar Japan.
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  CHAPTER 4
  POSTWAR POLITICS, 1945-1973
  Politics in modern society is both a cause and an effect of socioeco-
  nomic change. Sometimes it is possible to discern and trace the causal
  link between the two; that is, a specific political action is seen to cause
  a specific socioeconomic change, and vice versa. More often, however,
  the direction of the link is fuzzy and difficult to determine. A political
  action is seen to result from a set of socioeconomic conditions and in
  turn to bring about a new set of socioeconomic conditions. The rela-
  tionship between politics and socioeconomic change in postwar Japan
  is no exception.
  During the twenty-eight years between the summer of 1945 and the
  summer of 1973, the Japanese society and economy underwent an
  obvious and far-reaching transformation. On the other hand, politics
  appear to have changed little, in fact so little that a casual observer
  might have missed it completely. Upon closer examination, however,
  it becomes evident that politics, too, underwent a significant change
  during the period, in a close and complex relationship with the change
  in the society's socioeconomic conditions. The unstable multiparty
  pattern that prevailed during the first postwar decade yielded to a
  short-lived quasi-two-party system in the second half of the 1950s and
  then to a stable one-party-dominated multiparty regime in the 1960s
  and 1970s.1
  It is thus possible, in terms of both socioeconomic changes and
  shifts in the balance and alignment among the political parties, to
  divide these twenty-eight years into two distinctive periods. During
  the six and a half years of the Allied Occupation and the few years
  immediately following it, the nation was still economically fragile,
  socially confused, and politically unsettled. Only toward the end of
  this period did the government and people began to feel that the
  i These correspond to what Giovanni Sartori calls, respectively, limited pluralism, two-party,
  and predominant party systems. For this chapter, terms more descriptive than Sartori's are
  useful. For comparison, see Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Parly Systems: A Framework for
  Analysis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976), esp. chaps. 5,6.
  154
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  155
  hardest part of postwar rehabilitation and reconstruction was over and
  that there was a future to look forward to. During the next eighteen
  years, however, Japan evolved into an altogether different kind of
  society. It became conspicuously and increasingly prosperous, confi-
  dent, and stable.
  Political change in postwar Japan was both a cause and an effect of
  socioeconomic changes. To be more precise, it was an aspect of a
  complex social dynamic unfolding under a set of unusual domestic and
  international circumstances, of which the nation's economic and social
  changes were important aspects.
  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT:
  THE OCCUPATION AND ITS IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH
  On August 14, 1945, the Imperial Japanese government notified the
  Allied powers of its intent to accept the provisions of the Potsdam
  Declaration of July 26 and to sign the terms necessary for carrying out
  those provisions.2 At noon the following day, the emperor's prere-
  corded message announcing the termination of hostilities was broad-
  cast to the entire nation. Two weeks later, the Supreme Commander
  for the Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas MacArthur, arrived in
  Japan. His mission was to accomplish the Occupation's basic objec-
  tives as proclaimed in the Potsdam Declaration and spelled out in
  greater detail in the United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for
  Japan issued on August 29, 1945. These objectives were (1) to ensure
  "that Japan will not again become a menace to the United States or to
  the peace and security of the world" and (2) to establish eventually "a
  peaceful and responsible government," preferably closely conforming
  to principles of democratic self-government, "which will respect the
  rights of other states and will support the objectives of the United
  States as reflected in the ideals and principles of the Charter of the
  United Nations."3 In order to accomplish these objectives, SCAP
  would immediately disarm occupied Japan and permanently demilita-
  rize and democratize it through a sweeping program of political, eco-
  nomic, and social reforms.
  No sooner had SCAP moved into its new general headquarters
  2 For the texts of the Potsdam Declaration, the Japanese note of final acceptance and related
  documents, see Government Section, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Political
  Reorientation of Japan, September 194s to September 1948, vol. 2: Appendices, republished ed.
  (Grosse Pointe, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1968), app. A.
  3 See "United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan," in SCAP, Political Reorientation of
  Japan, pp. 423—6.
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  156 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  (GHQ), in Yokohama for the first two weeks and then in Tokyo, than
  a stream of directives began to flow instructing the newly formed
  caretaker government of Japan to implement specific measures to
  achieve the Occupation's objectives. All the institutions and leaders
  held responsible for the crimes committed against humanity by the
  militarist Japanese empire were removed, and in their place, new and
  democratic institutions and personnel were to be installed. In fact, the
  ministries of Greater East Asian Affairs, Munitions, and Agriculture
  and Commerce were abolished a few days before SCAP's arrival. On
  September 2, 1945, SCAP Directive No. 1 ordered the Imperial Gen-
  eral Headquarters to begin to demobilize all Japanese armed forces,
  and eleven days later the Imperial General Headquarters itself was
  abolished. The arrest of war criminal suspects also began. In the
  middle of October, the Special Political Police and the Public Peace
  Maintenance Law (Chian ijiho) went out of existence. In the next two
  and one-half years, some 5,700 war criminal suspects were tried by the
  International Military Tribunal for the Far East; 920 of them were
  found guilty; some 200,000 "ultranationalists" were purged from pub-
  lic office; Shinto was discontinued as the state religion; the largest
  holding and trading companies (zaibatsu) were dissolved; rural land
  reform was instituted; and the civil service was overhauled.4
  The Imperial constitution of Japan was "amended" in theory, but it
  was replaced in reality by an entirely new constitution based on a set of
  fundamentally different principles. It was drafted by personnel of the
  GHQ's Government Section (GS) in early 1946. After debate in the
  Diet, it was promulgated in November 1946 by the Japanese govern-
  ment.* It transferred sovereignty from the emperor to the people,
  renounced war and the nation's right of belligerency, and guaranteed
  to all citizens a long and comprehensive list of civil liberties. The Diet
  was declared the "highest organ of state power" and "the sole lawmak-
  ing organ of the state." Its structure remained bicameral, but the
  nonelective House of Peers was replaced by an elected House of Coun-
  cilors, and the House of Representatives became the larger and more
  powerful of the two chambers. Vested with executive power, the cabi-
  4 For an overview of the Occupation policies and their outcomes, see Oka Yoshitake, ed., Gendai
  Nihon no seiji katei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1958), pt. 1; Robert E. Ward, "Reflections on the
  Allied Occupation and Planned Political Change in Japan," in Political Development in Modem
  Japan, ed. Robert E. Ward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), chap. 13.
  5 On the making of the 1947 constitution, see Sato Tatsuo, Nihonkoku kenpo seiritsu shi, 2 vols.
  (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1962, 1964); Kenpo chosakai, Kenpo seilei no keika ni kansuru sko-iinkai
  hdkokusko, no. 2: Kenpo chosakai hokokusho fuzoku bunsho (Tokyo: Kenpo chosakai, July
  1964).
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  157
  net was now collectively responsible to the Diet. The judiciary was
  constitutionally independent and coequal, if not superior, to the Diet
  and the cabinet, with the supreme court given the power of judicial
  review.6 Finally, the new constitution explicitly established the princi-
  ple of local autonomy.
  Other laws followed to establish new rules and procedures for the
  operation and administration of the Diet, the cabinet, the imperial
  household, courts of justice, local government, the national and local
  public services, and the like. The once powerful Home Ministry was
  broken down into lesser and innocuous units: the ministries of Labor,
  Health and Welfare, Construction, and Local Autonomy.
  With the departure of the Home Ministry also went the state police
  and its special service units under the ministry's tightly centralized con-
  trol. Ordinary police functions were then divided into two categories,
  one composed of a unified force called the National Rural Police and the
  other made up of thousands of mutually autonomous municipal police
  forces.7 The new Labor Union Law guaranteed to all workers the right
  to organize and engage in collective actions to improve their working
  and living conditions.8 A sweeping land reform resulted in the wholesale
  redistribution of Japan's agricultural land, and of the wealth and power
  associated with landownership. The highly elitist education system di-
  rectly controlled by the Ministry of Education was also thoroughly over-
  hauled and democratized. A system of compulsory and free six-year
  primary and three-year secondary schools and voluntary three-year high
  schools and four-year universities modeled after the American public
  educational system was introduced, along with the principle of coeduca-
  tion of male and female students.9 Equally important, the administra-
  tive control of the primary through the high schools was decentralized
  by the creation of elected local boards of education. Under the new
  constitution and the revised civil code, the privileged status that the old
  system had accorded to the male head of a family was abolished, and the
  principle of legal equality between a husband and wife was established.I0
  6 On the theory and practice of judicial review under Japan's 1947 constitution, see Dan F.
  Henderson, ed., The Constitution of Japan: Its First Twenty Years, 7947-67 (Seattle: Univer-
  sity of Washington Press, 1968), pt. 2.
  7 Hoshino Yasusaburo, "Keisatsu seido no kaikaku," in Sengo kaikaku, ed. Tokyo daigaku
  shakaikagaku kenkyujo, 8 vols. (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1974-5), vol. 3: Seiji
  katei, pp. 287-350.
  8 See Tezuka Kazuaki, "Kyu-rodokumiaiho no keisei to tenkai: Shoki rodo iinkai no kino
  bunseki o chushin to shite," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 5: Rodo seisaku, pp. 234-8.
  9 Takemae Eiji, Senryo sengo shi: Tai-nichi kanri seisaku no zenyo (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1980),
  chap. 7.
  10 Watanabe Yozo, "Sengo kaikaku to Nihon gendaiho," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1: Kadai to
  shikaku, pp. 103,105-6.
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  POSTWAR POLITICS
  SCAP's reformist zeal, however, lasted for only a few years. By about
  1950 many of the legislative and administrative measures previously
  undertaken to accomplish the Occupation's initial goals, namely, the
  demilitarization and democratization of Japan, had been or were about
  to be significantly modified or abandoned altogether. In response to
  rising cold war tensions, a "reverse course" intensified during the last
  months of the Occupation and continued under Japanese governments
  in the post-Occupation period.
  When the Korean War broke out in the summer of 1950, SCAP
  ordered a purge of all members of the Japan Communist Party's Cen-
  tral Committee and then suspended the party's central newspaper,
  Akahata (Red Flag). This was followed by the suspension of news
  bulletins published by local party branches and a systematic and exten-
  sive purge of communists and communist suspects in the public ser-
  vices, mass media, and key industries.11 Meanwhile, the reinstatement
  of those who had been purged earlier under the initial demilitarization
  and democratization policy began in the spring of 1947. As a result,
  virtually all of the 201,815 persons who had once been purged had
  regained their civil rights and political freedom by the end of 195i.lz
  The demilitarization policy was reversed when at SCAP's order the
  National Police Reserve was established in August 1950 as a first step
  in Japan's gradual rearmament. When the Japanese peace treaty was
  signed in San Francisco in September 1951, a bilateral mutual security
  treaty was also concluded between Japan and the United States to
  provide military protection for disarmed Japan, "in the expectation,
  however, that Japan will itself increasingly assume responsibility for
  its own defense against direct and indirect aggression. . . ."'3
  During the first few post-Occupation years, the Japanese govern-
  ment pushed the "reverse course" further by persuading the Diet to
  pass a series of bills either nullifying or seriously modifying the intent
  of the early Occupation's key reforms. These bills included laws tight-
  ening the control of subversive activities (passed in July 1952), estab-
  11 See Shiso no kagaku kenkyukai, ed., Kyodo kenkyu: Nihon senryo kenkyu jilen {Kyodo kenkyu:
  Nihon senryogun, app.) (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1978), p. 150.
  12 Hans H. Baerwald, The Purge of Japanese Leaden Under the Occupation, vol. 8: University of
  California Publications in Political Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
  Press, 1959), pp. 78-9.
  13 For the text of the treaty, see George R. Packard HI, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty
  Crisis of i960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 355—7. On the circum-
  stances surrounding the negotiations on the peace and security treaties, see Nishimura
  Kumao, San Furanshisuko heiwa jbyaku, vol. 27: Nihon gaikoshi (Tokyo: Kajima heiwa
  kenkyu jo, 1971); and Frederick S. Dunn, Peace-Making and the Settlement with Japan (Prince-
  ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963).
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  159
  lishing an embryonic defense agency innocuously named the Safety
  Agency (August 1952), regulating more stringently strikes and other
  forms of worker actions (August 1953), softening antimonopoly regula-
  tions (July 1953), strengthening central control over the schools (May
  1954) and over the police (June 1954), and finally, establishing the
  Defense Agency and the Self-Defense Forces (June 1954).14 Critics
  regarded these and other similar measures as part of a concerted effort
  by the conservatives to subvert the postwar reforms and to revive the
  prewar authoritarian and militarist regime, an effort dubbed "reverse
  course" by the media.
  None of the legislative and administrative measures undertaken after
  April 1952, when the peace treaty went into effect and the Occupation
  formally ended, could be directly attributed to SCAP's or Washington's
  policies. The entire reverse course was nonetheless often associated
  with and blamed on the shift of the Occupation policy in the late 1940s
  and, in the minds of many Japanese, tainted the accomplishments of the
  demilitarization and democratization programs that SCAP once vigor-
  ously encouraged. As a result, the reaction of the Japanese public to the
  Occupation and its policies was diverse and complex. Some either sup-
  ported or opposed the Occupation regime because of its initial crusade
  against militarism and authoritarianism, whereas others did so because
  of its later crusade against communism.
  Japanese government in the early Occupation period
  The first two postwar Japanese cabinets were not formed through
  electoral processes and therefore were technically not representative of
  the Japanese people at large. The first was led by a relative of the
  emperor and a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, Prince Higashi-
  kuni Naruhiko. He was ordered by the emperor, on the recommenda-
  tion of the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kido Koichi, to form a
  caretaker cabinet following the resignation of the last wartime cabinet
  led by General Suzuki Kantaro, on August 15,1945.15 Other members
  of the cabinet were selected mainly by former prime minister Prince
  Konoe Fumimaro and former Cabinet Information Bureau president
  14 Seki Hirohara, "Taigai kankei no kozo to gaiko," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977: 55-nen taisei no
  keisei to hokai: Zoku gendai Nihon no seiji katei, ed. Nihon seiji gakkai (Tokyo: Iwanami
  shoten, 1979). pp. 77, 85; Takabatake Michitoshi, "Taishu undo no tayoka to henshitsu,"
  Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 324.
  15 Amakawa Akira, "Dai-43-dai: Higashikuni naikaku: Miyasama naikaku no shusen shori," in
  Nihon naikakushi roku, ed. Hayashi Shigeni and Tsuji Kiyoaki, 6 vols. (Tokyo: Daiichi hoki,
  1981), vol. 5, pp. 3-8.
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  l6o 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  TABLE 4.1
  Japanese cabinets, 1945-1974
  Prime
  minister
  Higashikuni Naruhiko
  Shidehara Kijuro
  Yoshida Shigeru
  Katayama Tetsu
  Ashida Hitoshi
  Yoshida Shigeru
  Yoshida Shigeru
  Yoshida Shigeru
  Yoshida Shigeru
  Hatoyama Ichiro
  Hatoyama Ichiro
  Hatoyama Ichiro
  Ishibashi Tanzan
  Kishi Nobusuke
  Kishi Nobusuke
  Ikeda Hayato
  Ikeda Hayato
  Ikeda Hayato
  Sato Eisaku
  Sato Eisaku
  Sato Eisaku
  Tanaka Kakuei
  Tanaka Kakuei
  Cabinet
  number
  1st
  2nd
  3rd
  4th
  5th
  1st
  2nd
  3rd
  1st
  2nd
  1st
  2nd
  3rd
  1st
  2nd
  3rd
  1st
  2nd
  Cabinet term
  17 August 1945 to 9 October 1945
  9 October 1945 to 22 May 1946
  22 May 1946 to 24 May 1947
  24 May 1947 to 10 March 1948
  10 March 1948 to 15 October 1948
  15 October 1948 to 16 February 1949
  16 February 1949 to 30 October 1952
  30 October 1952 to 21 May 1953
  21 May 1953 to 10 December 1954
  10 December 1954 to 19 March 1955
  19 March 1955 to 22 November 1955
  22 November 1955 to 23 December 1956
  23 December 1956 to 25 February 1957
  25 February 1957 to 12 June 1958
  12 June 1958 to 19 July 1960
  19 July 1960 to 8 December 1960
  8 December 1960 to 9 December 1963
  9 December 1963 to 9 November 1964
  9 November 1964 to 17 February 1967
  17 February 1967 to 14 January 1970
  14 January 1970 to 7 July 1972
  7 July 1972 to 22 December 1972
  22 December 1972 to 9 December 1974
  Ogata Taketora, who served in the Higashikuni cabinet, respectively,
  as the de facto deputy prime minister and the chief cabinet secretary16
  (see Table 4.1).
  The primary mission of the first postwar cabinet was to prevent
  and, if necessary, put down possible revolts by recalcitrant elements in
  the Japanese armed forces in the wake of Japan's surrender and during
  the critical initial phase of the Allied Occupation of the nation. Com-
  posed of largely conservative but loyal representatives of the prewar
  and wartime Japanese establishment, the cabinet succeeded in helping
  the nation make the unprecedented and painful transition from bellig-
  erency to peace without major mishap. During the fifty hectic days
  that it lasted, the cabinet dealt with the arrival of the Occupation
  forces, the installation of the SCAP GHQ, the signing of Japanese
  surrender, and the implementation of the first batch of SCAP direc-
  tives and instructions. However, it was unable to cope as successfully
  with the SCAP memorandum of October 4, 1945, ordering the re-
  16 Ibid., pp. 21-2.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  l6l
  moval of all forms of restriction on political, civil, and religious liber-
  ties, and it resigned the following day.'7
  Prince Higashikuni's immediate successor, Shidehara Kijuro, was
  appointed by the emperor, again on Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal
  Kido's personal recommendation.18 Kido consulted with the president
  of the Privy Council, Hiranuma Kiichiro, and used the former diplomat
  and foreign minister in the Higashikuni cabinet, Yoshida Shigeru, as
  his intermediary in negotiations with Shidehara on the one hand and
  with SCAP on the other. Shidehara, a former diplomat, reappointed his
  onetime subordinate, Yoshida, as foreign minister and a member of the
  House of Peers, Tsugita Daisaburo, as chief cabinet secretary. The
  three men then decided on other members of the cabinet, including five
  members of the House of Representatives associated with, but not
  representative of, the defunct prewar political parties.'»
  The Shidehara cabinet lasted about seven months. In that period, it
  presided over the implementation of the reforms stipulated in the afore-
  mentioned memorandum of October 4,1945, and a series of other and
  equally revolutionary measures to demilitarize and democratize the
  nation. The latter included implementation of a five-point instruction
  that SCAP issued directly to Shidehara on October 11, 1945, ordering
  (1) the emancipation of women through their enfranchisement, (2) the
  encouragement of the unionization of labor, (3) the liberalization of
  education, (4) the abolition of systems that held the people in constant
  fear through secret inquisition and abuse, and (5) the democratization
  of economic institutions.20 Under SCAP pressure, the cabinet also initi-
  ated a radical land reform, an equally sweeping purge of "ultrana-
  tionalists," andj above all, efforts to amend the constitution.21
  While Shidehara and his cabinet struggled to keep up with the
  succession of SCAP directives in the midst of a deepening economic
  crisis, the first postwar House of Representatives general election was
  held on April 10, 1946. No party won a clear majority, which resulted
  in a long delay in the appointment of Shidehara's successor. After
  complicated negotiations among the leaders of the major parties,
  Shidehara recommended to the emperor the appointment of Hato-
  yama Ichiro, the founder and president of the Japan Liberal Party,
  which had won a plurality in the general election. That same night,
  17 Ibid., pp. 22-9. For the text of the memorandum, see SCAP, Political Reorientation of Japan,
  vol. 2, pp. 463-5.
  18 Amakawa, "Dai-44-dai: Shidehara naikaku: 'Minshu' kaikaku no hajimari," in Nihon
  naikakushiroku, vol. 5, pp. 33-4. 
  19 Ibid., pp. 36-8.
  20 For the text of the instruction, see SCAP, Political Reorientation of Japan, vol. 2, p. 741.
  21 Amakawa, "Dai-44-dai: Shidehara naikaku," pp. 38-58.
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  162 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  however, SCAP announced Hatoyama's dismissal and after another
  round of negotiations among the parties, Yoshida was appointed first
  as a Liberal Party executive and then as the new prime minister.22
  A well-known Anglophile among prewar Japanese diplomats and a
  prominent opponent of the military during World War II, Yoshida,
  unlike Hatoyama, proved acceptable, though hardly a boon, to SCAP
  and the reformists in the GHQ. The first postwar party cabinet of
  Liberal and Progressive Party politicians thus was born. During the
  next twelve months, the cabinet invested most of its time and energy
  in feeding the starving nation and coping with the specter of a general
  strike called by the newly organized labor unions. Yoshida and his
  cabinet, however, also oversaw, if often reluctantly, an extension of
  the purge program, the implementation of a substantially expanded
  land reform, a sweeping educational reform, and parliamentary de-
  bates on and the approval of a new SCAP-authored constitution.23
  Before it resigned on May 20,1947, the Yoshida cabinet also presided
  over the enactment of a newly drafted House of Councilors and a revised
  House of Representatives members election laws, the Local Self-
  Government Law and the National Diet Law. Having thus helped lay
  the basic rules of electoral and parliamentary politics under the new
  system, the Liberals and Progressives (by then renamed Democrats)
  campaigned in the first Diet elections under those very rules and, ironi-
  cally, lost to the Socialists. The fall of the first Yoshida cabinet and the
  arrival of the first and, so far, the only postwar Socialist-led cabinet
  completed the transition from the wartime regime to the postwar system
  of representative government.
  Parties and elections in occupied Japan
  At the outset of the Occupation period, all but one of the main political
  parties of postwar Japan made their appearance (see Figure 4.1). Two of
  them were prewar conservative parties regrouped and renamed the
  Japan Liberal Party (Nihon jiyuto), composed of former Seiyukai politi-
  cians, and the Japan Progressive Party (Nihon shimpoto), composed of
  former Minseito members plus a few associated with one Seiyukai fac-
  22 Amakawa, "Dai-45-dai: Dai-l-ji Yoshida naikaku," in Nihon naikakushi roku, vol. 5, pp. 74-
  7; Inoki Masamichi, Hydden Yoshida Shigeru, vol. 4: Santen no maki (Tokyo: Yomiuri shin-
  bunsha, 1981), pp. 8-14; J. W. Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the
  Japanese Experience, 1878-1954 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp.
  309-10. See also Yoshida Shigeru, Kaisdjunen, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1957), vo1- 2> P-
  90.
  23 Amakawa, "Dai-45-dai: Dai-l-ji Yoshida naikaku," pp. 81-93; Inoki, Hydden, vol. 4,
  chap. 23.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Nihon Kyosanto
  (Japan Communist Party)
  Officially reestablished
  Oct. 1945
  Nihon Shakaito
  (Japan Socialist Party)
  Established Nov. 1945
  by various prewar socialist
  group factions
  Rodosha Nominto
  (Worker-Farmer Party)
  Dec. 1948
  Oct. 1951
  Nihon Jiyuto
  (Japan Liberal Party)
  Established Nov. 1945
  mainly by the Kuhara
  faction of the
  Rikken Seiyukai
  Nihon Shimpoto
  (Japan Progressive Party)
  Established Nov. 1945 mainh
  by the Rikken Minseito
  and the Nakajima faction
  of the Rikken Seiyukai
  Nihon Kyodoto
  (Japan Cooperative Party)
  Established Dec. 1945;
  no direct links
  to prewar parties
  (Social Reform Party)
  Jan. 1948
  Minshuto
  (Democratic Party)
  Mar. 1947
  Kyodoto
  July 1952
  Saha
  (Left faction)
  Uha
  (Right faction)
  t
  Oct. 1952
  S
  Nihon Shakaito
  (Japan Socialist Party)
  Oct. 1955
  Jan. 1957
  t f
  Minshu Jiyuto
  (Democratic Liberal Party)
  Mar. 1948
  Jiyutd
  (Liberal Party) 
  Kokumin Minshuto
  Mar. 1950 
  (People's Democratic Party)
  Apr. 1950
  I
  Nihon Jiyuto 
  Nihon Kaishinto
  (Japan Liberal Party) (Japan Reform Party)
  Nov. 1953 
  Feb. 1952
  I
  Kokumin Kyodoto
  (People's Cooperative Party)
  Mar. 1947
  Minshu Shakaito
  (Democratic Socialist Party)
  Jan. 1960
  I
  Minshato
  (Democratic Socialist Party)
  Apr. 1970
  T\\
  Komeito
  (Clean Government Party)
  Nov. 1964
  Nihon Minshuto
  (Japan Democratic Party)
  Nov. 1954
  I
  Jiyu Minshuto
  (Liberal Democratic Party)
  Nov. 1955
  Figure 4.1. Political parties, 1945-1974. (Based on Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 6., p. 209.)
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  164 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  tion.2" Both parties came into being in November 1945. A third conser-
  vative party, the Japan Cooperative Party (Nihon kyodoto), followed a
  few days later. The Progressives changed their name to Democratic
  Party (Minshuto) in 1947 and then split in 1949, one half joining the
  Liberals and the other half the Cooperativists. The Democrat-Coopera-
  tive group was called the National Democratic Party (Kokumin min-
  shuto) for a while but adopted a new name, the Reform Party
  (Kaishinto) in early 1952. When the Allied Occupation of the country
  ended, there were thus two rival conservative parties.
  Developments on the left side of the ideological and partisan divide
  paralleled those on the right. Two rival parties, both with long-
  standing and tangled roots in the party politics of prewar Japan, rees-
  tablished themselves in late 1945. Of the two, the Japan Socialist Party
  (Nihon shakaito: JSP) first appeared in early November. A coalition of
  several competing schools of the prewar socialist movement, the party
  split twice j in early 1950 and late I95i.25 At the end of this period,
  right-wing and left-wing Socialist parties were fighting each other even
  while competing with the Japan Communist Party (Nihon kyosanto:
  JCP), which had been reestablished in December 1945.26
  The initial purge order of November 1945 cost the Progressives
  about 93 percent and the Liberals about 45 percent of their seats in the
  House of Representatives, only a few months before the first postwar
  general elections.27 On the other hand, the Socialists suffered little
  from the purge, and the Communists not at all. The reestablishment
  of the JCP was in fact made possible by direct SCAP intervention: It
  was at SCAP's order, and in the face of considerable resistance by the
  Japanese government, especially by the justice and home ministers of
  the Higashikuni cabinet, that some three thousand political prisoners,
  including leaders of the prewar JCP, were set free in October 1945.28
  The first postwar general elections of April 1946 were unusual in
  24 For a concise description of the origins of the major parties of postwar Japan, see Ito Takashi,
  "Sengo seito no keisei katei," in Senryoki Nihon no keizai to seiji, ed. Nakamura Takafusa
  (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp. 339-82. See also Haruhiro Fukui, Party in
  Power: The Japanese Liberal-Democrats and Policymaking (Canberra: Australian National
  University Press; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), chap. 2.
  25 See Alan B. Cole, George O. Totten, and Cecil H. Uyehara, Socialist Parties in Postwar Japan
  (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), chap. 1; J. A. A. Stockwin, The Japanese
  Socialist Party and Neutralism: A Study of a Political Party and Its Foreign Policy (Carlton,
  Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1968), chap. 4.
  26 On the evolution of the Communist movement in postwar Japan, see Robert A. Scalapino,
  The Japanese Communist Movement, 7920-7966 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
  California Press, 1967), especially chaps. 2,3.
  27 Ito, "Sengo seito," in Senryoki Nihon, pp. 96, 99; Fukui, Party in Power, p. 38.
  28 Takemae, Senryo sengo shi, pp. 99-156-
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  165
  several ways. First, SCAP intended these elections to serve as a plebi-
  scite on the issue of constitutional revision in general and on the SCAP
  draft of the revision in particular and so scheduled them to serve that
  purpose.29 Second, for the first time since 1919, a "large" multimember
  electoral district system was adopted. Each prefecture constituted a
  unified electoral district and returned between four and fourteen mem-
  bers, each voter casting between one and three ballots, depending on
  the number of members to be elected in the district.3° This was novel
  enough to ensure some unexpected results. The participation of women
  for the first time, the result of another SCAP policy, added to the
  uncertainty and confusion. The result was the emergence of a frag-
  mented multiparty pattern and an unstable cabinet led by Yoshida.
  The next general elections of 1947 also resulted in a surprise, even
  though the large district system was abandoned and replaced by the
  more familiar "medium-sized" multimember system-a system that
  had been in effect between 1925 and 1945. Under this system, a
  subdivision of a prefecture constituted an electoral district, each dis-
  trict returning between three and five members and each voter casting
  a single ballot.3' For the first time in the country's history, the Social-
  ists won a plurality, no doubt with the support of a substantial seg-
  ment of the newly organized labor movement. The party became a
  senior partner in a coalition government formed by Democrats and
  National Cooperativists. The general elections of 1949, too, were dif-
  ferent in that a single party-the Liberals-won majority-party status
  for the first time since 1945, and at the same time, the Communists
  won significant representation with thirty-five seats. The performance
  of the two parties reflected the economic impact of the Dodge line
  austerity policy, which was welcome from the establishment's point of
  view and devastating from labor's.
  The 1949 general elections also were noteworthy in another respect.
  For the first time, a substantial number of senior civil servants ran for
  and won Diet seats, apparently lured by the vast decision-making
  power invested in the new Diet by the 1947 constitution.
  The Liberals maintained their majority position in 1952 but won
  only a plurality in 1953 and 1955. The Communists, meanwhile, were
  virtually wiped out by the "Red purge" of 1950, winning no seats in
  1952, one in 1953, and two in 1955. As the first phase of postwar
  Japanese politics drew to a close, the pattern of the balance of power
  29 See Kenpo chosakai, Kenpo kaisei no keika, pp. 350-1, 453-4.
  30 Shugiin and Sangiin, eds., Gikai seido shichiju-nen shi, 12 vols. (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsu-
  kyoku, 1960-2),Shiryo-hen, pp. 278-87. 
  31 Ibid., pp. 288-308.
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  166 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  among the main political parties was thus roughly the same as it had
  been at the beginning. The electorate remained uncertain and skittish.
  Many were unhappy with the state of both the economy and politics.
  Fifty-six percent of the respondents in a 1953 public opinion poll were
  dissatisfied with the performance of their representatives in the Diet,
  and 60 percent in a 1954 poll did not feel that government policies
  reflected their opinion.32
  Japanese reaction to the Allied Occupation
  Despite the unprecedented scope and depth of SCAP's "democratic
  reforms," there was remarkably little overt opposition or resistance
  from the Japanese public to either the Occupation as such or its spe-
  cific policies. There were several reasons for this rather surprising
  situation.
  First, the majority of the Japanese were tired of the war, which had
  long ceased to be an inspiring experience and by the summer of 1945
  had turned into an endless nightmare. They had probably not ex-
  pected the war to end when and how it did, but neither did they have
  reason to object to the sudden outbreak of peace after the succession of
  air attacks against the major cities of the country, culminating in the
  destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs.33 Further-
  more, many were inclined to blame the government, especially the
  military, for both the war and its consequences.34
  Nonetheless, there was apparently a widespread initial fear among
  the Japanese public of the Occupation and its military personnel.
  Some communities in and around Tokyo were beset by rumors of
  assaults on Japanese women by American servicemen, rumors that
  may have been based on memories of the Japanese soldiers' conduct in
  China and Southeast Asia in earlier years.3* The fear, however, did not
  last long, partly because it was not well founded. According to one
  incomplete estimate, 957 incidents involving members of the Occupa-
  32 Shinohara Hajime, Gendai nihon no bunka henyo: Sono seijigaku-teki kosatsu (Tokyo: Renga
  shobo, 1971), pp. 88-9.
  33 For pertinent comments, see Fukawa Kiyoshi, "Nihonjin no hi-senryo kan," in Kyodo
  kenkyii: Nihon senryo, ed. Shiso no kagaku kenkyukai (Tokyo: Tokuma shot en, 1972), pp.
  16-18; Watanuki Joji, "Kodo seicho to keizai taikoku ka no seiji katei," in Nenpo seijigaku,
  1977. PP- 142-
  34 See comments in Yanaihara Tadao, "Sosetsu," in Sengo nihon shoshi, ed. Yanaihara Tadao, 2
  vols. (Tokyo: Tokyodaigakushuppankai, 1958), vol. i,pp. 13-14.
  35 Fukawa, "Nihonjin no hisenryo kan," p. 21; Chihara Jun, "Gunju sangyo rodosha no haisen
  e no taio," in Kyodo kenkyii: Nihon senryo, p. 99; and Kata Koji, "Gunsei jidai no fuzoku,"
  Kyodo kenkyii: Nihon senryo, p. 260.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  167
  tion forces were recorded in the first two months of their presence-
  from the beginning of September to the end of October 1945-in
  Yokohama where, before the arrival of the Occupation units, the
  mayor had advised leaders of the neighborhood associations to evacu-
  ate the young women to safer places. 36 According to another record,
  throughout the country, 2,536 Japanese were killed and 3,012 were
  injured in incidents involving foreign troops between September 1945
  and September 1958.37 These numbers were by no means negligible,
  but they were not as large as many Japanese had anticipated. Some
  Japanese accepted them fatalistically, if resentfully, to be endured like
  earthquakes or floods.^8 For many others, however, this fear was rap-
  idly replaced by a sense of relief and even trust.
  Second, the mass media were under SCAP's tight control through-
  out the Occupation period. Whereas the country was ruled in most
  respects indirectly through the existing machinery of the Japanese
  government, the control of the information media was an exception.
  At the beginning of the Occupation, a, system of direct control was
  established for both the press and radio through the enforcement of
  rigid rules known as the press and radio codes.& The strict adherence
  to these codes was ensured by informal guidance and direction pro-
  vided by the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) of the
  GHQ and the prepublication censorship of manuscripts and radio
  programs by the Civil Censorship Department (CCD) of the Civil
  Intelligence Section (CIS). Dissemination of information about the
  censorship system itself was strictly controlled, and there were no
  significant infractions of the rules by Japanese authors, publishers, or
  broadcasters. The Japanese public was thus kept almost totally unin-
  formed and unaware of the practice.*0
  The ordinary Japanese reader or listener was treated instead to a
  flood of articles and programs depicting or symbolizing the virtues of
  American democracy. Alongside the hitherto suspended but once
  popular literary and current affairs magazines, such as Shincho, Bungei
  36 Tsukuda Jitsuo, "Yokohama kara no shogen," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nihon senryo, pp. 114-16,
  121.
  37 Tsukuda, "Yokohama kara no shogen," pp. 114, 128. Unfortunately, no details are available
  regarding the specific circumstances surrounding any of these incidents.
  38 Fukawa, "Nihonjin no hisenryo kan," p. 25. See also Shinohara Hajime and Miyazaki Ryuji,
  "Sengo kaikaku to seiji karucha," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1, p. 246.
  39 Okudaira Yasuhiro, "Hosohosei no sai-hensei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3: Seiji katei, p. 390,
  n. 17; Arai Naoyuki, "Senryo seisaku to janarizumu," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nihon senryo, pp.
  177-9. See also Fukushima Juro, "Senryoka ni okeru ken'etsu seisaku to sono jittai,"
  Senryoki Nihon, pp. 339-82.
  40 Arai, "Senryo seisaku to janarizumu," p. 179; Fukushima, "Senryoka ni okeru ken'etsu
  seisaku," pp. 340-2, 370.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  168 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  shunju, Chud koron, and Kaizo, which reappeared one after another
  after the autumn of 1945, a beginners' reader in colloquial English
  came on the market in late 1945, followed the next year by the Japa-
  nese edition of the Reader's Digest.*1
  The traditionally austere repertory of the nation's broadcasting mo-
  nopoly, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, or NHK (Nihon hoso
  kyokai), became considerably more "democratic" and colorful with
  the addition of such novel programs as "Watashitachi no kotoba" (Our
  words), "Nodo jiman shirouto engeikai" (Amateur singers' contest),
  "Hoso toronkai" (Roundtable of the air), and "Senshu no kokkai
  kara" (The Diet last week).*2 The inspiration probably came from the
  staff of the CIE and CCD, both of which were headquartered in the
  NHK building in downtown Tokyo. An English conversation course,
  disarmingly entitled "Come, Come English Conversation," was broad-
  cast for fifteen minutes every weekday evening at 6:00 P.M. and was
  taught by Hirakawa Tadaichi, a repatriated chief newscaster on the
  staff of NHK's international broadcasting department. The program
  enjoyed an unrivaled audience rating throughout the Occupation pe-
  riod and long afterwards, inspiring over one thousand fan clubs
  throughout the country. Hirakawa may well have been the most effec-
  tive advertiser and popularizer of linguistic as well as cultural and
  political "Americanisms."43
  Finally, the importation and distribution of foodstuffs donated by
  the United States government in response to persistent requests by the
  Yoshida government helped change many Japanese minds. On July 5,
  1947, both houses of the Diet officially thanked the Americans in a
  nonpartisan resolution of gratitude.^ More generally, the Japanese
  were profoundly impressed with both the affluence and the generosity
  of the Americans as they perceived them through the relief goods as
  well as the mass media.
  The Japanese reaction to the Occupation and its policies was thus
  pragmatic rather than ideological. They accepted disarmament and
  democracy just as they accepted the arrival of SCAP and the foreign
  troops; they tried to make the best of a bad situation without fighting
  what they saw as a force beyond their control. It is highly doubtful that,
  if left alone, the Japanese on their own initiative would have undertaken
  322.
  • y ~y 
  A 
  ••TIT J 
  *^ *f*w*y^ 
  * •*» K^ *r^w ww j 
  f 
  f 
  * J 
  " J 
  ^^^T *
  44 Fukawa, "Nihonjin no hisenryo kan," pp. 22-4; Iwamoto Sumiaki, "Senryogun no tai-nichi
  nogyo seisaku," in Senryoki Nihon, p. 188.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  169
  any of the most important reforms of the Occupation period. The Japa-
  nese press began to advocate amending the constitution only after SCAP
  ordered the Japanese government to do so, and though few newspapers
  actively opposed it, both the form and substance of the new constitution
  stunned even the most liberal among them.« Considering that an over-
  whelming majority of Japanese wanted the institution of the emperor to
  be preserved, the most important reason for the absence of public
  opposition to the new constitution may well have been that it provided
  for the retention of the throne, if only as the symbol, rather than the
  ruler, of the nation. «6
  In any event, the Japanese did not win but simply were given all the
  new rights and freedoms spelled out in the new constitution. Like the
  relief goods that arrived in the midst of the 1946 food crisis, democ-
  racy was delivered by the Occupation via the Japanese government
  and was accepted by the bewildered public without a burst of enthusi-
  asm. The amendment of the constitution was not a significant issue in
  the April 1946 House of Representatives general elections; indeed,
  many opposition candidates campaigned with the slogan "Food Before
  a New Constitution."47 As time passed, however, the significance of
  the reforms began to sink in, especially among those who either bene-
  fited or suffered from them most directly.
  The masses and the Occupation
  The masses generally benefited from the Occupation's policies and
  reforms, although they did not profit equally. For some, the experi-
  ence of the Occupation was not only confusing but even painful.
  Women were one of the most obvious and important beneficiaries of
  the Occupation. After all, they represented one-half of the entire popu-
  lation and, in a system of universal adult suffrage, would control one-
  half of the vote. The emancipation and enfranchisement of women
  were not obviously or completely the handiwork of SCAP. The Japa-
  nese suffrage movement dated back to the 1910s. Some important
  officials in the Japanese government, including Home Minister Hori-
  45 Kenpo chosakai, Kenpo seitei no keika, pp. 7, 417-28. See also Matsushita Keiichi, "Sengo
  kenpogaku no riron kosei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, p. 29; Shimizu Mutsumi, "Kenpo
  'kaisei' to gikai-seido kaikaku," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 61-62,89.
  46 The results of public opinion polls in December 1945 and February 1946 showed that 95
  percent and 91 percent, respectively, of the respondents supported the institution of the
  emperor. See Takemae, Senryo sengo shi, pp. 93-94; Tsuji Kiyoaki, "Sengo kaikaku to seiji
  katei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, p. 4; Shimizu, "Kenpo 'kaisei,' " in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, p.
  62.
  47 Shimizu, "Kenpo 'kaisei'," p. 62. See also Shimane Kiyoshi, "Tsuiho kaijo o yosei suru
  ronri," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nikon senryo, p. 236.
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  170 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  kiri Zenjiro, were favorably predisposed on the issue in the autumn of
  1945 before SCAP officially referred to it for the first time in an
  October 11 statement on the five major reforms to be undertaken by
  the Japanese government.48 Following the SCAP statement, both the
  Socialists and the Communists, as well as a group of scholars led by
  Takano Iwasaburo, proposed including in the new constitution provi-
  sions guaranteeing the equality of the sexes.49
  In early February 1946, when the GS staff drafted its own revision of
  the Imperial constitution, the three-member Civil Rights Committee
  established in the GS's Public Administration Division (PAD) prepared
  a draft of detailed provisions on the status and rights of women. The
  draft, however, was rejected by the Steering Committee, on the
  grounds that it was too detailed to be included in a constitution.*0 The
  details were thus left to the revision of the Civil Code, which was
  undertaken in the following year by a group of Japanese academic
  specialists, with little direct involvement by SCAP personnel.*1
  The role of the Americans was nonetheless critical to the implemen-
  tation of the principles established in the constitution and the revised
  civil code. The Labor Ministry's Women's and Minors' Bureau and its
  prefectural counterparts, all of which played a crucial watchdog role in
  the first few years following the laws' revisions, were largely the cre-
  ations of interested SCAP personnel, notably those in the relevant
  divisions of the Government, Economic and Scientific (ESS), Civil
  Information and Education, and Public Health and Welfare (PHW)
  sections.52
  As was true for most other reforms of the early Occupation period,
  the Japanese public was both uninvolved in and indifferent to the
  moves within the SCAP and the Japanese government toward the
  emancipation and enfranchisement of women. In a November 1945
  survey of two hundred towns and villages, the majority of respondents
  were found to be uninterested, and only about 40 percent were even
  slightly interested in the issue.« Within a few years, however, Japa-
  nese women began to take advantage of their new legal status and
  rights to change not only their own personal lives but increasingly to
  influence large issues of national and local politics as well. SCAP's
  48 Soma Masao, "Senkyo seido no kaikaku," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 105, 112, n. 31.
  49 Yoda Seiichi, "Senryo seisaku ni okeru fujin kaiho," in Senryoki Nihon, pp. 279, 284-5.
  50 Yoda, "Senryo seisaku ni okeru fujin kaiho," pp. 279-82. See also SCAP, Political Reorienta-
  lionofJapan, vol. 2, p. 104.
  51 Yoda, "Senryo seisaku ni okeru fujin kaiho," p. 287. 
  52 Ibid., p. 292.
  33 Yoda, "Sengo kazoku seido kaikaku to shin kazoku kan no seiritsu," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1,
  pp. 289-90.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  171
  direct and indirect support of the profeminist reform no doubt won
  the Occupation many appreciative friends, if not immediately, then in
  the long run.
  Tenant farmers also directly benefited from an Occupation-spon-
  sored reform. Like the grant of the vote to women, land reform had
  been an issue in the Japanese bureaucracy since the 1920s. In fact,
  the initiative for the first postwar legislative action came from a
  Japanese source rather than SCAP. A bill drafted by officials of the
  Agriculture and Forestry Ministry's Bureau of Agricultural Adminis-
  tration had been approved by a council of cabinet ministers and
  introduced to the House of Representatives by the time SCAP offi-
  cially raised the issue in a December 9, 1945, memorandum to the
  Japanese government.54 The SCAP action thus did not cause the first
  land reform bill to be drafted and debated in the Diet, but it did help
  it to be promptly passed by both houses by the end of the year.
  Technically a revision of the Agricultural Land Adjustment Law of
  1938, the new law required the redistribution within five years of land
  owned by absentee landlords and any portion of land owned by resi-
  dent landlords that exceeded about five hectares.55 This law, however,
  proved unsatisfactory to SCAP, and so a second land reform legisla-
  tion, called the Owner-Farmer Establishment Special Measures Law,
  was enacted in October 1945. This latter law authorized the govern-
  ment to purchase at fixed prices and redistribute all agricultural land
  owned by absentee landlords and portions of such land owned by
  resident landlords that exceeded one hectare (three hectares in Hok-
  kaido). It also imposed rigid ceilings on the rents that could be col-
  lected on tenanted land.s6
  The ensuing redistribution revolutionized Japan's rural society and,
  in the long run, its role in local and national politics. Some 80 percent
  of tenanted agricultural land was actually redistributed to boost the
  ranks of owner and owner-tenant farmers from 73.4 percent of the
  total farm households to 92.1 percent, leaving less than 8 percent still
  landless.57 Despite the landlords' protests, the 1946 law was vigor-
  54 Amakawa Akira, "Senryo seisaku to kanryo no taio," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nikon senryogun: Sono
  hikari to kage, ed. Shiso no kagaku kenkyukai, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1978), vol. 1,
  p. 223.
  55 Uehara Nobuhiro, "Nochi kaikaku katei to ndchi kaikaku ron," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 6:
  Nochi kaikaku, chap. 2; Yoshida Katsumi, "Nochikaikakuho no rippo katei: Nogyo keiei
  kibo mondai o chushin to shite," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 6, chap. 4.
  56 Uehara, "Nochi kaikaku katei," p. 65; Yoshida, "Nochi kaikakuho," p. 176.
  57 Ouchi Tsutomu, "Nochi kaikaku," in Showa keizai ski, ed. Arisawa Hiromi (Tokyo: Nihon
  keizai shinbunsha, 1976), p. 270. See also Oishi Kaichiro, "Nochi kaikaku no rekishiteki
  igi," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 6, pp. 34-5.
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  172 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  ously enforced, and the momentous changes it brought about were
  ensured permanence by the Agricultural Land Law of 1952, which in
  effect perpetuated the provisions of the Owner-Farmer Establishment
  Special Measures Law and those of a 1950 cabinet ordinance regulat-
  ing farmland prices.58
  The land reform helped avert an imminent economic and political
  crisis in rural Japan and the radicalization of the rural poor. By the
  spring of 1946, Japan's rural population had swollen with demobilized
  soldiers returning from overseas as well as hordes of refugees from war-
  ravaged cities. Between April 1945 and April 1946, the rural population
  increased by more than one million, or by nearly a quarter-million
  households, about half of which had no land of their own.59 The crowd-
  ing was especially hard on the small farmers- the overwhelming major-
  ity of Japanese farmers at the time-many of whom barely survived on
  the crops they grew themselves and depended on nonagricultural jobs
  for any additional income. According to a Ministry of Agriculture and
  Forestry survey, about 70 percent of the approximately 5.7 million
  farmer households owned less than one hectare of land in 1946.60 It was
  this large group of small and often impoverished farmers that benefited
  most from the land reform of 1946. As a result, many gave up, at least
  temporarily, their part-time nonagricultural employment and income.
  The tendency of small farmers to supplement their income with
  either full-time or part-time nonagricultural jobs dates back to the late
  1930s. Between July 1937 and February 1941, for example, about 1
  million farmers were either drafted into or voluntarily found employ-
  ment in war-related industries, and more than half of them emigrated
  from their native villages.61 In 1941, nearly 60 percent of farmer house-
  holds had some members, often heads of households, holding nonagri-
  cultural jobs, and on the average 60 percent of the income received by
  a farmer household was derived from nonagricultural sources. Al-
  though the land reform did not reverse the tendency in the long run, it
  did slow it down for a while. The number of farmer households rely-
  ing primarily on farm income and only secondarily on income from
  other sources decreased from about 2.019 million in 1941 to 1.753
  million in 1950.62 Although the number of households whose income
  58 For more details, see Watanabe Yozo, "Nochi kaikaku to sengo nochiho," Sengo kaikaku,
  vol. 6, pp. 107-10.
  59 See Eguchi Eiichi, Gendai no "lei shotoku so," 3 vols. (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1979-80), vol. 1, p.
  272, Table 3-3. 
  60 Ibid., p. 278. 
  61 Ibid., p. 267.
  62 Yano Tsuneta kinenkai, ed.,Nihon kokuseizue, 1981 ed. (Tokyo: Kokuseisha, 1981), p. 209.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  I73
  depended more on nonagricultural employment than on farming in-
  creased somewhat during the same period, the number of part-time
  farmer households as a whole decreased from about 58 percent of the
  total to about 50 percent.
  The decline in the number of part-time farmer households did not
  indicate an immediate and significant improvement of living condi-
  tions for their members. Until the mid-1950s, the average income of
  farmer households consistently lagged behind that of nonfarmer house-
  holds by nearly 10 percent in 1953 and 1954.63 Rural Japan was,
  however, significantly stabilized by the land reform, both economi-
  cally and politically.
  Fanners became an increasingly cohesive and effective economic
  force, thanks largely to the development of agricultural cooperative
  unions established by the Agricultural Cooperative Union Law of
  1947. These cooperatives were also a creation of the Occupation au-
  thorities, specifically the GHQ's National Resource Section (NRS). As
  such, they were in theory "autonomous, free, and democratic," al-
  though they were in practice virtual replications of the wartime agricul-
  tural associations (ndgyokai).6* Like the latter, they were semipublic
  entities financially supported and administratively controlled by the
  Agriculture Ministry bureaucracy, especially after the enactment in
  1951 of the Agricultural Cooperative Union Reconstruction and Ad-
  justment Law. Nonetheless, they enjoyed considerable influence not
  only in local communities but also with the political parties and politi-
  cians, mainly because of their all-inclusive membership.
  From the beginning, but especially after the June 1954 revision of
  the Agricultural Cooperative Union Law, each local union consisted
  of virtually all practicing farmers in a given village. The organization
  functioned also as the sole collecting agent for rice-whose distribu-
  tion remained under rigid government control until the end of the
  I96os-as well as the central village store, warehouse, and banking
  facility.6' Coordinated by prefectural federations and national head-
  quarters, the several thousand local cooperatives collectively com-
  63 Kokumin seikatsu senta, ed.,Kokumin seikatsu tdkei nenpo '80 (Tokyo: Shiseido, 1980), p. 57.
  64 Iwamoto, "Senryogun no tai-nichi nogyo seisaku," pp. 190-1; Ishida Takeshi, "Sengo
  kaikaku to soshiki oyobi shocho," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1, pp. 163-4.
  65 See Takeshi Ishida and Aurelia D. George, "Nokyo: The Japanese Farmers' Representative,"
  in Japan & Australia: Two Societies and Their Interaction, ed. Peter Drysdale and Hironobu
  Kitaoji (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1981), pp. 194-214; Michael W.
  Donnelly, "Setting the Price of Rice: A Study in Political Decisionmaking," in Policymaking in
  Contemporary Japan, ed. T. J. Pempel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 143-
  200.
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  174 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  prised a formidable pressure group to defend and promote the farm-
  ers' expanding economic and political interests.66
  Whereas women and tenant farmers were direct beneficiaries of the
  Occupation-sponsored reforms, the situation of employees in the in-
  dustrial and service sectors was more complicated. The Occupation's
  initial policy was clearly prolabor. The SCAP memorandum of Octo-
  ber 1945, which ordered the emancipation of women, also directed the
  Japanese government to encourage the organization of labor unions, so
  that they might have an influential voice in safeguarding the working
  people from exploitation and abuse and in raising their living stan-
  dards.67 Accordingly, a labor union bill was hastily drafted by Home
  Ministry officials, was perfunctorily debated and passed by the Impe-
  rial Diet, and became law in late December of the same year. Al-
  though it was far from radical, permitting both management and gov-
  ernment considerable power to interfere with and control the unions'
  activities,68 it nonetheless encouraged employees to organize at a pace
  and on a scale unprecedented in the history of the Japanese labor
  movement. By the end of the year, some 500 unions had been formed,
  with about 385,000 members; by the end of 1946, these numbers had
  grown, respectively, to over 17,000 and 4.849 million.6* The last fig-
  ure represents about 40 percent of those employed in the mining,
  manufacturing, and service industries in that year. Over a half of them
  were affiliated with the three major national federations formed in
  1946: the left-wing National Congress of Industrial Unions (Zen
  Nihon sangyobetsu rodo kumiai kaigi: Sanbetsu), the right-wing Ja-
  pan National Federation of Labor (Nihon rodo kumiai sodomei: Sod-
  omei), and the centrist Japan Labor Union Congress (Nihon rodo
  kumiai kaigi: Nichiro kaigi).
  Labor unions not only sprang into existence in great profusion but
  also displayed a great deal of militancy, often engaging in intense "pro-
  duction management" (seisan kanri) struggles aimed at wresting from
  management the power of decision making. In 1946 alone, nearly
  845,000 unionists participated in approximately 1,260 industrial dis-
  66 During the first few years of the Occupation, a radical peasant movement thrived under the
  direction of the Japan Peasant Union, originally founded in 1922 and reestablished in 1946.
  After 1947, however, it quickly lost popular support, partly because of internal conflict but
  mainly because of the growing conservatism among the newly liberated peasants. For a brief
  discussion of the subject, see Tanaka Manabu, "Nochi kaikaku to nomin undo," in Sengo
  kaikaku, vol. 6, chap. 7. 
  67 See SCAP, Political Reonentatwn of Japan, vol. 2, p. 741.
  68 Takemae Eiji, "1949-nen roddhd kaisei zenshi: Senryo seisaku o chushin to shite," in
  Senryoki Nihon, pp. 306, 316-17.
  69 Okouchi Kazuo, Sengo Nihon no rodo undo, rev. ed., Izvanami shinsho, no. 217 (Tokyo:
  Iwanami shoten, 1961), p. 37.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  175
  putes, roughly one-third of which involved demands for employee par-
  ticipation in production management.7° At the national level, Nichiro
  kaigi negotiated with the major employer organization, the Federation
  of Economic Organizations (Keizai dantai rengokai: Keidanren), for
  the establishment of a central forum for management-labor consulta-
  tion and coordination called the Economic Reconstruction Confer-
  ence.71 Organized labor thus won and maintained a position of equality,
  if not superiority, vis-a-vis management during the first few years of the
  Occupation.
  The popularity of the labor movement during this period reflected
  the severity of the economic hardships that the average worker suf-
  fered in the wake of the disastrous war as well as the union's appar-
  ent success in negotiating wage increases and employee participation
  in management. In 1947, private-sector wages in real terms were still
  as low as about 30 percent of the 1934-6 average72 but made sub-
  stantial gains in the following years, by as much as about 50 percent
  in 1948, 28 percent in 1949, and another 28 percent in 1950. By
  1952, wages reached a level slightly higher than that of the prewar
  peak years.?3
  The sudden upsurge of radical unionism, however, was somewhat
  artificial. The majority of Japanese workers had never been radical,
  and the initial success of the postwar labor movement, particularly its
  left wing, depended largely on SCAP's approval and support. Accord-
  ing to a February 1946 opinion poll, an overwhelming majority of the
  employees supported the institution of the emperor, the quintessential
  symbol of tradition and continuity in an era of revolutionary change
  and adjustment.74 Moreover, employees of large zaibatsu-affiliated
  companies apparently remained bound by the mystique of corporate
  solidarity and loyalty to the owner and his family.75 For a while,
  SCAP's well-publicized support and the impotence of management
  encouraged the rise of militant unionism, but after SCAP's support
  was withdrawn in the wake of the abortive general strike by public
  service unions in early 1947, the tide of radical unionism turned.
  At the instigation of the Labor Division of the GHQ's ESS, and with
  the tacit support of the Japanese government and employers, dissidents
  in the secretariat of Sanbetsu spearheaded the "democratization" pro-
  gram in the months following the failure of the public service general
  70 Ibid., p. 48. 
  71 Takemae, "1949-nen rddoho," pp. 302-3.
  72 Fujinawa Masakatsu, Nihon no saitei chingin (Tokyo: Nikkan rodo tsushinsha, 1972), p. 317,
  Table4-4. 
  73 Ibid., pp. 316-17. 
  74 Yoda, "Sengo kazoku seido," p. 291.
  75 Chihara, "Gunju sangyo rodosha," pp. 88-9.
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  176 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  strike in February 1947.76 In March 1948, they established the Democ-
  ratization League which thereafter steadily expanded its membership
  and influence among both Sanbetsu affiliates and Nichiro unions. The
  league's anticommunist campaign was bolstered by a SCAP directive of
  July 22, 1948, instructing the Japanese government to deny public
  servants the right to engage in collective bargaining and strikes.77 When
  the "Red purge" swept the public services and key private-sector indus-
  tries following the outbreak of the Korean War, most unions had come
  under the control of anticommunist leadership. They put up little fight
  even against the dismissal of minor union officials whose affiliation with
  the Communist Party was not even proved.78
  A few months before fighting broke out in Korea, the democratiza-
  tion movement evolved into a new national labor federation, the Gen-
  eral Council of Japanese Trade Unions (Nihon rodo kumiai sohyogikai:
  Sohyo). By far the largest among the several competing labor federa-
  tions, Sohyo ironically became a militantly antiestablishment and mod-
  erately procommunist organization under the direction of its first
  secretary-general, Takano Minoru, and his supporters, who consti-
  tuted the left-wing faction among the Democratization League leaders.
  Sohyo did not entirely neglect bread-and-butter issues. In fact, it cam-
  paigned vigorously, if unsuccessfully, for the establishment of a mini-
  mum wage law.™ More efforts, however, went into political and ideo-
  logical campaigns-against Japanese rearmament, American bases, the
  U.S.-Japanese Mutual Security Treaty, and revision of the constitu-
  tion. Wage and working conditions tended to be given short shrift in
  favor of socialism and world peace.
  During the first half of the 1950s, Takano's political line dominated
  Sohyo, and Sohyo dominated,the Japanese labor movement. Mean-
  while, under heavy government and management pressure, the work-
  ers began to drop out of the ranks of organized labor. Many workers
  were disillusioned and alienated by the leadership's highly political
  and divisive platform and by the continuing internecine struggle be-
  tween the left and right factions. The total union membership peaked
  in 1948, when about 34,000 unions boasted a combined membership
  of 6.677 million, representing 53 percent of the total work force in the
  secondary and tertiary sectors.80 During the next three years it de-
  76 On the role of the Labor Division, see Takemae Eiji, "Reddo paji," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nihon
  senryogun, vol. I, pp. 279-84.
  77 See Kume Shigeru, "Kokutetsu roso to Suzuki Ichizo ni mini senryoka rodo undo," in Kyodo
  kenkyu: Nihon senryd, pp. 55-7; Ishida, "Sengo kaikaku to soshiki," p. 185.
  78 Takemae,Senryosengoshi, pp. 201-9,213. 
  79 Fu')inav/a, Nihonno sauei chingin, pp. 62-5.
  80 Okouchi, Sengo Nihon no rodo undo, pp. 75-6.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  I77
  clined by almost I million, and the rate of unionization fell by about
  10 percentage points. The deflationary program introduced in early
  1949 to implement recommendations of a United States mission led
  by a Detroit banker, Joseph Dodge, and known as the "Dodge line"
  considerably aggravated the situation from labor's point of view. Not
  only did annual gains in real wages rapidly shrink after 1950, but
  over a quarter-million public service employees and almost as many
  in the private sector, especially in small businesses, lost their jobs in
  the wake of the "disinflation" caused by the enforcement of the
  program.81
  Thus, to most of the employees in the industrial and service sectors,
  the Occupation and early post-Occupation period began with great
  promises and ended in confusion and disappointment. The benefits
  they received were far more ambiguous and elusive than were those
  that women and tenant farmers enjoyed.
  The elite and the Occupation
  In contrast with the workers, members of the Japanese elite generally
  suffered more than benefited from the Occupation-sponsored reforms.
  As was the case with the workers, however, the impact of the Occupa-
  tion and its specific policies varied a great deal among segments of the
  elite.
  In December 1946, eleven of the fourteen imperial princes and their
  families lost their status as members of the imperial family and substan-
  tial parts of their wealth as well, because they were related to the
  emperor.82 All the peers and their families lost their titles and privi-
  leges overnight in accordance with Article 14 of the new constitution.
  They and the approximately one million landlords, whose farmland
  was in effect confiscated and redistributed in the land reform of 1947-
  52, were victims of the Occupation policy.8*
  81 Fujinawa, Nikon no saitei chingin, p. 316, Table 4-2; Shimura Yoshikazu, "Antei kyoko," in
  Showa keizai shi, pp. 308-11.
  82 See Takahashi Hiroshi and Suzuki Kunihiko, Tennoke no misshi tachi: Hiroku senryo to
  kdshitsu (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1981), pp. 167-8.
  83 Most studies of the land reform give considerably higher estimates of the number of affected
  landlords. The authoritative report edited by the Land Reform Records Commission, for
  example, refers to 3,829,785 landlords involved. These estimates, however, are vastly exag-
  gerated, for in many cases the same landlord was counted several times if his land was taken
  piecemeal in more than one of the twenty-four waves of assessment, designation, and transfer
  of title that took place during the nearly five-year period. The same landlord was frequently
  also classified as both a resident and an absentee if his property lay both inside and outside the
  locality where he resided. See Fukui Haruhiro, Jiyu minshutd to seisaku kettei (Tokyo:
  Fukumura shuppan, 1969), pp. 211-12, n. 2.
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  178 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  So too were the owners of the seventy-five holding and trading
  companies dissolved under the "deconcentration of economic power"
  program, as well as their families, notably those who belonged to the
  Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda zaibatsu.8* Over 200,000
  persons were purged, one-half of whom were military personnel. Al-
  though all those purged were eventually reinstated, most suffered
  enormously from the temporary, though sometimes permanent, loss
  of employment and income and the stigma of being purged, for many
  years after reinstatement.
  On the other hand, the three houses headed by the emperor's broth-
  ers were permitted to retain their imperial status and much of the
  social prestige, if not the economic privileges, that went with that
  status.85 The emperor himself was deprived by the new constitution of
  his status as the sovereign and was reduced to being a symbol of the
  state. The change in his constitutional status and role, however, was
  not as important as it might seem, considering the largely symbolic
  role that Japanese emperors had traditionally played.86 Far more sig-
  nificant was the fact that the monarchy was not abolished. The mon-
  arch was neither forced to abdicate nor brought before the war crimes
  tribunal, despite considerable public pressure in most Allied nations,
  including the United States, for his prosecution for the role he had
  allegedly played in the initiation and execution of the war.87 The
  emperor's remarkable fate, both as a person and as an institution, was
  based on a decision by SCAP, a decision that no doubt was shaped by
  the favorable impression the emperor himself made on General Mac-
  Arthur, especially during their first face-to-face encounter on Septem-
  ber 27, 1945.88 But not to be underestimated, much less forgotten, in
  this regard are the energetic lobbying efforts made on the emperor's
  behalf by a dozen or so intermediaries, including Mac Arthur's trusted
  military secretary, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers; his Earlham Col-
  84 On the dissolution of the zaibatsu and its consequences, see Eleanor M. Hadley, Antitrust in
  Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970); Shibagaki Kazuo, "Zaibatsu
  kaitai to shuchu haijo," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 7: Keizai kaikaku, chap. 2.
  85 Takahashi and Suzuki, Tennoke no misshi tachi, pp. 159-60; Frazier Hunt, The Untold Story
  of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Devin-Adair, 1954), p. 408.
  86 See John Whitney Hall, "A Monarch for Modern Japan," in Political Development in Modem
  Japan, ed. Robert E. Ward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), chap. 2.
  87 Watanabe Hisamaru, "Shocho tennosei no seijiteki yakuwari," in Tennosei to minshu, ed.
  Goto Yasushi (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1976), pp. 234-5; Hunt, The Untold
  Story, pp. 408,420-1.
  88 See Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History (New York: Knopf, 1956),
  pp. 420-1.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  179
  lege fellow alumna, Isshiki Yuriko; and her friend and Bryn Mawr-
  trained educator, Kawai Michi.89
  The experience of the majority of big businessmen and higher civil
  servants was far more diverse and complex. On balance, they bene-
  fited more from SCAP and Japanese government policies of the period
  than they suffered from them.
  The initial SCAP policy, and the various legislative and administra-
  tive measures taken by the Japanese government to implement it, were
  prolabor and antimanagement, at least implicitly. Employers were the
  most obvious and direct target of the Property Tax Law of November
  1945 and the Wartime Compensation Special Measures Law of Octo-
  ber 1946, both of which were enacted to increase the tax revenue of the
  financially beleaguered government.90 However, employers did not
  suffer long, as they soon organized to fend off pressure from the
  reformers in the GHQ and the newly organized labor movements.
  The major existing employer organizations, such as the Japanese
  Federation of Economic Organizations (Nihon keizai renmeikai), the
  Important Industries Council (Juyo sangyo kyogikai: Jusankyo), the
  National Council of Commercial and Industrial Associations (Zenkoku
  shoko keizaikai kyogikai), and the Central Council of Commercial and
  Industrial Unions (Shoko kumiai chuokai) were all disbanded shortly
  after the end of the war. But before long new organizations bearing
  somewhat different names were formed. In April 1946, the Committee
  for Economic Development (Keizai doyukai) made its appearance, fol-
  lowed in August by Keidanren. The Japan Federation of Employer
  Associations (Nihon keieisha dantai renmei: Nikkeiren) was founded in
  April 1948, in order to combat the rising tide of left-wing labor union-
  ism.91 These employer organizations soon became powerful and effec-
  tive political lobbies, with their influence reaching deep into the heart of
  the conservative establishment.
  The shift in the Occupation policy, combined with the growing
  concern about the deepening economic crisis, led the Japanese govern-
  ment after the middle of 1946 to develop and implement a series of
  89 One author has written of Fellers: "I am constantly startled to find the reflection of Fellers'
  ideas in the general's pronouncements. . . . 'Emperor Hirohito,' he told a correspondent, 'is
  no more a war criminal than Roosevelt. . . .' " See Mark Gayn, Japan Diary (Tokyo: Tuttle,
  1981), p. 343. For the identities and activities of other intermediaries, see Takahashi and
  Suzuki, Tennoke no misshi tachi, passim.
  90 Inoue Ichiro, "Senryo shoki no sozei gyosei," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nihon senrydgun, vol. 1, pp.
  264-72.
  91 Ishida, "Sengo kaikaku to soshiki," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1, pp. 184-5; Sakaguchi Akira,
  "Iki fukikaesu zaikai," in SAOTWJ tetzai s/i!, pp. 292-5.
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  l8o 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  programs to assist businesses in key industries, through both the provi-
  sion of public funds and special tax breaks. The main targets and
  beneficiaries of the early preferential funding programs under the so-
  called priority production (keisha seisari) system were the coal-mining,
  iron and steel, electric power generation, shipbuilding, and fertilizer
  industries.92 The Reconstruction Finance Bank established by law in
  October 1946 provided in the next two years some ¥126 billion in
  special loans to the major producers in the target industries. At about
  the same time, the commercial banks were rapidly rehabilitated, with
  substantial government assistance provided under the Banking Institu-
  tions Reconstruction and Adjustment Law of October 1946.93
  Tax breaks played an increasingly important role in the rehabilita-
  tion and development of the postwar Japanese economy in general and
  the growth of robust businesses in particular, especially after the 1950
  tax reform based on the recommendations of the Shoup mission.w In
  1951, for example, the manufacturers of certain types of machinery
  were allowed special accelerated depreciation. In 1952 the electric
  power companies were allowed tax-deductible reserves against future
  drought, and insurance companies were given tax-deductible premium
  payments on life insurance policies. In 1953 it became possible to sepa-
  rate interest from the rest of one's income when computing one's indi-
  vidual income tax, a device designed to encourage savings by individual
  depositors and also to help banks, and generous tax-free reserves were
  allowed against export trade-related losses. Finally, in 1954 the with-
  holding rates for income from dividends were lowered, and dividends
  earned on newly issued stocks became entirely tax free.«
  Except in the first year or so, the Occupation thus turned out to be
  quite benign to the majority of employers in the key manufacturing
  and service industries. Overall, they did far better than labor, not to
  mention former landlords and onetime leaders of the zaibatsu business
  empires.
  The case of higher civil servants is even more complex. It was one of
  SCAP's principal initial policy objectives to overhaul and reform the
  civil service bureaucracy, the "key instrument in the totalitarian regi-
  mentation of the people's life."'6 But once GHQ decided to rule Japan
  92 Watanuki, "Kodo seicho," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, pp. 152-3, 155; Miyashita Buhei,
  "Keisha seisan hoshiki," in Showa keizai shi, pp. 286-9.
  93 Hara Shiro, "Kinyu kikan tachinaoru," in Shdtua keizai shi, pp. 295-8.
  94 On the work of the Shoup mission, see Hayashi Takehisa, "Shaupu kankoku to zeisei
  kaikaku," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 7, chap. 5.
  95 Sato Susumu, Nihon no zeikin (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp. 38-9.
  96 SCAP, Political Reorientation of Japan, vol. I, p. 246.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  l8l
  indirectly through the existing machinery of the Japanese govern-
  ment, the survival of at least a segment of the civil service personnel
  became a foregone conclusion. Therefore, most of the bureaucrats in
  the central government, including those at the highest ranks, not only
  survived the Occupation-sponsored reforms but even participated in
  their formulation and implementation, including measures designed
  to overhaul the civil service itself. This was particularly true for the
  middle- and senior-level Foreign Ministry officials who filled most of
  the key posts in the Central Liaison Office established on August 26,
  1945, to help SCAP implement the initial Occupation policies.97
  Although nearly 80 percent of military personnel down to the level
  of corporal and 16 percent of the members of the Imperial Diet were
  purged, less than 1 percent of civil servants were.98 Once assured of
  their continuing employment in the various ministries and agencies of
  the central government, they began to participate, sometimes willingly
  and sometimes unwillingly, in the implementation of SCAP's initial
  policy objectives. The involvement of the Japanese bureaucrats signifi-
  cantly affected both the form and the substance of the most important
  legislation enacted during the Occupation. The Labor Union Law of
  1945 and the first land reform are good examples. So are the amend-
  ments to the House of Representatives Members Election Law, which
  was approved by both houses of the Imperial Diet at about the same
  time, and the House of Councilors Members Election Law, which was
  passed a year later. In both cases the original bills were drafted by
  Home Ministry bureaucrats." The new Diet law enacted in March
  1947 resulted from negotiations between the SCAP staff, on one hand,
  and the House of Representatives Committee on Legislative Investiga-
  tion and the Cabinet Bureau of Legislation, on the other.100 In some
  cases, the interaction between SCAP personnel and Japanese bureau-
  crats was far more complex.
  The reform of the police was first undertaken by the staff of the
  Home Ministry's Police Bureau in the spring of 1946 and then was
  studied by a public advisory group called the Police System Council
  appointed in November of the same year.101 However, the Police Law
  97 See Kazuo Kawai, Japan's American Interlude (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, i960),
  pp. 19-20.
  98 Ishida, "Sengo kaikaku to soshiki," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1, p. 185; Kume, "Kokutetsu
  roso to Suzuki Ichizo," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nikon senryo, pp. 55-7.
  99 Soma, "Senkyo seisaku," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 93, 119. See also Amakawa, "Senryo
  seisaku to kanryo," in Kyodo kenkyu: Nikon senryogun, vol. 1, p. 225.
  100 Shimizu, "Kenpo kaisei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 82-5.
  101 Hoshino Yasusaburo, "Keisatsu seido no kaikaku," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 320-5.
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  POSTWAR POLITICS
  that followed in December 1947 and that authorized the establishment
  of 95,000-member municipal police units and a 300,000-member na-
  tional rural police force reflected SCAP's, especially the GS's, view,
  which favored maximum decentralization rather than the ascendancy
  of either Japanese group.102
  The reform of the local government system was accomplished in
  two stages: In the first stage, four bills designed to increase the auton-
  omy of, respectively, metropolitan Tokyo, other cities, towns and
  villages, and prefectures were drafted by Home Ministry officials and
  then were debated, amended, and passed in September 1946 by both
  houses of the Diet. In the second, an advisory group was appointed
  and, under Home Ministry bureaucrats' guidance, prepared a draft
  local self-government bill, which was then debated by the Diet and
  significantly amended in response to SCAP's, as well as several Japa-
  nese ministries', demands before it was passed in March 1947.I03
  Still more complex was the reform of the civil service itself. Here
  again, the initiative came from the Japanese government. The Cabinet
  Bureau of Legislation began to study the issue seriously in late Septem-
  ber 1945 and by the middle of November submitted to the cabinet
  specific recommendations that followed those previously proposed by
  several groups, notably by the Imperial Rule Assistance Association
  (IRAA) in January I94I.10* Most of these recommendations were im-
  plemented by a series of imperial ordinances in the spring of 1946. In
  July of the same year, however, an ad hoc advisory group was ap-
  pointed to review the reforms, and in late October it submitted to the
  cabinet a report proposing additional changes in the civil service per-
  sonnel system.105 The ad hoc group's proposals also were partially
  implemented, but no sooner had its report been presented to the
  government than still another working group, somewhat ambiguously
  named the Administrative Research Bureau, was established in the
  secretariat of the cabinet to prepare for the expected visit of an advi-
  sory mission from the United States.
  The American group arrived in Japan at the end of November 1946.
  Officially named the United States Personnel Advisory Mission to Ja-
  pan and popularly known as the Hoover mission after its leader, Blaine
  Hoover, the group worked closely with the staff of the Administrative
  Research Bureau, especially in administering and processing an exten-
  102 Ibid., pp. 328-35.
  103 Amakawa Akira, "Chiho jichi ho no kozo," in Senryoki Nihon, pp. 136-7, 146, 150-9.
  104 Ide Yoshinori, "Sengo kaikaku to Nihon kanryosei: Komuin seido no soshutsu katei," in
  Sengokaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 149-51,159-60,162-3. 
  105 Ibid., pp. 165-7.
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  THE POLITICS OF ADJUSTMENT 
  183
  sive survey of personnel practices in the main ministries, and then
  independently prepared a draft of a National Public Servants Law.106
  To the surprise and dismay of the Japanese, not only was the document
  drafted by the American advisers alone, but more importantly, it con-
  tained a set of recommendations that represented a radical departure
  from the existing Japanese system and practices, including the establish-
  ment of an independent National Personnel Authority.
  However, the National Public Service Law, which was promulgated
  in October 1947, was a substantially revised version of the Hoover
  mission's original draft.107 Hoover left Japan for the United States on
  July 1 of that year, and during his absence the Japanese managed to
  amend many of the original draft's key provisions. For example, the
  National Personnel Authority was renamed the Temporary National
  Personnel Commission, and the commissioners' powers and responsi-
  bilities were considerably more limited than the Hoover mission's
  draft had envisaged. The provision prohibiting public servants from
  engaging in strikes and other forms of concerted work stoppages was
  simply omitted, as was the key word class in the article providing for
  the classification of positions.
  In November, Hoover returned to Japan, followed by those he had
  recruited in the United States to staff the GS's newly established Civil
  Service Division (CSD). Under Hoover's personal direction and
  SCAP's explicit endorsement, the division began a comprehensive re-
  view, and then extensive revisions, of the 1947 law. In the process,
  many of the provisions of the original Hoover mission draft, which had
  been either omitted or substantially amended by the Japanese, were
  restored, including the original name of the national personnel agency
  and the prohibition of strikes by public servants.108 The revisions were
  ratified by the Diet with few significant modifications and the new
  National Public Service Law was promulgated on December 3, 1948.
  Some of the revisions, however, were hotly debated, not only between
  the staff of the CSD and that of the Temporary National Personnel
  Commission, but, to further complicate the matter, also within the
  GHQ itself between the CSD and the ESS's Labor Division (LD).
  The final outcome of the civil service reform thus reflected the
  intent of the original Hoover mission draft more faithfully than the
  106 Ibid., pp. 178-90. See also Blaine Hoover's own account in SCAP, PoliticalReorienlaiion of
  Japan, vol. 1, pp. 246-59.
  107 Ide, "Sengo kaikaku to Nihon kanryosei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 3, pp. 196-9; SCAP,
  Political Reorientation of Japan, vol. 1, pp. 253-4.
  108 Ide, "Sengo kaikaku to Nihon kanryosei," pp. 210-23.
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  184 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  1947 law did. It was nonetheless a compromise reached by negotiation
  and bargaining both between the Americans and Japanese and among
  the Americans themselves. To an important extent, it also reflected
  the shift in the concerns of the Occupation policy, from Japan's demili-
  tarization and democratization to its economic rehabilitation and politi-
  cal stabilization. SCAP's new objectives were basically agreeable to the
  upper echelon of the Japanese government bureaucracy, and so were
  many of the provisions of the 1948 National Public Service Law.10* Of
  all the major prewar political institutions, the bureaucracy alone sur-
  vived the Occupation with few visible changes. In fact, its overt politi-
  cal influence increased, rather than decreased, during the period.
  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM:
  HIGH ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
  Japanese politics between 1955 and 1973 w a s somewhat paradoxical.
  On the one hand, the period was characterized by recurrent and often
  violent confrontations between the conservative governments and the
  opposition parties, both inside and outside the halls of the Diet, and
  on the other hand, it was a period of stable and seemingly never-
  ending one-party dominance by the united conservatives.
  Under the new constitutional structure adopted in 1947, a party's
  strength in the Diet determined its role in national politics. In theory,
  a party that controlled at least two-thirds of the seats in both the
  House of Representatives and the House of Councilors could become a
  hegemonic party, able to initiate amendments to the constitution and
  thus able to change the rules under which politics was conducted. In
  practice, however, no party ever attained such a position in the post-
  war period. On the other hand, if a party attained the position of
  majority party, controlling more than half of the seats in the House of
  Representatives, it could designate the candidate of its choice as prime
  minister. And if it controlled a majority in both houses, it could pass
  whatever legislation it wished to put before the Diet. Until the mid-
  1950s, only the Democratic Liberal Party (and its successor, the Lib-
  eral Party) ever attained a clear majority and only in the lower house
  (from 1949 to 1953).
  The situation of the opposition was more complex. Under the new
  constitution and the 1947 Diet Law as amended in January 1955, there
  were four possible roles that an opposition party might play. First, a
  109 Ibid., pp. 223-9.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  185
  party that controlled more than a third, but less than half, of the seats
  in either house could deny that house the right to transact business
  and could thwart the initiation of a constitutional amendment. This
  type of party could be called a veto party. Second, a party that could
  win at least fifty, but fewer than one-third, of the seats in the House of
  Representatives could present a bill affecting the budget or a motion to
  amend such a bill. This kind of party could be called a significant
  opposition party, but it could not hope to form a government by itself.
  Third, a party with fewer than fifty, but more than twenty, seats in the
  House of Representatives could present an ordinary bill not affecting
  the budget or a motion to amend such a bill, and it could be called a
  minor opposition party. Finally, a party with fewer than twenty seats in
  the lower house could be regarded as a marginal opposition party.
  In early 1955 there was no majority party in the Diet. There were
  only a conservative veto party (the Democratic Party), one conserva-
  tive and two left-wing minor opposition parties (the Liberals and the
  Right and Left Socialists), and a marginal group of conservative and
  left-wing members. This configuration of the Diet augured a period of
  potential political instability. The reunification of the Socialists in
  October 1955, and the merger of the two conservative parties into the
  Liberal Democratic Party the following month, radically transformed
  this situation. It created what many observers at first called a two-
  party system and later a one-and-a-half-party system.
  By the time this period ended in the wake of the first "oil crisis" of
  the 1970s, six House of Representatives general elections had been
  called. In each of them the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyu minshuto:
  LDP) won majority-party status, thus forming a reasonably stable
  government. On the opposition side, the Socialists split once more in
  late 1959, the right wing forming a separate party of its own, the
  Democratic Socialist Party (Minshu shakaito, subsequently Minshato:
  DSP). This was followed by the appearance of a new party associated
  with a Buddhist lay organization, Sokagakkai. Originally called the
  Clean Government League (Komei seiji renmei), the party was re-
  named the Clean Government Party (Komeito: CGP) in November
  1964. The emergence of these two parties further fragmented and
  weakened the chronically divided opposition.
  At the beginning of this period, the opposition consisted of only two
  parties of any significance: the united Japan Socialist Party (Nihon
  shakaito: JSP) with veto-party status and the Communists with
  marginal-opposition strength. The split of the DSP reduced the parent
  JSP to the significant-opposition-party level, except in 1967 when it
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  POSTWAR POLITICS
  managed to regain a veto-party position. The addition of the CGP did
  not affect the JSP's relative position as directly as the defection of the
  DSP did, either vis-a-vis the LDP or among the opposition parties. It
  did, however, help keep the opposition's overall power divided among
  four different parties in a virtual stalemate and thus ineffectual against
  the party in power. The CGP held minor-opposition-party status in
  the last three general elections of the period in which it participated,
  whereas the DSP began in a marginal-opposition position in i960,
  moved up to minor-opposition status in 1967, but fell back again to a
  marginal position in 1972. The JCP stayed in its customary marginal-
  opposition position throughout the period, except in 1972 when it
  exchanged that status with the DSP and rose to the minor-opposition
  level for the first time since 1949.
  The first LDP government led by Hatoyama Ichiro lasted only a
  year, from November 1955 to December 1956. It provoked strong and
  persistent Opposition to some of its principal foreign and domestic
  policies. For example, its efforts to conclude a peace treaty with the
  Soviet Union were opposed by many LDP politicians and senior For-
  eign Ministry officials. Negotiations ended in October 1956 in the
  issuance of a joint declaration normalizing diplomatic relations be-
  tween the two nations, rather than a formal peace treaty.110 Hato-
  yama's domestic legislative program met even more intense opposition
  from the Socialists and Communists. A bill to replace the existing
  multimember election districts with single-member districts was killed
  by the opposition. Several other bills, such as those amending the
  Defense Agency Establishment and the Self-Defense Forces laws, es-
  tablishing the Committee on the Constitution to study possible revi-
  sions of the 1947 constitution, and making elected local boards of
  education appointive, survived the opposition and became law, but
  only after a bitter and protracted struggle with the opposition.
  The confrontation between the LDP government and the opposi-
  tion parties intensified during the administration of Hatoyama's suc-
  cessor, Kishi Nobusuke, a former Commerce and Industry Ministry
  bureaucrat and a member of the wartime Tojo cabinet. Between 1957
  and i960, debates in the Diet were frequently interrupted by disorder
  and often accompanied by violence on the floor of the chambers. At
  issue was the handling of bills requiring periodical performance evalua-
  110 On the process of Japanese-Soviet negotiations and decision making in the Japanese govern-
  ment, see Donald C. Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: The Peace
  Agreement with the Soviet Union (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
  1969).
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  187
  tions of schoolteachers, increasing the duties and powers of police
  officers, and expanding the scope of competence of the Defense
  Agency and Self-Defense Forces. After the bitter battles over these
  issues, the focus of the controversy shifted to the proposed revision of
  the 1951 United States-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. The Kishi
  government won the ratification of the revised treaty in May i960, but
  not until a succession of massive protest rallies and demonstrations
  claimed the life of a woman college student and led to the cancellation
  of a scheduled official visit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.111
  Kishi and his cabinet resigned in the aftermath of the turmoil, and a
  leader of the JSP, Asanuma Inejiro, was assassinated a few months
  later.
  Once the new security treaty was ratified and a new prime minister,
  Ikeda Hayato, was installed, calm and normalcy returned to both the
  halls of the Diet and Tokyo's streets, thanks largely to Ikeda's deliber-
  ate avoidance of controversial issues. The acquisition of surface-to-air
  missiles (SAMs) by the Self-Defense Forces in late 1962 and the an-
  nouncement a few months later of a plan to bring a nuclear-powered
  U.S. submarine to a Japanese port threatened to, but did not, trigger
  another wave of violent protest.
  The Ikeda government's domestic policy program was also noncon-
  troversial. It was built around the much publicized "income-doubling"
  policy, which was to double the gross national product per person in ten
  years. This proved to be one of the most popular policies ever proposed
  by an LDP government. In 1963 and 1964, the threat of inflation caused
  widespread public concern; a chronic depression led to the closing of
  the nation's major coal mines; and the payment of compensation to
  former landlords for the losses caused by the Occupation's land reform
  provoked some opposition both inside and outside the Diet. None,
  however, led to a confrontation comparable to those during the Hato-
  yama and Kishi governments. The final report of the Commission on
  the Constitution was quietly submitted to and filed away by the cabinet
  in the middle of 1964.
  The political lull was broken after Ikeda's retirement in November
  1964. A new LDP government led by Kishi's younger brother, Sato
  Eisaku, remained in power for the next seven and a half years. His
  administration, however, was rocked by a series of legislative and
  ideological battles with the opposition. Particularly controversial were
  the ratification of the Eighty-seventh Convention of the International
  111 See Packard, Proust in Tokyo.
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  188 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  Labor Organization (ILO), the normalization treaty with the Republic
  of Korea, the Tokyo-Washington negotiations on the return of Oki-
  nawa to Japanese administration and on the export of Japanese syn-
  thetic and woolen textiles to the United States, Japanese involvement
  in the Indochina war, strikes and occupation of campus buildings and
  premises by university students, and the spread of industrial pollu-
  tion.112 The government won virtually all of the major battles, but
  Sato's often high-handed, and sometimes underhanded, handling of
  the controversial issues eventually alienated and antagonized not only
  the opposition parties but also many in the LDP, the bureaucracy, and
  influential business groups.
  With the exception of Ikeda's relatively brief rule, this period was
  characterized by political strife and tensions, during which the LDP
  governments and their policies were subjected to sustained and often
  virulent partisan and public attacks. Paradoxically, however, this was
  also a period of great stability in terms of the results of the Diet
  elections. The key to this paradox is the massive socioeconomic
  change during this eighteen-year period.
  Costs and benefits of the "economic miracle"
  Ikeda's "income-doubling" plan was more a symbol and a conse-
  quence than a cause of Japan's "economic miracle." By the time it was
  announced, the nation's economy had entered the second of its three
  sustained booms in the 1950s and 1960s. The first, dubbed the
  "Jimmu boom" (Jimmu keiki), occurred in the 1950s, spanning a
  thirty-one-month period from the beginning of 1955 to the middle of
  1957; the second, remembered, as the "cave boom" {iwato keiki), began
  in the middle of 1958 and lasted for forty-two months until the end of
  1961. During the first boom, the real GNP grew about 8 percent per
  year; during the second, the growth rate averaged over 10 percent.
  The last and longest in the series, the "Izanagi boom" (Izanagi keiki),
  began in late 1965 and lasted for fifty-six months until the middle of
  1970, with an average growth rate of over 11 percent per year."3
  112 On the politics in the period of the Sato government, see Watanabe Akio, "Dai 6i-dai: Dai I-
  ji Sato naikaku: 'Kanyo to nintai' kara 'kanyo to chowa' e," "Dai 62-dai: Dai 2-ji Sato
  naikaku: Jujitsu shita 3-nen kan," and "Dai 63-dai: Dai 3-ji Sato naikaku: Gekido no 70-
  nendai e no hashi watashi," in Nikon naikakushi roku, vol. 6, pp. 101-211; Kusuda Minoru,
  Shusho hishokan (Tokyo: Bungei shunjusha, 1975); Miyazaki Yoshimasa, Saishd: Sato
  Eisaku (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1980).
  113 See Kanamori Hisao, "Tenbo I: Kyoran doto no naka no seicho," in Showa keizai shi, pp.
  369-71; Kosai Yutaka, "Iwato keiki," in 5hovia keizaishi, pp. 378-80; Iki Makoto, "Izanagi
  keiki," Showa keizai shi, pp. 474-7.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
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  This succession of booms accelerated capital formation, induced
  massive plant and equipment investments, and vastly improved the
  competitive position of Japanese manufactures in international mar-
  kets. By i960 Japan's GNP had become the fifth largest among the
  world's market economies behind only those of the United States,
  West Germany, the United Kingdom, and France; by 1968, it had
  surpassed all but that of the United States. The economy's extraordi-
  nary growth and transformation had a far-reaching impact, not only
  on Japan's international status and image, but also on its domestic
  society and politics.
  The rapid economic growth was an outcome of accelerated industri-
  alization, which in turn was both a cause and an effect of the country's
  intensive urbanization. In the early 1960s a nationwide exodus of rural
  residents began. By the middle of the decade, numerous rural villages
  had been deserted, whereas urban areas, especially those around To-
  kyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, had begun to show signs of strain arising
  from overcrowding. By the end of the decade, the flow of migrants to
  the three largest cities had slowed down somewhat, but the flow to
  lesser urban centers, such as Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima, Fukuoka,
  and Kita-Kyushu, had accelerated.11''
  Overcrowding caused an acute scarcity of space and housing in the
  major urban areas. This situation was exacerbated by the tendency,
  increasingly evident since the mid-1950s, for traditional extended fami-
  lies to break up into smaller nuclear families. As a result, nearly 45
  percent of urban employee households were renters in the first years of
  the 1970s."5 Meanwhile, the price of urban land rose rapidly. In the
  fifteen years between 1955 and 1970, the price index for urban residen-
  tial land increased about fifteen times on the average, and in the six
  largest cities it increased more than twenty times."6 To make the
  situation worse, the differential between the growth rate of land prices
  and the prevailing interest rates led the majority of urban landlords to
  hold on to their property as long as possible, thus adding to the already
  great pressure on the housing markets and pushing up the land prices
  still further. "7
  The effects of this rapid industrialization and urbanization affected
  not only the housing markets in the larger and older cities but also the
  114 Nishio Masaru, "Kaso to kamitsu no seiji gyosei," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 231.
  115 Keizai kikaku cho sogo keikaku kyoku, ed., Shotoku shisan bunpai no jitlai to mondaiten:
  Shoioku bunpai ni kansuru kenkyukai hokoku (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsukyoku, 1975), pp.
  82-3.
  116 Kokumin seikalsu tokei nenpo '80, p. 135.
  117 Ito Mitsuharu, Hoshu to kakushin no Nihonuki kozo (Tokyo: Chikuma shobd, 1970), p. 165.
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  190 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  physical environments of lesser and younger urban centers. During the
  decade of "income doubling," the nation was gripped by a "regional
  development" fever as well; municipalities throughout the country com-
  peted to lure more and bigger industries with a view to balancing their
  chronically deficit-ridden budgets by expanding and diversifying the
  local sources of tax revenue. By the spring of 1969, about 90 percent of
  the prefectures, 60 percent of the cities, and 35 percent of the towns and
  villages had issued special ordinances designed to attract industries."8
  The percentage figures were considerably higher for municipalities in
  the least developed prefectures along the Japan Sea coast.
  The industrialization of rural Japan in effect dispersed the costs, as
  well as the benefits, of rapid economic growth. By the middle of the
  decade, for most communities invaded by complexes of industrial
  plants and support facilities, the pollution of the air, water, and soil
  had become an affliction as serious and common as congestion and
  shrinking space."» The rapid spread of pollution, combined with de-
  lays in effective responses by the national and local governments, gave
  rise to public movements, first among those directly victimized by
  industry-based pollution and subsequently among growing numbers
  of other concerned citizens to demand compensation for damage done
  and to call for the closure of facilities or the halt of activities believed
  to be the main sources of pollution and other unwanted by-products of
  intensive industrialization.
  Victims of organic mercury poisoning in Minamata City, Kumamoto
  Prefecture (Minamata disease) and their relatives were the first to orga-
  nize in 1958 what became known as either a residents' movement (jutnin
  undo) or a citizens' movement (shimin undo). By the mid-1960s similar
  movements were begun by those affected by other major pollution-
  caused afflictions, notably asthma in Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture
  (Yokkaichi asthma), cadmium poisoning in communities along the
  Jintsu River in Toyama Prefecture (itai-itai disease), and mercury poi-
  soning along the Agano River in Niigata Prefecture (Niigata Minamata
  disease).120 By the early 1970s, citizens' movements had spread to many
  118 Nishio, "Kaso to kamitsu," p. 209, n. 20. See also Mizuguchi Norito, "Kamitsuchi ni okeru
  seiji sanka: Osaka daitoshi ken o rei to shite," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1974: Seiji sanka no riron to
  genjitsu, ed. Nihon seiji gakkai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975)1 p. 148.
  119 While Japan's GNP grew at the average rate of 10.7 percent per year between i960 and
  1970, the quantities of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air also increased at the
  estimated annual rate of 13.4 percent and n.o percent, respectively, the chemical oxygen
  demand (COD) loading at 12.7 percent, and the total volume of industrial waste at 13.8
  percent. See Otoda Masami, "Kogai mondai," in Showa keizai shi, p. 506.
  120 For an overview of these and other cases, see Kankyo-cho, Kankyo hakusho (annual) (To-
  kyo: Okurasho insatsukyoku).
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
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  communities throughout the country, far beyond the circles of those
  directly affected by the particular pollution-related diseases. Of the
  approximately three thousand organizations of this type identified in
  1973, most were concerned primarily with environmental issues, but
  about 40 percent were interested in much more general national and
  local policy issues, such as housing, education, public health, and
  inflation.121
  The citizens' movements of the late 1960s and 1970s were as diverse
  in their origins and membership characteristics as in their concerns.
  According to a 1973 survey, about 45 percent of the citizens' movement
  organizations then in existence were traditional neighborhood associa-
  tions of long standing, commonly called block or hamlet associations;
  about 15 percent were peer groups also of considerable vintage, such as
  women's and youth associations, parents' and teachers' associations, or
  artists' and writers' circles; nearly 12 percent were extensions of politi-
  cal parties or trade unions; and less than 30 percent were newly formed
  issue-oriented organizations.122 The majority of these movements were
  politically conservative, concerned not with fundamental reform but
  with the protection or promotion of particular local interests within the
  limits of the existing political and economic order. I23
  Nonetheless, the growth of the citizens' movements helped focus
  media attention on local economic and social issues and on the role of
  local governments. In the areas particularly affected by the negative
  impact of the rapid industrialization and urbanization, citizens' move-
  ments tended to support antiestablishment candidates in prefectural
  and municipal elections, whether they were officially independent or
  endorsed by an opposition party. This support paved the way for the
  election of a substantial number of "progressive" governors, mayors,
  and city assemblypersons. When the National Association of Progres-
  sive Mayors (Zenkoku kakushin shicho kai) was formed in 1964, some
  60 mayors joined it, and by 1971 the number had increased to 106.124
  Meanwhile, a "progressive," Minobe Ryokichi, won the governorship
  of the Tokyo metropolitan prefecture in 1967, and another, Kuroda
  Ryoichi, was victorious in the second most populous prefecture,
  121 Asahi shimbun, May 21, 1973. See also Nishio Masaru, "Gyosei katei ni okeru taiko undo:
  Jumin undo ni tsuite no ichi-kosatsu," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1974, p. 75.
  122 Ibid., p. 76. See also Margaret A, McKean, "Political Socialization Through Citizen's
  Movement," in Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan, ed. Kurt Steiner, Ellis S.
  Krauss, and Scott C. Flanagan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), chap. 7.
  123 Nishio, "Gyosei katei," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1974, pp. 80-1; Yokoyama Keiji, "Toshi sai-
  kaihatsu to shimin sanka no seidoka," Nenpo seijigaku, 1974, pp. 104-8.
  124 Nishio, "Kaso to kamitsu," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 243.
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  192 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  Osaka, in 1971. Ninagawa Torazo, the first elected governor of Kyoto
  in 1950, became the first six-term governor in the nation's history in
  1970.125
  Like the reforms of the Occupation, the "economic miracle" of the
  late 1950s and 1960s produced far more beneficiaries than victims.
  Despite the serious losses of both population and economic assets
  suffered by some farming communities, those who stayed on their
  farms managed not only to survive but also to benefit from the change.
  Despite the unforeseen and unwanted consequences that attended the
  intensive industrialization and population movements, most urban em-
  ployees were economically far better off after the miracle than they
  had been before it. And finally, despite the recurrence of violent
  clashes between the LDP governments and the opposition, the na-
  tion's masses were mainly satisfied with the economic performance of
  the succession of conservative administrations.
  Farmers in the era of rapid urbanization and industrialization
  During the decade and a half of intensive industrialization and urban-
  ization, most of the nation's local communities lost population. The
  largest losers were those located in rural areas and heavily dependent
  on farming. As a result, the number of farmer households declined
  from 6.043 million in 1955 to 5.342 million in 1970, or by 11.6
  percent over the fifteen-year period.126 Second, the size of farmer
  households also declined from slightly more than 6 persons to slightly
  fewer than 4, reducing the total population of farmer household
  members by nearly 28 percent. Third, the proportion of farmer
  household members who actually engaged in farming, whether full
  time or part time, decreased from an average of 53 to 39 percent,
  thus reducing the total agricultural work force by about 47 per-
  cent.127 Finally, the number of full-time farmer households, all of
  whose members engaged principally in farming, declined by about 60
  percent. The average farmer household in 1955 had 2.7 members
  engaged full time in fanning, but in 1970 it had only 1 such full-time
  125 On Ninagawa's career and politics, see Ellis S. Krauss, "Opposition in Power: The Devel-
  opment and Maintenance of Leftist Government in Kyoto Prefecture," Political Opposi-
  tion, chap. 11.
  126 See Asahi shinbunsha, Asahi nenkan, 1966, p. 401; 1971, p. 384. See also Ohashi Takanori,
  Nihon no kaikyu kosei (Iioanami shinsho, no. 789) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), p. 115. In
  i960, the typical Japanese rural hamlet consisted of sixty-four households, of which thirty-
  one, or 61 percent, were farmers'; ten years later, it consisted of eighty-one households, of
  which thirty-seven, or 46 percent, were farmers'. See Nishio, "Kaso to kamitsu," in Nenpo
  seijigaku, 1977, pp. 210-n. 
  127 Asahi nenkan, 1958, p. 569; 1966, p. 401; 1971, p. 384.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  193
  farmer, who was likely to be either an old man or a woman.128 Young
  people, especially males, left in droves for nonfarming jobs. One out
  of every 4 farmers between thirty-five and thirty-nine years old in
  1955 had quit farming by 1970, and 1 out of every 3 between twenty-
  five and twenty-nine years old did so.12?
  The rising ratio of rural households partly dependent on farming for
  their income to those completely dependent on such incomes predated
  World War II and, after a temporary halt following the Occupation's
  land reform, rose again after 1950. By 1955, there were already nearly
  twice as many households of the first type as of the second type. This
  trend accelerated during the next decade and a half, with the ratio
  changing to 3.6:1.0 in 1965 and 5.4:1.0 in 1970.130 The average farmer
  household derived 71 percent of its income from farming in 1955, but
  only 48 percent in 1965 and 37 percent in I97O.'31 Economically as
  well as numerically, the typical household in the rural Japan of the
  early 1970s thus had two wage earners to one farmer.
  The dramatic decline of agricultural population and the number of
  all-farmer households resulted from a combination of circumstances.
  The fragmentation of farmland, an unintended consequence of the
  postwar land reform, pushed people out of farming. According to a
  February i960 survey, for example, 38 percent of the nation's farmer
  households owned less than 0.5 hectare of farmland, 32 percent be-
  tween 0.5 and 1.0 hectare, and 25 percent between 1.0 and 2.0 hect-
  ares. In other words, about 70 percent owned less than 1.0 hectare and
  about 94 percent less than 2.0 hectares.132 For the majority of farmer
  households, there was too little land available for farming to absorb
  even their own labor all year round, especially during slack seasons.
  The surplus of agricultural labor resulting from the fragmentation of
  farmland was considerably augmented in the 1960s by the rapid mecha-
  nization of farming methods. Small tractors, which had been in use
  since the early 1950s, became quite common by the early 1960s, and in
  1962 about two-thirds of farmer households owned one.'33 At the same
  time, a variety of herbicides and insecticides were also introduced,
  further reducing the amount of human labor that could profitably be
  invested in farm work.
  Although the small size of the farms owned by individual farmer
  128 Uraki Shin'ichi, Nihon nomin no henkan katei (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1978), pp. 28-9.
  129 Miyake Ichiro, "Yukensha kozo no hendo to senkyo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 265.
  130 Nikon kokusei zue, 1981, p. 209.
  131 Ibid., pp. 212-13; Kokumin seikatsu tokei nenpo 'So, p. 56.
  132 Nihon kokusei zue, 1981, p. 208, Table 16-6. 
  133 ltd, Hoshu to kakushin, pp. 82-3.
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  194 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  households and the introduction of labor-saving devices acted as a
  powerful push behind the outflow of the agricultural work force, the
  expansion of industries provided an equally powerful pull. Employ-
  ment opportunities in the major urban centers lured large numbers of
  young people away from the villages. More important, during the
  1960s, numerous factories and offices were located, or relocated, in
  rural areas, attracted by the abundant, cheap, and pliant labor still
  available there and helped by the rail and highway networks that were
  vastly expanded during the decade.
  This migration of population from rural to urban areas and the work
  force's shift from the agricultural to the industrial and service sectors
  affected the farmers' economic and social status in various ways. Many
  rural hamlets, particularly those in remote and hilly regions, lost most
  of their younger inhabitants and remained as poor as, or even poorer
  than, they were previously. One study shows that in 1970 the average
  farmer household of 4.4 members in a fairly typical agricultural prefec-
  ture, Mie, had an annual income of about ¥1.350 million and spent
  ¥1.055 million for living expenses and an additional ¥116,000 for
  taxes and other public levies. Comparable households in the more
  remote and hilly parts of the same prefecture, however, earned an
  average of only ¥948,000.'*» But the latter type of households were
  not typical in either Mie Prefecture or Japan as a whole. More farmer
  households substantially improved their standards of living in both
  absolute and relative terms.
  In Mie Prefecture, the average farmer's real household income
  roughly quadrupled between 1955 and 1970.'35 At the same time, the
  nominal values of such a household's current assets and buildings
  increased twenty to twenty-five times and thirty-five to forty times,
  respectively. Nationwide, the change was even more dramatic: The
  average farmer household gained by an increase in the nominal value
  of its current assets from ¥282,000 in i960 to ¥ 1,644,700 in 1970 and
  ¥3,103,000 in 1973.136 This amounts to a 58 percent increase in ten
  years and a 110 percent increase in thirteen years.
  Farmers' income improved as well. The average farmer household
  income was roughly equal to that of the average self-employed house-
  hold throughout this period. •" It was slightly less than three-quarters
  of the average employee household income in i960, but it caught up
  134 Uraki, Nihon nomin, pp. 35,41-2. 
  135 Ibid., p. 31.
  136 Keizai kikaku cho, Shotoku shisan bunpai, p. 44.
  137 See Kokumin seikatsu tokei nenpo '80, p. 57.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  195
  by 1970.'38 In 1970, farmers owned per household as many amenities,
  such as color television sets, washing machines, and refrigerators, and
  more automobiles than did either white-collar or blue-collar workers.
  One important cause of the farmers' growing affluence was the good
  prices of their staple product, rice, thanks largely to generous govern-
  ment subsidies. Rice distribution remained a government monopoly
  until 1969, but from the government's point of view, it was a consis-
  tently unprofitable operation after 1952 when the price at which the
  government bought rice from the farmers began to exceed the price at
  which the government sold it to registered rice dealers. In the early
  1960s, the system became even more unprofitable, as the latter price
  fell below the consumer price.139 From the rice farmers' point of view,
  however, this was a profitable arrangement that they naturally ex-
  ploited as much and as long as they could.
  Another factor contributing to the farmers' improved living stan-
  dards was the dramatic increase in the market value of farmland. In
  Mie Prefecture, for example, the price of average-grade wet farmland
  doubled, and that of a comparable grade of dry farmland increased 2.2
  times in the ten years between i960 and 1970.14° More significantly,
  nearly one-third of the prefecture's farmland was converted to residen-
  tial and industrial use during the same period, and the value of this
  type of land rose three to twenty times as fast as did either wet or dry
  farmland. By either selling part of the farmland at the inflated price or
  simply holding on to it, the average farmer thus gained.
  Much less obvious but no less important than the impact of the
  rising price of either rice or land was that of the increasing number of
  farmer household members who abandoned farming for off-farm jobs.
  The income of a typical Mie Prefecture farmer household derived
  from farming increased about three times in nominal terms and a little
  less than twice in real terms between 1955 and 1970.141 Meanwhile, its
  income attributable to nonfarming employment increased eight times
  in nominal terms and about five times in real terms. In 1970 such a
  household thus earned ¥600,000 to ¥900,000 from farming and
  ¥1.200 million to ¥1.400 million from nonfarming employment. In-
  terestingly, however, those households that divided their sources of
  income evenly between farming and nonfarming jobs, rather than
  138 Nishio, "Kaso to kamitsu," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, pp. 210-11.
  139 Ibid., p. 217. See also Ishida and George, "Nokyo," in Japan & Australia; Donnelly,
  "Setting the Price of Rice," in Policymaking in Contemporary Japan.
  140 Uraki, Nikon nomin, pp. 140-1. 
  141 Ibid., pp. 29-30.
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  196
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  those that depended considerably more on one or the other type of
  employment, did best. To cite the Mie Prefecture study again, those
  households engaged exclusively in farming earned an average total of
  ¥1.113 million in 1970; those that depended more on nonfarming
  sources of income than on farming earned ¥1.236 million; and those
  that drew their income equally from both farming and nonfarming
  jobs earned ¥1.574 million.1*2 In any event, how much a farmer
  household depended on off-farm employment income significantly af-
  fected its overall standard of living.
  The diversification of employment among members of farmer
  households had another important, and subtle, socioeconomic im-
  pact. It tended to reduce income inequalities among the farmer house-
  holds themselves. According to an Agriculture Ministry study, the
  farming income differential among farmer households increased na-
  tionwide between 1957 and 1973, but the differential of total farmer
  household income measured by the Gini coefficient slightly decreased
  during the same period, owing to the counterbalancing effects of
  income from nonfarming sources."*3 The sharp decline in the overall
  agricultural population and the even sharper increase in farmer house-
  holds dependent on diversified sources of income which took place
  142 Ibid., pp. 42-7.
  143 Keizai kikaku cho, Shotoku shisan bunpai, pp. 28-30. The Gini coefficient is defined as the
  ratio of the area between the Lorenz curve and the diagonal to the total area under the
  diagonal. The ratio equals zero when the distribution of income is perfectly equal, that is,
  when the Lorenz curve overlaps the diagonal line (see diagram). Numerically, the Gini
  coefficient is defined as
  ABC - ABCDE
  ABC
  t.
  10,000
  100
  r,
  For explanations and discussions of the properties and limitations of the measure, see ibid., pp.
  2-3; and also Richard Szal and Sherman Robinson, "Measuring Income Inequality," in Income
  Distribution and Growth in the Less-Developed Countries, ed. Charles R. Frank, Jr., and Richard
  C. Webb (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1977), pp. 504-5.
  100%
  Cumulative
  share of
  income 
  Y,
  Lorenz curve
  100%
  Cumulative share
  of population
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  197
  between 1957 and 1973 thus not only enriched the majority of the
  nation's farmers but also made its villages economically more, rather
  than less, homogeneous.
  The farmers' growing affluence added to the financial health and
  political effectiveness of the agricultural cooperatives. The growing
  strength of cooperatives in turn helped individual farmers further
  improve their socioeconomic status. Agricultural cooperative unions
  had become the hubs of economic activity in most rural communities
  by the mid-1950s. During the first half of the decade, however, they
  were still vulnerable, for several reasons. The wartime system of
  government-controlled distribution of agricultural produce, under
  which the agricultural associations had acted as the sole authorized
  marketing agents, had been dismantled, except for rice, after the end
  of the war. This deprived postwar agricultural cooperatives of a po-
  tentially lucrative business. They also often suffered from imprudent
  credit sale practices, which left them with many unpaid bills and a
  slow inventory turnover. ••• The cooperatives' food-processing busi-
  nesses, such as the production of sweet-potato starch, usually were
  not profitable, because of depressed market conditions. Finally, the
  cooperatives' generally impoverished members kept their collective
  assets too limited to permit much expansion or diversification of
  operations. But this situation changed dramatically in the early
  1960s, partly because of a government-sponsored consolidation pro-
  gram and partly because of the increasing affluence of the coopera-
  tives' members.
  The Mie Prefecture study shows that between 1955 and 1965 the
  number of multifunctional cooperatives-as opposed to those specializ-
  ing in the marketing of their members' produce, the bulk buying of
  merchandise on behalf of members and mutual funds and investment
  operations-declined from 400 to 145, whereas the membership of
  each increased from several hundred, on the average, to several thou-
  sand. "45 At the same time, virtually all the money received by mem-
  bers for rice sold to the government through a cooperative, as well as
  most of the money made by individual members selling vegetables,
  fruit, livestock or land, was routinely deposited in the cooperatives'
  accounts to be lent or invested at a profit for both the depositors and
  the cooperatives.1'*6 Until the growing criticism of the rice-price sup-
  port system in the face of mounting stockpiles of unsold rice led the
  government in the late 1960s to curb production, the nation's farmers
  144 Uraki, Nihon nomin, pp. 197-206. 
  145 Ibid., pp. 205-6. 
  146 Ibid., p. 229.
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  I98 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  and their agricultural cooperatives enjoyed unprecedented prosperity
  and security. And so they were bound to be a major pillar of the
  conservative rule during this period.
  Urban workers and the "economic miracle"
  The majority of those who left farming during the decade and a half of
  extraordinary economic growth joined the swelling ranks of the urban
  working class. According to a 1965 survey, forty-six of every one
  hundred children of farmers deserted farming, and twenty-nine of
  them joined the blue-collar ranks.'47 Despite the increase in their
  numbers resulting from the massive shift in the work force, urban
  employees made substantial gains during this period, owing to the
  even faster rise in labor productivity and wages.
  Real wages steadily rose at an accelerating rate, and by 1970 they
  were an average of 2.3 times what they were in 1955.148 But these gains
  were by no means evenly distributed among all members of the work-
  ing class. Day workers who depended on odd jobs found through
  either public or private employment agencies were, as a rule, paid the
  minimum wage, which was substantially lower than half of the average
  wage received by those regularly employed. "49 Although the number
  of registered day workers declined by about 45 percent during the
  1960s, there were still some 300,000 of them in 1970. '5°
  Numerically more important were those employed by small busi-
  nesses hiring fewer than one thousand workers each, especially those
  hiring fewer than one hundred each. Employees of such businesses
  accounted for 83 and 53 percent, respectively, of the nation's wage
  earners in I965.1*1 With the possible exception of male workers thirty
  years old or younger, wages in these businesses consistently lagged
  behind those in larger establishments.1*2 In the case of female workers
  fifty years of age or older, the prevailing regular monthly wages paid
  by businesses with eleven to one hundred employees were about 56
  147 Naoi Masaru, "Sangyoka to kaiso kozo no hendo," in Hendoki no Nihon shakai, ed. Akuto
  Hiroshi, Tominaga Ken'ichi, and Sobue Takao (Tokyo: Nihon hoso kyokai, 1972), p. 100.
  148 Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpd seijigaku, 1977, p. 270. See also Fujinawa, Nihon no
  saitei chingin, p. 316, Table 4-2.
  149 Fujinawa, Nihon no saitei chingin, pp. 472-3.
  150 Eguchi, Gendai no "tei shotoku so," vol. 1, p. 156.
  151 Asahinenkan, 1971, p. 416; Sorifu tokei kyoku,ed.,Nihonnotokei, 1976 (Tokyo: Okurasho
  insatsukyoku, 1976), p. 41.
  152 The average wages paid to male employees by businesses hiring between 10 and 990 workers
  were slightly higher than those paid to their counterparts in businesses hiring 1,000 or more.
  See Fujinawa, Nihon no saitei chingin, p. 352.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  199
  percent of those paid by businesses hiring one thousand or more work-
  ers, and likewise, semiannual bonuses were generally about 26 per-
  cent. Low wages were thus associated with small businesses, which in
  the 1960s were typically found in the textile, lumber, leather- and
  food-processing industries, and wholesale and retail trades. '53
  As the rapid growth of the economy led to an acute labor shortage in
  the early 1960s, however, wages in small businesses began to rise
  faster than did those in larger businesses. As a result, the glaring gaps
  between them substantially narrowed. In i960 in businesses hiring
  between 30 and 99 workers the mean wages were slightly less than 60
  percent, and in those hiring between 100 and 499, the mean was
  slightly more than 70 percent of the mean in businesses hiring 500 or
  more persons. By 1970 the wages for the smaller businesses were
  slightly less than 70 percent and slightly more than 80 percent, respec-
  tively, of those for the larger businesses. '54
  There was another gap in wages among workers in different age
  groups, owing to the seniority-based pay system (nenko joretsu). The
  average starting wage for a young secondary school graduate was a
  small fraction of what a veteran in his or her forties was paid after
  thirty years of service. This gap, too, considerably narrowed during
  the 1960s, for several reasons. First, the increasing shortage of labor,
  particularly young labor, substantially raised the younger workers'
  wages, as well as wage levels in small businesses in general.155 Second,
  young workers tended to be hired in disproportionately larger num-
  bers by large firms, as compared with small businesses. In 1968, for
  example, businesses hiring fewer than one hundred workers ac-
  counted for about 30 percent of workers in the fifteen-to-nineteen age
  bracket and 64 percent of those in the fifty-five-to-sixty-four age
  bracket, whereas businesses hiring one thousand or more workers
  accounted for 37 percent of the former, but only 12 percent of the
  latter.156 Finally, the seniority system itself began to be modified un-
  der the pressure of increased labor costs resulting from the combina-
  tion of the across-the-board rise in wages and the depletion of the
  once-abundant pool of young and cheap labor. As a result of these
  changes, the starting wages of secondary and high school graduates
  rose quite rapidly as the mean for all workers and seniority-based
  153 Ibid., pp. 329-31.
  154 Nihon kokuseizue, 1981, p. 423. See also Fujinawa, Nikon no saiteichingin, pp. 318-19; ltd,
  Hoshu to kakushin, pp. 74-5.
  155 Tanaka Manabu, "Rodoryoku chotatsu kiko to roshi kankei," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 8:
  Kaikaku go no Nihon keizai, p. 180. 
  156 Qfoashi, Nihon no kaikyukdid, pp. 157-8.
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  200 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  differentials shrank. Between i960 and 1970, the mean for those un-
  der twenty-five years old gained between 12 and 14 percentage points
  against the mean for those in their forties, who were collectively the
  highest paid group under the seniority system. '5?
  Sex discrimination was a persistent source of wage differentials
  among older employees. In 1958, for example, female workers be-
  tween twenty and twenty-four years of age were paid on the average
  about two-thirds of what their male counterparts earned, but those
  between forty and forty-nine years of age were paid less than one-third
  of what male workers in the same age bracket received.158 During the
  next decade and a half, these gaps narrowed somewhat. The mean for
  all female workers rose from 41 percent of the mean for all male
  workers in 1958 to 47 percent in 1970. The proportion of female
  workers among the lowest paid 10 percent, however, substantially
  increased during the same period, from 77 percent to 87 percent.
  Despite the glaring and in some respects greater inequality arising
  from sex discrimination, female workers staged no major revolts. One
  reason was custom and inertia; in most occupations, women had al-
  ways been paid considerably less than men had, and they always had
  been discriminated against. Another reason was probably the ten-
  dency of younger and unmarried women workers to continue to live
  with their parents and to pay relatively little for housing and, in many
  cases, food; and of older and married women workers to regard their
  wages basically as supplements to their husbands' earnings. According
  to a 1971 Ministry of Labor survey, female workers consistently em-
  phasized their life at home over their work on the job more than male
  workers did.'59
  In any event, the real income of worker households not only in-
  creased significantly but also became less unequal than previously,
  because of the reduction, though not the elimination, of the tradi-
  tional sources of discrimination and inequalities. An Office of the
  Prime Minister study shows that the average worker household in-
  come rose from about ¥53,000 per month in 1963 to ¥113,000 in
  1970, whereas the Gini coefficient fell from 0.2153 to 0.1787.160 The
  trend toward greater equality was helped by the legislation of mini-
  mum wage standards. These standards were implemented initially
  through the mechanism of voluntary agreements among employers as
  provided for in the 1959 Minimum Wage Law and, after the 1968
  157 See Fu')inawa, Nihon no sake: chingin, pp. 324, 334-5. 
  158 Ibid., pp. 342-3.
  159 Rodo daijin kanbo tokei joho bu, ed., Nihonjin no kinro kan (Tokyo: Shiseido, 1974), pp. 9,
  47-51. 
  160 Keizai kikaku cho, Shotokushisan bunpai, pp. n-12,19.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  201
  revision of the law, mainly through the intervention of the Central
  Minimum Wage Council. By the end of 1971, approximately 90
  percent of the nation's industrial workers and 40 percent of employ-
  ees in the wholesale and retail trades were covered by the law, which
  guaranteed minimum wages roughly equal to the high school gradu-
  ates' starting wages.161
  Consumer prices of key commodities and services remained remark-
  ably stable throughout this period, despite the phenomenal rise in
  wages and incomes. Prices did rise sharply, however, in certain areas
  of the small-business sector, reflecting the growing labor costs. Be-
  tween 1956 and 1970, movie tickets in Tokyo rose about 3.7 times on
  the average, the price of a haircut 2.7 times, admission to a public bath
  house 2.5 times, a newspaper subscription 2.3 times, and both rail and
  city bus fares doubled. On the other hand, telephone and telegraph
  charges remained the same; gas, water, and postage rates increased
  moderately by 7, 21, and 40 percent, respectively; and electricity costs
  actually decreased by 7.5 percent.162
  Material comforts were made more available by means of a series of
  tax cuts, and income taxes were reduced in 1957, followed by cuts in
  inheritance and corporate taxes the next year.16* In 1962, indirect
  taxes such as alcohol taxes and certain commodity taxes were substan-
  tially reduced. Sweeping across-the-board cuts were made in 1966,
  followed by more selective but nonetheless substantial cuts in income
  taxes in 1969. The combination of stable consumer prices and signifi-
  cant increases in disposable incomes contributed to the growing afflu-
  ence among both white-collar and blue-collar workers.
  Many workers experienced changes in other aspects of their lives as
  well. Between the two world wars, and especially since the end of
  World War II, the larger Japanese firms had depended heavily on the
  practice of guaranteeing lifetime employment (shushin koyo). To retain
  skilled workers, these firms based their wages on length of service.164
  The lifetime employment practice largely survived the "economic
  miracle." First, the system applied to a relatively small number of
  161 Fujinawa, Nikon no saitei chingin, pp. 472-3.
  162 Kokumin seikatsu tokei nenpo '80, p. 134. 
  163 Sato, Nikon no zeikin, pp. 24-8.
  164 On the history and functions of the permanent employment and seniority-based wage
  systems, see Walter Galenson and Konosuke Odaka, "The Japanese Labor Market," in
  Asia's New Giant: How the Japanese Economy Works, ed. Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky
  (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1976), pp. 609-27. See also Yasukichi Yasuba,
  "The Evolution of Dualistic Wage Structure," in Industrialization and Its Social Conse-
  quences, ed. Hugh T. Patrick (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
  1976). PP- 253-4; Robert E. Cole, Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition (Berkeley
  and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 75-81,113-17.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  202 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  workers, perhaps no more than about 20 percent of the total in the early
  1960s. l65 The generally tight labor market during the rapid economic
  growth also argued for the continuation, rather than the abandonment,
  of devices to lure and keep scarce skilled workers. The practice of
  basing wages principally on length of service, which roughly equaled
  age, however, came under increasing strain, as the diminishing supply
  of young workers began to push up the starting wages of secondary and
  high school graduates and thus indirectly the already high wages of the
  older employees.
  In 1962 Nikkeiren called for a shift to a new system of wage determi-
  nation based on skill and performance.166 The ideas underlying the
  new system were imported from the United States and popularized
  through what was commonly called the quality control (QC) or zero
  defects (ZD) movement. A common practice associated with the move-
  ment was to divide workers into numerous self-regulating work teams,
  each with a leader appointed from among the workers themselves. The
  result was the emergence of a new class of workers charged with a
  variety of quasi-managerial duties, invested with appropriate titles,
  and rewarded by wage increments for their added service. According
  to a study made in the late 1960s, one in every five employees of
  Toyota Motor Company and one in every four of IBM Japan belonged
  to this emerging class of Japanese-style foremen.167
  Combined with the effects of the rapidly rising worker-household
  incomes, this latest version of the Japanese system of management had
  a profound impact on the attitudes and behavior of individual workers
  and labor unions alike. Despite the moderate rise in worker mobility,
  resulting mainly from voluntary separation in an era still characterized
  by full employment, the system helped maintain, even strengthen in
  many cases, the employees' morale and loyalty to management.168 A
  1968 Nihon keizai shinbun survey of 1,200 male employees between
  twenty-five and thirty years of age, drawn from a national sample of
  150 large firms, found three-quarters of the respondents generally
  satisfied with the current conditions of their lives.169 A 1971 Ministry
  of Labor survey using a random sample of 26,058 workers found
  majorities in all age groups, except those in the below-twenty group,
  satisfied with their current jobs.170
  165 Koji Taira, "Characteristics of Japanese Labor Markets," Economic Development and Cul-
  lural Change 10 (January 1962): 150-68.
  166 Tanaka, "Rodoryoku chotatsu kiko," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 8, p. 180.
  167 Ohashi, Nihon no kaikyu kosei, pp. 141-5.
  168 Watanuki, "Kodo seicho," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 171.
  169 Nikon keizai shinbun, January I, 1969.
  170 Rodo daijin kanbo, Nihonjin no kinro kan, pp. 12, 54-5.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  203
  Few workers were entirely happy with their living conditions. Many
  were in fact unhappy with their wages or salaries. Two-thirds of those
  polled in the aforementioned 1971 government survey, for example,
  expressed dissatisfaction with their wages, and about the same number
  with the amount of their current savings.171 In other words, most
  Japanese workers in the late 1960s and early 1970s were generally
  content with the improvement in their living conditions brought about
  by the rapid growth of the economy, but they nonetheless felt that
  their wages were lower than they should have been. As far as they were
  concerned, the primary task of a labor union was to win higher wages
  from management.I72
  Leaders of the major labor federations adapted, with varying de-
  grees of success, to the increasingly evident bread-and-butter con-
  cerns of the rank and file. In the largest of the national federations,
  Sohyo, the leadership passed in 1955 from the ideologue of the left,
  Takano, to a pair of pragmatists, Iwai Akira and Ota Kaoru.17* The
  latter introduced a wage negotiation strategy soon to be known as the
  "spring offensive" (shunto). Annual wage negotiations between indi-
  vidual enterprise-based unions and employers were coordinated and
  directed by Sohyo. In the 1960s the strategy became a standard
  operating procedure for Sohyo and its affiliates, and it significantly
  contributed to the across-the-board rise in wage rates during that
  period.
  An important reason for the success of the spring offensive strategy
  was the employers' generally conciliatory and cooperative attitudes. In
  the benign and optimistic atmosphere of the decade following the i960
  battles over the United States-Japan Mutual Security Treaty and the
  close of major coal mines in southern Fukuoka Prefecture, man-
  agement-labor antagonisms were largely buried or papered over, and a
  pattern of relationships that some called "lovers' fights" (abekku toso)
  evolved.I7<» The right-wing International Metal Federation-Japan
  Council, or IMF-JC, as it has been better known since its founding in
  1964, advocated management-labor cooperation on the ground that
  labor's contribution to increased productivity, rather than strikes,
  would win higher wages for the workers.I7* After the mid-1960s, unions
  in the fastest-growing private-sector industries, such as those repre-
  sented by the IMF-JC, replaced the public service employees' unions,
  171 Ibid., pp. 18-19, 93-6.
  172 Ibid., pp. 186, 200; Shinohara, Gendai Nihon no bunka henyo, p. 157.
  173 Takemae, "1949-nen rodoho," in Senryoki Nihon, pp. 303-4; Tanaka, "Rodoryoku chotatsu
  kiko," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 8, p. 170.
  174 See Ishida, "Sengo kaikaku to soshiki," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 1, p. 153.
  175 Tanaka, "Rodoryoku chotatsu kiko," in Sengo kaikaku, vol. 8, p. 192.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  204 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  such as those represented by Sohyo, as the pacesetters in the spring
  offensive wage negotiations.
  The shift of pocketbook power from public- to private-sector unions
  had immediate effects on the balance of power among the major labor
  federations. By 1973 the IMF-JC had grown into a 1.8-million-
  member federation of leading unions in the iron and steel and metal
  industries, in automobile and home appliance manufacturing, and in
  shipbuilding. '?6 An even more formidable coalition of ideologically
  moderate unions was built around the All Japan Trade Union Con-
  gress (Zen Nihon rodo kumiai kaigi: Zenro) and its successor, the
  Japan Confederation of Labor (Zen Nihon rodo sodomei: Domei),
  founded in 1954 and 1964, respectively. Between 1963 and 1973,
  Zenrd-Domei absorbed nearly 1 million private-sector workers, most
  of them defectors from the left-leaning Sohyo, and became the na-
  tion's second-largest labor federation, with a membership of some 2.3
  million, as compared with Sohyo's 4.3 million.'77
  The "embourgeoisement" of labor and the peasantry brought about
  a revolution of values and attitudes among the Japanese electorate.
  The erosion of class consciousness and loyalty among those who had
  traditionally supported the opposition parties, especially the Social-
  ists, greatly helped the LDP to dominate both national and local
  politics throughout this period. It was as if Japan were about to turn
  into a classless society of increasingly and uniformly affluent and con-
  servative citizens.
  The rise of a middle-class majority
  Between 1955 and 1970, the proportion of farmers in the nation's total
  work force declined from about 40 percent to 19 percent, and there
  was a corresponding rise in the proportion of the urban white-collar
  and blue-collar workers, from 42 to 60 percent'.178 The rapid improve-
  ment and equalization of living standards for farmers and workers
  thus meant similar changes for most Japanese.
  But neither poverty nor inequality was entirely eliminated. As late
  as 1972, more than a third of the households in a Tokyo ward were
  found to have incomes below the poverty line established by the Liveli-
  hood Protection Law (¥771,000 for a household of four).179 The inci-
  176 Takabatake Michitoshi, "Taishu undo no tayoka to henshitsu," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977,
  PP- 349-5°-
  177 Ibid., pp. 344, 349-50; Watanuki, "Kodo seicho," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, pp. 170-1. See
  also Ohara shakai mondai kenkyujo, Nihon rodo nenkan, vol. 50 (Tokyo: Rodo junposha,
  1979). P- 177-
  178 Eguchi, Gendai no "lei shotoku so," vol. 3, pp. 488-9. 
  179 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 55-7.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  205
  dence of poverty thus defined was particularly high among households
  either headed by those under twenty years old or over seventy years
  old, or consisting of single old men, women, or couples.180 In fact, the
  number of households receiving public assistance increased somewhat
  between i960 and 1970, as did the number of households without an
  employed member.181 In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, the
  amounts of assistance provided under the Livelihood Protection Law
  increased faster than did consumer prices. The development of social
  security and tax-supported pension plans further helped alleviate the
  plight of the poor, especially single parents and the aged.182 By the end
  of this period, absolute poverty, as opposed to relative poverty, had
  been largely eliminated.
  Occupation-based income differentials remained significant but
  steadily diminished. An important reason was the increasing homoge-
  neity in young job seekers' level of education, which was clearly a
  major determinant of their occupation. l83 Educational background as
  a determinant of occupational career and income gradually lost much
  of its importance as the number of those who went to high school and
  college rapidly increased. Whereas only slightly over half of the gradu-
  ates of secondary schools entered high school in 1955, nearly 90 per-
  cent did so in 1973; the proportion of high school graduates who
  entered colleges and universities rose from less than 5 percent to over
  30 percent in the same period.18" The rapid rise in the wage rates of
  younger workers, noted in the preceding section, reduced education-
  based income differentials to the rather negligible levels of 1.0:1.6
  between primary school and college graduates and 1.0:1.1 between
  high school and college graduates.l8'
  In 1955, the highest incomes were earned by those holding manage-
  rial, sales, specialist, and clerical jobs, in that order, and the lowest
  incomes were earned by farmers and unskilled, skilled, and semi-
  skilled workers, also in that order.186 The mean income of managerial
  180 Ibid., no. 1, pp. 72-3, 77. 
  181 Keizai kikaku cho, Shotoku shisan bunpai, pp. 163-6.
  182 Ibid., pp. 154, 137; Keizai kikaku cho, ed., Kokumin seikatsu hakusho: Showa 54-nen ban
  (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsu kyoku, 1979), p. 164.
  183 According to a 1975 study, for example, 1 percent of primary and secondary school gradu-
  ates, 7 percent of high school graduates, and 34 percent of college and university graduates
  held managerial or specialist jobs, whereas 54 percent, 41 percent, and 15 percent of each
  category of graduates were manual workers, and 33 percent, 11 percent, and 1 percent,
  respectively, were farmers. See Imada Takatoshi and Hara Junsuke, "Shakaiteki chii no
  ikkansei to hi-ikkansei," in Nihon no kaiso kozo, ed. Tominaga Ken'ichi (Tokyo: Tokyo
  daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp. 184,191-4.
  184 Imada Sachiko, "Gakureki kozo no suisei bunseki," in Nihon no kaiso kozo, p. 133; Asahi
  nenkan, 1977, p. 598.
  185 Tominaga Ken'ichi, "Shakai kaiso to shakai ido no suisei bunseki," in Nihon no kaiso kozo,
  pp.50-1. 
  186 Ibid., pp. 43-4; Kokumin seikatsu hakusho, 1977, pp. 124-37.
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  206 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  personnel was about four times higher than that of farmers. For the
  next twenty years, managers stayed at the top of the scale, and
  farmers exchanged their place at the bottom with unskilled workers.
  However, managers' mean income grew only 7.2 times during the
  decade, whereas farmers' and unskilled workers' incomes grew 13.8
  and 12.0 times, respectively. As a result, the mean income of man-
  agers was only 2.3 times that of unskilled workers in 1975.187 By
  the late 1960s, income distribution in Japan thus looked similar to
  that in the United Kingdom and somewhat more equal than that in
  West Germany.188
  Along with incomes, household savings both increased and equal-
  ized during the 1960s. The relatively higher rate of savings among the
  poor reflected the perceived inadequacies in the social security and
  publicly supported welfare programs. According to a 1961 national
  survey, one-third of the respondents saved mainly in order to cope
  with such contingencies as family illnesses, another third to pay for
  their children's education, and nearly 10 percent to support them-
  selves in their old age.'8' The sharp rise in the household incomes of
  the poor in the 1960s thus enabled them to save considerably more
  than could the poor of the 1940s and 1950s.
  All the while, the distribution of fixed assets, as opposed to income
  and savings, remained wildly unequal. The deliberately low capital
  gains tax rate in effect between 1970 and 1975 for the sale of land
  owned by the seller for five or more years (the rate was set at 10
  percent for 1970-1 and rose to 15 percent in 1972-3, and 20 percent in
  1974-5) helped perpetuate, if not aggravate, the remaining inequali-
  ties in income distribution.190
  These inequalities, however, were apparently not conspicuous
  enough to nurture class consciousness among the majority of the
  nation's farmers or workers. According to one estimate, those identi-
  fying themselves as middle class increased from 37 percent in 1958 to
  61 percent in 1973. If one includes those who preferred to call them-
  selves either lower-middle or upper-middle class, the percentage fig-
  ure reached 90 percent by 1970.'9' Most, if not all, of the self-
  187 The Gini coefficient for all households declined substantially during the 1960s and the first
  two years of the 1970s, from 0.3236 in 1961 to 0.2705 in 1972, although it rose to 0.2736 and
  even higher in the mid-1970s. See Kokumin seikatsu hakusho, 1979, p. 145.
  188 Keizai kikaku cho, Sholoku shisan bunpai, pp. 33-6.
  189 Shinohara, Gendai nihon no bunka kenyo, pp. 54-5. See also Mita Munesuke's comments in
  Asahi shimbun, February 25,1969. 
  190 Sato, Nihon no zeikin, p. 28.
  191 Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpd seijigaku, 1977, p. 270. See also Takabatake, "Taishu
  undo," in Nenpd seijigaku, 1977, p. 342; and Naoi Michiko, "Kaiso ishiki to kaikyu ishiki,"
  in Nihon no kaiso kozo, p. 376.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  207
  identified members of this expansive middle class were presumably
  satisfied with the present state of affairs.
  Values, party identification, and electoral outcomes
  Satisfaction with the material conditions of life cut across party, gen-
  erational, and occupational lines. At the end of this period, 80 percent
  of the LDP supporters, 75 percent of the JSP and DSP, 70 percent of
  the CGP, and 65 percent of the JCP supporters were satisfied with the
  current conditions of their lives.192 Economic issues were thus less
  important to both the general electorate and the political parties. Pros-
  perity and affluence, as represented by the rapid increases in house-
  hold savings, made the Japanese considerably more conservative in the
  1960s and early 1970s than they had been during the Occupation and
  early post-Occupation period.•« Asked in a i960 poll to name the
  nation's single most important goal, twice as many respondents in
  metropolitan Tokyo named peace as those who named the well-being
  of their own family, and the latter outnumbered by two to one those
  who named any other goal.194 Of the respondents in rural Hitachiota,
  only slightly fewer mentioned peace, whereas substantially more, but
  far fewer than the peace advocates, mentioned family well-being. In
  that same year, government efforts to persuade the Diet to ratify the
  revised United States-Japan Mutual Security Treaty touched off a
  series of protest rallies and demonstrations, not because the public had
  suddenly become revolutionary or anti-American, but because many
  thought that the government efforts threatened the peace or the demo-
  cratic rules of government or both.195
  The rise of middle-class conservatism, however, did not lead to an
  end of ideology. Throughout this period, conflicts over fundamental
  values and commitments continued to divide both the electorate and
  the parties. According to a 1973 survey, 27 and 20 percent of those
  who identified with the LDP and DSP unequivocally supported capi-
  talism, whereas only 5 and 10 percent of those who identified with the
  JCP and CGP did so.196 On the other hand, 69, 60, and 51 percent of
  192 Kazama Daiji, "Chunenso no shiji-seito betsu seikatsu ishiki," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2:
  Tokushu: Shiji-seito betsu nihonjin shudan, ed. Nihonjin kenkyukai (Tokyo: Shiseido, 1975),
  p. 146.
  193 Mita Munesuke, Gendai Nihon no shinjo to ronri (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1971)1 P- '39-
  194 Shinohara, Gendai Nihon no bunka henyo, p. 72.
  195 See Seki, "Taigai kankei," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 105; Takabatake, "Taishu undo," in
  Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, PP- 335-6-
  196 Hayashi Chikio, "Nihonjin no ishiki wa seito-shiji betsu ni do chigau ka," in Nihonjin
  kenkyu, no. 2, pp. 40-7.
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  208 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  the CGP, LDP, and DSP supporters opposed communism, but only 9
  and 37 percent of the JCP and JSP supporters did so. Few supporters
  of any party opposed "democracy," but the term meant different
  things to the different groups. To the LDP and DSP supporters, it
  was incompatible with both socialism and communism; to CGP sup-
  porters, it was compatible with socialism but not with communism; to
  JCP supporters, it was compatible with both socialism and commu-
  nism; and finally, to JSP supporters, it was neither clearly compatible
  nor clearly incompatible with either ideology. Similarly, in the late
  1960s, LDP and DSP supporters preferred the United States to both
  the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China by a wide mar-
  gin, whereas JSP and JCP supporters preferred the Soviet Union and
  China to the United States by an equally wide margin.1'7 Two-thirds
  of middle-aged LDP supporters and substantial majorities among
  CGP and DSP supporters had respect for and generally favorable
  feelings toward the emperor, whereas only about half of JSP and less
  than one-third of JCP supporters shared such feelings.198
  Opinion was divided along party lines particularly on issues of equal-
  ity, both among nations or within Japanese society. Among LDP
  supporters those who believed that absolute equality is unattainable, if
  not undesirable, far outnumbered those who did not believe this, but
  the opposite was true among JSP, CGP, and, especially, JCP support-
  ers. "9 Those LDP and CGP supporters who held the view that the
  Japanese were racially superior to other peoples outnumbered those
  who rejected such a view, but among JSP and JCP supporters those
  who rejected the racist view outnumbered those who upheld it. CGP,
  LDP, DSP, and JSP supporters overwhelmingly approved, but JCP
  supporters opposed, the views that women should take their hus-
  bands' family names and that after children are born, they should
  mind the home rather than hold jobs.200 Both LDP and DSP support-
  ers supported the legalization of prostitution, whereas JSP, CGP, and
  JCP supporters opposed such a move.201
  Values and party identification were related to such variables as age,
  sex, education, occupation, and place of residence. Throughout this
  period, substantially and consistently higher percentages of those in
  their fifties preferred the LDP than did those in their twenties,
  197 Karube Kiyoshi, "Nihonjin wa donoyo ni shite shiji-seito o kimeru ka," in Nihonjin kenkyu,
  no. 2, pp. 82-3. See also Hayashi, "Nihonjin no ishiki," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, pp. 14-27.
  198 Kazama, "Chunenso," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, p. 145.
  199 Karube, "Nihonjin wa donoyo ni," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, pp. 82-3.
  200 Kazama, "Chunenso," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, p. 132.
  201 Karube, "Nihonjin wa donoyo ni," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, pp. 82-3.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  209
  whereas substantially higher percentages of those in their twenties
  consistently preferred the opposition parties than did those in their
  fifties.202 Each party was thus identified with particular segments
  of the electorate. The LDP was favored by older male employers, the
  self-employed, and farmers.203 The JSP, on the other hand, was
  predominantly a party of urban employees under forty years old with
  either high school or college diplomas.2a» The DSP, CGP, and JCP
  all drew most of their electoral support from the major urban cen-
  ters, but their popularity was most stable, respectively, among male
  white-collar, female blue-collar, and younger blue- and white-collar
  voters of both sexes.2°s CGP supporters were mainly primary and
  secondary school graduates, whereas JCP supporters were much bet-
  ter educated.
  Between the late 1950s and early 1970s, the voter turnout in rural
  areas remained consistently higher than that in urban areas.206 How-
  ever, electoral behavior changed in other respects. At the beginning of
  this period, turnout was substantially hjgher among male voters than
  among female voters, and slightly higher among younger and better-
  educated voters than among older and less-educated voters. By the
  end of this period, the male-female difference had disappeared, and
  the turnout among older and less-educated voters had surpassed that
  among younger and better-educated voters. This trend benefited the
  LDP and hurt the opposition, especially the JSP.
  Radio and especially television became important influences in the
  i960 general elections, when the major private networks for the first
  time gave the candidates time for campaign commercials.207 NHK
  followed suit a.year later by starting a one-hour program called "Meet-
  ing the Prime Minister." TV commercials with candidates' pictures
  and brief summaries of their curricula vitae became a standard
  election-time program after 1963, and longer and more elaborate cam-
  paign speeches began to be telecast after 1969.208 The influence of the
  audiovisual media on voters' decisions was hard to measure but was
  202 Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 280. See also Kazama, "Chunenso,"
  in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, p. 130.
  203 NHK hoso yoron chosajo, ed., Gendai nihonjin no ishiki kozo (NHKBooks, no. 344) (Tokyo:
  Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai, 1979), pp. 228-9. See also Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in
  Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, pp. 266-9; Kazama, "Chunenso," in Nihonjin kenkyu, no. 2, p. 130;
  Asahi shinbunsha yoron chosa shitsu, ed., Asahi shinbunyoron chosa no 30-nen: Nihonjin no
  seiji ishiki (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1976), pp. 8-9,76-8.
  204 Asahi shinbunyoron chosa, p. 83. 
  205 Ibid., p. 13.
  206 Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpo seijingaku, 1977, pp. 288-9. See also Shinohara,
  Gendai Nihon no bunka henyo, pp. 140-1.
  207 Uchikawa Yoshimi, "Masukomi jidai no tenkai to seiji katei," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, pp.
  313-14. 
  208 Ibid., p. 319; Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 293.
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  210 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  probably significant, considering that television set ownership in-
  creased from less than i percent of the nation's households in 1955 to
  over 90 percent in I973.2°9
  Considerably more obvious was the effective mobilization of con-
  stituents through a network of local campaign machines. LDP politi-
  cians were the first to try to build personal campaign machines
  (koenkai or support associations), soon after the party was founded in
  the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, such groups had grown to consti-
  tute a shadow party of over 10 million members, whereas the member-
  ship of the LDP itself remained no more than a few hundred thou-
  sand.210 In each election district, votes were garnered and delivered to
  particular LDP candidates by koenkai, often led by local politicians,
  such as prefectural and city assemblymen, and supported by major
  interest groups in the area. Politicians in other parties began to emu-
  late the LDP's example, but with less successful results.
  The LDP was helped by its image as the main force behind the
  economic miracle, thanks to the consistently progrowth policies pur-
  sued by the succession of conservative cabinets. The party was helped
  also by the ineptitude and lack of credibility of the opposition parties,
  especially the JSP.
  In a 1959 poll, only about 12 percent of the respondents expected the
  Socialists ever to come to power in the foreseeable future.211 In the wake
  of the unsuccessful i960 campaign against the ratification of the new
  United States-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, the JSP lost to the LDP
  substantial numbers of its supporters, particularly among the young.212
  For the first time, more voters in their twenties supported the LDP
  than the JSP. Moreover, the decline of the JSP's popularity was most
  conspicuous among organized labor. Between i960 and 1969, the mem-
  bers of Sohyo-affiliated unions who supported the party fell from 72 to
  39 percent, whereas the percentage of those who did not support any
  party increased from 14 to 39 percent.21* According to a 1967 study by
  Sohyo's own research department, less than a quarter of its rank and file
  supported and looked forward to the arrival of socialism. The remain-
  209 Ichikawa, "Masukomi jidai," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 304; Nihon no tokei, 1966, p. 304.
  210 Miyake, "Yukensha kozo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 295. See also Gerald L. Curtis,
  Election Campaigning Japanese Style (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), chap. 5;
  Nathaniel B. Thayer, How the Conservatives Rule Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
  sity Press, 1969), chap. 4. 
  211 Shinohara, Gendai Nihon no bunka henyo, p. 33.
  212 Asahi shimbunyoron chosa, p. 18; Hayashi Chikio, "Sengo no seiji ishiki," in Jiyu (January
  1964): 57-65-
  213 Watanuki, "Kodo seicho," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 171. See also Miyake, "Yukensha
  kozo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 296; and Takabatake, "Taishu undo," in Nenpo
  seijigaku, 1977, p. 349.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  211
  ing three-quarters either preferred the existing system of capitalism or
  wanted to see only a partial and gradual reform of it.214 Unsurprisingly,
  the JSP's membership stagnated at about 50,000 until the late 1960s and
  then began to slip until it was reduced to about 37,000 in 1973. The
  JSP's share of the vote and its number of seats in the House of Represen-
  tatives general elections both steadily dropped from 33 percent and 166
  seats in 1958 to 22 percent and 118 seats in 1972.2I5
  Of the three lesser parties, the DSP did not make much headway in
  either formal membership or broader electoral support, despite the
  significant gains made by the party's main source of support, the
  Domei-affiliated unions. The party claimed to have 70,000 members
  after its split from the JSP at the end of 1959, but it apparently lost
  half of them by 1973.2l6 The party won 7.7 percent of the vote and
  thirty-one seats in the 1969 House of Representatives elections, its
  best electoral performance of this period, but it suffered a disastrous
  defeat in the next general elections of 1972 when it won only nineteen
  seats with 6.9 percent of the vote. The party's ambiguous ideological
  and programmatic commitments appear to have been the main cause
  of its trouble. During the first decade of its existence, the party be-
  came increasingly indistinguishable from the LDP in its platform and
  legislative performance.217
  The CGP and the JCP both did considerably better. The CGP
  advertised a membership of one-half million in 1964 when the party
  contested the House of Councilors election for the first time, but by
  1973 the number had fallen to 160,000, mainly owing to the party's
  nominal "separation" and independence from the parent organization,
  the Sdkagakkai, in 1970.218 Despite the dip in formal membership,
  however, the party retained its virtual monopoly of Sdkagakkai mem-
  bers' votes, which swelled to several million in the early 1970s.219 As a
  result, the CGP managed to avoid falling to the bottom of the heap,
  and it was able to maintain its minor-opposition status, even after the
  1970 public severance of its umbilical cord.
  214 Takabatake, "Taishu undo," in Nenpo seijigaku, 1977, p. 340, n. 9.
  215 Naigai senkyo deia ('78 Mainichi nenkan bessalsu) (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1978), pp.
  2-7; Asahi nenkan, 1974, p. 259; Jiji tsushinsha, Jiji nenkan, 1958 (Tokyo: Jiji tsushinsha,
  '958), P- 149; Nakano Tatsuo and Iizuka Shigetaro, Nihon 0 ugokasu soshiki: Shakaito
  minshald (.Nihon 0 ugokasu soshiki series) (Tokyo: Sekkasha, 1968), pp. 64-7.
  216 Jiji nenkan, 1961, p. 58; Asahi nenkan, 1974, p. 263.
  217 For relevant comments, see Taketsugu Tsurutani, Political Change in Japan (New York:
  McKay, 1977), pp. 164-8. 
  218 Asahi nenkan, 1966, p. 297; 1974, p. 262.
  219 The Sdkagakkai itself claimed a membership of over 15 million. See Tsurutani, Political
  Change, p. 153. But precise figures are not available. For an excellent discussion of the
  problems in estimating the organization's membership, see James W. White, The
  Sdkagakkai and Mass Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970), pp. 57-61.
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  212 
  POSTWAR POLITICS
  The JCP was a marginal party in 1955, with two of its members
  sitting in the House of Representatives and polling about 2 percent of
  the vote in the general elections of that year. By 1973, however, it had
  established itself as a respectable minor-opposition party, with thirty-
  eight seats in the House of Representatives and about 10 percent of the
  vote among the nation's electorate under its control. The party's
  achievement was all the more impressive considering that alone among
  the several Japanese parties of this period, it relied for its electoral
  success more or less exclusively on the vote and work of its own
  membership. In 1955 the JCP had no more than about 20,000 mem-
  bers, but by 1973 that figure had grown to over 3oo,ooo.220 In the
  early 1970s the JCP was an equal of the LDP rather than of any other
  opposition party in terms of both membership and campaign funds at
  its disposal. These remarkable gains resulted largely from the skillful
  and effective adaptation of the party's platform and policies to socio-
  economic changes. The party transformed itself from an inveterate
  opponent into an outspoken defender of the existing constitutional
  order.
  In the face of these developments, the "two-party" system of 1955
  changed into a "quasi-multiparty" system. The LDP ceased to be a
  majority party in terms of its share of the vote in the 1967 House of
  Representatives elections, and it lost its majority position in the House
  of Councilors in 1971. The party nonetheless remained a majority
  party in the House of Representatives throughout this period, partly
  because of the retention of the outdated electoral boundaries originally
  drawn in 1947, which grossly overrepresented rural constituents at the
  expense of their urban counterparts, and partly because of the party's
  recruitment of successful independent candidates after each elec-
  tion.221 More important, generalized public support for the LDP re-
  mained virtually unchanged from 1955 to 1973, probably because of
  the favorable socioeconomic climate and the increasing fragmentation
  of the opposition. In a series of Asahi shinbun polls, support for the
  LDP hovered around 45 percent and for the opposition as a whole a
  few percentage points lower.222 Whenever the LDP's popularity took
  220 See Haruhiro Fukui, "The Japanese Communist Party: The Miyamoto Line and Its Prob-
  lems," in The Many Faces of Communism, ed. Morton A. Kaplan (New York: Free Press,
  1978), p. 284.
  221 J. A. A. Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy (New York: Norton, 1975),
  pp. 91-6. See also Scott C. Flanagan, "Electoral Change in Japan: An Overview," in Political
  Opposition, ed. Steineretal.,pp. 45-7. 
  222 Asahi shinbun yoronchosa, pp. 13—14.
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  THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENTALISM 
  213
  a sharp dip, as it did in the spring of i960 during the last days of
  Kishi's government and in late 1971 and early 1972 during the last
  months of Sato's, a change of prime ministers reversed the trend and
  restored the balance. In the early 1970s, the one-party-dominated
  multiparty system had yet to face a real crisis.
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  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  PART II
  EXTERNAL RELATIONS
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  CHAPTER 5
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE,
  1895-1945
  CIRCUMSTANCES AND MOTIVATIONS
  Japan's rise as a colonial power stands as an anomaly in the history of
  modern imperialism, one that can be understood only in the context of
  Japan's historical and geographic circumstances and the world events
  in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Launched in the high noon
  of the "new imperialism," the Japanese colonial empire1 was to a large
  extent formally patterned after the tropical empires of modern Eu-
  rope. Yet, as the only non-Western imperium of modern times, Ja-
  pan's overseas empire stood apart from its European counterparts, its
  circumstances scarcely duplicated elsewhere.2
  The first and most arresting aspect of the Japanese empire is the fact
  that the metropolitan homeland itself only narrowly escaped colonial
  subjugation, surviving as one of the four Asian nations (along with
  China, Siam, and Korea) to escape obliteration in the flood of Western
  dominance in the nineteenth century. As it was, Japan's emergence as a
  colonial power in the late 1890s came just as the nation was extricating
  itself from the unequal treaty system imposed three decades earlier by
  the Western powers. The reasons for this remarkable phenomenon-
  the pull of other Asian opportunities on aggressive Western energies at
  mid-century and the revolutionary transformation of Japan from a
  weak, feudal, and agrarian country into a modern industrial power
  economically and militarily capable of resisting foreign domination-
  have been so extensively explored in this and other histories that they
  1 I shall deal here with only the formal colonial empire, that is, with the territories acquired by
  Japan before 1931 through cession by treaties given the sanction of international recognition. I
  shall thus set aside the informal imperialism in China and Manchuria, including the Japanese
  settlements, concessions, and railway "zones" in those countries, as well as the Japanese
  conquests in China, Southeast Asia, and the southwest Pacific from 1937 to 1945. Yet, as I
  shall argue, these outer spheres of interest and unassimilated wartime conquests became the
  consequence, the justification, and the eventual undoing of the inner formal colonial empire.
  2 To date, the best comprehensive treatment of the Japanese colonial empire in English is The
  Japanese Colonial Empire, i8gs~t94S> ed- Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton:
  Princeton University Press, 1984).
  217
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  2l8 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  need no repetition here. What does require reemphasis is that both
  historical timing and an overriding concern for national security were
  basic to the initial direction of Japanese expansion.
  Sealed up during 250 years of self-imposed isolation, Japan had
  been a passive spectator to the advance of Western power in Asia and,
  by the time of its emergence as a colonial power, had lost the opportu-
  nity to preempt a dominant position on the Asian continent or in the
  Pacific. Moreover, the struggling nation's limited political, economic,
  and military resources did not permit it the luxury of staking a claim to
  more distant regions of the globe, even if the Meiji leadership had
  been so inclined. Thus, in establishing a colonial empire, Japan was
  obliged to assert claims over neighboring areas close to the home
  islands where it could maximize its political, military, and economic
  strength. In climate and geography the Japanese colonial empire-
  Karafuto (the Japanese-held southern half of the island of Sakhalin
  below the fiftieth parallel), the Kwantung Leased Territory (the Japa-
  nese leasehold on the Liaotung peninsula), Korea, Taiwan, and the
  Nan'yo (the Japanese designation of its mandate over the former is-
  lands of Micronesia)- stretched from pine to palm. Yet, except for its
  island possessions in the south Pacific, it was a fairly compact empire,
  composed of territories at no great distance from the mother country
  (see Map 5.1). Thus, even though Japan was an island nation and its
  colonial possessions lay literally overseas, the thrust, and ultimately
  the purpose, of its empire was both region and continent directed.
  The overriding Meiji concern for Japan's insular security also
  served to circumscribe the empire's location and dimensions. No colo-
  nial empire of modern times was as clearly shaped by strategic consid-
  erations, a fact demonstrated, by the processes through which the
  empire's individual components were acquired. Many of the overseas
  possessions of Western Europe had been acquired in response to the
  activities of traders, adventurers, missionaries, or soldiers acting far
  beyond the limits of European interest or authority. In contrast, Ja-
  pan's colonial territories, (with the possible exception of Taiwan),
  were, in each instance, obtained as the result of a deliberate decision
  by responsible authorities in the central government to use force in
  securing a territory that would contribute to Japan's immediate strate-
  gic interests. Largely continental in dimension, these interests, di-
  rected initially toward Korea, China, and Manchuria, were more akin
  to the traditional link that Britain drew between its own security and
  that of the Lowlands across the English Channel than they were to the
  advantages sought and enjoyed by Europeans on more distant shores.
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  CIRCUMSTANCES AND MOTIVATIONS
  219
  5PXUT
  MONGOLIA 
  ~--:.
  SE\ OF JAPAN
  CHOSEN
  EAST CHINA 
  .W
  SEA
  , w w 
  NAN'YO
  H 5E
  5OUTH SEAS 
  .
  14-1144
  .' C /K «. O 
  L 
  I 
  N 
  E 
  1 
  5 'L 
  ^ 
  N 
  p 'S •
  SOUTH
  CHINA
  5EA
  Map 5.1. The Japanese colonial empire, 1895-1945.
  But if strategic security was the initial rationale for obtaining control
  over adjacent island territories and continental buffer zones on the way
  to creating a near-at-hand formal empire, the same rationale made it
  impossible to give finite limits to Japan's imperial ambitions even after
  it had assembled its formal empire. As early as the 1880s, even before
  Japan had launched a bid for empire, Yamagata Aritomo's famous
  dicta on the compass of Japan's strategic concerns spoke of concentric
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  22O 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  circles of national interest radiating outward from the home islands: a
  "cordon of sovereignty," encompassing territory related to the na-
  tion's survival and thus under direct and formal occupation, and a
  "cordon of advantage," seen as necessary to protect and guarantee the
  inner line.3 Implied in this doctrine was the necessity of preserving the
  outer line through the control of buffer zones. Once those had become
  areas of Japanese "advantage," territories still farther distant became
  matters of Japanese interest.
  Thus, in its quest for security, the empire became involved in a
  series of strategic "problems" that were to torment Japan's domestic
  politics and imperil its foreign relations: In the early Meiji period it
  was the "Korean problem" and the extension of a Japanese foothold in
  Asia; in the Taisho and early Showa periods it was the "Manchurian-
  Mongolian problem" and the conflict with Chinese and Russian inter-
  ests in northeast Asia; in the 1930s it was the "China problem"; and in
  the 1940s it was the "southern advance problem" which involved the
  fatal extension of Japanese interests toward the Western colonial terri-
  tories of Southeast Asia. The inner logic of Japan's strategic doctrine
  thus committed the empire to ever-expanding and ever-receding secu-
  rity goals, each colonial acquisition being seen as a "base" or "outpost"
  from which the empire could, in some way, control a sphere of influ-
  ence over more distant areas.4
  The regional dimensions of Japan's empire created its own sin-
  gularities. Because of its Asian provenance, its largest, most populous,
  and most important territories, Taiwan and Korea, were not empty
  stretches settled thinly by ethnic groups profoundly different from the
  /Japanese in racial origins or cultural traditions but were well-populated
  countries, whose peoples were racially related to their Japanese con-
  querors, with whom they also shared a common cultural heritage.
  This sense of cultural affinity with its subject peoples, unique
  among the imperia of modern times, not only shaped the Japanese
  attitudes toward colonial governance once the empire was assembled
  but also played at least a peripheral role in the creation of the empire.
  Although Meiji Japan lacked a missionary spirit akin to Christian
  evangelism, a sense of idealism related to the "uplifting" of less fortu-
  3 Marius B. Jansen, "Modernization and Foreign Policy in Meiji Japan," in Political Develop-
  ment in Modern Japan, ed. Robert Ward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968),
  p. 182.
  4 Yamabe Kentaro, "Nihon teikokushugi to shokuminchi," in Iwanami koza Nikon rekishi, vol.
  19 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), pp. 207-8.
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  CIRCUMSTANCES AND MOTIVATIONS 
  221
  nate Asian neighbors was part of the imperial motivations of late
  nineteenth-century Japan. The political and social reformism of the
  Meiji liberal movement found an outlet for its energies and frustra-
  tions on the Asian continent and fired some Meiji activists with
  dreams of transforming corrupted and decaying Asian civilizations
  through reform, visions that they sought to realize through their own
  efforts. Individual propagandists for imperial expansion in late Meiji
  could speak of a Japanese "mission," as did the journalist Tokutomi
  Soho when he declared in 1895 that it was Japan's obligation to "ex-
  tend the blessings of political organization throughout the rest of East
  Asia and the South Pacific, just as the Romans had once done for
  Europe and the Mediterranean."5 But an officially sponsored sense of
  national destiny to inspire reform from above and to guide backward
  Asian peoples along the path of modernity pioneered by Japan did not
  appear until the early twentieth century, when the formal empire was
  already in place.
  There were lesser motivations for empire, of course. The elements
  of adventure and excitement inherent in the prospect of overseas activ-
  ity after centuries of national isolation and inertia spurred individual
  Japanese like Fukushima Yasumasa, Hattori Toru, and Taguchi Uki-
  chi to lone exploits on the Asian continent or peregrinations in the
  South Seas.6 Accounts of such activities helped quicken the imagina-
  tion of the reading public about Japanese courage and vigor on far
  frontiers. But the flag seldom followed the wanderings of these adven-
  turers, and even their literary impact was muted, for Japan produced
  no Rudyard Kipling or George Henty to turn the romantic view of
  empire building into a national mystique.
  Yet, if idealism and romanticism did not greatly promote the emer-
  gence of Japan as a colonial power, new perceptions of Japanese rank
  and status certainly did. In part this was due to the Japanese abandon-
  ment of the harmonies of the Sino-centric cultural order for the stri-
  dent doctrines of inevitable international struggle trumpeted by the
  social Darwinism of the day. It was also due to a quick acceptance by
  Japan of the Western indicators of prowess and prestige that measured
  a nation's progress in a new and dangerous world. Among those,
  5 Quoted in Kenneth Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems in Cultural Identity,
  i88s-i8gs 
  (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 181.
  6 See for example, Hanzawa Hiroshi, Ajia e no yume (Tokyo: San'ichi shobo, 1970); Kaneko
  Tamio, Chud Ajia ni hailla Nihonjin (Tokyo: Shinjimbutsu oraisha, 1973); and Yano Toru,
  Nikon no Nan'yo shikan (Tokyo: Chuo shinsho, 1979).
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  222 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  colonial empires, along with constitutional government, industrializa-
  tion, national bureaucracies, and modern armies and navies, were seen
  as hallmarks of national progress and vitality and, more important,
  international power.
  Historical timing also set the Japanese empire apart from its Euro-
  pean counterparts in the matter of economic interests. Economic expla-
  nations of the European "new imperialism" in the late nineteenth
  century emphasize the dominating financial interests of the capitalist
  class, the persistent congestion of capital in domestic manufacturing,
  and the consequent need to open up new markets and new investment
  opportunities in foreign lands. Japanese imperial expansion, however,
  began before the nation's industrial growth, and a shortage, not an
  excess, of capital was one of Japan's main economic problems in the
  1890s. Moreover, it is not apparent that the acquisition of Japanese
  colonial territories derived from the schemes of bankers or merchants
  "manipulating" the Meiji leadership. Nor was any colonial territory
  acquired to protect an already flourishing economic interest there.
  Indeed, the Japanese government, like that of late nineteenth-century
  Germany, had difficulty in luring domestic capital into colonial invest-
  ment at the outset of its imperial venture.7
  Although the classic Leninist argument that imperialism is the full-
  blown and dying stage of the capitalist system thus seems unworkable
  in the Japanese case, much modern Japanese scholarship has at-
  tempted, with varying degrees of success, to qualify and refine that
  approach. In the process, related explanations have been offered to
  substitute for the workings of surplus private capital, including the
  development of "state capitalism," the politics of an "absolutist em-
  peror system" controlled by an "imperialist bourgeoisie" and "para-
  sitic landlords," as well as the aggressive designs of the military and
  bureaucracy in Japan that supposedly provided the impetus behind
  Japan's initial imperialist venture.8 Whatever one may think of the
  logic of these various explanations, they do not buttress the idea that
  the profit motive was the central engine behind Japan's drive to extend
  its influence onto the Asian continent.
  7 To date, the most persuasive critique in English of the primacy of economic interests in the
  initial stages of Japanese imperialism is the ninth chapter of Hilary Conroy's The Japanese
  Seizure of Korea, 1868-1910 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, i960), pp. 442-
  8 See, for example, Shoichi Fujii, "Capitalism, International Politics, and the Emperor Sys-
  tem," in The Emergence of Imperial Japan: Self-Defense or Calculated Aggression? ed. Marlene
  Mayo (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1970), pp. 75-82; and Inoue Kiyoshi, "Nihon teikokushugi
  no keisei," in Kindai Nihon no keisei, ed. Rekishigaku kenkyukai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
  1953). PP-5I-I3O-
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  CIRCUMSTANCES AND MOTIVATIONS 
  223
  This is not to say that Japan's imperial ambitions lacked an eco-
  nomic dimension. Recent approaches to the study of economic inter-
  ests in Japanese imperialism have highlighted the economic concerns
  of the Meiji leaders who directed the acquisition of the empire and
  have shown that the upper echelons of government and business
  shared a common belief in the economic promise of Asia.9 But two
  facts must be kept in mind. First, these economic interests emerged
  most clearly after, not before, the initial steps were taken on the road
  to empire. Second, the ambitions of Japanese business in Asia were
  directed largely toward the mainland of China and toward Manchuria,
  and although they came to be a potent force in Japanese imperialism in
  its widest sense, they played little role in the assembling of the formal
  colonial empire and thus furnish inadequate evidence for arguments
  about its economic inevitability.
  In any event, the origins of the Japanese imperium cannot be re-
  duced to monocausal explanations. Writing over a quarter of a century
  ago, William Lockwood noted:
  As usual in the folklore of imperialism, so intertwined were considerations of
  military power, economic advantage, national prestige, and "moral obliga-
  tion" that even the honest testimony of the makers of Japanese policy is an
  unreliable guide to the facts. The quest for empire in East Asia was impelled
  by no single motive except as most Japanese were indoctrinated with a mysti-
  cal faith in the imperial destiny. It drew support from various interest groups
  and for differing reasons. Its momentum and direction reflected the political
  struggle at home, as well as the resistance it met abroad.I0
  Lockwood's last statement reintroduces the question of circumstance
  rather than motivation. Japan's precarious position in Asia in the late
  nineteenth century makes one hesitant to assert that Japan's rise as a
  colonial power was inevitable. Yet it is probable that given the energy
  and efficiency of its newly transformed institutions, Japan would have
  come to dominate adjacent portions of the decaying Chinese empire,
  regardless of the motivation. In this sense, Japanese imperialism was
  more situational than deliberate in origin. The aggressive movement
  of Japanese forces into Korea, China, and Micronesia was as much due
  to the absence of effective power to resist it as it was to specific
  Japanese policies and planning.
  9 Peter Duus, "Economic Dimensions of Meiji Imperialism: The Case of Korea, 1895-1910,"
  in Myers and Peattie, Japanese Colonial Empire, pp. 128-171.
  10 William L. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change,
  1868-1938 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 534.
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  224 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  THE EMPIRE ASSEMBLED, 1 8 9 5 - I 9 2 2
  The first overseas territories that Japan acquired were the "no man's
  islands" of the surrounding seas. In the 1870s and 1880s, Japan estab-
  lished effective sovereignty over the Bonin, Ryukyu, and Kurile is-
  lands, as well as strengthening its grip on Hokkaido through an intensi-
  fied program of colonization. But this effort was less the initial step
  toward colonial expansion than it was a reassertion of national author-
  ity over territories traditionally within the Japanese cultural sphere. It
  was in this sense, therefore, a clarification of national boundaries of
  the sort common to nation building in nineteenth- and twentieth-
  century Europe."
  It was Japan's turn toward the Korean peninsula that marked its
  first step outside the Japanese cultural area and its first effort in mod-
  ern times to exert influence, if not direct control, over an alien people.
  Although in a formal sense Korea was to be the next-to-last addition to
  the colonial empire, it was the first to attract Japanese ambition.
  Beginning in the 1880s, an increasingly aggressive Japanese involve-
  ment in Korea, whose course can only be touched on here, displayed a
  range of motivations - adventurism, idealism, and obsession with stra-
  tegic security-already identified. The "conquer Korea" debate of the
  early 1870s split the new Japanese leadership over the issue of whether
  to divert the tensions and energies of early Meiji Japan toward a
  weaker and more backward neighbor. This led in turn to the ill-
  conducted expedition to Taiwan in 1874, momentarily releasing the
  energies of the frustrated ex-samurai elite but ending with no perma-
  nent territorial gains to show for it. Over the next two decades, as
  Japan gathered military and naval strength sufficient to confront
  China over primacy in Northeast Asia, Japanese diplomats, garrison
  commanders, traders, and adventurers worked sporadically with Ko-
  rean reformers and agents provocateurs, to undermine both Chinese
  influence on the peninsula and the authority of the stubbornly tradi-
  tional Korean government.
  When the collision with China finally occurred in 1894, Japanese
  armies quickly drove the Chinese out of Korea, crossed the Yalu
  River, and occupied the strategic Liaotung peninsula. By February
  1895 they had seized Weihaiwei on the Shantung peninsula. Every-
  where triumphant, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters pon-
  dered the best means to exploit these successes, in terms of both
  11 Jansen, "Modernization and Foreign Policy," pp. 164-71.
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  THE EMPIRE ASSEMBLED 
  225
  offensive operations and territorial concessions to be sought from
  China. The outright annexation of Korea was neither planned nor
  necessary and, in any event, would have risked the active opposition of
  the foreign powers, especially Russia. Yet the Japanese public, exhila-
  rated by a series of spectacular victories on land and sea, eagerly
  anticipated some sort of territorial rewards. The Meiji leadership, as
  well, viewed the acquisition of new territory as a means of enhancing
  imperial prestige.
  For its part, the army favored holding on to the Liaotung peninsula
  and driving on toward Chihli Province and Beijing. But the civilian
  government, aware that major conquests on the Chinese mainland
  risked dangerous international repercussions, favored the "southern
  strategy" advocated by the navy. This approach called for the rapid
  occupation of Taiwan and the Pescadores as the operation least likely
  to provoke Western intervention and yet, at the same time, most likely
  to satisfy public demands for the fruits of victory.12 During the negotia-
  tions at Shimonoseki in February 1895, with an expeditionary force
  already in possession of the Pescadores and another prepared to land
  on the north coast of Taiwan, Japan demanded and was ultimately
  awarded Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaotung peninsula. All
  three were ceded to Japan by the subsequent peace treaty. Yet within
  three months, the "Triple Intervention" (by Russia, Germany, and
  France) forced Japan to retrocede Liaotung to China which, in turn,
  was soon forced to lease the peninsula to Russia, to the suppressed
  fury of Japan.
  Thus, although the main thrust of Japan's expansionism had been
  directed toward Korea and although confrontation on the peninsula
  had furnished the immediate casus belli between Japan and China,
  immediate strategic and diplomatic circumstances determined that Tai-
  wan would become the first outright possession of the Japanese colo-
  nial empire.
  As a result of its victory over China and the diminution of Chinese
  influence in Korea, Japan had tightened its grip on that country.
  Japanese "advisers" forced a growing number of modernizing re-
  forms on a weak but obdurate Korean government, efforts that made
  Japan and reformism ever more odious to the Korean upper classes.
  At the same time Japan increased its economic stake in Korea with
  the construction of railways and a rapid growth in commercial activ-
  12 Edward I-te Chen, "Japan's Decision to Annex Taiwan: A Study of Mutsu-Ito Diplomacy,"
  Journal of Asian Studies 37 (November 1977): 63-7.
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  226 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  ity throughout the peninsula. Then, between 1898 and 1904, Japanese
  ascendancy in Korea seemed temporarily checked by the counter-
  expansion of Russian influence there. Once again, the government saw
  its strategic interests threatened by a rival power. Once again it deter-
  mined to confirm its primacy in Korea, peacefully if possible, by force
  of arms if necessary. Russia was offered an arrangement-the noted
  Man-Kan kokan-that would recognize Russian primary in Man-
  churia in exchange for a completely free hand for Japan in Korea.
  When Russia, blinded by its own expansionist visions, brushed aside
  this proposal, the Japanese leadership saw no other course but open
  hostilities.
  Japan's territorial conquests in the ensuing conflict with Russia
  from 1904 to 1905 formed the basis for its next colonial acquisitions.
  In frightful combat and at terrible cost Japanese armies reconquered
  the Liaotung peninsula and the strategic ports of Dairen and Port
  Arthur, which it had been forced to relinquish in 1895. To the north-
  east, Japanese units landed on the southern end of Sakhalin and rap-
  idly extended their control, so that Japan might use the island as a
  bargaining chip in the subsequent peace negotiations. During the
  peace talks at Portsmouth in 1905, the Japanese representative was
  instructed to insist on the cession of the Liaotung peninsula and on
  Russian acknowledgment of Japan's complete freedom of action in
  Korea, but only to bargain for the cession of Sakhalin. '3
  In the subsequent treaty signed at Portsmouth, Japan gained its first
  two demands, in addition to acquiring all Russian rights and privileges
  in south Manchuria, but was forced to compromise on Sakhalin, ob-
  taining only the southern half of the island below the fiftieth parallel,
  to which the Japanese gave the name Karafuto. In December 1905,
  according to the Manchurian Remedial Protocol, China was obliged to
  accept the treaty arrangements that had applied to Manchuria and
  specifically consented to transferring to Japan the Russian lease on
  Kwantung Province-the Liaotung peninsula-now designated the
  Kwantung Leased Territory. (In 1915, under Japanese pressure, the
  Chinese extended the lease for ninety-five years.) With Port Arthur
  and Dairen in its possession, Japan held the finest naval base and
  potentially one of the most important trading centers on the coast of
  northeast Asia.
  This turn of events hardly lessened Japan's pressure on Korea. In-
  13 Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Colum-
  bia University Press, 1970), pp. 112-8,124.
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  THE EMPIRE ASSEMBLED 
  227
  deed, Korea's last pretensions as an independent nation were now
  short-lived. With the end of hostilities and the elimination of Japan's
  last effective rival to the control of Korea, it was not long before that
  unfortunate country was totally absorbed into the Japanese colonial
  empire. The penultimate stage of this process was the creation of a
  Japanese protectorate over the country in November 1905, backed by
  overwhelming Japanese military force, which transformed Korea into a
  virtual Japanese satellite. Although the Korean monarch was permitted
  to keep his throne, all power was vested in the office of the resident
  general. Its occupant, the Meiji oligarch Ito Hirobumi, aimed at a
  modernizing, benevolent administration capable of gaining Korean co-
  operation while strengthening Japanese control. This "moderate" ap-
  proach by an essentially civilian administration, governing Korea just
  short of outright Japanese annexation, soon met opposition in both
  Japan and Korea. Japanese hard-liners in the government and ul-
  tranationalist pressure groups outside it kept up an incessant criticism
  of the "weak-kneed" policy of the resident general and demanded the
  immediate annexation of Korea. In Korea itself, the bitter protest of
  Korean patriots of every class and calling swelled into open rebellion
  between 1908 and 1910 and was extinguished only by the most brutal
  military suppression and at the cost of nearly twelve thousand Korean
  lives. Although Ito himself strove to maintain a policy of paternalistic
  reform in Korea short of full Japanese control, his assassination in 1909
  by a Korean patriot provided the more oppressive elements in Tokyo,
  the military in particular, with a pretext for ending the last fiction of
  Korean autonomy. In 1910, Korea was formally annexed into the Japa-
  nese empire, and an iron-fisted general, Terauchi Masatake, was offi-
  cially installed as governor general.I4
  The final addition to the Japanese colonial empire was acquired four
  years later when Japan was once more able to use a sudden turn in
  international events to its own profit. With the outbreak of hostilities
  in Europe in 1914, Japan was quick to recognize the slight risk and
  considerable gain in joining the Allies as a belligerent. The immediate
  object of Japan's designs was Germany's colonial territories in Asia
  and the Pacific: Tsingtao on the Shantung peninsula and the German
  island possessions in Micronesia-the Marshalls, the Carolines, and
  the Marianas (excluding Guam)-all of which were isolated and weakly
  defended. A territorial foothold on the China coast had long been the
  ambition of Japanese expansionists in and out of government. The
  14 Conroy, The Japanese Seizure of Korea, pp. 325-82.
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  228 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  South Pacific, though hardly a region of traditional concern to Tokyo,
  had held a singular fascination for a variety of Japanese travelers,
  traders, and colonization enthusiasts since the 1880s. With the emer-
  gence of American and Japanese naval rivalry in the Pacific, the Japa-
  nese navy suddenly saw the advantage of acquiring advance bases in
  those seas.
  The first phase of Japan's efforts during World War I to extend and
  consolidate its interests in East Asia and the western Pacific was a
  series of military and naval operations to assault and capture the Ger-
  man colonies in the opening weeks of the war. Tsingtao fell after a
  stubborn but futile resistance by its German defenders, and the iso-
  lated island territories were seized without resistance by Japanese na-
  val units.
  The second diplomatic phase of this expansion was designed to
  secure international recognition of Japan's claims to the territories that
  it had summarily occupied, an undertaking considerably more diffi-
  cult, as the speed and aggressiveness of Japanese moves in East Asia
  and the Pacific had aroused the suspicion and hostility of Britain,
  Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.'5 By the end of the
  war, however, Japan had collected secret agreements from most of the
  Allied powers confirming its expropriation of these territories and,
  using these, was later able to press its claims during the Paris peace
  negotiations.
  Subsequent treaty arrangements, however, forced the Japanese to
  modify their territorial objectives. The German Micronesian islands
  were assigned to Japan as a Class C mandate under the League of
  Nations, subject to the proviso that Japan make no effort to fortify
  them. Although these arrangements were less than perfect from To-
  kyo's point of view, Japan willingly consented to them, offset as they
  were by similar nonfortification restrictions on American possessions
  in the Pacific.
  In any event, from the outset of its administration, Japan regarded
  the Nan'yo, as its new Pacific territories were collectively called, as an
  integral part of the Japanese empire. Japan's acquisition of Tsingtao,
  which had raised a storm of protest in China and in the United States,
  proved to be of shorter duration. In 1922, at the Washington Confer-
  ence, Japan was obliged to yield to American pressure and to retrocede
  the colony to China.
  15 David Purcell, Jr., "Japanese Expansion in the South Pacific, 1890-1935," Ph.D. diss.,
  University of Pennsylvania, 1967, pp. 69-100.
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  EVOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE 
  229
  By 1922, therefore, Japan's formal colonial empire was complete.
  Its imperial ambitions, however, were not yet satisfied, nor was its
  economic, political, and military penetration of Northeast Asia sub-
  stantially lessened. The consequent risk to the empire, which had won
  grudging acceptance from the West by World War I, was hardly
  recognized by those Japanese in and out of government who most
  aggressively pushed for its extension. Heedless of the end of the old
  imperialist world order that had tolerated the growth of Japanese
  imperialism, or of the tide of nationalism and anticolonialism abroad
  in Asia, Japan pressed ahead on the continent in an illusory quest for
  final security and economic autonomy. Fatally linked to these ever-
  receding goals, the formal empire became a base and an arsenal for the
  increasingly dangerous effort to dominate ever-expanding buffer zones
  and, as such, was finally overtaken by disaster in World War II.
  EVOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1 8 9 5 - I 9 4 I
  The history of Japanese colonialism begins with a military pacification
  effort in Taiwan by Japanese military forces not unlike that under-
  taken by the United States Army against Filipino rebels after the
  conclusion of American hostilities against Spain. Directed against a
  resistance movement headed by local Taiwanese leaders unreconciled
  to the prospect of Japanese rule over the island, the five-month cam-
  paign (June-October, 1895) ravaged parts of the island and was costly
  to both the Japanese army (which suffered over seven thousand casual-
  ties, mostly from disease) and the indigenes (who suffered many thou-
  sands more). The Japanese operation left all but the island's inner
  mountain regions under firm Japanese control. In those forest strong-
  holds the aboriginal tribesmen carried on a guerrilla warfare against
  Japanese security forces. Though it posed no real obstacle to the over-
  all Japanese control and development of the island, this sporadic but
  bitter resistance smoldered in the interior for over thirty years.
  Development of the empire's first colony was slow in coming. Lack-
  ing any experience or tradition as a colonial power, Japan had acquired
  Taiwan without long-range objectives for its management. The island
  was seen in some quarters as being as much a liability as an asset, a
  response provoked by an initial period of chaos, carpetbagging, and
  mismanagement under military rule, not uncommon to European colo-
  nial ventures in their early stages.
  Yet within a few years, pride, purpose, and efficiency were mani-
  fested in the administration of General Kodama Gentaro, fourth gov-
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  230 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  ernor general of the island, and his chief civil administrator, Goto
  Shinpei. Doctor, bureaucrat, and later businessman and statesman,
  Goto's accomplishments in restructuring the political, social, and
  economic order in Taiwan transformed the territory from an embar-
  rassment into a colonial showcase and made him Japan's most dis-
  tinguished colonial administrator in the empire's fifty-year history.
  Working with a brilliant and energetic cluster of subordinates, includ-
  ing Nitobe Inazo, who was to become a distinguished scholar and
  statesman in his own right, Goto sought a "scientific" approach to
  colonial governance and development that emphasized thorough and
  extensive research as the basis of colonial policies. The result was a
  series of well-planned and coordinated efforts dealing with a wide
  range of colonial problems and creating an effective infrastructure of
  schools, public health facilities, agricultural improvements, transpor-
  tation and communications, and urban and port development, which
  collectively transformed a backward, economically fragmented, and
  debt-ridden territory into a modern economically self-sufficient colo-
  nial possession. All this was accomplished with the passive acquies-
  ence of a submissive population.16
  In Korea, pacification was undertaken by a more openly authoritar-
  ian military administration, despite the vehement protest and occasion-
  ally active resistance of a fearful, obstinate, and antagonized colonial
  people. The period of the protectorate, 1905-10, had seen the Japa-
  nese Residency General devote its efforts to taking over the institu-
  tions of Korean government, including those of the police, military
  affairs, transportation, communications, and the courts, in order to
  establish Japanese control over the peninsula. During the subsequent
  decade the Government General had grown into a powerful machine of
  centralized bureaucratic control that undertook the wholesale transfor-
  mation of Korea's political, educational, and social structures. It also
  created the institutions of a modern economy by building a transporta-
  tion and communications network linking the entire country and creat-
  ing new monetary and financial systems. In the process of these mod-
  ernizing efforts, the Koreans were effectively deprived of freedom of
  assembly, association, press, and speech, and initial efforts were made
  to liquidate the very concept of a Korean identity. Under the draco-
  nian administration of Governor General Terauchi, Korea now en-
  tered that dark epoch of developmental shock known to its chroniclers
  16 Chang Han-yu and Ramon H. Myers, "Japanese Colonial Development Policy in Taiwan,
  1895-1906: A Case of Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship," Journal of Asian Studies 22 (August
  1963): 433-49-
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  EVOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE 
  231
  as the "period of military rule," a term that in English hardly conveys
  the crushing impact of the Japanese army and police on every aspect of
  Korean life. "Regulations of every kind poured forth wildly and were
  as harshly enforced," noted a Japanese journalist in Korea at the time,
  adding that "so completely were the people's liberties restricted that
  the entire peninsula could be said to have been militarized."17
  On the Liaotung peninsula the early years of the Japanese military
  administration were fraught with difficulties. Financial problems, in-
  ternational complications over the exact status of the territory, poor
  administration of the lower echelons, and a flood of carpet bagging
  failures from the home islands made for unstable conditions in the
  colony. Troublesome, too, was the fact that Kwantung Government
  General, though headed by a military officer, was entangled in a web
  of relationships with various ministries and bureaus in matters of
  administration, external relations, and military command in Man-
  churia as well as in the Leased Territory.18 By 1919, however, the
  administration of the territory had been reorganized into a Kwantung
  government-Kantocho-headed by a civilian governor residing in
  Dairen. The influx of immigrants, both Japanese and Chinese, was
  more closely supervised, and the South Manchuria Railway Company,
  the driving force behind Japanese exploitation and development in
  both Manchuria and the Leased Territory, had begun a series of proj-
  ects in the colony centered on the development of Dairen that, within
  fifteen years, emerged as one of the great ports of Asia and the Pacific.
  Karafuto was the only Japanese dependency in which the Japanese
  did not have to be concerned with the administration of an alien
  people. An island where only a few scattered Ainu tribesmen and
  Russians had settled prior to the Japanese conquest, Karafuto came to
  be peopled almost exclusively by the Japanese who were its settlers. As
  Japan's only true settlement colony, Karafuto, in its colonization,
  exploitation, and development, was much more like Hokkaido of a
  quarter-century before. Indeed, despite its dependent status, re-
  moteness, and harsh environment, to the Japanese, Karafuto always
  seemed to be a part of the home islands. The colony's homogenous
  racial composition thus made its history less troubled by tensions
  between ruler and ruled and helps explain why the initial period of
  military administration after the Japanese conquest quickly gave way
  to the establishment of a Karafuto government- Karafutocho-headed
  17 Quoted in Yamabe Kentaro, Nihon tojika no Chosen (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1975), p. 13.
  18 Shimada Toshihiko, Kantogun (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1965), pp. 6-10, 10-12; Oyama
  Azusa, Nichi-Ro sensd no gunsei shiroku (Tokyo: Fuyo shob6,1973), pp. 19-25.
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  232 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  by a civilian governor. With the exception of a brief period of turmoil
  and mismanagement involved in the temporary occupation of the
  northern half of the island from 1920 to 1925, the history of the colony
  was uneventful, though the exploitation of its physical resources com-
  prised one of the most rapacious episodes of both government and
  private capital in the history of the Japanese empire.19
  In the South Pacific, international circumstance shaped the first
  years of Japanese rule. A docile Micronesian population offered no
  resistance to the Japanese naval garrison that controlled the islands
  from its headquarters at Truk during World War I. Yet the delay in
  obtaining an internationally confirmed basis for Japanese jurisdiction in
  Micronesia made it difficult to establish permanent institutions of civil
  administration and postponed an officially sponsored program of immi-
  gration. Nor did the first Japanese economic ventures in Micronesia,
  centered on a struggling and heavily subsidized sugar industry in the
  Marianas, seem to justify the increasing expense of managing and devel-
  oping the islands. Indeed, not a few in the home government came to
  view the islands as an encumbrance and proposed that Japan abandon
  them. But such was the group's potentially strategic position, despite
  the limitations imposed by the nonfortification clause of the Washing-
  ton Naval Treaty, that they were retained at the particular insistence of
  the naval high command.20 The delay in establishing a permanent civil
  administration, moreover, did not postpone intensive Japanese activi-
  ties in the islands designed to bring the native populations under Japa-
  nese influence and control. Although the South Seas government-
  Nan'yocho- headed by a civilian governor, was not established until
  1922, the impact of the Japanese presence on the Micronesian popula-
  tion in terms of education, language, and manners was so immediate
  that an American visitor to the Marshalls in 1919 described it as a
  "Japanning" of the islands.
  Throughout the empire, this initial stage of colonialism, once Japa-
  nese order had been established, was characterized by an effort to set
  up regimes that clearly resembled European colonial administrations
  in character and purpose. Japanese publicists in these decades spoke
  proudly of the nation's achievements as a new colonial power, and the
  19 See, for example, John Stephan, Sakhalin: A History (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press,
  I97I). pp. 88-9.
  20 For a detailed discussion of Japanese mandate rule in Micronesia, see Mark R. Peattie,
  Nan'yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945 (Honolulu: University of
  Hawaii Press, 1988).
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  EVOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE 
  233
  Japanese in the colonies themselves constructed a life-style and physi-
  cal environment built on privilege, money, and authority not unlike
  their counterparts in European tropical colonies. For this reason, and
  because Japanese efficiency gave success to these efforts, Western
  commentary on Japanese colonialism in this stage was overwhelmingly
  favorable. British and American visitors to Taiwan and Korea spoke
  glowingly of the "amazing progress" of Taiwan under Japanese admin-
  istration, of the "courage, devotion, and insight" of the Japanese ad-
  ministration in Korea after centuries of "racial and political decay."
  Only a few foreign observers amended this lavish praise by noting that
  Japanese colonialism was harshly authoritarian and quite exploitive,
  that the Taiwanese had little affection for their colonial rulers, and
  that Korean attitudes toward Japanese rule were those of outrage and
  despair. Undoubtedly, this benign view from abroad was in large part
  shaped by the fact that, outwardly at least, Japanese colonialism at this
  stage closely resembled that of the European nations themselves.
  Powerful currents of political change in the Japanese homeland and
  abroad from 1914 to 1920 began to push Japanese authorities toward a
  more liberal administration of the colonies. In Japan, these trends
  were marked by an erosion of the influence of both the genro and the
  military and by a concomitant rise in political party power, more
  democratic in domestic policy and more accommodative to the inter-
  ests of Japan's colonial populations. Abroad, the emergence of Wil-
  sonian idealism, particularly the principle of the self-determination of
  peoples, gave heart to Taiwanese and Koreans who sought autonomy
  for their homelands and placed Japanese colonialism increasingly on
  the defensive.
  In Taiwan by 1914, these ideas had already encouraged an "assimi-
  lation movement" designed to provide Taiwanese with certain basic
  civil rights under the Japanese constitution, while keeping Taiwan
  generally within the empire, an effort supported by a number of
  distinguished liberals in Japan, of whom Itagaki Taisuke was the
  most prominent. Vehemently opposed by Japanese colonials in Tai-
  wan, the movement was soon banned by the Taiwan Government
  General. It was succeeded by moderate Taiwanese demands for home
  rule to be achieved through the election of a Taiwanese legislature
  and for restrictions on the authority of the Government General. The
  colonial government utterly rejected such notions and made no con-
  cessions whatsoever to the home-rule movement. Yet such was the
  docility and moderation of Taiwanese nationalism that Japanese au-
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  234 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  thority on the island remained unchallenged by the advocates of
  either assimilation or home rule.21
  In Korea, the rigor with which Japan's first proconsul on the penin-
  sula, General Terauchi Masatake, had attempted to enforce Korean
  conformity to Japan's institutions and values had created violent an-
  tagonisms that could not be permanently contained. Nonetheless, the
  explosion of Korean national resentment on March i, 1919, stunned
  all elements of informed opinion in Japan. The March First movement
  demonstrated the depth of Korean detestation of Japanese administra-
  tion, as well as the influence of Wilsonian ideals on Korean national
  sentiment. It also showed the progress of Korea toward a sense of
  nationhood, bringing together over two million Koreans in a call for
  national liberation. The Japanese response, launched against an un-
  armed and generally unresisting popular movement, was instanta-
  neous and bloody.22 The brutal methods used by Japanese officialdom
  to stamp out the protest drove the remaining Korean resistance leaders
  to exile in foreign countries and left a legacy of Korean hatred of
  Japan.
  The horrified protests around the world, as well as in Japan, against
  colonial reaction in Korea encouraged those political forces in Japan
  that sought to moderate Japanese colonial policy. To Prime Minister
  Hara Takashi, who believed that colonial administration should be
  guided by the same sort of bureaucratic reform that had recently
  evolved in Japan, the March 1919 crisis in Korea and the death of the
  incumbent military governor general in Taiwan provided opportuni-
  ties to attempt administrative changes throughout the empire that
  would modify Japanese rule. The first step was to abolish or limit
  military administration in those colonies where it still existed, as it had
  proved both oppressive and unresponsive to civilian direction. In Tai-
  wan, Hara was successful in attaining this objective, and his appoint-
  ment of Den Kenjiro, a trusted political party colleague, ushered in a
  decade and a half of civilian administration for the colony. In Mi-
  cronesia, too, the Japanese naval administration gave way to a civilian
  government, more appropriate to the islands' mandate status. But in
  Korea, strategic considerations and the adamant resistance by the
  Japanese military turned aside Hara's efforts to apply the principle of
  civilian rule. Although by law a civilian could have been appointed
  governor general at Keijo (Seoul), in practice, Japan's administration
  21 Harry J. Lamley, "Assimilation in Colonial Taiwan: The Fate of the 1914 Movement,"
  Monumenta Serica 29 (1970-1): 496-520; Yamabe, "Nihon teikokushugi to shokuminchi,"
  pp. 236-7. 
  22 Yamabe, Nihon tojika no Chosen, pp. 58-101.
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  EVOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE 
  235
  in Korea continued to be headed by an unbroken chain of military
  autocrats.
  Nevertheless, a series of modest reforms pointed toward greater
  opportunities for Koreans in government, education, and industry
  and demonstrated greater Japanese respect for Korean culture. In
  part, these changes were wrought by an administration in Tokyo that
  believed in bringing the colony into closer relationship with an admin-
  istratively liberalized and reformed Japan. In part, they were due to a
  belated recognition that the Korean problem, which had become for
  Japan as intractable as the Irish problem had been for Britain, re-
  quired at least minimal concessions to reduce the explosive pressures
  of Korean nationalism. It was for this latter reason that during the
  decade of "cultural rule" (bunka seiji), Korea was granted a number of
  reforms of a kind never conceded to the more docile colonial popula-
  tion of Taiwan. In 1920, the Japanese government announced a num-
  ber of social, political, and economic changes designed to permit
  greater self-expression for Koreans, to abolish abuses in the judicial
  system, to eliminate discrimination in the treatment of Japanese and
  Koreans in public service, to equalize educational and economic oppor-
  tunity, to promote agriculture and industry, and generally to give
  Koreans greater voice in the management of their own affairs.23
  Had not Prime Minister Hara been assassinated in office, it is possi-
  ble that the transformation of these symbolic pronouncements into
  substantive advances for Korean aspirations might have been under-
  taken with greater vigor. As it was, the feeble administrative and social
  reforms of the ensuing decade hardly realized Hara's objective of ex-
  tending Japanese liberties and rights to Korea, let alone satisfied Ko-
  rean demands for political, social, and economic autonomy. Filtered
  as it was through a colonial administration that still held in contempt
  Korea's political capacities, the liberalization of Japanese rule quickly
  evaporated into empty slogans. Still, if neither the depth nor the
  tempo of colonial reform went far in meeting the Koreans' legitimate
  demands, the more overtly arbitrary and oppressive aspects of Japa-
  nese administration were at least muted throughout the empire during
  this decade, and the effort to construct modern economic facilities and
  institutions in the colonies continued apace.
  For these reasons Japan continued to earn a favorable international
  rating as a respectable colonial power. It appeared to have brought
  peace and order to all the territories under its control, to be lessening
  23 David Brudnoy, "Japan's Experiment in Korea," Monumenia Nipponica 25 (1970): 172-4.
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  236 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  the military cast of its colonial administrations, to be undertaking
  responsible reform in Korea, and to be meeting its material obligations
  as a mandatory power in the South Pacific. Its colonial ports were
  open to the trade of all nations, and the economies of all its colonial
  territories appeared to be developing rapidly. If Japanese colonial pol-
  icy contained almost no accommodation to the concept of trusteeship -
  preparing its dependent peoples for self-rule-much the same could be
  said about the colonial policies of the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium,
  Italy, or even France in this period.
  In any event, the thin coating of liberal reform and modest accom-
  modation to the interests of Japan's colonial peoples, initiated by Ja-
  pan's civil government in the 1920s, was soon dissolved in the acids of
  aggressive nationalism and military necessity in the 1930s. The social
  and economic dislocations at home and the uncertainties and instabil-
  ities abroad-particularly in East Asia-are among the primary causes
  that many historians have assigned to the shift of Japan toward domes-
  tic authoritarianism, an accelerated tempo of nationalism, and the
  resurgent influence of the military in shaping national policy. Regard-
  less of the relative emphasis that one may assign among such causes,
  their consequences remilitarized the Japanese colonial empire and
  transformed its dependencies into regimented and exploited bases for
  aggressive Japanese expansion into East and Southeast Asia. In the
  process these changes sharply altered both Western and Japanese per-
  ceptions of Japan as an accepted and acceptable colonial power.
  In the overheated political atmosphere of the 1930s, the Japanese
  empire once more became expansive, though less through considered
  decisions at its metropolitan center than through the arbitrary initia-
  tives of Japan's field armies abroad. Moving first from the Kwantung
  Leased Territory and Korea into Manchuria and from there into
  north China, Japanese garrisons on the continent, acting largely on
  their own, ushered in an era of military expansion outside the bound-
  aries of the formal empire not unlike the forward sweep of late
  nineteenth-century French military imperialism in West Africa. By
  the latter half of the decade, these initiatives had drawn Japan into
  bloody encounters with the Soviet Union and a frightful war of attri-
  tion with China.
  In 1940, as the drift of international events tempted Japan to
  move into Southeast Asia, Japan's southernmost dependencies, Tai-
  wan and the Micronesian islands, became staging areas for such op-
  erations. Although there is scant evidence that Japan violated its
  mandatory obligations by fortifying the Nan'yo before its withdrawal
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  JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY 
  237
  from the League in 1933, by the end of the decade Japan was hur-
  riedly preparing naval and air facilities in all of the Micronesian
  island groups.
  Because Japan's colonial territories were increasingly thrust into a
  strategic role, it was inevitable that the empire's colonial administra-
  tions should have been remilitarized in the 1930s. Beginning in 1932,
  the commander of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria concurrently
  held the post of governor general of the Kwantung Leased Territory,
  and by mid-decade a general once more took over the colonial adminis-
  tration of Taiwan. Only in Karafuto and the Nan'yo did civilian offi-
  cials still continue to head colonial governments. (In 1940, the latter
  was placed under de facto control of the Japanese navy which formally
  assumed responsibility for the Micronesian islands in 1943.)
  Central to the concerns of Japanese colonial policy in the new decade
  were the economic consolidation of the empire and the integration of its
  colonial economies to meet the wartime requirements of the home is-
  lands. Perceiving a world trend toward the creation of autarkic units,
  Japan's leadership, both civilian and military, became convinced that
  Japan must build its own economic bloc to which the nation must look
  for its survival. In this perspective the colonies were chiefly seen as
  productive units of a central economic engine, geared to the creation of
  a self-sufficient garrison state. By 1939, therefore, the colonies' popula-
  tions and resources had been rapidly and ruthlessly harnessed to Ja-
  pan's growing needs for labor, foodstuffs, strategic raw materials, and
  military supplies. In Korea and Taiwan, particularly, forced-draft pro-
  grams of military industrialization rapidly transformed these colonies
  into logistical bases to support aggressive war. In this final, militarized,
  exploited, and regimented condition, the empire was hurled into Ja-
  pan's violent confrontation with the United States and was shattered in
  the process.
  JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY:
  CONCEPTS AND CONTRADICTIONS
  There was nothing in the way of national experience or tradition before
  1895 that might have aided Japan in the development of a well-
  articulated colonial policy or doctrine, though various interests had
  impelled Japan along the course of empire. Yet as Japan assembled its
  overseas imperium, two basic approaches to Japanese colonial rule did
  indeed appear. Centered on conflicting notions of race that were them-
  selves shaped by the historical timing and cultural circumstances of
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  238 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  Japan's entry onto the colonial stage, these conceptions of colonial
  policy were inherently contradictory. But it should not be supposed
  that their differences were so obviously antagonistic to one another that
  they divided those Japanese who acted on or wrote about colonial affairs
  into two mutually hostile groupings. On the contrary, both doctrines
  contributed to the formation of Japanese colonial policy, at least during
  the first quarter-century of the empire. Moreover, Japanese colonial
  policy in all its phases-conservative, liberal, and militarized-dis-
  played two overriding continuities: first, the primacy of Japanese
  interests-largely strategic but to a lesser extent economic-over those
  of the dependent people and, second, the absence of any arrangements
  to prepare those peoples for self-rule, even in the distant future.
  The first of the two Japanese conceptions of Japanese colonial policy
  was European in origin and orientation, and its adoption by Japanese
  administrators and publicists had much to do with the fact that Japan
  entered its colonial tasks at the zenith of European colonialism. Its
  characteristics thus stemmed from the assumptions and predilections
  common to the "New Imperialism" of late nineteenth-century Europe
  and derived largely from European colonial empires whose territories
  were geographically dispersed and racially diverse.
  It was, first, a racially separatist approach to colonial rule, and as
  such, it reflected the prevailing social Darwinist predilections. It ac-
  cepted without reservation the notion that not only did "biological
  laws" determine the course of human institutions but also that there
  were "biological"- that is, racial-differences in the political capacities
  of various peoples. It thus assumed, on the one hand, the separate
  evolution of races according to their inherent capacities or incapacities
  to modernize and, on the other hand, the moral right of "superior"
  races to dominate and guide the destinies of "lesser" peoples.24
  This theory of colonial governance was, moreover, self-consciously
  "rational" in its application and mirrored the current European convic-
  tion that the techniques of modern science could be brought to the task
  of orderly social change. Thus, Goto Shinpei's systematic, research-
  oriented approach to the development of Taiwan and his perception of
  the island as a laboratory, wherein experiments in social engineering
  could determine the course of change in the country, were manifesta-
  tions of the pseudoscientific assumptions of nineteenth-century Europe
  about the administration of alien peoples, specifically the "scientific
  24 See, for example, Yosaburo Takekoshi, "Japan's Colonial Policy," in Japan to America, ed.
  Naoichi Masaoka (New York: Putnam, 1915), pp. 96-9.
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  JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY 
  239
  colonialism" of Wilhelmian Germany, where Goto had been trained as a
  medical doctor.25
  Like much of European colonial policy at the time, this Japanese
  conception of empire was also paternalistic and cautiously humanitar-
  ian in tone and rhetoric. It incorporated the assumption that along
  with their own self-interest in the acquisition of overseas territories,
  colonial powers must not neglect their colonial charges but should
  work earnestly for their welfare and eventual enlightenment. In the
  West this moralizing element was part of an obsessive sense of respon-
  sibility for the "improvement" of colonial peoples, as expressed in the
  French notion of mission civilisatrice, the Belgian concept of moralisa-
  lion, the German Eingeborenenfursorge, the Portuguese politico da atrac-
  cao, and of course the British "white man's burden." In the Japanese
  case this moral imperative stemmed not only from the assumption that
  the reforms already accomplished in Meiji Japan could be transferred
  to colonial peoples but also from the growing conviction that the
  nation had a "heavenly calling" (tenshoku) to enlighten other Asian
  peoples. "The highest and ultimate purpose of colonialism is the devel-
  opment of the human race," asserted Nitobe Inazo. "If we neglect
  humanitarianism then our great mission will have little success." The
  colonial publicist Mochiji Rokusaburo also spoke of the necessity of
  "humanitarian advances [in the colonies] through the diffusion of the
  culture of the mother country."26
  Finally, this perspective on overseas administration was gradualist.
  It presumed, indeed insisted on, an infinite stretch of time for the
  benefits of colonial rule to work their good, unhurried by pressures
  from without or demands from within the colonies. In its most conser-
  vative form, this approach argued for the perpetuation of a colonial
  status quo in which colonial peoples would be kept in a permanently
  subordinate position to the colonizing race, without any political
  rights or responsibilities whatsoever. At its most accommodative level,
  it was not unlike the contemporary French doctrine of "association,"
  which held that the colonies should retain a separate identity and be
  governed pragmatically, with due respect for the institutions of their
  individual peoples.
  Between 1905 and 1920 this general approach to Japanese colonial
  policy was articulated by a growing body of informed opinion on
  25 Ramon H. Myers, "Taiwan As an Imperial Colony of Japan, 1895-1945," Journal of the
  Institute of Chinese Studies 6 (Chinese University of Hong Kong, December 1973): 435.
  26 Nitobe Inazo, Zenshu, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1969-70), pp. 371, 478; Mochiji Roku-
  saburo, Taiwan shokumin seisaku (Tokyo: Fuzanbo, 1912), pp. 431-2.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  colonial matters in Japan. It was shaped in large part by a group of
  publicists-ex-administrators, scholars, politicians, and journalists -
  who were widely versed in modern European colonial theory but who
  also possessed a firsthand knowledge of colonial affairs from exten-
  sive service in the colonies, particularly Taiwan. Prominent in their
  own right, men like Nitobe Inazo, Togo Minoru, Mochiji Roku-
  saburo, Takekoshi Yosaburo, and Nagai Ryutaro produced a steady
  flow of commentary on the Japanese colonial empire in books, arti-
  cles, and public lectures, as well as from chairs in colonial studies
  established at some of Japan's leading universities (at Tokyo Imperial
  University in 1908 and at Waseda University in 1909). Much of this
  commentary found its way into the official rhetoric of Japanese colo-
  nialism, particularly in Taiwan. In sum, it was rational, conservative,
  and paternalist. It perceived the colonies as separate territories, dis-
  tinct from the homeland and not merely extensions of it; yet it took
  pride in Japan's participation in what was seen as a universal "civiliz-
  ing mission."
  The second Japanese conception of colonial rule contained a set of
  assumptions radically different from most of those underlying Euro-
  pean colonial theory. It stemmed in large part from the general Asian
  provenance of the Japanese empire, specifically from the fact that
  there existed affinities of race and culture between Japan and its two
  largest and most populous colonies. It found expression in the doc-
  trine of "assimilation" (doka) that aimed at eliminating all differences
  between the colonies and the motherland. As a general concept, of
  course, assimilation was not uniquely Japanese, as it had found enthu-
  siastic and articulate expression in French colonial theory. But there is
  scant evidence that French assimilationist doctrine had much influ-
  ence in the formation of Japanese ideas on assimilation, which were
  distinctly Asian in origin and character.
  At least four assumptions seem to have been central to the Japa-
  nese conception of assimilation. The first was a conviction that Japan
  had an indissoluble bond with other countries of the Chinese culture
  area-specifically Taiwan and Korea-as they shared a common sys-
  tem of writing as well as similarities of race and culture. To Japanese
  advocates of assimilation, these common cultural denominators of-
  fered the possibility of union between Japan and its Asian colonial
  subjects not conceivable in Europe's racially and culturally diverse
  tropical empires.
  Second, Japanese ideas of assimilation contained a strongly moralis-
  tic element derived from Confucian tradition, an emphasis conveyed
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  JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY 
  241
  in an incessantly repeated phrase, "impartiality and equal favor" (isshi
  dojin), which expressed the idea that all who came under the sover-
  eign's sway shared equally in his benevolence. Because of its implied
  reference to the will of the Japanese emperor, it was a concept of
  powerful appeal to all Japanese. Yet, its vagueness meant that the
  concept could encompass a variety of interpretations to suit quite
  disparate political purposes. It could be given the most liberal con-
  struction, stressing the necessity to provide equal rights to colonizers
  and colonized, or the most authoritarian interpretation, concerned
  with the equality of all Japanese subjects, at home and in the colonies,
  in their obligations to the state.
  The third distinguishing feature of the Japanese concept of assimi-
  lation was the mystical linkage drawn between the Japanese race and
  the Japanese imperial house, which together formed an imperial
  "family." This principle could be extended outward to include new
  populations brought under Japanese dominion, so that these too,
  could become "imperial peoples" {kom,in). Yet here again, the con-
  cept was so murky as to defy any precise application of rights and
  responsibilities to such "imperialized" nationalities, a vagueness that
  made it less a doctrine than a dogma. As a concept, assimilation came
  to have great appeal to a wide spectrum of Japanese, particularly
  because it implied a unidirectional change by colonized peoples to-
  ward the "higher" culture of their colonial masters. Thus, it meshed
  to a certain extent with the more Euro-centered concept of colonial
  rule, as it included the idea of "uplifting" and "civilizing" backward
  colonial peoples.27
  Although much of Japanese assimilation theory contained lofty rheto-
  ric about the necessity of a true merger of colonizers and colonized on
  the basis of familiarity and respect, the environment of Japanese colo-
  nialism rarely permitted the realization of such ideals. Assimilation of a
  quite limited, material sort was, however, actively promoted by Japa-
  nese colonial officialdom as a means of social control. By encouraging
  programs that Japanized the appearance and life-styles of Japan's colo-
  nial peoples, they sought to remold them outwardly into loyal, law-
  abiding Japanese. The colonial bureaucrat thus delighted in programs
  that induced Koreans, Chinese, and Micronesians to speak Japanese, to
  live in Japanese homes, to dress in modern Japanese clothing, and
  generally to reinforce their physical identity with the ruling elite. Ulti-
  mately, official policies supporting assimilation were reduced to this
  27 Lamley, "Assimilation," pp. 496-9.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  mechanical level and generally achieved results among those colonial
  populations that were similarly material and superficial.28
  The most liberal and far-reaching interpretation of assimilation,
  however, centered on the idea of the direct application of the laws and
  institutions of metropolitan Japan to its territories overseas. Specifi-
  cally, it implied an extension to the colonies of the same political rights
  and privileges enjoyed by Japanese in the home islands under the
  Meiji constitution. The idea of bringing the colonies into a closer
  relationship with a politically liberalized mother country had emerged
  early in the Taisho period, at the initiative of certain members of the
  Diet critical of the enormous power wielded by colonial governments
  in Korea and Taiwan and yet opposed to the idea of home rule for
  either country. It was essentially reflected in the colonial policies of
  Hara Takashi when he became prime minister. Hara and liberals in
  the Diet advocated the rapid and direct assimilation of the colonies
  into Japan's political structure, through advanced education, ex-
  panded civil liberties, and growing political responsibility for Japan's
  colonial populations, including colonial representation in the Diet as
  well as the elimination of restrictions hindering political union be-
  tween Japan and its overseas possessions. "The desire of most Koreans
  is not for independence" insisted Hara in 1920, "but to be treated as
  the equals of the Japanese."2* Whether or not Hara underestimated
  the force of Korean nationalism, however, the entrenched opposition
  by the Japanese military, by the colonial bureaucracies in Korea and
  Taiwan, and by the Japanese residents in those colonies blocked any
  opening toward the realization of his colonial objectives after his assas-
  sination and thus doomed any real extension of political equality to the
  colonies.
  Despite this failure, the more liberal atmosphere of the 1920s ush-
  ered in by Hara did enable modest social and economic assimilationist
  reform in the colonies, particularly in Taiwan. That colony's first
  civilian governor general, Den Kenjiro, undertook a policy of "accul-
  turation" (kyoka), a modest program designed to provide advanced
  education for the Taiwanese and equal employment opportunities for
  the Taiwanese and Japanese alike and to encourage the social and
  racial integration of the two peoples through the diffusion of the Japa-
  nese language and the encouragement of intermarriage between the
  28 Ibid., pp. 503-4. The contradictions in Japan's assimilation policy are discussed in Hatada
  Takashi, "Nihonjin no Chosenkan," in Nihon to Chosen, vol. 3: Ajia-Afurika Koza (Tokyo:
  Keiso shobo, 1965), pp. 5-10.
  29 Hara Kei nikki, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Tokyo Kengensha, 1950), p. 563.
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  JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY 
  243
  races. But even the limited policy of "acculturation," initiated in Tai-
  wan by Den and his immediate successors, was designed to proceed at
  only the most gradual pace. Indeed, at the decade's end the Taiwanese
  still occupied a distinctly second-class social and economic status in
  their own land.3°
  In any event, with the remilitarization, exploitation, and regi-
  mentation of the empire in the 1930s, this gradualist, modestly accom-
  modative policy of assimilation gave way to one considerably more
  hurried, ideological, and coercive in nature. Japanese assimilationist
  theory had always had a hazy identification with the Pan-Asianist
  ideals of many Japanese, and now these themes of racial harmony,
  coprosperity, and union among Asian races came to be valued more
  highly than any universal "civilizing mission" of modern (Western)
  colonialism. Indeed, colonialism of the European variety came to be
  seen as an obstacle to Pan-Asian unity and was thus regarded by
  Japanese policymakers with increasing hostility. Japanese colonial pol-
  icy also began to emphasize the mystical links between the emperor
  and his subjects at home and overseas. By the end of the decade, this
  concept had materialized into a strident, officially sponsored move-
  ment that aimed at the "imperialization" (kominka) of Japan's depen-
  dent races but that, in its mystical rhetoric about equality, no longer
  spoke of the rights of Japanese subjects, only of obligations. The
  ideological regimentation that now began to grip all Japan's overseas
  territories reached its most severe limits in Korea, where the extreme
  efforts of the Government General to stamp out all forms of Korean
  identity, including the attempt to prevent any use of the Korean lan-
  guage, amounted to "colonial totalitarianism," in Gregory Hender-
  son's words.31
  Moreover, as the decade progressed, and as Japanese field armies
  began to overrun adjoining Asian regions, Japanese policymakers came
  to perceive both the territories of the formal empire and the newly
  occupied areas as one undifferentiated unit, Asian in composition and
  uncompromisingly Japanese in purpose and outlook. For this reason,
  all references to colonies were eliminated in favor of a distinction only
  between the "inner territory"-Japan-and the "outer territories"-the
  overseas possessions. The latter were now seen to be merely extensions
  of a single Japanese nation, without any separate colonial, let alone
  30 E. Patricia Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 189S-194S (Cambridge, Mass.:
  Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 146-56.
  31 Gregory Henderson, Korea: Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
  Press, 1966), pp. 72-114.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  national, identities of their own. The European colonial model was not
  only abandoned but also reviled as decadent and evil. Japan was to lead
  all Asian races (by force if necessary) in a national war of liberation to
  drive Western colonialism out of Asia. *2
  At the same time, official Japanese rhetoric about Japan's mission in
  Asia also began to display traces of overt racism. Despite incessant
  references to Asian racial harmony and coprosperity, the Japanese
  government increasingly spoke of Japan's dominant position within
  the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and not a few among the
  Japanese military spoke openly of themselves as "master peoples."
  Rent by these internal contradictions of imperial purpose, the final,
  "anticolonial" expression of Japanese colonialism could not garner the
  support of the peoples it increasingly oppressed and exploited in the
  name of equality, nor could it historically justify the empire after it
  collapsed in the rubble of the Pacific War.
  ADMINISTERING THE EMPIRE
  At its outset, the empire was slow to establish administrative machin-
  ery for central colonial administration. During the empire's first sev-
  eral decades, successive administrative changes placed the separate
  colonies at different times under various ministries in Tokyo or under
  the prime minister's office. By the 1920s the expansion of the empire
  made it necessary that colonial administration be unified, but it was
  not until 1929 that a Ministry of Colonial Affairs (Takumusho),
  headed by an appointee of cabinet rank, was established to supervise
  all the component territories of the empire. Yet it must not be sup-
  posed that this office held powers anything like those of the British
  Colonial Office or the French Colonial Ministry, whose influence over
  their respective colonies was considerable. Rather, the effective cen-
  tral authority was exercised by individual ministries in Tokyo, particu-
  larly those of the army and navy, acting through their agents in the
  colonies. The Japanese Ministry of Colonial Affairs, while it existed,
  served largely as a coordinating and reporting instrument, and to the
  extent that it held any real authority at all, this power was exercised in
  the lesser colonies, not in Korea or Taiwan. With the outbreak of the
  Pacific War, the ministry was abolished, and in keeping with the
  empire's ideological and Pan-Asianist character, all its functions were
  taken over by the Greater East Asia Ministry (Dai Toa-sho) which
  32 Nagao Sakuro, Nihon shokumin seisaku no dozo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1944), pp. i-8, 29.
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  ADMINISTERING THE EMPIRE 
  245
  handled relations with all Japanese-occupied territory in Asia except
  for Taiwan, Korea, and Karafuto. In 1942 Korea was brought under
  control of the Home Ministry, and in 1944 Karafuto was absorbed into
  Japan as a mere prefecture.
  The powerful influence of the military in Japanese colonial affairs
  also had much to do with the absence of an effective centralized colo-
  nial administration under the civil government in Tokyo. Because of
  the circumstances of the empire's formation, military government was
  the initial stage in the administrative evolution of all the colonies.
  Military men continued to play a predominant role in much of the rest
  of the empire's history. Given the general power and prestige of the
  Japanese military, as well as its independence from civil control, it is
  no wonder that the Japanese army and navy often had virtually free
  rein in Japan's territories overseas and thus helped isolate colonial
  governments from political developments in metropolitan Japan.
  It was in Taiwan and Korea, however, where military authority was
  the most dominant, and in consequence, the colonial governments
  became the most autonomous and the most authoritarian. The gover-
  nors general of those colonies-the only Japanese colonial officials to
  hold that title-held shinnin rank (which meant appointment in a cere-
  mony personally attended by the emperor), the highest in Japanese
  officialdom. They possessed enormous executive, judicial, and even
  legislative powers, far greater indeed than those of any single office in
  the home government, that of the prime minister included. "Korea
  and Formosa," Edward Chen tells us, "were in effect empires within
  an empire, contrary to the goal of political integration repeatedly pro-
  claimed by the Japanese."33
  Nor was either the Government General, nor any other Japanese
  colonial government for that matter, troubled by having to deal with a
  colonial legislature or limited by an effective instrument for indigenous
  self-rule. Although it is true that in Korea, as a matter of appeasing
  Korean sentiment, there were far more indigenes in the colonial govern-
  ment than in Taiwan and that a Korean "central advisory council"
  existed in Seoul, an armory of legal restrictions by the Government
  General made these Korean "advantages" essentially meaningless.
  Of these two colonial governments, that in Korea had far more
  awesome powers. Although appointments to the position of governor
  general in both colonies were in theory open to civilians after 1919,
  33 Edward I-te Chen, "Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa: A Comparison of the
  Systems of Political Control," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30 (1970): 155.
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  246 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  only in Taiwan was such a change actually made. In Korea, at the
  insistence of the Japanese army, the rule of military commanders
  continued unbroken. Because of the military's autonomy in the Japa-
  nese political system, the relationships of the governors general in
  Korea to the prime minister's office in Japan remained ambiguous.
  Although occasionally the former accepted the supervision of the latter
  as a matter of immediate convenience, almost to the end of Japanese
  rule, the governor general in Korea made his report directly to the
  emperor. Adding to the prestige of the office was the fact that the
  Japanese army nominated to it only officers of the highest rank and
  influence. Virtually invulnerable to interference from the civil govern-
  ment in Tokyo, the governors general of Korea functioned more as
  imperial proconsuls than as mere colonial officials.^
  Nor were the governors general in Korea troubled by any need for
  deference to the Japanese Diet in Tokyo. In the empire's formative
  years the unresolved question of whether or not the constitution's
  provisions extended to the colonies provoked a challenge by the Diet
  to the authority of Japanese colonial governments. Specifically, the
  controversy centered on the question of whether the governors general
  of Taiwan or Korea could be given authority to issue seirei, legislative
  ordinances that in the colonies had the same effect as Japanese law, or
  whether, under the constitution, lawmaking power was reserved for
  the Diet. In Taiwan, this authority (granted under a highly controver-
  sial statute, Law 63) was eventually amended, so that every five years
  the Government General was forced to seek from the Diet an extension
  of these powers. In addition, the governor general in Taiwan was
  obliged to search for relevant Japanese law before issuing his own
  seirei. In Korea, however, the governor general's authority (under
  Law 30) remained undented by any such limitations.«
  Thus, isolated from interference from either the home islands or the
  will of the Korean majority, the governor general in Korea was able to
  rule as a military autocrat. Beneath him the officials of the Govern-
  ment General comprised an enormous self-contained administrative
  elite in which most positions were reserved for the Japanese, who were
  too often arrogant in their omnipotence and contemptuous of Korean
  sentiment.
  34 Kim Han-kyo, "The Japanese Colonial Administration in Korea: An Overview," in Korea
  Under Japanese Colonial Rule: Studies of the Policy and Techniques of Japanese Colonialism, ed.
  Andrew Nahm (Kalamazoo: Center for Korean Studies, Institute of International and Area
  Studies, Western Michigan University, 1973), pp. 41-53.
  35 Chen, "Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa," pp. 136-40.
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  ADMINISTERING THE EMPIRE 
  247
  In their local governments, Korea and Taiwan had virtually identi-
  cal systems of administration. Provincial governments were headed by
  governors who in every case were Japanese who held chokunin rank (in
  which appointments were conferred by imperial order on the recom-
  mendation of appropriate officials, in this case by colonial governors
  general). Below these were county and municipal governments, and at
  the bottom of the administrative scale were the townships and villages.
  Koreans occupied most of the village headmen positions on the penin-
  sula, some of the township magistrate offices, and even a few of the
  chief executive positions at the municipal and county levels, whereas
  the Japanese in Taiwan monopolized all three levels of local govern-
  ment. As a concession to elicit support of the indigenous peoples of
  both colonies, the colonial governments there provided the appearance
  of local autonomy in the form of consultative councils, which were
  supposed to inject Taiwanese and Korean opinion into the processes of
  local decision making. But in fact, they consisted largely of Japanese
  or pro-Japanese Taiwanese or Koreans, selected by the Governments
  General and not elected by the will of the colonial peoples. They were
  empowered, in any event, to offer only advice, which the governor
  general of either colony would accept or reject as he saw fit.36
  The administrative structures of the three lesser colonies may be
  summarized briefly, for they did not greatly differ from those of Taiwan
  and Korea, except in the diminished prestige and restricted authority of
  their chief executives. Each was headed by a governor holding the
  chokunin rank, who was responsible, until World War II, to the prime
  minister through the minister for colonial affairs. All three colonies
  contained two levels of local government. The first of these, the district
  (or the municipality in the case of the Kwantung Leased Territory), was
  headed by a district governor who held sonin rank (that is, nominal
  appointment by the emperor but, in practice, appointment by the gover-
  nor). Below this was the village government headed by a headman or
  chief. In Karafuto, the Japanese controlled all levels of administration.
  In the Kwantung Leased Territory and the Nan'yo, indigenous partici-
  pation in government was restricted to the village level. Even on the
  remoter islands of the Nan'yo, moreover, the extension of Japanese
  colonial power undercut the authority of the original native elite: Al-
  though the Nan'yocho did not replace the traditional village chiefs, it
  sometimes simply bypassed them by establishing a new hierarchy of
  native officials, appointed and paid by the district government.37
  36 Ibid., pp. 141-6. 
  37 Yamabe, "Nihon teikokushugi to shokuminchi," pp. 217-19.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  Whatever else may be said about Japanese administration in the
  overseas territories, one must give Japanese colonial administrators
  high marks as a group. Indeed, the competence and quality of the
  average Japanese colonial bureaucrat are remarkable when one consid-
  ers that they had few of the professional advantages of their counter-
  parts in the British or French colonial systems. Not only was there no
  Japanese colonial tradition, there also was no specialized colonial ser-
  vice or colonial school like those in Britain or France that might
  provide particular training in colonial administration. Neither was
  colonial service a time-honored profession, as it was in Britain, in
  which distinguished service in the colonies was an important ladder to
  social promotion and in which a far-flung "old boy" network kept
  alive the traditions of the colonial service and a steady supply of young
  talent flowing into it.
  At the outset of Japan's colonial venture, certainly, Japan's first
  overseas officials, like those at the initial stage of German colonialism,
  were a mixed lot and included a number of adventurers, romantics,
  exploiters, and incompetents. But as Japan tightened its administra-
  tive grip on the colonies, these undesirables were shaken out of the
  system. By the second decade of Japanese colonial rule, foreign visi-
  tors to Taiwan and Korea were bringing back highly favorable impres-
  sions of the intelligence, dedication, and integrity of the Japanese
  bureaucracy they saw there.38
  This general level of competence is largely explained by the fact that
  senior- and middle-level officials serving in the colonies were generally
  drawn from the graduates of Japan's imperial universities, particularly
  Tokyo Imperial University, who had passed the civil service examina-
  tion. They were, therefore, not drawn from the public at large or even
  from among those Japanese who had considerable experience in the
  colonies, but from the various ministries and bureaus of civil govern-
  ment in metropolitan Japan. The thinking behind this arrangement
  seems to have been that it was better to have Japan represented over-
  seas by individuals who had met the exacting and uniform standards of
  the Japanese bureaucracy than by brilliant innovators or those who
  had expertise in a particular colonial area. This is not to say that in
  making personnel assignments the Japanese government did not re-
  38 See, for example, E. C. Semple, "Japanese Colonial Methods," Bulletin of the American
  Geographical Society (April 1913): 269; and A. J. Brown, The Mastery of the Far East, the Story
  of Korea's Transformation and Japan's Rise to Supremacy in the Orient (New York: Scribner,
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  ADMINISTERING THE EMPIRE 
  249
  gard colonial experience as an asset, but many bureaucrats who served
  Japan overseas were transferred from colony to colony, their posting
  to any one colonial territory rarely being more than a few years. Un-
  doubtedly, these arrangements also contributed to the aloofness and
  isolation of Japan's colonial officials from the indigenous peoples they
  administered. Yet because they were imbued with a sense of public
  service typical of Japanese civil government, they took their jobs seri-
  ously, and because they were openly given preferential treatment and
  reward (a point of bitter resentment by their Korean and Taiwanese
  co-workers similarly employed in colonial government), they were
  rarely tainted with corruption or malfeasance.
  A key element in the general effectiveness of Japanese colonial ad-
  ministration was the availability of military and police power in such
  scale and pervasiveness as to ensure obedience to Japanese authority.
  In Korea the most sensitive and trouble-prone colony, Japan kept its
  greatest military strength at hand. Korea had been subdued and its
  army disbanded by one division and several infantry regiments; after
  1920 the Japanese army permanently stationed two of its best divisions
  on the northern half of the peninsula. In addition, the Japanese main-
  tained several air regiments and fortress garrisons in the country,
  along with a wide distribution of gendarmerie (kenpeitai) units through-
  out the colony. In Taiwan, considering its smaller size and smaller
  potential for civil unrest, the Japanese maintained a considerable mili-
  tary presence: a mixed brigade, an air regiment, an artillery regiment,
  detachments of the gendarmerie in all the main towns, and a garrison
  at the naval base at Mako in the Pescadores Islands. In the Kwantung
  Leased Territory, the Port Arthur Fortress Garrison and the nearby
  elements of the Kwantung Army were more than enough to handle
  any emergency. In Karafuto and the Nan'yo, however, Japanese mili-
  tary and naval forces were negligible until a year or so before the
  outbreak of the Pacific War.&
  Significantly, Japan never augmented these overseas garrisons with
  colonial armies. Alone among the colonial nations, Japan was the only
  power never to raise any separate military contingents from among its
  colonial peoples, like the Indian Army of the British, the French
  Armee Coloniale, or the Force Publique of the Belgian Congo. In large
  part, this may have been because the Japanese could never contem-
  39 Oe Shinobu, "Shokuminchi ryoyu to gunbu," Rekishigaku kenkyu (September 1978): 10-41;
  Boeicho bdei kenshujo senshishitsu, eds., Kanwgun, vol. I (Tokyo: Asagumo shinbunsha,
  «969). PP- 13-15-
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  plate the possibility of arming their colonial charges. Koreans and
  Taiwanese were recruited, indeed drafted, into the Japanese army in
  World War II, but only into labor battalions, not into separate colonial
  combat units.
  Yet when one considers that Britain maintained only a few battal-
  ions to provide security for all its vast African territories, the military
  forces that Japan maintained in the colonies or had available nearby in
  the home islands seem indeed massive for the modest size of its em-
  pire. Undoubtedly, this preponderance of military power had an effect
  on the attitudes of Japanese colonial officials, who knew they could
  count on instant, loyal, and overwhelming military support and were
  therefore much less likely to temporize in dealing with their colonial
  populations.
  Yet rarely did Japanese colonial governments have to call upon
  regular military forces to preserve order. The empire's first line of
  internal security was the double weave of two systems of law enforce-
  ment employed by the Japanese: modern and superbly efficient police
  forces supplemented by the clever exploitation of indigenous systems
  of community control.
  As it was in so many other aspects, Taiwan became the model for
  Japan's system of law enforcement throughout the empire. The imme-
  diate problem after the acquisition of the island was the suppression of
  continuing anti-Japanese activities. The regular units of the Japanese
  army being too expensive to maintain as permanent local security
  forces, the Government General, at Goto Shinpei's initiative, took
  steps to create a modern police force patterned after the police system
  in the home islands but adapted it to suit the conditions in Taiwan.
  Carefully recruited, rigorously trained, and distributed throughout
  the island, except in the wildest aboriginal areas of the interior (whose
  borders were patrolled by specially trained Japanese guard units), the
  Japanese police in Taiwan were placed in every village, ready to pun-
  ish any resistance to Japanese authority quickly and efficiently.
  What is more, the police became the backbone of local administra-
  tion in Taiwan. Assigned a wide range of functions-tax collection,
  enforcement of sanitary regulations, public information, superinten-
  dence of local public works programs, and other supervisory tasks-
  the Japanese policeman became a colonial functionary whose responsi-
  bilities resembled those of the district officer in British Africa. During
  the next several decades the structure and function of this police sys-
  tem were perfected and extended to the other colonies, though they
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  ADMINISTERING THE EMPIRE 
  251
  were adapted to regional circumstances.40 In his omnipresent and
  seemingly omnipotent role, the Japanese policeman came to be the
  chief point of contact between the colonial government and local com-
  munities throughout the empire. Even the more remote atolls in the
  Nan'yo were each assigned a policeman to keep an eye on village
  government and to instruct the native population in modern agricul-
  tural techniques, in which he was often trained. To Japanese colonial
  authorities, the wide-ranging functions of the Japanese police were a
  source of continuing pride and an indication of the efficiency of the
  Japanese colonial government. In this perspective the predominant
  place of the policeman in colonial affairs gave evidence of the empire's
  law, order, and material progress.1"
  In his tasks the Japanese policeman was assisted, though never
  supplanted, by the indigenous police who always remained sharply
  subordinate in numbers, authority, and pay scale. Only in Korea,
  where the Japanese had taken over a national police force (which they
  had largely helped train) did indigenes occupy higher posts in the
  colonial police structure and comprise a substantial portion of the total
  colonial police force. But the Korean police was in no way indepen-
  dent of Japanese police authority.
  Modern police forces were expensive and, by themselves, would not
  have been adequate to maintain both local order and bureaucratic
  control throughout the empire. To supplement and support the uni-
  formed police in its various local functions, the Japanese were quick to
  exploit traditional systems of village security and leadership. Here
  again, Taiwan provided valuable precedents. Using his rapidly ac-
  quired knowledge of local customs, Goto Shinpei was quick to adopt
  the ancient Chinese pao chia system of collective responsibility for
  maintaining law and order in the village. This mechanism for commu-
  nity control had, for centuries, contributed to the stability of rural
  China but had fallen into disuse in Taiwan. Under Goto's direction,
  the pao chia {hoko in Japanese) system became an effective mechanism
  for information gathering, militia mobilization, and the search and
  seizure of suspected dissidents. More than this, Goto refurbished the
  40 Ching-Chih Chen, "Police and Community Control Systems in the Empire," in Myers and
  Peattie, Japanese Colonial Empire, pp. 213-39.
  41 To Western observers who visited the colonies, however, the ubiquitous and often inquisito-
  rial presence of the Japanese colonial police became an increasingly onerous burden. Travel
  accounts by foreigners who passed through Japan's colonial territories almost always men-
  tioned the official phobia about foreign spies and the police's constant surveillance and
  frequent questioning of foreign residents and visitors.
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  system so that it came to be used not only for local security but for
  general administrative purposes as well. Through it, the Government
  General was able to use local manpower to collect taxes, construct and
  maintain local public works, gather census data, and perform a myriad
  of other administrative tasks, all under the watchful eye of the Japa-
  nese police. 4*
  The pao chia system, being a traditional Chinese institution, could
  not be used in Korea, Karafuto, or the Nan'yd with the same effective-
  ness as it was in Taiwan; being a rural control system, it was less
  appropriate to the metropolitan populace of the Kwantung Leased Ter-
  ritory. Nevertheless, building on their experience in community con-
  trol, the Japanese learned how to manipulate traditional leadership
  mechanisms on the local level in all their territories (except in Karafuto,
  where the overwhelming portion of Japanese in the colonial population
  did not make it necessary to do so). In Korea, the Government General
  fostered a reemphasis on Confucian virtues, particularly those of loyalty
  to the sovereign (in this case the Japanese emperor) and appointed
  prominent local leaders who were willingly subservient to Japanese
  authority. In the Nan'yo, the Japanese police worked through village
  chieftains to reach into local Micronesian communities to ensure order
  and to guarantee compliance with Japanese directives.
  Through these Japanese and indigenous mechanisms, the Japanese
  were able to extend tight bureaucratic control even to the empire's
  most remote parts. Unimpeded by any barriers to arbitrary and au-
  thoritarian rule and able to subject their colonial populations to con-
  stant police surveillance and to various systems of community control,
  the Japanese colonial governments thus ensured an unprecedented
  degree of law, order, and stability throughout the empire. In the
  process they created bureaucracies more centralized and more authori-
  tarian than any that existed in Japan itself, a fact that accounts for the
  vigor and force with which Japan was able to carry out its colonial
  policies.
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL ECONOMY: DEVELOPMENT
  AND EXPLOITATION
  No aspect of Japanese colonial history is more complex and more
  subject to disagreement than the conduct of economic policy within
  the empire. Japan's capacity to create modern economic infrastruc-
  42 Ching-chih Chen, "The Japanese Administration of the Pao-chia System in Taiwan, 1895—
  1945," Journal of Asian Studies 34 (February 1975): 391-446.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL ECONOMY 
  253
  tures in the colonies, as well as to increase both agricultural and indus-
  trial production, was a source of great satisfaction to Japanese colonial
  authorities at the time and has been the focus of a significant amount
  of postwar scholarship on the economic dimensions of Japanese colo-
  nialism. Using these criteria it is legitimate to speak of the empire's
  economic "development." Yet in light of Japan's harsh demands on its
  colonial territories, the inequities it created between the Japanese and
  their colonial charges, and the distortions and imbalances it wrought
  in the colonies' economic structures, Japanese economic policy has
  been condemned in the postwar era by Japan's former colonial peoples
  and criticized by a majority of specialists in the field. In this perspec-
  tive, Japan's economic activities in the colonies clearly merit the term
  exploitation. That the debate has come to include emotional recrimina-
  tion, incomplete or disputed data, and highly specialized analytical
  methodology, in almost equal proportions, has made its resolution in
  the near future all the more unlikely.«
  It is, however, possible to make certain generalizations regarding
  economic relations within the empire about which most might agree.
  Although these apply to some degree to the empire as a whole, they are
  drawn specifically from the cases of the two colonies that figured most
  largely in Japan's economic schemes, Taiwan and Korea.
  No matter what the range of motives may have been for Japan's
  acquisition of an empire-and these appear to have been largely strate-
  gic rather than economic in nature-Japan was not slow in shaping its
  colonies to the homeland's economic advantage. In this sense, the eco-
  nomic structure of the Japanese empire was not dissimilar to the typical
  European colonial model, in which the colonial economies were devel-
  oped to serve as docile producers of raw materials for the metropolitan
  power and as a market for its manufactures. What distinguishes the
  Japanese case was that although the European countries' attention to
  their colonial economies was sometimes desultory, Japan devoted con-
  tinuous and assiduous planning and skill to its economic interests in the
  colonies. To paraphrase the words of one scholar, Japan's colonial
  economies suffered not from neglect but from overattention.
  43 Examples of the "development" approach to Japanese colonialism can be found in Ramon H.
  Myers and Adrienne Ching, "Agricultural Development in Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial
  Rule," Journal of Asian Studies 33 (August 1964): 555-70; James I. Nakamura, "Incentives,
  Productivity Gaps, and Agricultural Growth Rates in Pre-War Japan, Taiwan, and Korea,"
  in Japan in Crisis: Essays in Taisho Democracy, ed. Bernard Silberman and H. D.
  Harootunian (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 329-73. Examples of
  the "exploitation" approach are by Kwan Suk-kim, "An Analysis of Economic Change in
  Korea," in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule, pp. 100-7; and Asada Kyoji, Nikon
  leikokushugi to kyu-shokuminchi jmushi sei (Tokyo: Mizusu shobo, 1968).
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  It is obvious that only the power and resources of the Japanese state
  could account for the scale and direction of economic growth attained
  during the life of the empire. The transformation of the agrarian
  economies of Taiwan and Korea was wrought not so much by private
  venture capital as by energetic, enterprising colonial bureaucracies
  whose policies were designed to serve the needs of the central govern-
  ment in Tokyo and to create conditions in the colonies that would lead
  to economic growth and the eventual participation of private capital.
  To accomplish these objectives, Japan simply extended to the colonies
  the experiences and successes of the Meiji state in fostering prosperity
  in the home islands. Hard on the heels of the initial military and
  administrative measures that provided for a stable and secure colonial
  environment, therefore, the new colonial governments embarked on
  ambitious programs to create modern facilities and institutions that
  were essential to economic growth and that often were beneficial to the
  colonizers and colonized alike.
  At the time that Japan acquired Taiwan, these efforts, unsupported
  as yet by colonial revenues and thus paid for by deficit financing, were
  an expensive burden for a central government that had so recently
  modernized its own domestic economy. It was therefore imperative for
  Japan to reduce this drain on its treasury and to make the colony
  financially independent as soon as possible and also to make it serve as
  a source of profit for the mother country. Like the Meiji state before
  it, the Taiwan Government General determined that the agricultural
  sector should bear the burden of the costs of modernization. To enable
  it to do so, the Government General exercised its massive authority to
  direct agricultural development, allocating the necessary expendi-
  tures, using special tax revenues to influence the behavior of agricul-
  tural producers, disseminating modern agricultural technology, and
  establishing monopolies in certain agriculturally based industries that
  were expected to provide substantial revenue. More importantly, the
  colonial government devoted the most intensive research and planning
  to developing those commodities that offered the best prospects for a
  quick return on investment and that at the same time would meet
  Japan's domestic needs. These efforts laid the foundations of a highly
  successful sugar industry between 1900 and 1910, which was heavily
  subsidized at first but which, within a decade, became the colony's
  leading industry and contributed to its eventual fiscal self-sufficiency.
  From sugar the Government General turned to the expansion and
  modernization of Taiwan's rice production, applying to it modern
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL ECONOMY 
  255
  technologies and techniques, so that by the 1920s it became Taiwan's
  second major export to Japan.+»
  This pattern of massive government involvement in stimulating and
  commercializing agriculture, particularly through deficit financing,
  large-scale public investment, and the establishment of semigovern-
  ment monopolies, laid the foundation for the economies of all of Ja-
  pan's overseas territories. Certainly, the pattern of agricultural devel-
  opment in the Kwantung Leased Territory and the Nan'yo was much
  the same, though from the beginning in Karafuto, the Japanese effort
  was much more exploitive, concentrating as it did on a rapacious use
  of the colony's timber reserves by private venture capital in the pulp-
  manufacturing industry.
  Japan's colonial economic policies were in every case shaped to meet
  the needs of the metropolitan homeland, not those of the colonial
  populations themselves. For this reason, the evolution of Japanese
  colonial policies cannot be understood separately from the shifting
  economic circumstances of Japan's domestic economy during the em-
  pire's lifetime. Viewed chronologically, the evolution of this relation-
  ship between domestic need and colonial policy can be seen as having
  two distinct phases.
  In the initial period, from approximately 1900 to 1930, the transfor-
  mation of Japan from an essentially agrarian economy to an industrial
  base dictated a shift in the nation's economic needs. A booming indus-
  trial machine had begun to require markets abroad for its manufac-
  tures, markets to be found most easily in protected colonial territories
  from which foreign competition could most effectively be driven. Dur-
  ing this phase, therefore, the trade of both Taiwan and Korea was
  made increasingly dependent on the metropole. Japan monopolized
  the principal colonial industries and established colonial customs sys-
  tems that diverted the whole of their foreign trade to the home islands.
  At the same time the colonial governments vigorously prevented the
  development of industries that might challenge those in Japan.
  Equally important was that Japan's domestic agricultural sector
  could no longer meet the demands of a growing domestic population.
  Having enjoyed surpluses in food grains at the end of the nineteenth
  44 Samuel P. S. Ho, "The Economic Development Policy of the Japanese Colonial Government
  in Taiwan, 1895-1945," in Government and Economic Development, ed. Gustav Ranis (New
  Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 289-99; Samuel P. S. Ho, "The Economic
  Development of Colonial Taiwan: Evidence and Interpretations," Journal of Asian Studies 34
  (February 1975): 417-39.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  century, because of the heroic efforts of the Japanese farmer in the
  early Meiji period, the nation now faced a shortage in those cereals.
  Importation of food from foreign countries was not a permanent solu-
  tion, because of the drain on Japan's foreign exchange.
  For these reasons Korea and Taiwan were developed as major food
  suppliers, Taiwan largely in sugar and Korea mostly in rice. Despite
  these efforts, however, and because of overheating in the Japanese
  economy provoked by rapid industrialization, food prices continued to
  rise in Japan, and food stocks, particularly rice, were insufficient to
  meet Japanese public demand. These conditions sparked the wide-
  spread rice riots of 1918, a wave of popular unrest that threatened to
  lead to a major upheaval. In response, the Japanese government di-
  rected the colonial authorities in Korea to undertake a massive effort
  to expand rice production on the peninsula. The resultant Rice In-
  crease Plan involved intensive efforts to improve the technical aspects
  of Korean agriculture and to increase the acreage of arable land
  through the expansion of irrigation systems. These efforts did indeed
  substantially increase the peninsula's annual rice yield, so that Korea
  became the principal supplier of rice to the metropolitan power.45
  Although the bulk of the populations of both Taiwan and Korea were
  agricultural, the impact of the Japanese programs to increase agricul-
  tural production was markedly different in the two colonies. In Taiwan,
  Japanese agricultural policies were mainly of direct benefit to the rural
  economy. Improved agricultural technology slowly spread throughout
  the island, raising not only production levels but also the yield per unit
  of land. Until the 1930s, moreover, shipments of Taiwanese rice had
  little effect on the consumption levels of the Taiwanese populace. Most
  importantly, the land registration program (1898-1903) conducted in
  order to obtain accurate data for agricultural planning and to provide
  for an enlarged and stable tax base did no great violence to the tradi-
  tional landholding system and worked to the general advantage of the
  average farmer. In Korea, on the other hand, Japanese policy may be
  said to have worsened the quality of rural life, despite the gains in
  agricultural production. Although there appears to have been no Japa-
  nese plan to dispossess the Korean farmer of his land, the flood of land-
  hungry Japanese immigrants before the annexation, combined with a
  land registration program (1906-17) that ripped apart the complex
  fabric of Korean land tenure, threw numerous rural poor off the land
  45 Suh Chang-chul, Growth and Structural Changes in the Korean Economy, 1910-1940 (Cam-
  bridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1978), pp. 6-13.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL ECONOMY 
  257
  and left them without title to it. Those tenant farmers who remained
  found themselves under the even tighter control of rapacious landlords,
  an increasing number of whom were Japanese farm managers and land
  speculators. Indeed, the inequities of the tenant-landlord relationship
  so minimized the incentives to the Korean farmer that his productivity
  per acre during this period hardly increased at all. Worse than this, the
  ruthless accomplishment of the original objectives of the Rice Increase
  Plan victimized the Korean consumer as well. All rice surpluses pro-
  duced in Korea were shipped directly to Japan, and after the 1920s the
  consumption of rice by Koreans (half that of the much smaller popula-
  tion on Taiwan) actually dropped, the average Korean being obliged to
  eat lesser grains such as millet.-*6
  In any event, by the end of the 1920s, both Taiwan and Korea had
  been molded into docile colonial economies, linked to the colonial
  power by a trade cycle of exported raw materials and foodstuffs and
  imported manufactured consumer goods. But at the outset of the
  1930s, a dramatic shift in Japan's economic circumstances ushered in
  the second phase of its colonial economic policy and sharply redirected
  the colonial economies of Taiwan and Korea.
  As Japan moved toward a semiwar economy and the consequent
  decision to create a self-sufficient industrial base, the two major colo-
  nies were seen as strategic contributors to this endeavor. During the
  first half of the decade, the colonial governments of Korea and Taiwan
  drew up plans for major industrialization programs and downgraded
  agricultural production as an economic priority. Other economic trends
  in Japan had already pointed to this shift. Foundering in the world crisis
  of 1929, Japan needed profitable investment opportunities to contend
  with these difficulties, and Korea, with its rich mineral resources, abun-
  dant hydroelectric power, and cheap labor, was suddenly perceived by
  the Japanese business community as an attractive market. There was,
  moreover, an agricultural depression in Japan, manifested particularly
  in the plummeting price of rice. In both Taiwan and Korea, therefore,
  agricultural expansion programs were curtailed, and industrial facilities
  were created to produce the raw materials-petrochemicals, ores, and
  metals-needed by Japanese heavy industry. These efforts were more
  successful in Korea than in Taiwan, owing to initial inadequacies of
  labor and transportation systems on the island, though by 1939 industry
  and agriculture occupied almost equal proportions of Taiwan's total
  46 Myers and Ching, "Agricultural Development in Taiwan," pp. 560-5; Kwan, "An Analysis
  of Economic Change in Korea," pp. 100-7.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  production. With the outbreak of Japan's war in China, Korea increas-
  ingly became a logistical base for Japanese military operations on the
  continent, and Korea's industrial plants turned to the task of keeping
  Japan's armies in China supplied. At the same time, rice shipments
  from Korea continued to flow toward the home islands, to the consider-
  able hardship of the Korean populace*?
  These industrialization programs, geared as they were to meet Ja-
  pan's military needs, little benefited the peoples of Taiwan and Korea
  during those years, though they worked to the greater disadvantage of
  the latter. This is exemplified by the disparity in consumer services,
  wage differentials, and employment rates. For example, even though
  hydroelectric production in Korea nearly tripled that of Taiwan, less
  than 12 percent of Korean families enjoyed electric lighting, as com-
  pared with 36.3 percent of Taiwanese households (and over 90 percent
  of Japanese families in the home islands). Not only did the Taiwanese
  tend to receive higher wages than did their counterparts in Korea, but
  the wage differentials between Japanese and indigenes in the same jobs
  were also far greater in Korea than in Taiwan, where employment
  rates were also twice those of Korea.48
  By the outbreak of the Pacific War, therefore, the economies of all
  of Japan's territories were harnessed to the needs of the embattled
  metropolitan power at the sacrifice of the welfare of Japan's colonial
  peoples. And yet the colonies collectively occupied only a moderately
  important position in the total economy of the home islands, particu-
  larly in terms of strategic imports. Although in the late 1920s, Korea
  and Taiwan supplied Japan with four-fifths of its rice imports, two-
  thirds of its sugar imports, and lesser amounts of minerals, lumber,
  and other items, Japan was never able to obtain from its colonies its
  chief requirements for a whole range of strategic products, including
  textile fibers, metals, petroleum, and fertilizers, which it was forced to
  seek abroad. During the empire's lifetime, moreover, the colonies
  provided Japan with no more than a modest export market for its
  manufactures (about 20 percent of Japan's industrial exports and
  about 10 percent of its textile exports in 1930). Japan's colonial trade,
  though it grew far more rapidly than did that with foreign countries,
  counted for only about one-quarter of the nation's total overseas
  trade."'
  47 Yamabe, Nihon tojika no Chosen, pp. 188-95; Samuel P. S. Ho, "Agricultural Transforma-
  tion Under Colonialism: The Case of Taiwan," Journal of Economic History 28 (September
  1968): 324-6. 
  48 Kim, "The Japanese Colonial Administration," pp. 107-10.
  49 Yamabe, "Nihon teikokushugi to shokuminchi," pp. 205-7.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL ECONOMY 
  259
  Two questions are frequently raised about the significance of Ja-
  pan's colonial economy. The first is the extent to which, in strictly
  economic terms, the empire was an asset or a liability to Japan. Obvi-
  ously, a comprehensive and conclusive answer to this question is im-
  possible, as there is no accounting system that can calculate the costs
  of maintaining a colonial establishment-military expenditures, gov-
  ernment subsidies, administrative outlays, and the like-and match
  them logically against the returns-volume of trade, reductions in
  foreign exchange disbursements, repatriated capital, and so on. Al-
  though certain private Japanese groups undoubtedly found their colo-
  nial investments highly profitable, the net profit to the nation of its
  economic activities in the colonies is less certain, given the tariff prefer-
  ences and subsidies that supported such enterprises.50 At any given
  time, moreover, the economic benefits of empire accruing to Japan
  were very mixed, as the advantages of one group were often the costs
  of another. Because of imports from Korea, for example, city dwellers
  paid less for rice than they would have otherwise; on the other hand,
  Japanese rice farmers had less earning power. Overall, it appears that
  Japan's economic activities in the colonies were not cost effective (espe-
  cially considering the tariff preferences and subsidies that supported
  them), though certain private Japanese groups found their colonial
  investments highly profitable. These points require considerably more
  data and study.
  The second question pertains to the influence of Japan's economic
  policies on the postwar development of the former colonial territo-
  ries, particularly Taiwan and Korea. At first glance, one would have
  to conclude that the Japanese contribution was real and indisputable.
  Whatever advantages the Japanese consumer may have gained at the
  time from the modernization and expansion of the agricultural sec-
  tors of Taiwan and Korea, it cannot be denied that both countries
  emerged from Japanese rule with efficient and productive agricul-
  tural systems. Nor is it disputable that the modern facilities and
  institutions-transportation and communications networks, modern
  banking and monetary systems, educational and administrative facili-
  ties, hospitals, and factories-that the Japanese created during the
  colonial period were of substantial importance in the economic ad-
  vance of Taiwan and Korea.
  Yet recent studies have come to cast doubt on the long-range eco-
  nomic contributions of Japanese colonialism to the former colonial
  50 Lock wood, The Economic Development of Japan, pp. 50-2.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  territories. Even though both Taiwan and Korea expanded their agri-
  culture during their colonial periods, it does not appear that Japan
  provided the necessary elements of sustained nonagricultural growth in
  either colony. Because Japanese policies kept economic power out of
  the hands of the Taiwanese and Koreans, a modern entrepreneurial
  class failed to develop in Taiwan and grew only marginally in Korea.
  In both countries, because industrial and administrative positions re-
  quiring technical or managerial skills were so often filled by Japanese
  during the colonial period, few indigenous technicians or managers
  were available to either country, which resulted in massive disloca-
  tions in the economic machinery of Taiwan and Korea when the Japa-
  nese withdrew. 5'
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL PRESENCE:
  EMIGRATION, SETTLEMENT, AND THE
  COLONIAL LIFE-STYLE
  It was the great dream of many Japanese colonial theorists of the late
  Meiji and early Taisho periods that the colonies could become outlets
  for emigration, in which the nation's "surplus" population could find
  new living space under the Japanese flag and create overseas settlement
  colonies similar to those white settlements of the British Common-
  wealth. From faulty population statistics, an initial ignorance of physi-
  cal conditions in the colonies, and much wishful thinking, Japanese
  colonial propagandists derived heady visions of mass emigration of
  energetic and resourceful Japanese agriculturalists who would create
  "new Japans" overseas, strengthening and increasing the Japanese race
  and furnishing foodstuffs for the health and vigor of the homeland.52
  In fact, the circumstances and predisposition of those Japanese who
  did emigrate to the colonies undercut these rosy expectations. First, the
  initial conditions of health, climate, and civil unrest discouraged the
  settlement of certain colonies. In Taiwan many early immigrants fell
  victim to poor health conditions, an unfamiliar semitropical climate,
  and the sporadic attacks of rebellious Taiwanese. In Karafuto the bitter
  climate and psychological remoteness from the home islands also dis-
  couraged large-scale settlement. In Korea the problem was the popula-
  tion-land ratio. By the time of Korea's annexation, Japanese aspira-
  51 Suh, Growth and Structural Changes, pp. 143-56; Ho, "The Economic Development Policy,"
  p. 328.
  52 See, for example, Togo Minoru, Nihon shokumin ron (Tokyo: Bunbudo, 1906), pp. 176-88,
  243-6.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL PRESENCE 
  26l
  tions to colonize the peninsula had foundered on the fact that Korea was
  already filled-with Koreans. Although many Korean farmers had in-
  deed been dispossessed by the new Japanese-directed system of land
  tenure, most of the cultivated land that was redistributed quickly found
  its way into the hands of a few landlords, Japanese and Korean. 53
  Nor did the Japanese who did emigrate to the colonies conform to
  the colonial theorists' cherished notions. Far from being pioneers will-
  ing to till the hillsides of Taiwan or Korea, most of the first wave of
  Japanese who rushed to the new territories were profit seekers, land
  speculators, opportunists, and carpetbaggers, who came seeking pre-
  ferment and position in the new colonial administrations. So notorious
  was the conduct of many of these persons ("like dung flies following
  horses" complained one Japanese newspaper) that Japanese authori-
  ties had to repatriate a good number to Japan. Many came from the
  lowest social stratum of the Japanese countryside: tenant farmers,
  tinkers, peddlers, failed shopkeepers, and rural poor of every descrip-
  tion. Geographic proximity meant that immigrants of this type washed
  into the peninsula in massive numbers and established an unusually
  extensive and abrasive occupation. From Kyushu, beginning some
  twenty years before Korea's annexation into the empire, these rural
  poor had entered the country in a growing tide, which has been lik-
  ened to the influx of the European pieds noirs into North Africa in the
  same period. Spreading throughout the Korean countryside, they ap-
  propriated land, food, and farm animals from an increasingly outraged
  Korean populace. In the years immediately following the Russo-
  Japanese War, when this flood of impoverished interlopers reached its
  height, conditions in much of southern Korea were not unlike those of
  the post-Civil War American South. Indeed, the chaotic conditions in
  parts of rural Korea, where isolated Japanese settlements had to
  defend themselves against Korean counterviolence, have been likened
  to those of the native American frontier of the mid-nineteenth cen-
  tury. 54 By the 1920s this flood had receded. Many Japanese remained
  in the Korean countryside, a few buying or simply expropriating vast
  amounts of cultivated land, so that they became the new landlords of
  53 Karl Moskowitz, "The Creation of the Oriental Development Company: Japanese Illusions
  Meet Korean Reality," Occasional Papers on Korea, no. 2: Joint Committee on Korean
  Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council,
  March 1974, pp. 73-109-
  54 Gregory Henderson, "Japan's Chosen: Immigrants, Ruthlessness, and Development Shock,"
  in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule, pp. 263-6. For the impressions of a Japanese immi-
  grant in Korea during this turbulent period, see Muramatsu Takeji, "Shokuminsha no
  kaiso," pt. 6, Chosen kenkyu (February 1968): 52-3.
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  262 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  Korea. But most eventually gravitated to the cities where economic
  opportunity was greater. 55
  In the second, more stabilized phase of Japanese rule in the colo-
  nies, after most of the land had been legally apportioned, most of the
  government positions occupied, and the opportunities for quick profit
  nearly extinguished for those possessing little but their wits, the flow
  of Japanese immigrants to the colonies slowed to a trickle. Govern-
  ment plans to encourage agricultural immigration, as part of its pro-
  gram of "Japanizing" the colonies, were generally unavailing, despite
  generous inducements of free travel, low-cost loans, and handsome
  subsidies. The hardships, risks, and effort involved in clearing and
  cultivating land in the colonies discouraged most Japanese farmers. A
  few came and settled and farmed successfully, but in Korea, Taiwan,
  the Kwantung Leased Territory, and even Karafuto, Japanese agricul-
  tural communities remained small in size and number.56
  These settlement patterns had profound consequences for the em-
  pire and for its racial, occupational, and geographical structure. First,
  the immigrationist objectives of Japanese colonial policy were never
  realized, and the colonies, insufficiently attractive to the average Japa-
  nese, never solved the nation's real or imagined demographic prob-
  lems. For this reason and because of the natural increase of the indige-
  nous majorities, the Japanese in the colonies, despite their gradual
  numerical increase, remained a tiny minority in the major colonies. (In
  1905 the Japanese made up only 2 percent of the total population of
  Taiwan; nearly a quarter of a century later, that figure had grown to
  only 5.8 percent. Korea, despite the large numbers of Japanese immi-
  grants before 1910, showed an even smaller minority: 1.3 percent in
  1915 and 2.9 percent in 1939.) Because of their small numbers and
  despite their favored position among the indigenous majorities, the
  Japanese colonials were seldom influential in shaping colonial policy.
  Certainly, with the possible exception of the Japanese minority in
  Manchuria, overseas Japanese in Asia never attained the political im-
  portance of the French settlers in Algeria or the whites in Rhodesia.
  The second consequence of the restricted Japanese immigration to
  the colonies was its effect on the social and occupational stratification
  in the empire. Although Japanese farmers were on the whole reluctant
  55 Kajimura Hideki, "Shokuminchi Chosen de no Nihonjin," in Chiho demokurashii to senso,
  vol. 9: Chiho bunka no Nihonshi(Tokyo: Bun'inchi sokai shuppan, 1978), pp. 336-43.
  56 Andrew Grajdanzev, Modern Korea: Her Economic and Social Development Under the Japanese
  (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944), pp. 79-80; Andrew Grajdanzev, Formosa
  Today: An Analysis of the Economic Development and Strategic Importance of Japan's Tropical
  Colony (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1972), pp. 24-5.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL PRESENCE 
  263
  to undertake the tasks of agricultural settlement in the colonies, a
  growing number of Japanese were able and eager to take advantage of
  opportunities in administration, commerce, and the white-collar pro-
  fessions. Thus, the Japanese who immigrated to the colonies in the
  second half of the empire did so chiefly as civil servants, managers,
  technicians, and merchants. "In all these towns," wrote a Western
  visitor to Taiwan in 1924, "one is struck . . . with the fact that the
  Japanese are not pioneers, that they are officials or merchants, govern-
  ment employees, or petty shopkeepers, exploiters or capitalists, but
  rarely tillers of the soil or clearers of virgin lands."5? Thus the most
  comfortable and most lucrative occupations were essentially the pre-
  serve of Japanese colonials, and as a result, they occupied the highest
  social stratum in terms of prestige, salary, and life-style.
  The Japanese monopoly of positions in government, commerce, and
  industry meant that urban concentration was a third characteristic of
  Japanese patterns of settlement in the colonies. By 1938, for example,
  71 percent of all Japanese in Korea were concentrated in fifty urban
  centers on the peninsula, over half in ten cities, and 21 percent in
  Keijo (Seoul) alone. The largest cities in Taiwan held the greatest
  concentrations of Japanese on the island, and Japanese comprised 41
  percent of the island's capital, Taihoku (Taipei). The Kwantung
  Leased Territory was largely urban, of course, and the Japanese com-
  prised a substantial portion of the residents of Dairen and Port Ar-
  thur. Even in Karafuto, two-thirds of the overwhelmingly Japanese
  population were located in the largest towns and cities.
  The exception to these general patterns of immigration and settle-
  ment was the Nan'yo, which differed from the other colonies in its
  racial and cultural composition and geographic situation. By disposi-
  tion and cultural tradition, the Micronesian population was suited to
  neither rice farming nor agricultural labor. Thus, from the beginning
  the economic development of Japanese Micronesia was heavily depen-
  dent on Japanese labor. At the outset of Japanese rule, conforming to
  the general pattern of Japanese colonial settlement, immigrants from
  the home islands comprised only a small portion of the population of
  Micronesia (in 1920, slightly fewer than 4,000 out of a population of
  nearly 52,000). Then, at the beginning of the 1930s, spurred on by
  immigrationist propaganda and a program of generous government
  inducements to settle in the islands, the Japanese began to move into
  the Nan'yo in numbers that were massive in relation to its tiny
  57 Harry A. ViancV.,GlimpsesofJapanandFormota (New York: Century Press, 1924), pp. 164-5.
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  264 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  landmass. Many came from Okinawa as contract laborers for the siz-
  able sugar industry in the Mariana Islands (Saipan, Tinian, and Rota)
  and eventually stayed to open up small shops and stores. Others culti-
  vated coffee, pineapples, or cassava. Still others, largely from the
  Ryukyu Islands, came to fish the abundant tropical waters. By 1935,
  the number of Japanese coming into Micronesia had become what one
  American observer called a "rip tide" of immigration, and toward the
  end of the decade, Japanese substantially outnumbered the native
  Micronesians. The distribution of the Japanese in the Nan'yo was
  uneven, however. Far the largest number settled in the Marianas, the
  Palau Islands, and Ponape; very few went to the Marshall Islands.58
  The Japanese in their colonies constructed for themselves a sunlit
  way of life common to colonials everywhere. One of the first tasks of
  the various colonial governments had been to create urban environ-
  ments appropriate to the favored status of the colonizing race. The
  model, of course, was Taihoku (Taipei), the capital of Taiwan, which
  had been splendidly renovated at the beginning of the.century under
  the direction of Goto Shinpei, who was determined to demonstrate
  Japan's new status as a colonial power with the creation of a truly
  imperial city. Goto's master plan, thoroughly Western in concept and
  design, transformed the dilapidated little city of Taipei, confined by
  its crumbling Chinese walls, into a modern colonial capital graced with
  broad, tree-shaded boulevards, parks, fountains, and impressive pub-
  lic buildings of brick and stone, of which the Government General
  Building, with its heavy Prussian mansard architecture, was the most
  magnificent. Within a few years Japanese colonial authorities had be-
  gun the expansion and modernization of all of Taiwan's provincial
  capitals along lines that were similar, though smaller in scale. Within a
  quarter of a century the empire could boast a number of handsome
  capitals-Keijo (Seoul), Dairen, Ryojun (Port Arthur), and Toyohara
  (in Karafuto)-which rivaled Western colonial cities in Asia and were
  better planned, more ordered, and more attractive than many cities in
  the home islands.
  The physical arrangement of these capitals was often remarkably
  similar to their counterparts in the tropical empires of the West. Sepa-
  rated in each case from the older, more crowded commercial core of
  the original city and its indigenous majority was a Japanese residential
  section, quiet, orderly, and clean, with schools, hospitals, and recre-
  ational areas, all generally reserved for the Japanese, but open on a
  58 Peattie, Nan'yo, chapter 6.
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  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL PRESENCE 
  265
  carefully restricted basis to selected members of the Taiwanese, Ko-
  rean, or Chinese elite. Here, isolated from the crowding and noise of
  the "native quarter," the Japanese residents, surrounded only by their
  fellow nationals and by those indigenes who pulled the rickshas, swept
  the streets, collected the garbage, and hauled away the night soil,
  enjoyed a life of comfort and prestige not usually available to them in
  the less privileged surroundings of the metropolitan homeland. The
  amenities and pleasures available to Japanese colonials varied with the
  two colonies: In Taiwan, weary colonial officials or merchants could
  relax at the hot springs resorts in the hills behind Taihoku; in Korea
  and Taiwan there were numerous geisha and tea houses; in the
  Kwantung Leased Territory, fine beaches and parks eased life; and in
  Micronesia, the Japanese enjoyed the cool bougainvillea-covered ve-
  randas of their clubs and cottages. But everywhere, community separa-
  tism was the common pattern. Even in the smaller towns of rural
  Taiwan and Korea, the Japanese lived in tight, exclusive communi-
  ties, out of contact with the populace around them.
  The isolated existence of the colonial Japanese, in which they en-
  joyed homes, salaries, and public facilities and services far superior to
  anything available to the local populace, served to create attitudes of
  superiority and contempt toward the "natives," all too common to
  Western colonial systems. Over the years their own favored status and
  the demeaned position of the Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese sub-
  jects of the empire came to be the natural order of colonial life, an
  outlook that made a mockery of Japanese rhetoric about the assimila-
  tion of colonizer and colonized.59
  Ultimately, of course, these attitudes, in combination with the disas-
  ters that overtook and obliterated the empire and the homeland at the
  end of the Pacific War, foreclosed any future for the Japanese in the
  newly liberated colonial territories after 1945. Not only were Japanese
  colonials swept from their positions of privilege at the war's end; they
  also were herded together by the Occupation armies of the victorious
  allies and compelled to quit their colonial domiciles forever. In the
  Russian-occupied territories-Manchuria, the Liaotung peninsula,
  northern Korea, and southern Sakhalin-tens of thousands of Japa-
  nese soldiers and civilians were transported to Soviet labor camps,
  where many died and the rest faced long imprisonment before they
  again saw their homeland. Their compatriots in territories now under
  59 Attitudes of one class of Japanese colonial elites toward indigenous peoples are discussed in
  Ozawa Yusaku, "Kyu Ninon jinushi no Cbosenkan," Chosen kenkyu (December 1968)135-
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  266 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  American, British, or Chinese control-the Micronesian islands, Tai-
  wan, and southern Korea-were repatriated more quickly, but their
  future was bleak. Stripped of all wealth, privilege, or function, this
  unhappy human wreckage was cast upon the shores of a ruined and
  defeated country whose once proud colonial reputation was now an
  object of universal hatred and disdain.
  THE INDIGENOUS RESPONSE TO JAPANESE COLONIALISM
  Given the nature of the Japanese colonial presence, it was to be ex-
  pected that all the colonial peoples welcomed the end of Japanese rule
  in 1945. What is remarkable, however, is the disparity in the depths of
  indigenous feeling toward Japanese overlordships within the various
  colonial territories.
  In the case of Korea, the Japanese were faced with a virtual war of
  popular resistance in the years between the establishment of the protec-
  torate and the annexation of the peninsula into the empire, after which
  the fires of national hatred continued to smolder until they burst out
  anew in 1919. The March First movement of that year was by any test
  a protest of national proportions. Only the most drastic Japanese mea-
  sures, the massive presence of the Japanese army, and the imprison-
  ment or exile of most of the leadership of the resistance brought the
  Korean people to a sullen obedience. Despite the belief by Japanese
  liberals, like Prime Minister Hara Takashi, that Koreans only wanted
  their just rights under the Constitution as subjects of an empire, few
  politically conscious Koreans in subsequent years would have been
  satisfied with anything less than complete independence from their
  colonial oppressor.60
  In Taiwan, on the other hand, the indigenous majority tolerated, if
  it did not welcome, the Japanese presence. After an initial spasm of
  resistance by dissident elements during the first years of the Japanese
  occupation, the Taiwanese passively succumbed to the idea of colonial
  rule. Despite certain tremors of political and intellectual restiveness
  during and immediately after World War I, the public peace of the
  island was never seriously threatened.61
  60 The March First movement and Japan's response to it are summarized in Yamabe, Nikon
  tojika no Chosen, pp. 58-100.
  61 This assertion takes into account the Musha Rebellion of November 1930, a bloody uprising
  by aboriginal tribes in the mountains of central Taiwan that was provoked by Japanese abuse
  of the aborigines and by encroachment into their tribal territories. Both the origins of the
  rebellion and its merciless suppression by Japanese military forces using planes and artillery
  were subjects of heated debate in the Diet. But the violence, restricted to a remote interior of
  the island and involving a small ethnic minority, did not affect the Taiwanese majority.
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  THE INDIGENOUS RESPONSE 
  267
  The only Taiwanese political movements that ever operated with
  any degree of public support were those that either sought for Taiwan-
  ese the same rights and benefits guaranteed to Japanese under the
  Meiji constitution or sought home rule within the empire. It is a mark
  of the generally passive response of the Taiwanese to Japanese colonial-
  ism that these political initiatives were suppressed with little difficulty
  by the Japanese colonial authorities. Active but clandestine resistance
  to Japanese rule did not emerge again until the closing years of World
  War II.62
  Japan's other colonial peoples were noticeably moderate in their
  response to Japanese rule. In Karafuto, of course, one cannot speak
  of an indigenous response, as the population of the colony was essen-
  tially Japanese. In the Kwantung Leased Territory, the Chinese ma-
  jority seems to have undertaken little opposition to the Japanese
  presence, and indeed, during the turbulence of the warlord period in
  Manchuria and mainland China, many propertied Chinese refugees
  from those areas appear to have sought shelter in the colony's secu-
  rity and stability. In the Nan'yo, because of the vast dispersion of the
  islands themselves and the Japanese settlements on them, native atti-
  tudes toward Japan varied widely. The main impact of the colonial
  presence was felt in the Marianas, particularly Saipan, where the
  Japanese came to outnumber the Chamorro population by ten to one,
  and in the Palau islands, which contained the seat of colonial govern-
  ment in Micronesia. In those places, because of the loss of Microne-
  sian land to the tidal wave of Japanese immigration, there was some
  resentment of the Japanese colonial presence. Indeed, in Palau this is
  said to have manifested itself in a semisecret anti-Japanese cult. At
  the same time, most Micronesians rapidly adopted Japanese customs,
  dietary habits, and language (though the islanders on Yap, disdainful
  of the Japanese, seem to have been the exception). In the eastern
  Carolines and the Marshalls the natives bore little enmity toward
  their Japanese masters until 1943-4, when they were subjected to the
  increasingly harsh demands of the besieged and isolated Japanese
  garrisons. 63
  Korea thus represented the single recalcitrant member of the em-
  pire. There were a number of reasons for the bitterly an ti-Japanese
  sentiments of the Korean people, in contrast with the passive accep-
  tance of Japanese colonialism by the other colonies, particularly Tai-
  62 Yamabe, "Nihon teikokushugi to shokuminchi," pp. 236-7; Hyman Kublin, "Taiwan's
  Japanese Interlude, 1895-1945," in Taiwan in Modem Times, ed. Patfl K. T. Sih (New York:
  St. John's University Press, 1973), pp. 331-6. 
  63 Peattie, Nan'yo, pp. 216-20.
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  268 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  wan.6* There was, first, the historic animosity between the Korean
  and Japanese peoples dating back to Hideyoshi Toyotomi's invasion
  of the peninsula in the sixteenth century which had left a legacy of
  destruction and a tradition of Korean hatred nurtured by the Kore-
  ans down through the centuries. Reinforcing this heritage of enmity
  was the fact of Korea's cultural autonomy. Whereas Taiwan had
  never existed as more than a political subdivision and cultural ap-
  pendage of China, Korea, despite its identification with the Chinese
  Confucian tradition, was a country with its own culturally rich tradi-
  tions that went back at least as far as those of Japan. For these
  reasons, its people had no cause to feel any great sense of admiration
  or esteem for Japan. Korea was, moreover, a unified country in
  which, at the very time of its absorption into the Japanese empire,
  forces of modern national consciousness were beginning to break
  through the crust of moribund Confucian culturalism. To the Kore-
  ans, the expansion of Japanese power across the peninsula seemed to
  represent not an advance but an outrageous retreat in the country's
  history. The forcible suppression of this emergent national conscious-
  ness bears less similarity to situations in any of the Western tropical
  empires of the time than it does to the German occupation of Alsace-
  Lorraine from 1870 to 1918 or to the long British domination of
  Ireland. Moreover, the disruptive flow of Japanese immigration into
  the country at the outset of the Japanese colonial occupation served
  to fuel the indignation of the Korean people.
  Moreover, when Japan annexed Taiwan, it became possible for the
  island's elite class either to stay in the colony and become Japanese
  citizens or to return to China, an arrangement that soon drained Tai-
  wan of many of those persons who might have been most inclined to
  resist Japanese rule. On the other hand, when Japan took over Korea,
  it occupied an entire country, and so its elite classes had no "main-
  land" to which to return. More than this, the pathetic existence in
  Korea of the Korean royal family, virtual prisoners of the colonial
  government, served as a reminder of the nation's past and a rallying
  point for anti-Japanese national feeling.
  One must also consider Japan's treatment of Korea, in contrast with
  that received by the other colonies. For example, that compared with
  the Taiwanese under Japanese rule, the Korean people fared worse in
  64 For comparisons of Japanese rule in Korea and Taiwan, see Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial
  Education, pp. 172-6; and Edward I-te Chen, "Japan: Oppressor or Modernizer? A Compari-
  son of the Effects of Colonial Control in Korea and Formosa," in Korea Under Japanese
  Colonial Rule, pp. 251-60.
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  THE INDIGENOUS RESPONSE 
  269
  nearly every economic category, and the Koreans, even more than
  Taiwanese, were subject to the most grinding ideological regimentation
  during the wartime years.
  Last of all, one must recognize that all of these elements together
  tempered and intensified Korean national determination to succeed as
  a people. In this sense the Japanese colonial presence served as both a
  goad and a model. The Japanese contempt of Korean national aspira-
  tions and culture wounded Korean pride, and Japanese competition in
  industry, agriculture, and commerce provoked Korean antagonism.
  At the same time, Japanese technology, the effectiveness of the mod-
  ern Japanese bureaucratic state, and the higher Japanese standard of
  living created a model that inspired both Korean envy and a determina-
  tion to pursue such advances as an independent nation. The ultimate
  legacy of Japan to the Korean people was to endow them with national
  indignation. As the Korean scholar Lee Chong-sik noted, "Japan,
  through her conquest and rule of Korea, awakened and sustained
  Korean nationalism. Japan provided the negative and yet the most
  powerful symbol of Korean nationalism, a national enemy."6'
  Had Japan been content with the modest colonial empire it had
  acquired by the end of World War I and abjured the reckless military
  adventurism in Asia that spilled beyond its boundaries, Japanese colo-
  nialism might have made some effort to compromise, albeit belatedly,
  with the growing forces of nationalism that had begun to stir through-
  out the colonial world by 1939. It is true, of course, that the span of
  the Japanese colonial empire was too short, briefer, indeed, than the
  waxing and waning of Western imperialism, to have permitted the
  evolution of such policies. More to the point, speculation on the fur-
  ther liberalization in the empire, which seemed possible in the 1920s,
  cannot be separated from a recognition of the external forces and
  internal pressures that prompted Japan to embark on the path of
  aggression in the 1930s. What is certain is that the tightening demands
  on the energies, loyalties, and resources of Japan's colonial peoples by
  a nation at war with much of Asia and most of the West transmogrified
  an authoritarian but recognizably "Western" colonial system into an
  empire of the lash, a totalitarian imperium, that dragged along its
  peoples as it staggered toward defeat. Linked to the image of Asian
  conquest and to the horrors of the China and Pacific wars, stripped of
  any purpose beyond that of supplying Japan with the material necessi-
  65 Lee Chong-sik, The Politics of Korean Nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
  California Press, 1973), p. 275.
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  27O 
  THE JAPANESE COLONIAL EMPIRE
  ties for survival, this mutant colonialism shriveled in the holocaust of
  defeat in 1945. Without even a feeble commitment to the principle of
  trusteeship, without any sort of legitimization of rule over alien peo-
  ples beyond Japan's own interests, Japanese colonial policy, in its final
  phase, could not provide the nation with any pride of tutelary accom-
  plishment when the empire was liquidated at the war's end. Unlike
  most Western decolonization in the postwar era, the transfer of power
  from colonizer to colonized came not as a gift, bestowed by a grace-
  fully departing officialdom in an atmosphere of mutual confidence and
  respect, but as a decree by Japan's triumphant enemies, dispensed by
  their garrisons of occupation and received by peoples resentful of their
  colonial past.
  Yet no former colonial power, save for America, has so successfully
  surmounted the loss of its former colonial territories as has Japan. For
  most European colonial nations, decolonization meant a shrinking of
  influence and prestige. According to David Fieldhouse,
  Above all, the end of the empire deprived the West of status. The countries of
  Europe were no poorer than they had been before, but they were infinitely
  smaller. They had been the center of vast empires; now they were petty
  states, occupied with parochial problems. Dominion had gone and with it the
  grandeur which was one of the rewards.66
  To contemplate the postwar rebirth of the Japanese industrial phoe-
  nix, the fleets of Japanese-built tankers that swept the world's oceans,
  the global influence of decisions taken daily in Japanese corporate
  boardrooms, and Japan's economic domination of many of the Asian
  territories that it once occupied is to realize how unusual the Japanese
  experience in the postcolonial era has been. If Japan's success, re-
  duced to the shoreline of its own islands, says much about the periph-
  eral value of the old empire to the well-being of the Japanese people, it
  also demonstrates how persuasively Japan has redefined the nature of
  power and influence in a postcolonial world.
  66 David Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires; a Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century
  (New York: Delacorte, 1966), p. 394.
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  CHAPTER 6
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION, 1905-1941
  GREATER JAPAN OR LESSER JAPAN?
  The world's attention turned toward Japan after its victory in the
  Russo-Japanese War. This small island nation in East Asia not only
  had escaped falling under the colonial control of the Western impe-
  rialist powers, but it also had emerged as an imperialistic nation in its
  own right, on its way toward hegemony in East Asia and the western
  Pacific. The advanced countries that opposed or supported Japan in
  the war against Russia, and other Asian countries that were the targets
  of Western expansion, contemplated Japan's future with a mixture of
  admiration and wariness.
  In retrospect, it can be said that the Russo-Japanese War brought
  Japan to an important crossroads in the path of its national destiny. The
  basic issue was whether Japan should be satisfied with a limited success
  as a solid middle-sized nation or should drive toward becoming a great
  military power dominating the Asian continent. In the postwar years,
  journalists and intellectuals debated Japan's goals and direction during
  its next stage of development. The debate considered several issues:
  greater "Japanism" versus little "Japanism," northern advance versus
  southern advance, and army-first versus navy-first. Greater Japanism
  implied continued expansionism, whereas little Japanism implied satis-
  faction with the postbellum status quo. Northern advance and southern
  advance were somewhat more ambiguous terms. The first was generally
  understood to mean a policy of continental expansion from the Korean
  peninsula through Manchuria into China proper; the second was under-
  stood to mean expansion from Taiwan into south China and Southeast
  Asia. Army-first meant that the army would carry the main burden of
  expansion, whereas navy-first implied that the navy would. There was a
  tendency for greater Japanism to go hand in hand with northern ad-
  vance, which in turn implied continental expansion and an army-first
  policy. Little Japanism tended to be associated with the southern ad-
  vance and navy-first positions. The debate necessarily had strong politi-
  271
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  272
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  T CHINA
  SEJ\ 
  '-5 V
  V
  A Hollick.
  Map 6.1. Areas of Cliina penetrated by Japan, 1941.
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  GREATER JAPAN OR LESSER JAPAN? 
  273
  cal implications because it involved competition between the army and
  the navy over the expansion of military armaments.
  One of the leading monthly journals, Taiyo, ran issues in 1910 and
  again in 1913 in which the contributors debated the pros and cons of
  the northern advance-southern advance strategies. It is apparent that
  the northern advance argument was not popular among the contribu-
  tors, the majority of whom supported the southern advance argument
  that stressed the primacy of the navy over the army. Takekoshi
  Yosaburo, a leading journalist and critic who warmly supported the
  colonial development of Taiwan, argued that it was a "disadvantage
  for an island country to employ its strength on the continent" and that
  it was better to pursue economic advances to the south (by which he
  meant Southeast Asia). "Our future," he wrote, "lies not in the north
  but in the south."1 Inukai Tsuyoshi, leader of the minority Koku-
  minto and a sympathizer of the Chinese revolutionary movement,
  argued that because there was "no danger of war in the North for the
  next ten years," Japan should assume a defensive posture in north
  Korea and instead turn toward the south, a task for which a "great
  navy" was necessary.2 On the other hand, Major General Kusao
  Masatsune, a reserve general who saw the implications of a move
  south, wrote, "If Japan moved northward and northwestward beyond
  our present location, it would be aggression, but a war between Japan
  and the United States would be even more foolish."3 Opposed to
  expansion of the navy, he proposed instead peaceful expansion into
  the South Seas.
  A number of writers for the Toyo keizai shinpo (The Oriental
  Economist)-Katayama Sen, Miura Tetsutaro, and Ishibashi Tanzan,
  among others-carried Kusao's argument to its logical conclusion.
  They opposed the ambitions of greater Japanism to expand in either
  direction, north or south. Instead they called for a lesser Japanism
  with the goal of building a compact "island welfare state" through the
  expansion of industry and trade.* Ishibashi wrote that Taiwan, China,
  and Korea were not "defensive palisades but highly flammable and
  dangerous dry brush." Japan, he said, should "abandon Manchuria,
  give independence to Korea and Taiwan, abandon economic rights in
  China, and live in peace with those weak nations."'
  1 Taiyo, August 1911, pp. 81-92. 
  2 Ibid. 
  3 Ibid., November 1910.
  4 Takayoshi Matsuo, "Katayama Sen, Miura Tetsutaro, Ishibashi Tanzan," in Kindai Nihon to
  Chugoku, vol. 2, ed. Takeuchi Yoshimi and Hashikawa Bunso (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha,
  I974)>PP- 68-83.
  5 Ishibashi Tanzan zenshu, vols. 1-2 (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1970).
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  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  Arguments in favor of the southern advance and lesser Japanism
  remained a minority opinion. The northern advance or continental
  policy not only had the overwhelming support of public opinion,
  but it also was the path chosen by the government. There were
  disagreements over timing and method, but the northern advance
  policy remained the mainstream position in Japanese foreign policy
  for the next several decades. As Tomizu Hiroto, a professor of law
  at Tokyo Imperial University, observed, "Northern advance is a
  historical reality."6
  Komura Jutaro, foreign minister in the Katsura cabinet, was one of
  the chief architects of the continental policy. As the Japanese represen-
  tative at the Portsmouth Peace Conference in 1905, Komura had
  crossed swords with Sergei Witte, the Russian delegate, but he had
  been unable to negotiate a peace settlement completely satisfactory to
  the Japanese public. Many Japanese, elated at their military victory
  over Russia, had expected Komura to bring home as prizes a huge
  indemnity and territorial cessions in Siberia. Professor Tomizu ac-
  quired his nickname "Professor Baikal" because he advocated cession
  of Siberia east of Lake Baikal to Japan. Such grand hopes did not
  materialize. Under the Portsmouth Treaty, Japan obtained only terri-
  torial control over southern Karafuto, a paramount position in Korea,
  a leasehold in the Liaotung peninsula, and the South Manchuria Rail-
  way concession. When the contents of the treaty became known,
  antitreaty demonstrations erupted into rioting-the so-called Hibiya
  incident-and an angry mob attacked Komura's residence.
  Although Japan had failed to obtain either an indemnity or any
  territory apart from Karafuto, Komura hoped that Japan could main-
  tain a foothold on the Asian continent as a springboard for further
  expansion. When he returned home from Portsmouth, he learned that
  the Katsura government had decided that because it would be difficult
  to operate the railway concessions in Manchuria because of postwar
  financial difficulties, it would give unofficial assent to the sale of the
  railroad line to E. H. Harriman, the American railroad magnate.
  Komura persuaded Katsura to cancel this decision, and despite poor
  health, Komura traveled to Peking, where he obtained the Ch'ing
  government's consent to Japan's new interests in Manchuria.
  Yamagata Aritomo, the dominant senior figure in the army and
  another key figure in the shaping of the continental pohcy, insisted
  that Japan "should expand its national interests and sovereign rights"
  6 Taiyo, August 1911, pp. 81-92.
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  GREATER JAPAN OR LESSER JAPAN? 
  275
  toward the Ch'ing dynasty.? His protege, Colonel Tanaka Giichi, a
  strong advocate of continental expansion and later war minister and
  prime minister in the 1920s, wrote in 1906 that Japan "should break
  free from its insular position, become a continental state, and confi-
  dently extend its national power."8 These arguments, of course, were
  linked to an army-first and navy-second position and naturally invited
  resistance from the navy. Captain Sato Tetsutaro, known as the "Japa-
  nese Mahan," warned against pushing north, arguing that "an ocean
  state should not go too far into the continent."9 He advanced a navy-
  first position, arguing that there was no danger of an island country
  like Japan being invaded by a foreign power and that Japan could
  defend its own trade routes if it had a powerful navy.
  The views of army leaders like Yamagata and Tanaka were far more
  moderate than those of Colonel Matsuishi Yasuji, an army general
  staff officer who urged expansion first on the Asian continent, then
  into Southeast Asia and the South Seas, and finally into South and
  Central America.10 His position combined the northern advance and
  southern advance views. It can also be seen as a harbinger of the
  concept of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Clearly, how-
  ever, a grand scheme like Matsuishi's was a mere dream given Japan's
  real capabilities. By contrast, the views of Meiji leaders like Yamagata
  and Komura, who had worked hard to build a modern state, were
  fairly realistic and cautious.
  The government's caution can be seen in the decision taken by the
  Katsura cabinet in July 1908 that "Japan should solidify the alliance
  with England, strive to maintain the entente with Russia, improve old
  friendships with Germany, Austria and Italy" and reaffirm coopera-
  tion with the United States." The cabinet's view was that its continen-
  tal expansion policy should be carried out within the limits permitted
  by the European powers and the United States and within a frame-
  work of international harmony. Such caution and realism diminished
  as time went on, eroded by the popular nationalism induced by two
  victorious wars in 1895 and 1905, by the displacement of older leaders
  by a younger generation, and by the army's increasing vociferousness
  and influence.
  The government's commitment to a greater Japan orientation in
  7 "Yamagata ikensho, October 1906," Tanaka Giichi bunsho, in possession of Yamaguchi
  Prefecture archives. 
  8 Tanaka Giichi, "Zuikan zatsuroku," Tanaka Giichi bunsho, 1906.
  9 Sato Tetsutaro, Teikoku kokubo shi ron sho (Tokyo: Tokyo insatsu, 1912), p. 547.
  10 Matsuishi Yasuji, "Kokubo daihoshin ni kansuru iden" (December 26, 1906), in Boeicho
  senshi shitsu, Daihon'eirikugunbu (Tokyo: Asagumoshinbunsha, 1967), vol. i,p. 153.
  11 Otsu Jun'ichiro, Dai Nippon kensei shi (Tokyo: Hobunkan, 1927-8), vol. 6.
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  276 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  foreign policy encouraged the military services to make plans for arms
  expansion. Military leaders ignored the postwar political clamor to
  "lift the tax burden from the people," and they had no qualms about
  intervening in politics to achieve their objectives. The army justified
  its call for a military buildup by citing the need to prepare for opera-
  tions on the continent and the danger of a war of revenge by the
  Russians; the navy argued that it was necessary to counter the trend of
  the American navy toward expansion. These claims were not entirely
  convincing, as they raised suspicions that hypothetical crises were
  created in order to expand military armaments. Yamagata, concerned
  lest the differing policies of the two services cause discord between
  political goals and military strategy, promoted a unified policy. The
  resulting doctrine, "The Aims of Imperial National Defense" (Tei-
  koku kokubo hoshin), sanctioned by the emperor in February 1907,
  listed Japan's hypothetical enemies as Russia, the United States, Ger-
  many, and France, in that order. It called for the buildup of the army
  to twenty-five divisions and the creation of a grand fleet with a core of
  eight battleships and eight battle cruisers (the so-called 8:8 plan). The
  document mainly promised both the army and the navy a substantial
  increase in strength.
  The projected scale of arms expansion under the 1907 policy was
  150 percent greater than the levels achieved at the end of the Russo-
  Japanese War. The expenditures required far exceeded what the gov-
  ernment could afford to spend, as it had obtained no indemnity from
  Russia. The 1895 indemnity from China, of course, had been used to
  finance the arms buildup that enabled Japan's victory over Russia.
  When the emperor unofficially showed the national defense policy
  statement to Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi, Saionji commented,
  "Our financial situation since the war does not allow the implementa-
  tion of the whole military armament program at once. A little more
  time is desirable, so in reaching your decision please consider our
  national strength in light of these circumstances. . . ."I2
  The army and the navy, hiding behind the shield of national de-
  fense, continued to press the government for increased military expen-
  ditures. The situation was exacerbated by continuing army-navy ri-
  valry for budget support. In 1910 the army requested that in addition
  to the existing nineteen divisions, two more be added to the Korea
  Army. Public sentiment favored naval expansion, and the Saionji gov-
  12 Boeicho senshi shitsu, Daihon'ei kaigunbu: Rengo kanlai (Tokyo: Asagumo shinbunsha,
  1970), vol. I, p. 121.
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  WORLD WAR I AND JAPAN 
  277
  eminent refused the request on the grounds of financial stringency.
  Frustrated and overzealous, the army leadership decided to bring
  down the Saionji cabinet in 1912 by arbitrarily ordering the war minis-
  ter to withdraw from the cabinet. The ensuing political upheaval side-
  lined the two-division issue in the short run, but the increase was
  finally authorized by the Okuma cabinet in 1915 after the outbreak of
  World War I.
  The navy continued to press its own demands for the implementa-
  tion of the 8:8 fleet-building plan. After funds were appropriated for
  an 8:4 fleet and an 8:6 fleet, the Diet finally approved the 8:8 fleet plan
  in 1920. Because the size of capital ships had increased, it was pre-
  dicted that naval expenditures would make up 30 percent of the na-
  tional budget and that by the time the program was completed in 1927
  that figure would reach 40 percent.13 It was obvious that maintenance
  of such an immense navy was financially impossible for Japan. Thus,
  as a result of the Washington Conference in 1921-2, the 8:8 fleet plan
  was abandoned.
  The emergence of both military services as powerful lobbying
  groups or veto groups within the state had great long-term significance
  for foreign policy. By taking advantage of regulations that required the
  service ministers to be generals or admirals on active duty, the military
  services could bring down cabinets they disliked or could manipulate
  them by hinting at such action. As the oligarchic generation died off,
  the ties that had united both the civilian and military sides of the
  hanbatsu weakened. The army began to function as an increasingly
  independent group, often moving away from government control. The
  army, of course, played the main role in the development of the conti-
  nental policy, but the navy, which had originally been opposed to such
  a policy, did not neglect to exploit the opportunities when they arose.
  WORLD WAR I AND JAPAN
  The basis of Japanese foreign policy immediately after the Russo-
  Japanese War was to advance on the continent within the framework
  of international cooperation. This policy reflected the domestic neces-
  sity of recovering from the Russo-Japanese War. The government
  concluded treaties and agreements, one after another, with the major
  powers in East Asia, laying the groundwork for a stable international
  environment. The postwar diplomatic network centered on the Anglo-
  13 Ibid., p. 182.
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  278 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  Japanese alliance, regarded as the "marrow of imperial diplomacy."•*
  It was woven together by the Russo-Japanese Entente (1907; later
  renewed in 1910, 1912, and 1916), the Franco-Japanese Entente
  (1907), and the U.S.-Japanese understanding known as the Root-
  Takahira Agreement (1908). Skillful diplomatic give-and-take was re-
  quired to advance on the continent without threatening the interests
  and ambitions of the other advanced powers. In order to obtain Anglo-
  American assent to the Japanese position in Korea, the Japanese pro-
  posed trading the joint defense of India in its bargaining with Great.
  Britain, and the security of the Philippines in its bargaining with the
  United States. In the Franco-Japanese Entente of 1907, the Japanese
  traded the recognition of French rule over Indochina in return for
  France's recognition of the results of the Russo-Japanese War. In
  short, if the Western powers agreed to Japan's new rights and interests
  in Korea, the Japanese in return would recognize their colonial posses-
  sions. Thus, despite the international appeals of the Korean emperor,
  no objection was heard from the Western powers when Japan an-
  nounced its annexation of Korea in 1910.
  In its entente with Russia, Japan reached a secret understanding
  that Manchuria would be divided into two equal spheres of influence,
  with both powers having the ultimate intention of annexation. But this
  arrangement was not to the liking of the United States which had
  expected the "Open Door" principle to apply to Manchuria. The Taft
  administration, inviting the backing of Great Britain, attempted to
  extend its own influence into the area. In 1909 Secretary of State P. C.
  Knox initiated the "dollar diplomacy" policy aimed at putting all
  Manchurian railway lines under the joint management of the powers
  in order to "smoke [Japan] out" of southern Manchuria.'5 But the
  Japanese and the Russians, erstwhile enemies, forged a joint front to
  stop the so-called Knox plan, and in March 1913 President Woodrow
  Wilson finally announced an end to the dollar-diplomacy offensive.16
  In the meantime, revolutionary forces toppled the Ch'ing dynasty in
  late 1911. The internal political confusion in China intensified among
  the powers competing to grab the lion's share of the fragmenting
  polity. As a result, the "partition of China" proceeded even further. In
  Japan, Yamagata and the army leadership wanted to use the revolution
  14 Cabinet council decision, "Tai-gai seisaku hoshin kettei no ken" (September 25, 1908), in
  Nikon gaiko nenpyo narabini shuyo bunsho (hereafter NGNSB), vol. 1, p. 309.
  15 T. A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (New York: Appleton-Century-
  Crofts, 1950), p. 580.
  16 H. F. McNair and F. Lach, Modem Far Eastern International Relations (New York: Van
  Nostrand, 1950), p. 555.
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  WORLD WAR I AND JAPAN 
  279
  as an opportunity to occupy southern Manchuria, but the Saionji
  government hesitated to go that far. Yamagata lamented, "We have
  missed a god-given opportunity, and I am truly and mightily indig-
  nant for the sake of our country."'7 The Russian government had
  considered taking over northern Manchuria but decided not to out of
  concern for opposition from the United States, Germany, and Great
  Britain. The Russians, however, did succeed in making Outer Mongo-
  lia independent and securing "freedom of movement" in western
  China in return for recognizing the same rights for the British in
  Tibet. Under the third Russo-Japanese entente in 1913, the Japanese
  obtained a sphere of influence in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia.18
  Strong displeasure lingered in the Japanese army over the failure to
  seize control of southern Manchuria. Continental adventurers, in se-
  cret collusion with the army general staff, plotted military uprisings
  aimed at establishing independent regimes in Manchuria and Mongo-
  lia under the old Manchu and Mongolian ruling dynasties. The basic
  plan in 1912, and again in 1915, was to provoke a military clash that
  would involve Japanese forces. But both plots failed because the Japa-
  nese government remained aloof, allowing the local warlord, Chang
  Tso-lin, to put them down. The Japanese army simply lacked the
  prerequisites and the power to act independently, as it would in 1931.
  In the meantime, the real power in Manchuria remained in the hands
  of Chang Tso-lin, whom the Japanese government had to rely on in
  maintaining its vested interests there.
  When World War I began in 1914, it would have been possible for
  Japan to stay out, but the Okuma cabinet almost immediately declared
  war on Germany. The government declared that "Japan must take the
  chance of a millennium" to "establish its rights and interests in
  Asia."19 Clearly, the Japanese were less interested in what was going
  on in Europe than they were in the advantages that the war might
  bring in Asia. The war opened the way for the pursuit of a more
  vigorous continental policy unimpeded by the restraining influence of
  the Western powers. As a member of the allied coalition against Ger-
  many, Japan was able to obtain both "the gains of a participating
  country and the gains of a neutral country."
  The main Japanese military operations were to seize German bases
  on the Shantung peninsula and in the Pacific. The German base at
  17 Letter of Yamagata to Katsura, dated February 9, 1912, in Yoshimura Michio, Nihon to
  Roshia (Tokyo: Harashobo, 1968), p. 37.
  18 Hata Ikuhiko, Taiheiyo kokusai kankei shi (Tokyo: Fukumura shuppan, 1972), p. 52.
  19 Ibid., p. 114.
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  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  Tsingtao surrendered without much resistance after being surrounded
  by a single Japanese army division, and the defenseless Pacific islands
  were seized by the Japanese navy without bloodshed. The Allied pow-
  ers wanted Japan to dispatch troops to Europe, but the Japanese
  government limited its military cooperation to sending convoy-escort
  destroyers to the Mediterranean and stalking German converted raid-
  ers operating in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Its main might was
  concentrated on expanding its sphere of influence in the Pacific.
  In early 1915, six months after the beginning of the war, the Okuma
  cabinet presented China with the infamous Twenty-one Demands.
  Proposed as a draft treaty, the demands included provisions for Japa-
  nese to take over German interests in Shantung, for an extension of the
  leasehold in the Liaotung (Kwantung) peninsula, for an extension of
  commercial rights in Manchuria, for joint Sino-Japanese control over
  the Han-yeh-p'ing mines in central China, and for a limitation of
  China's right to cede control of coastal areas to third powers. The fifth
  and final group of demands, however, was really designed to turn
  China into a second Korea, by requiring the Chinese government to
  use Japanese advisers in its military, police, and financial administra-
  tions. Some Japanese diplomats had misgivings about the wisdom of
  the move. At the end of 1916, Foreign Minister Motono Ichiro wrote,
  "There are those who say that we should make China a protectorate or
  partition it, and there are those who advocate the extreme position that
  we should use the European war to make [China] completely our
  territory. . . . But even if we were able to do that temporarily, the
  empire lacks real power to hold on to it very long."20 His reference to
  the lack of Japanese power to maintain a long-term hold on China
  recognized the resistance of the Chinese populace-through boycotts
  and demonstrations-to Japanese pressure. But had the United States
  not lodged strong and repeated protests, the Japanese government
  might well have begun the aggression in China that it delayed until
  3
  The Okuma cabinet issued an ultimatum that forced the regime in
  Peking to accept most of its demands, but Japan had to back off from
  the radical Group Five when Secretary of State William Jennings
  Bryan sent a strong note indicating that the United States could "not
  recognize" them. Although the United States, mindful of the balance
  of power, was flexible in its reaction, it also held fast to the principles
  of the Open Door doctrine and consistently expressed disapproval of
  20 "Motono gaisho ikensho," in NGNSB, vol. I, pp. 421-4.
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  WORLD WAR I AND JAPAN 
  28l
  Japanese actions that violated Chinese sovereignty. The doctrine of
  nonrecognition implied in the Bryan note was later taken up by Secre-
  tary of State Henry L. Stimson in 1931, and it reappeared yet again in
  the Hull note of 1941. It might even be said that the Bryan note laid
  down the "moral obligations" (taigi meibun) that led to the war be-
  tween Japan and the United States.
  As the war in Europe approached an end, the situation became ever
  more favorable to the advancement of Japan's continental policy. The
  United States entered the war in 1917, and the Russian Revolution
  erupted the same year. Given the likelihood that the Western powers
  would return to Asia after the war's end, many Japanese leaders were
  anxious to gain as much ground as possible beforehand. In the sum-
  mer of 1918, a few months before the German surrender, the Terauchi
  government sent a force of seventy thousand to Siberia as part of the
  joint Allied intervention in the Russian Revolution. Significantly, Ja-
  pan committed the most forces, and its forces stayed the longest, even
  after the other Allied powers had pulled out of Siberia. The Terauchi
  cabinet also concluded a joint-defense treaty with China under the
  pretext of preventing the spread of revolutionary currents from Russia
  to the Far East. Its provisions enabled the Japanese troops to move
  freely throughout almost all of China. By the time World War I ended
  in November 1918, Japanese military forces were able to operate in a
  zone that extended from Lake Baikal in the north, into the hinterland
  of Sinkiang Province to the west, and as far south as the former
  German-held island territories in Micronesia to the south. It was an
  area almost equivalent in extent to the regions occupied by the Japa-
  nese forces in 1942 in the Pacific War.
  The question was whether the Western powers, especially the
  United States, would recognize these established facts. In November
  1917 while on a visit to the United States, Ambassador Ishii Kikujiro
  succeeded in concluding a joint statement with Secretary of State
  Robert Lansing. Even though both countries recognized the princi-
  ples of China's territorial integrity and equal opportunity for com-
  merce and industry, the agreement also acknowledged that Japan had
  special interests in China. Ishii interpreted the agreement to mean that
  the United States recognized Japan's exclusive sphere of influence in
  all of China, and the emperor honored Ishii with a gracious message
  for his "diplomatic victory."21 But just as many Japanese leaders had
  expected, once the war ended, the Western powers, led by the United
  21 Hata, Taiheiyo kokusai kankei shi, pp. 127-8.
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  282 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  States, began a daring offensive to roll back Japan's position in Asia
  and to restore their prewar position.
  THE VERSAILLES-WASHINGTON SYSTEM
  The new international order formed under the leadership of the victori-
  ous powers, especially Great Britain and the United States, after the
  smoke of war had cleared, is generally called the Versailles-Washington
  system. It originated in the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 and was
  elaborated at the Washington Conference of 1921-2, where the Four
  Power Treaty and the Nine Power Pact attempted to freeze the status
  quo in the Pacific.
  This international order had been organized to protect the interests
  of the two major victorious powers, Great Britain and the United
  States. The new system led to dissatisfaction among the countries that
  later turned fascist, such as Germany, which was suffering under the
  heavy burden of reparations, and Italy and Japan, which, although
  victorious, felt deprived of adequate rewards. The system also ex-
  cluded the Soviet Union, which had survived the Allied intervention
  and was building the first socialist regime in history. The Soviet Union
  acted as a powerful outsider, seeking to expand the influence of the
  international Communist movement through the Comintern and mak-
  ing special efforts to support rising nationalist movements in colonial
  areas. The advanced capitalist countries scrambled to devise material
  and psychological countermeasures to defend their colonies abroad
  and to check subversive movements at home.
  By the early 1920s, then, a balance of power had emerged among
  the three major world power blocs-the United States and Great Brit-
  ain, leaders of the Washington system; the discontented powers of
  Germany, Japan, and Italy; and the Soviet Union, with its goal of
  creating an international socialist order. The equilibrium among these
  various blocs did not survive the buffeting of the Great Depression, a
  storm that struck the world economic system in 1929. International
  politics was swept on toward another great war in a series of crises
  brought about by attempts by the fascist countries to overturn the
  status quo. As it happened, it was Japan that led the way with the
  Manchurian incident.
  Why did Japan eventually break away from the Versailles-Washing-
  ton system? The main reason was that the rollback begun by the United
  States and Great Britain at the war's end forced Japan to give up most of
  the wartime gains it had made in the Asia-Pacific area. The rollback
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  THE VERSAILLES-WASHINGTON SYSTEM 
  283
  included the abolition of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the withdrawal
  of Japanese troops from Siberia, the 5:5:3 ratio in capital ships in a naval
  arms limitation treaty that left the Japanese fleet inferior in strength to
  those of the United States and Great Britain, the return of the Shantung
  concession to Chinese sovereignty, and the suspension of the Lansing-
  Ishii agreement. Many of these developments took place as a result of
  the Washington Conference. The most important agreement concluded
  at the conference was the Nine Power Pact of 1922, which liquidated all
  existing treaties between the powers and China and replaced them with
  the Open Door principles so long espoused by the United States. The
  pact was an indisputable victory for American diplomacy. According to
  A. Whitney Griswold, it was the "apotheosis of the traditional Far
  Eastern policy of the United States."22
  The Japanese viewed these agreements with mixed feelings. There
  were those like Mochizuki Kotaro, a prominent journalist and Diet
  member, who complained, "Our empire has lost everything and gained
  nothing, and only the expense of building warships is spared."23 Even
  stronger sentiments had been expressed in 1918 by Konoe Fumimaro,
  later to become prime minister, who argued that Japan "would be left
  forever a backward country" under the Versailles settlement.24 The
  Japanese government, especially the diplomatic authorities, did not
  share these negative sentiments, however, nor did they regard the
  Versailles-Washington system as a total defeat for Japanese interests.
  In the early 1920s, many leaders, beginning with Prime Minister Hara
  Takashi, had enough self-confidence to accept the "world trends" and
  tried to extend Japan's national interests while adjusting to the new
  international framework centering on the League of Nations. To some
  extent, the same trends toward progressivism and pacificism expressed
  in Woodrow Wilson's idealism were at work in Japan.
  From a practical point of view, the advantages of the new interna-
  tional system, especially those coming out of the Washington Confer-
  ence, were by no means negligible. First, the treaties signed at Wash-
  ington were the product of an ideology of the status quo, and they held
  out the possibility of a joint defensive front by the United States, Great
  Britain, and Japan to contain the expansion of Soviet international
  22 A. W. Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
  •938), p. 331-
  23 Kobayashi Yukio, "Tai-So seisaku no suii to Man-Mo mondai," in Taiheiyo senso e no michi
  (hereafter TSENM), ed. Nihon kokusai seiji gakkai Taiheiyo senso gen'in kenkyubu (Tokyo:
  Asahishinbunsha, 1962), vol. I,p. 182.
  24 Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, December 15, 1918; Yabe Teiji, Konoe Fumimaro (Tokyo: Kobundo,
  1952), vol. i, p. 77.
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  284 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  communism and Chinese nationalism. Second, in regard to the mutual
  relations among the three powers, it was understood that in principle,
  the restrictions imposed on Japan were to be applied in the future and
  that they did not touch on those established special interests, espe-
  cially in Manchuria and Mongolia, regarded by the Japanese as vital to
  their survival. Third, because the League of Nations lacked the ability
  to enforce any of its sanction provisions, it was clear that Japan could
  easily break away from the system whenever it felt advantageous to do
  so. As long as Japan remained able to expand through free competition
  and as long as Japan's special interests in Manchuria and Mongolia
  were not threatened by either China or the Soviet Union, the conces-
  sions Japan made in China-the return of the Shantung territory, for
  example—were not thought an undue price to pay for an end to interna-
  tional isolation.
  Japan's commitment to the Washington naval arms limitation treaty
  created pressures to reconsider the army expenditures as well. First
  under War Minister Yamanashi Hanzo in 1922 and under War Minis-
  ter Ugaki Kazushige in 1925, increases in military appropriations were
  checked. The resulting decline in the military's authority seemed to
  provide an opportunity to remove the ill effects of "dual diplomacy,"
  which gave the military services as much voice in the making of for-
  eign policy as the civilian diplomats had. It was an opportunity to
  restore real control over diplomacy to the civilian cabinets, now domi-
  nated by the political parties. Prime Minister Hara Takashi, and later
  Prime Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, both informally considered a
  plan to abolish the office of army chief of staff, though ultimately their
  scheme came to naught.25
  The main exponent of working faithfully within the Washington-
  Versailles system without abandoning practical considerations in the
  Asia-Pacific area was Shidehara Kijuro, the first career diplomat re-
  cruited by means of civil service examination to serve as foreign minis-
  ter. Shidehara, who held that post under five Minseito cabinets, had
  been vice-minister of foreign affairs, ambassador to the United States,
  and plenipotentiary at the Washington Conference. The interlinked
  components of his foreign policy were international collaboration, eco-
  nomic diplomacy, and nonintervention in China's domestic affairs.
  1. International collaboration was generally accepted to mean diplo-
  macy centering on the League of Nations, but basically it involved a
  policy of cooperation with the United States and Great Britain.
  25 Hata Ikuhiko, Gunfashizumu undo shi, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1980), p. 275.
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  SHIDEHARA DIPLOMACY VERSUS TANAKA DIPLOMACY 285
  2. Economic diplomacy referred to emphasizing peaceful economic
  advance and shifting away from the policy of military pressure embod-
  ied in the Twenty-one Demands, the Siberian expedition, and military
  assistance to Chinese warlords, which had invited nationalistic resis-
  tance. This aspect of Shidehara's policy responded to the demands of
  Japanese industrial capitalists who had prospered greatly during
  World War I. It reflected an optimism and a confidence that Japan
  was strong enough economically to compete with the advanced West-
  era economies without excessive political or military protection.26 In
  fact, the volume of trade with China and other countries climbed
  under "Shidehara diplomacy." Shidehara himself was rather inflexible
  and intolerant of actions that violated economic rationality or in-
  fringed on economic interests as a result of "extraeconomic logic" or
  "noneconomic logic."
  3. Nonintervention in China's domestic affairs, the most important
  element of Shidehara's policy, meant accepting the unification of
  China by the Kuomintang and sympathizing with China's demands
  for tariff autonomy and the abolition of extraterritorial rights. This
  was closely tied to the principle of economic diplomacy. It rested on
  the judgment that the establishment of a stable and unified govern-
  ment in China was desirable for the advance of Japanese economic
  interests and the expansion of its markets and that an imprudent
  policy of intervention would provoke nationalistic hostility and anti-
  Japanese boycotts.
  These principles of Shidehara diplomacy dovetailed with the prevail-
  ing diplomatic environment. After the resumption of normal diplo-
  matic relations between the Soviet Union and Japan in January 1925,
  Japan appeared to be moving away from international isolation, on the
  path to stable peaceful expansion. Yet this illusion of stability was
  soon demolished by the launching of a new Chinese Nationalist offen-
  sive. The resulting sudden shift toward Sino-Japanese confrontation
  brought the collapse of the entire Washington system.
  SHIDEHARA DIPLOMACY VERSUS TANAKA DIPLOMACY
  At the time of the Washington Conference, the Kuomintang con-
  trolled only a small local regime in the region around Canton. But with
  the support of the Comintern and the Soviet Union, it launched the
  northern expedition against local warlord governments in 1926. By the
  26 Shidehara Kijuro (Tokyo: Shidehara heiwa zaidan, 1955), p. 256.
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  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  end of 1928 it had unified nearly all of China proper, excluding Man-
  churia. In the midst of this campaign, a coup d'etat within the party
  shifted power from pro-Communist leftists to rightists under the lead-
  ership of Chiang Kai-shek. The influence of both the Soviet and Chi-
  nese Communists in the party vanished.
  During this period of domestic turmoil, the Western imperialist
  powers competed to acquire the most advantageous position to guaran-
  tee their special interests. But they all agreed that the expansion of the
  Kuomintang's radical unification of the whole country was not desir-
  able, and they all wanted to check the advance of Soviet influence.
  The most intransigent of the imperialist powers was Great Britain,
  which had the largest interests in the Yangtze River region. In 1927
  the British tried to arrange a military intervention with American and
  Japanese help on the pretext of protecting foreign residents in China.
  In response, Chinese antiforeign nationalist movements were directed
  against Britain's gunboat policy, and trade between Britain and China
  was interrupted for nearly a year and a half.
  In face of these developments, Foreign Minister Shidehara clung to
  his policy of nonintervention in Chinese domestic politics. In March
  1927, during the so-called Nanking incident when revolutionary sol-
  diers attacked consulates and foreign residences, Anglo-American gun-
  boats responded with a bombardment, but the Japanese declined to
  join in. In negotiations with the Chinese to resolve the affair, Shide-
  hara displeased the other powers by refusing to blame Chiang and by
  insisting that order must be restored on Chiang's initiative.27 Accord-
  ing to unofficial reports from the Japanese consul general in Shanghai,
  Shidehara had already learned of Chiang's plan to carry out an internal
  party coup against the left wing. Because Shidehara wanted to stabilize
  Japanese relations with a united China under Chiang, he thus avoided
  offending the Chinese leader.28
  In April 1927, just a week after the antileft coup, the Minseito
  cabinet led by Wakatsuki Reijiro fell from power. Shidehara was re-
  placed by Tanaka Giichi, president of the Seiyukai, who served as his
  own foreign minister. The immediate cause of the change in cabinets
  was a domestic matter, the Privy Council's rejection of the Wakatsuki
  government's plan for dealing with the bank panic. But the real reason
  was the conflict of opinion over Shidehara's China policy. Criticism of
  Shidehara's "weak diplomacy" grew stronger during the Nanking inci-
  27 Usui Katsumi, Nihon gaiko shi: hokubaisu nojidai (Tokyo: Chuo koron sha, 1971), pp. 32-9.
  28 Ibid., pp. 37-9.
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  SHIDEHARA DIPLOMACY VERSUS TANAKA DIPLOMACY 287
  dent. A young navy officer attempted suicide, infuriated because he
  mistakenly thought that Shidehara was responsible for giving the or-
  der that forbade the bombardment of Nanking, and the naval landing
  force at Shanghai, acting in concert with the British and the Ameri-
  cans, requested the dispatch of army forces. The situation had even
  reached the point that the Asahi shinbun, supportive of Shidehara
  diplomacy in the past, urged the foreign minister to reconsider. Tak-
  ing advantage of the anti-Shidehara mood, Mori Kaku, a key Seiyukai
  leader, allied with hard-liners in the army and the Privy Council to
  unseat the cabinet. Even War Minister Ugaki Kazushige, a member of
  the Minseito government, wrote that the fall of the cabinet "might
  well be good fortune for the empire."2' It is not difficult to imagine
  how strong the dissatisfaction with the Shidehara policy had become.
  The new Tanaka cabinet adopted an outwardly tougher policy to-
  ward the disorder brought about by the northern expedition. In May
  1927 the government, following previous Seiyukai demands that it
  "protect local residents," dispatched an army brigade to Shantung,
  where it forced the northern expeditionary forces back to the Yangtze
  River. This display of military force was known as the first Shantung
  intervention.
  In June 1927 the Tanaka government brought local military and
  diplomatic officials to Tokyo for the Eastern Regions Conference, to
  enunciate the Tanaka cabinet's new foreign policy. The man who
  planned and chaired the meeting was Mori Kaku, parliamentary un-
  dersecretary for foreign affairs. He exercised real control over diplo-
  macy, even though Tanaka formally held the post of foreign minister.
  The basic elements of Tanaka's diplomacy were (1) a policy of sending
  Japanese troops to protect local Japanese interests and residents when-
  ever danger threatened and (2) a policy of "separating Manchuria and
  Mongolia" (Man-Mo bunri seisaku), intended to confirm Japan's spe-
  cial position in both areas and to prevent the Chinese revolution from
  spreading to Manchuria.30 These policies were clearly the opposite of
  Shidehara's, which had respected China's sovereignty over Manchuria
  and had called for the evacuation of Japanese residents to safety if their
  lives were endangered.
  The Eastern Regions Conference confirmed the principles of the
  Tanaka diplomacy, but it ended without agreement on specific plans.
  The general public impression was that Japan's China policy had been
  29 Ugaki Kazushige, Ugaki Kazushige nikki (Tokyo: Mizusu shobo, 1970), vol. 2, entry for
  April 17,1927.
  30 Sato Motohide, "Tohokaigi to shoki Tanaka gaiko," Kokusai seiji, no. 66 (i98o):89-9O.
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  288 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  reversed 180 degrees. In China, an anti-Japanese economic boycott
  began, and it soon spread to Manchuria, where the first anti-Japanese
  demonstration took place at Mukden in September 1927. The Tanaka
  government adopted military countermeasures that were even stronger
  than before. When Chiang Kai-shek resumed the northern expedition
  in 1928, the Tanaka cabinet again dispatched two army divisions to
  Shantung. In May, Japanese and Chinese forces clashed at Tsinan. But
  Chiang's northern army bypassed Tsinan, moving toward Peking in
  pursuit of Chang Tso-lin's retreating forces. Anticipating certain vic-
  tory by Chiang's forces, the Japanese advised Chang to abandon north
  China quickly, return to his old base in Manchuria, and try to rebuild
  his forces there under Japanese protection.
  As a young officer during the Russo-Japanese war,. Tanaka had
  saved Chang from execution as a Russian spy. He now aimed at ex-
  panding Japan's influence in Manchuria by supporting Chang's pup-
  pet regime while building new Japanese-controlled railway lines there.
  The Kwantung Army garrisoned in Manchuria, however, wanted to
  replace Chang-who had become too strong and difficult to deal with-
  with a more pliant figure. On April 18, 1928, Colonel Komoto Dai-
  saku, a Kwantung staff officer, told a friend on the army general staff
  that he intended to assassinate Chang. "I will do it this time for sure,"
  he said, " . . . with the determination to settle everything of twenty
  years' standing once and for all."31 The return of Chang to Man-
  churia presented the Kwantung Army with a golden opportunity. On
  the morning of June 4, 1928, Komoto, in collusion with several of
  his colleagues, set an explosive charge under Chang's personal train
  as it passed through a suburb of Mukden. Chang died soon afterward
  from the injuries sustained in the blast. Komoto had hoped that the
  authorities in Tokyo would call out the Kwantung Army to occupy
  Mukden, but the order never came, and so the whole plot ended in
  failure.
  The Kwantung Army announced that the Northern Expeditionary
  Forces were responsible for Chang's death, but rumors of a Japanese
  plot behind the incident spread quickly at home and abroad. The
  opposition parties in Japan questioned the government in the Diet,
  referring ominously to a "certain serious incident in Manchuria."
  Prince Seionji, the last genro, reacted strongly. "I would never have let
  things get out of hand," he told a confidant.*2 Tanaka, who lamented
  31 Letter from Kawamoto to Isogai, April 18, 1928, in Sagara Shunsuke, Akaiyuhi no masu-
  nogahara ni (Tokyo: Kojinsha, 1978), p. 149.
  32 Harada Kutnao, Saionji ko to seikyoku (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1950), vol. 1, p. 10.
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  SHIDEHARA DIPLOMACY VERSUS TANAKA DIPLOMACY 289
  that "children never know their parents' mind," had originally in-
  tended to punish Komoto and his fellow conspirators. He had prom-
  ised the emperor that he would do so. But because of strong army
  opposition, Tanaka was able to impose only light administrative pun-
  ishment on the Kwantung army commander and on Komoto for hav-
  ing "committed a mistake in guarding the railroad." This leniency cost
  him his office. After the emperor reproached Tanaka for breaking his
  promise, his cabinet resigned in July 1929. Several months later, Ta-
  naka died in despair.
  Imperial ire over the handling of the Chang Tso-lin affair was the
  immediate cause of Tanaka's downfall, but his diplomatic policy had
  already reached a dead end in China. The two Shantung interventions,
  both intended to demonstrate a tough stance toward China, had not
  only failed to check the Kuomintang's effort to bring north China
  under control; they had also caused casualties among Japanese resi-
  dents and provoked a growing popular anti-Japanese movement. To
  make matters worse, Tanaka's hope to resolve the Manchurian prob-
  lem by gradually bringing Chang under control was thwarted by
  Chang's assassination. In December 1928, Chang Hsueh-liang, who
  had succeeded his father as the warlord of Manchuria, ignored strong
  warnings by the Japanese and merged his territory with the new
  Kuomintang government at Nanking. Just before his resignation the
  following July, Tanaka himself had been finally forced to recognize
  the Nanking government.
  As Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated, Japan's ties with the West-
  ern powers, especially Britain and the United States, cooled as well.
  Both countries had made timely concessions to the Nanking govern-
  ment, including agreement to tariff autonomy, and both were trying to
  establish new and cordial bonds with the Chinese. Only Japan lagged
  behind.
  Although the Tanaka and the Shidehara diplomacies have often
  been viewed as alternative policies, it is inappropriate to contrast them
  as completely opposite. Tanaka had no intention of blocking the
  Kuomintang's unification of China or abandoning traditional coopera-
  tion with the Anglo-American powers. He certainly did not envisage a
  plan for world conquest such as outlined in the counterfeit "Tanaka
  memorandum."33 However, it is difficult to deny that in contrast with
  Shidehara, who maintained a consistent policy, Tanaka appeared vacil-
  lating and contradictory in his actions, swinging first one way and then
  33 Morishima Morito, Inbo, ansaisu, gunto (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1950), pp. 7-8.
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  290 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  another. For example, when Chiang visited Japan in the fall of 1927
  while temporarily out of office, Tanaka indicated his intention not to
  interfere in the Kuomintang's unification of China. Despite that assur-
  ance, a few months later Tanaka dispatched the second Shantung
  expedition when Chiang reopened his northern campaign. Tanaka also
  revealed that he lacked the capacity to control the conflict over the
  direction of foreign policy between the foreign ministry and the army
  and its civilian allies such as Mori. Although Tanaka had succeeded
  Yamagata as head of the Choshu lineage in the army, he was unable to
  budge it on the matter of punishing the Kwantung Army plotters like
  Komoto. In effect, that meant that he had abdicated to the army his
  initiative in continental policy. Tanaka was succeeded as prime minis-
  ter by Hamaguchi Osachi, president of the Minseito, and as foreign
  minister by Shidehara. Shidehara diplomacy took a new lease on life,
  but its failure was in sight.
  WAS MANCHURIA A LIFELINE?
  Nothing better expresses the romantic view of Manchuria than one of
  the most popular military songs in Japan, written right after the
  Russo-Japanese War. It went as follows:
  Here in far-off Manchuria
  Hundreds of leagues from the homeland,
  Our comrades lie beneath the rocky plain
  Lit by the red setting sun.
  During the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had spent ¥2 billion and shed
  the blood of nearly 100,000 soldiers. Its material rewards were the
  Kwantung Leased Territory, including Dairen and Port Arthur, and
  interests in southern Manchuria centering on the South Manchuria
  Railway Company. After the Chinese Revolution of 1911, Manchuria,
  the homeland of the Ch'ing rulers, slipped from the reach of the
  central authorities in China. It then came under the control of Chang
  Tso-lin, who enjoyed the backing of the Japanese army, and then of
  his son, Chang Hsueh-liang. Although the area was Chinese in name,
  it was thought of as a special zone to which Chinese sovereignty did
  not extend. Even the Lytton Commission of Enquiry dispatched by
  the League of Nations in 1932 to investigate the situation in Man-
  churia partially acknowledged this.
  For those Japanese unable to satisfy their ambitions at home, Man-
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  WAS MANCHURIA A LIFELINE? 
  29I
  churia was a new frontier where they could fulfill their dreams of fame
  and fortune. Adventurers and merchants with a desire to get rich quick
  rushed to Manchuria. Some young men even joined mounted bandit
  gangs. When Japanese-American relations deteriorated as a result of the
  Japanese immigrant problem in California, Foreign Minister Komura
  urged a policy of concentrating Japanese immigration in Manchuria and
  Korea (Man-Kan iminshuchiiron). In hopes of shifting the destination of
  immigrants to ease the population problem, he drew up a twenty-year
  plan to send 1 million immigrants to Manchuria.*» The number of
  Japanese residents in Manchuria increased from 68,000 in 1909 to
  219,000 in 1930. The majority were employees of the South Manchuria
  Railway Company and their families. About 1,000 were farmers, and
  the rest were adventurers, unscrupulous merchants, get-rich-quick art-
  ists, and other social undesirables. By contrast, each year 300,000 to
  500,000 Chinese, mainly peasants, drifted into Manchuria, reaching a
  peak of 780,000 migrants in 1927.35
  After the failure of the plot to take over Manchuria by assassinating
  Chang Tso-lin, a sense of crisis grew more intense within the Kwan-
  tung Army as the Chinese began to construct railway lines parallel to
  the South Manchuria Railway line and as Chang Hsueh-liang began to
  exert economic pressure on the Japanese settlers in Manchuria. It is
  usually argued that the Kwantung Army provoked the Manchuria
  incident because the diplomatic policies of Foreign Minister Shidehara
  were unable to cope with the extension to Manchuria of the Kuomin-
  tang regime's nationalistic "rights recovery" movement and its "anti-
  Japanese policy." Because diplomacy had reached an impasse, it is
  said, the Kwantung Army resorted to force to achieve its long-held
  ambition of bringing the region under Japanese control.
  It remains doubtful, however, whether Japanese "rights in Man-
  churia" (zai-Man kerieki) were of such enormous importance to Japan
  or so critically threatened as to justify a response by military action.
  For example, it was probably an exaggeration that the new parallel
  railway lines built by Chang Hsueh-liang brought about a decline in
  the profitability of the South Manchuria Railway line. At the time,
  Kimura Eiichi, a director of the company, argued: "The parallel lines
  are not the cause. The depression is. The public thinks the income
  earned in the good old days is normal, but the fall in income for the
  34 Gaimushd, Komura gaiko shi 1953, vo'- 2> P- 29%> Manshushi kenkyu kai, ed., Nihon
  leikokushugika no Manshu (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1972), p. 15.
  35 Royama Masamichi, Nichi-Man kankei no kenkyu (Tokyo: Shibunshoin, 1933), pp. 151,205.
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  292 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  parallel Chinese lines is greater [than ours]."36 Although the South
  Manchuria Railway admittedly made smaller profits because of the
  world economic slump, the competing parallel Chinese lines would
  have collapsed before the Japanese line did. Even Colonel Komoto,
  the plotter of Chang Tso-lin's assassination, admitted that the eco-
  nomic pressure felt by the Japanese residents in Manchuria was essen-
  tially due to their inability to compete with the Chinese immigrants'
  low standard of living, that it was not due to the Chiang government's
  anti-Japanese policy.&
  Seen in this light, the Manchurian incident was really the product
  of a false "crisis in Manchuria and Mongolia" (Man-Mo no kiki). The
  Kwantung Army, as well as Japanese colonists favoring the use of
  force, worked hard to convince the Japanese government, the mili-
  tary high command, and the public at large that such a crisis existed.
  "Manchuria and Mongolia are not territories of China; they belong to
  the people of Manchuria and Mongolia," wrote Lieutenant Colonel
  Ishiwara Kanji. "It is a publicly acknowledged fact that our national
  situation has reached an impasse, that there is no way of solving the
  food, population, and other important problems, and that the only
  path left open to us is the development of Manchuria and Mongo-
  lia."38 There were discrepancies, however, in Ishiwara's logic. Even
  if neither Manchuria nor Mongolia were Chinese territory, how did
  that justify Japan's claims to territorial rights? Would Japan's re-
  source and population problems be solved even if Manchuria and
  Mongolia were seized? In the midst of hard times, would it be possi-
  ble to raise the capital for their development? Ishiwara offered no
  concrete answers.
  The Manchurian Youth League, organized by hard-liners in the
  Japanese resident community, also called for an end to Shidehara
  diplomacy. They sent a lobbying group to Japan to publicize the crisis
  of the South Manchuria Railway, but the public reception was cool.w
  This was only natural, considering the disastrous economic situation
  36 "Explanation by Director Kimura at the Department of Overseas Affairs Meeting of Decem-
  ber 7,1930," Kikan gendai shi, November 1972, p. 162. According to statistics for 1937 found
  in Minami Manshu letsudo kabushiki kaisha sanjunen ryakushi (Dairen: Minami Manshu
  tetsudo kabushiki kaisha, 1937), profits were consistently made (although the curve was
  downward), and dividends were paid between 1927 and 1931; ibid., p. 724. Concerning the
  rumor of the South Manchuria Railway's loss of business, see Yamaguchi Juji, Manshu
  teikoku (Tokyo: Gyosei tsushinsha, 1975), p. 52. 
  37 Sagara, Akaiyuhi no masunogahara ni,
  p. 149.
  38 Ishiwara, Kanji, "Genzai oyobi shorai ni okeru Nihon no kokubo," in Ishiwara Kanji shiryo,
  vol. 2: Sensdshiron, ed. Tsunoda Jun (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1967), pp. 422-32.
  39 Hirano Ken'ichiro, "Manshu jihen zen ni okeru zaiman Nihonjin no doko," Kokusai seiji,
  "Manshu jihen," no. 43 (i97o):66.
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  WAS MANCHURIA A LIFELINE? 
  293
  in Japan, where unemployment was mounting and popular hardship
  was widespread. There were crises enough at home without having to
  worry about Manchuria.
  The central military authorities in Tokyo, though concerned about
  developments in Manchuria, took a more prudent position. A month
  before the Manchurian incident took place, the army prepared a docu-
  ment called "An Outline of Measures for the Solution of the Manchu-
  rian Problem."4° It called for taking a year or so to consolidate the
  situation at home and abroad and to create a favorable public mood
  before resorting to a solution by force in Manchuria. Even though
  Ishiwara and his colleagues in the Kwantung Army were willing to
  defy the rest of the world, the central army authorities were concerned
  that the League of Nations would impose sanctions on Japan if force
  were used in Manchuria. Moreover, they thought that a local incident
  would be difficult to enlarge as long as Shidehara's foreign policy
  views prevailed. To overcome these obstacles, it would be necessary to
  administer a multiple shock by simultaneous coups at home and
  abroad.
  In 1930 and 1931 the conditions for a military usurpation of politi-
  cal power at home continued to ripen. The Hamaguchi cabinet in-
  cluded three of the finest leaders produced by party politics-Prime
  Minister Hamaguchi Osachi, Finance Minister Inoue Junnosuke,
  and Foreign Minister Shidehara. But their policies produced distrust
  and dissatisfaction among all strata of the Japanese population. In
  fiscal policy, the Hamaguchi cabinet tried to strengthen Japan's eco-
  nomic capacity to compete in the international marketplace, in order
  to overcome the chronic slump. But Inoue's policies of tight fi-
  nances, industrial rationalization, and a return to the gold standard
  coincided with the onset of world depression in 1929, and the econ-
  omy sank to unprecedented depths. Many economic indicators fell to
  50 to 70 percent of their normal levels.^1 Because all the sacrifices
  were borne by the farm communities and small- and medium-sized
  businesses, "Inoue financial policy" was interpreted as a policy to
  extend the political power of the parties who represented the interests
  of the zaibatsu. Successive revelations of political graft and corrup-
  tion further diminished public confidence in party politics. In foreign
  policy, the compromise reached with the United States and England
  in 1930 at the London Naval Conference, where Japan agreed to an
  40 Kitaoka Shin'ichi, "Rikugun habatsu tairitsu (1931-35) no saikento," Showaki no gunbu
  (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1979), p. 54.
  41 Sumiya Mikio, ed., Sh&wa kyoko (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1974), p. 236.
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  294 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  inferior ratio of auxiliary vessels, incurred the displeasure of the
  navy's "fleet faction." And criticism of Shidehara diplomacy contin-
  ued to grow when the Kuomintang government called for "the rapid
  abolition of all unequal treaties and the recovery of all rights and
  interests." The "revolutionary diplomacy" of the Chinese overlapped
  the "crisis in Manchuria and Mongolia," widening fears that Japan
  might be forced to pull out of the continent completely.
  The impasse at home and abroad provided the rationale for the
  sudden emergence of a "reform movement" {kakushin undo) in the
  army and the right wing. The movement hoped that the army would
  become a political force to replace the political parties, which had lost
  their purity and their ability to deal with the country's problems.
  There were disputes within the movement over which should come
  first, political reform at home through a "Showa restoration" (Showa
  ishin) or military action abroad to resolve the Manchurian problem,
  but efforts to accomplish both moved hand in hand. The Cherry
  Blossom Society (Sakurakai), organized by young army officers in the
  fall of 1929, plotted a military coup in March 1931 to place General
  Ugaki in control of the government. This so-called March incident
  failed when Ugaki refused to cooperate, but it was followed in the fall
  by another, even larger coup plan, the October incident, involving
  young naval officers and civilian right-wing activists.*2
  Meanwhile, in Manchuria a group of Kwantung Army officers led
  by Lieutenant Colonel Ishiwara and Colonel Itagaki Seishiro pushed
  forward preparations to deal with the Manchurian crisis by military
  force. Ishiwara, who blended his faith in Nichiren Buddhism with a
  knowledge of recent trends in military science to develop a unique
  theory of ultimate global war, was the theorist behind the plot;
  Itagaki, who as a military cadet had joined a secret society dedicated to
  continental expansion, was the practical manager. They maintained a
  liaison with the Cherry Blossom Society through Colonel Komoto, the
  assassin of Chang Tso-lin, now retired from active service. Their plans
  reached fruition in the fall of 1931.
  On the night of September 18, Lieutenant Kawamoto Suemori of
  the Second Battalion of the Railroad Garrison set off an explosive
  charge on South Manchuria Railway tracks at Liutiaokou in the sub-
  urbs of Mukden. The conspirators had intended to stir up local confu-
  sion by derailing the Dairen Express, scheduled to arrive in Mukden
  42 Karita Toru, Showa shoki seiji, gaiko shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Ningen no kagakusha, 1978).
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  THE OCCUPATION OF MANCHURIA 
  295
  at 10:30 P.M. The train reached the blown-up section of track shortly
  after the explosion, swayed a bit, but passed over it safely.43 Nonethe-
  less, the Manchurian incident was set in motion.
  Plans for military action in Manchuria had been hastened by leaks
  of the plot. Rumors had reached informed circles by mid-August,
  causing a drop in the stock of the South Manchuria Railway. The
  consul general at Mukden had sent reports of a plot to Foreign Minis-
  ter Shidehara, who at a cabinet meeting asked War Minister Minami
  Jiro about their authenticity.** When Minami ordered Major General
  Tatekawa Yoshitsugu of the army general staff to Manchuria to stop
  the plot, Ishiwara and Itagaki stepped up their schedule by ten days.
  Even before his departure, Tatekawa had secretly informed the Kwan-
  tung Army that their plans were known. After conferring with Itagaki
  en route to Mukden, Tatekawa arrived several hours before the explo-
  sion went off, got drunk, and fell asleep in a Japanese restaurant.
  Later he excused the failure of his mission by commenting, "I didn't
  make it in time."4* There were other general officers like Tatekawa
  who had committed themselves to the conspiracy or at least had
  guessed what was going on but pretended not to know. In this sense
  the Manchurian incident-as well as the March and October inci-
  dents-can be interpreted as a direct army challenge to political party
  rule.
  THE OCCUPATION OF MANCHURIA
  The initial phase of the Manchurian incident ended with an almost
  bloodless victory, the overnight fall of Mukden. Chang Hsueh-liang,
  who was in Peking, ordered his subordinate officers to adopt a policy
  of nonresistance.46 But if the Kwantung Army were to occupy all of
  Manchuria, as planned, Japanese troops had to advance outside the
  railway zone where Japan had treaty rights. On September 21, Ishi-
  wara and his colleagues requested that the Kwantung Army com-
  mander Honjo Shigeru dispatch troops to Kirin to establish local order
  there. In fact, disturbances in the area had been provoked by the
  plotters. By this time, Honjo, who had not been privy to the plot,
  began to realize what his staff officers were up to. According to the
  43 Hata Ikuhiko, "Ryojoko jiken no saikento," Seiji keizai shigaku, no. 183 (1981).
  44 Seki Kanji, "Manshu jihen zen shi," TSENM, vol. I, pp. 404-12.
  45 Mori Katsumi, Manshu jihen no rimen shi (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1976), pp. 19-80.
  46 Usui Katsumi, Manshu jihen (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1974), p. 58.
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  296 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  army's military code, it was a capital offense for a local commander in
  a foreign country to move his troops without the emperor's consent.
  All through the night, the staff officers worked on Honjo, until at
  dawn he finally agreed to their request.v The dramatic effect of the
  troop dispatch was heightened when the Korea Army sent a division to
  relieve the Kwantung Army in Manchuria without first obtaining per-
  mission from the central army authorities.
  The Wakatsuki cabinet, in which Shidehara remained foreign minis-
  ter, adopted a policy of not expanding military operations. The central
  military authorities in Tokyo reluctantly followed suit. But the Kwan-
  tung Army completely ignored both their instructions and the cabi-
  net's nonexpansion policy. A group of army general staff officers mak-
  ing preparations for the October incident to support the Kwantung
  Army's actions spread rumors that the Kwantung Army was planning
  to declare its independence from the homeland.*8 In December 1931
  the Wakatsuki cabinet finally fell. The cabinet of Inukai Tsuyoshi, the
  Seiyukai's president, reversed the direction of national policy by recog-
  nizing the occupation of Manchuria as an accomplished fact.
  In response to the Japanese military action, Chang Hsueh-liang,
  who had concentrated his defeated soldiers in north China, continued
  guerrillalike attacks across the southwestern border of Manchuria.
  Chiang Kai-shek, whose plan was to appeal to the League of Nations
  and to recover Manchuria through pressure by the great powers, held
  back the central Kuomintang army as well.49 Chiang, who wanted
  eventually to unify all of China, including Manchuria, was preoccu-
  pied with his domestic enemies, especially in the areas under the
  control of the Chinese Communist movement, and he was reluctant
  to commit his forces against the Japanese. If any force had been able
  to check the arbitrary actions of the Kwantung Army and its support-
  ers in Tokyo, it would certainly have been international pressure by
  Great Britain, the United States, or the Soviet Union. But in fact,
  none of them decided to intervene. In the United States, Secretary of
  State Henry Stimson proclaimed the "nonrecognition doctrine," a
  refusal to accept the Japanese fait accompli, and the Hoover adminis-
  tration concentrated the Pacific Fleet at Hawaii under the pretext of
  47 Katakura Tadashi, Kaiso no Manshukoku (Tokyo: Keizai oraisha, 1978), pp. 57-8; Ishii
  Itaro, Gaikokan no issho (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1950), pp. 182-3.
  48 Regarding this point, some say that the October incident was really a coup d'etat planned by
  conspirators at higher levels in the military and aimed at provoking the Manchurian incident.
  See Fujimura Michio, "Iwayuru jugatsu jiken no saikento," Nihon rekishi, no. 393 (1981).
  49 Chiang Kai-shek, Sho Kai-seki hiroku: Manshujihen (Tokyo: Sankei shinbunsha, 1976), vol.
  9» PP- 52-3-
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  THE OCCUPATION OF MANCHURIA 
  297
  maneuvers.50 But the Americans were not able to take effective mea-
  sures against the "Far Eastern crisis" because the country was founder-
  ing at the bottom of the depression. Great Britain was also in economic
  difficulty and was inclined toward appeasement, hoping to use Japan
  as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet government
  was in the midst of economic reconstruction after the long period of
  factional strife between Stalin and Trotsky. Consequently, the Soviet
  leaders wanted to avoid international disputes for the moment. The
  Soviet government thus did not protest the Japanese advance into
  northern Manchuria, and in 1935 it sold the Soviet-owned Chinese
  Eastern Railway to Japan and withdrew to the Amur River line. If the
  Manchurian incident had been planned with the thought of avoiding
  foreign intervention, it can be said that its timing was perfect. The
  international circumstances served Japan well.
  When fighting spread to Shanghai at the end of January 1932,
  international pressure against Japan's actions in Manchuria increased
  considerably. The Shanghai incident was touched off by a plot
  hatched by the Kwantung Army and Major Tanaka Ryukichi, the
  Japanese military attache stationed in Shanghai. Its purpose was to
  divert domestic and foreign attention away from Manchuria so that the
  Kwantung Army could complete its occupation of Harbin and the
  establishment of the new state of Manchukuo at a time when anti-
  Japanese sentiment reached its height overseas. But the incident soon
  expanded into a large military clash. Three army divisions had to be
  sent to rescue the beleaguered Japanese marine units. The army high
  command, however, was worried that a penetration of central China
  would provoke a joint intervention by the powers. Unlike Manchuria,
  where the Western powers had few substantial interests, central China
  had long been an area of Western economic and political activity. Just
  when the entire city of Shanghai had been occupied, the army clamped
  down on the hawkish elements and pulled out the Japanese troops.
  In March 1932, having completed the occupation of all Manchuria,
  the Japanese created a puppet state there. The idea of establishing a
  new and independent nation in Manchuria had taken shape in the
  Kwantung Army immediately after the incident began. Their plans
  called for a new state free from the evils of domestic capitalism and
  unified under the slogan of a "paradise of benevolent government"
  {odd rakudo) and "harmonious cooperation among the five races"
  igozoku kyowa). Many government officials, economists, ronin, and
  50 Hata, Taiheiyd kokusai kankei thi, chap. 7, concerning Stimson's diplomacy.
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  298 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  farmer migrants rushed to Manchuria to become part of the ruling
  apparatus. As a result, Manchukuo literally became Japan's "lifeline
  colony." In 1934 Manchuria's original republican structure was
  changed to a monarchy. Henry Pu-yi, previously the head of state, was
  elevated to the position of emperor, with the authority of the Japanese
  emperor delegated to him. But the real power was kept in the hands of
  the commander of the Kwantung Army, who concurrently held the
  post of Japanese ambassador to Manchukuo.
  The League of Nations' Lytton Commission, whose perceptive ob-
  servers visited the scene in the spring of 1932, fully fathomed the
  situation inside Manchuria. The Japanese army, which expected the
  commission's report to be unfavorable to Japan, tried to stir up public
  opinion by promoting a movement to recognize Manchuria's indepen-
  dence. Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya announced his "scorched
  earth diplomacy" (shodo gaiko). "I will not yield one step in achieving
  this demand [the recognition of Manchuria]," he said, "even if our
  country is reduced to ashes." In September 1932 Japan formally recog-
  nized Manchuria. In March 1933, after having been defeated by a vote
  of forty-two to one on the acceptance of the Lytton Commission's
  report, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. This meant that
  Japan had seceded from the Versailles system and had chosen "splen-
  did isolation" instead. Italy and Germany, seeing the League's impo-
  tence, took a leaf from Japan's book and embarked on their own paths
  of expansionism.
  One of the reasons that neither the League nor the powers were able
  to impose effective restraints on Japan was that its pattern of response
  defied expectation.*1 "Dual diplomacy" had been a problem since the
  time of the Siberian expedition, but there was no precedent for what
  occurred during the Manchurian incident, when local army forces
  ignored the nonexpansion policy that the Tokyo government had
  pledged to follow. Once the powers realized that Shidehara diplomacy
  was no longer effective, they stepped up the international pressure on
  Japan. But by that time it was too late to have any restraining effect.
  Japanese public opinion, which had stiffened overnight, backed the
  occupation of Manchuria as an accomplished fact. It was only ten
  years later on the eve of the Pacific War that the United States made
  effective use of the nonrecognition doctrine in the famous Hull note
  which called for a return to the pre-1931 status quo and demanded the
  liquidation of all faits accotnplis.
  51 Mitani Taichiro, "Kokusai kin'yu shihon to Ajia no senso," Kindai Nihon to higashi Ajia, ed.
  Kindai Nihon kenkyukai (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1980), pp. 117-27.
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  THE QUEST FOR AUTONOMY 
  299
  THE QUEST FOR AUTONOMY
  Was Japan's foreign expansion - from the Manchurian incident through
  the China conflict to the Pacific War-blind aggression whose objec-
  tives were military conquest and plunder like that of the Huns or the
  Mongols? Or was it a limited action aimed at achieving a "quest for
  autonomy"'2 as the world divided into economic blocs in the face of the
  Great Depression? Historians' interpretations have veered back and
  forth between these two extremes, but whichever position one takes,
  the period of transition from the Manchurian incident to the China war
  was clearly an epoch-making turning point.
  The Manchurian incident played a role in Japan similar to that of the
  New Deal in the United States. The reflationary effects of increased
  military expenditure and increased war production revived the Japa-
  nese economy from stagnation.53 The same thing happened in Germany
  when Adolf Hitler, after pulling the country out of the depression by
  building public works such as the autobahn and putting to work six
  million unemployed, embarked on a program of rearmaments* All
  three countries-the United States, Germany, and Japan-were uncon-
  sciously putting into practice the Keynesian methods of stimulating
  recovery and achieving full employment by means of military arma-
  ments expansion or public works projects.
  Nevertheless, the worldwide spread of economic nationalism aimed
  at domestic economic recovery upset the self-regulating mechanisms
  of the international economy and promoted the formation of closed
  economic blocs. Japan and Germany, late-developing countries lack-
  ing self-sufficiency in natural resources, had to establish control over
  extensive economic zones in order to compete with the blocs con-
  trolled by the advanced nations. To justify such a policy, there
  emerged in Germany the notion of Lebensraum advocated by Nazi
  geopoliticians, and in Japan there emerged the notion of a "Japan-
  Manchukuo economic bloc." The reactionary folkish doctrines that
  permeated the fascist ideology in both countries can also be viewed as
  essential to their rejection of economic internationalism and their for-
  mation of closed economic blocs. 55
  52 James B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
  1966).
  53 Nakamura Takafusa, ed., Senkanki no Nihon keizai bunseki (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppan,
  1981). See, in particular, the article by Blumenthal. General demand increased by 1.5 per-
  cent, as opposed to an increase in military expenditure of 2.2 percent from 1931 to 1936. The
  growth rate expanded from 0.5 percent in 1929 to 10.5 percent in 1933.
  54 Sebastian Hafner, Hitara to wa nanika, trans. Akabane Tatsuo (Tokyo: Sohisha, 1979), p. 36.
  55 See articles by Hatano Sumio, Takahashi Hisashi, and Gerhard Krebs, in Nihon no 1930 nen
  dai, ed. Miwa Kimitada (Tokyo: Soryusha, 1980).
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  3OO 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  For many years Japan's overpopulation and shortage of raw materi-
  als had been a cause of concern for the advanced countries. Although
  the population problem may simply have been (in Ishibashi Tanzan's
  phrase) an aggressor's "last excuse,"'6 there was a widespread interna-
  tional feeling that a social explosion in Japan could be prevented by
  providing Japan with an appropriate safety valve. Even in China there
  was a tacit acceptance that the occupation of Manchuria, where Chi-
  nese sovereignty was by no means completely clear, was a necessary
  evil. In any case, for the Kuomintang regime, the defeat of the Chi-
  nese Communist forces under Mao Tse-tung continued to be the most
  pressing objective." Under these circumstances, between 1932 and
  1935, harmony based on a tacit acceptance of the accomplished facts
  seemed to have been restored in Sino-Japanese relations.
  In October 1935 Foreign Minister Hirota Koki asked the Chinese to
  accept his "three principles": suspension of anti-Japanese activities,
  recognition of Manchukuo, and a joint defense against Communism.
  Hirota intended first to obtain China's agreement in principle and
  then to move on to specific and detailed arrangements. The real power
  over foreign policy, however, had shifted into the hands of the mili-
  tary. With the rise of a promilitary faction in the Foreign Ministry, the
  old "Kasumigaseki diplomacy" was on the wane, and some began to
  talk about the ministry as the "War Ministry's Foreign Affairs Bu-
  reau." As if to ignore Hirota's diplomacy, elements in the army, espe-
  cially middle-ranking officers in the Kwantung Army whose appetite
  had been whetted further by the success in Manchuria, began to ad-
  vance into north China, Inner Mongolia, and eventually mainland
  China in the latter part of 1935. Their pattern of action, relying on
  subversion, threats of force, and the establishment of puppet govern-
  ments, was similar to that of the Kwantung Army at the time of the
  Manchurian incident. The rationale for their actions was to check the
  emergence of a strong and unified China.
  After signing the Umezu-Ho Ying-chin and Doihara-Chin Te-chan
  agreements in June 1935, on the pretext of settling some trifling inci-
  dents, the Kwantung Army and the China Garrison Army drove the
  Chinese central armies from the provinces of Hopei and Chahar. Major
  56 Ishibashi Tanzan, Editorial in Tqyo keizai shinpo, May l6, 1913, printed in Ishibashi Tanzan
  zenshu (Tokyo: T6yo keizai shimposha, 1970-72).
  57 Tung Hsien-kuang, Sho Kai seki, trans. Terashima Masashi and Okuno Masami (Tokyo:
  Nihon gaisei gakkai, 1956), p. 173. Tung stated: "On September 18, China was obliged to
  choose whether it should opt for a military counteroffensive or await the opportunity to drive
  the Japanese out of Manchuria through foreign intervention; China chose the latter. Japan,
  however, continued its aggression, taking advantage of China's internal strife."
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  THE QUEST FOR AUTONOMY 
  3OI
  General Doihara Kenji was sent to north China where he tried to form
  an autonomous pro-Japanese regime by pulling together various war-
  lords in the five northern China provinces. But these plans did not
  materialize because the Kuomintang central government successfully
  intervened politically. Although the Japanese created the East Hopei
  Autonomous Council, a pro-Japanese puppet regime in the northeast-
  ern part of Hopei, the Kuomintang countered it with the Hopei-
  Chahar Political Council headquartered at Peking. Using funds gained
  from smuggling operations through East Hopei, the Kwantung Army
  also formed a puppet government under Prince Te in Inner Mongolia
  and began to expand to the west.58 Major General Ishiwara Kanji, now
  holding a key position in the army general staff, did not agree with such
  rapid and disorderly expansion. Rather, he stressed the immediate need
  to develop the resources of Manchuria and to build sufficient national
  strength for Japan to cope favorably with coming changes in the world
  situation. However, given his own previous record of defying central
  authority, Ishiwara had difficulty in controlling the adventurism flour-
  ishing among the junior officers. 59
  The result was that the Japanese, after seizing Manchuria's re-
  sources, lunged toward the main part of China in search of new and
  easy gains. In the meantime, a bloody factional struggle over leader-
  ship was raging within the army between the Control faction (Toseiha)
  and the Imperial Way faction (Kodoha). The struggle, culminating in
  the February 26 incident of 1936, ended with the victory of the Con-
  trol faction and a shift in emphasis from internal reform to external
  aggression. It is clear that the aggressive actions of the Japanese mili-
  tary from the Manchurian incident onward were hardly so moderate as
  to be called a "quest for autonomy." Military action came first, and
  ideological justifications for faits accomplis were churned out after-
  ward. By the time the "Japan-Manchukuo economic bloc" had broad-
  ened into the "Japan-Manchukuo-China economic bloc," Japanese
  forces had already invaded all parts of the Chinese mainland. Slogans
  extolling a "new order in East Asia" (Tda shinchitsujo) and an "East
  Asian Gemeinschaft" (Tda kyodotai) were soon supplanted by the
  "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Daitoa kyoeiken) when it
  became clear that the targets for further Japanese conquest were to be
  extended from East Asia to Southeast Asia and the western Pacific. As
  a result, the costs of acquiring a "self-sufficient economic sphere"
  58 Hata Ikuhiko, Nitchu senso shi, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1979), chap. 2, sec. 6.
  59 Tsunoda Jum, ed., Ishiwara Kanji shiryo, vol. 1: Kokubo ronsaku (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1971),
  p. 436.
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  302 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  exceeded the expected advantages. A paper prepared by the Research
  Bureau of the Foreign Ministry at the end of 1936 argued: "The
  practical advantages of an expansionist policy are slim. Ever since the
  Sino-Japanese War [of 1894-5], there has been a national deficit, and
  this deficit could not be paid off by ten or twenty years of colonial rule
  in the future." Instead, the paper explained, Japan should put aside
  considerations of profit or loss and pursue the ideal of "universal
  harmony" {hakko ichiu, literally, "the eight corners of the world under
  one roof').60
  Because Japan's limited national strength made it difficult to sup-
  port the rapidly growing Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan made up for its
  disadvantages by a ruthless policy of local plunder, reminiscent of
  early Spanish colonial policy. Land was seized for the settlement of
  Japanese immigrants in Manchuria; on the Chinese mainland business
  and enterprises were confiscated; and Japanese forces fighting in
  China and later in the Pacific lived off the land. The army purchased
  daily necessities with excessive issues of unbacked military scrip that
  inevitably brought local inflation. In modern history there has been no
  other instance of a foreign expeditionary force's adopting a policy of
  local self-sufficiency from the very outset. It was a glaring demonstra-
  tion of the enormous disparities between slogans and realities. It was
  only natural that the Japanese army alienated the inhabitants of the
  occupied areas, who joked that the "Imperial Army" (kogun) was an
  "army of locusts" (kogun).
  THE CHINA CONFLICT
  Recently it has become popular for Japanese historians to call the chain
  of aggression from the Manchurian incident onward "the fifteen-year
  war" (although strictly speaking, it lasted only thirteen years and eleven
  months). In this sense, the Manchurian incident, the war in China, and
  the war in the Pacific should not be viewed separately but as one continu-
  ous war.61 The only occasion when war was formally declared in accor-
  dance with international law was in December 1941, but after 1931 not a
  day passed without gunfire (including guerrilla action) in the areas
  where Japanese forces operated.
  It is questionable whether this war can be viewed as the conse-
  60 Gaimusho chosabu, "Nihon koyu no gaiko shido genri koryo," December 1936, Gaiko
  shiryokan archives, File number A-1-0-0-6.
  61 Ienaga Saburo, Taiheiyo senso (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), preface and pp. 1-4; Hata
  Ikuhiko, "Onnen shikan kara no dakkyaku," Keizai orai, February 1979.
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  THE CHINA CONFLICT 
  303
  quence of deliberate action based on a conspiracy by Class A war
  criminals, as Allied prosecutors insisted at the Tokyo war crimes tri-
  als. Although few in number, some Japanese did sense that the coun-
  try's eventual downfall was inevitable if the war continued beyond the
  point of no return. At each crucial turning point during the 1930s,
  there were confrontations between "expansionist" and "nonexpansion-
  ist" factions, between those who wished to push forward and those
  who wished to restrain Japan's military advance to some extent. The
  distrust of Japan abroad, however, contributed to the failure of the
  nonexpansionist camp.
  During the years between the Manchurian incident and the China
  war, the nonexpansionists foresaw that an invasion of China would
  prove fatal to Japan. They continued to insist that Japan concentrate
  on the development of Manchuria for the time being. As Finance
  Minister Takahashi Korekiyo observed to a group of ministry officials
  departing for Manchuria, "We opposed the Manchurian incident.
  Now that matters have come this far, I think that there is no more use
  talking about it. But we should not meddle in north China."62 As we
  have already seen, during the latter half of 1935, the Kwantung Army
  had begun to advance into north China, even though order had not
  been established in Manchuria and investigation of its potential re-
  sources had not advanced very far. The military, disappointed at the
  rather unexpectedly low quality of iron ore and coal in Manchuria,
  could not resist the temptation of high-quality iron and coal in north
  China. Colonel Ishiwara, doubtful of the wisdom of penetrating north
  China, dispatched a trusted economic officer to Manchuria with a
  report that Manchuria alone could provide the resources necessary for
  the buildup of a national defense state, but it was difficult to dissuade
  the adventurers in the Kwantung Army.53
  In July 1937 all-out war finally began between Japan and China. It
  began with a small military clash at the Marco Polo Bridge in the
  suburbs of Peking. The truth behind the incident, especially the ques-
  tion of who fired the first shot at the Japanese troops engaged in night
  maneuvers there, is one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the
  1930s. In regard to who fired the first shot are the following hypothe-
  ses, in descending order of probability: (1) The "accidental shot"
  hypothesis is that a low-ranking Chinese soldier fired the shot out of
  fright at the Japanese night maneuvers; (2) the "Communist plot"
  62 Nomura Masao, Hoso fuunroku (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1966), vol. 2, p. 70.
  63 Hata, Gun Fashizwnu undo shi, p. 234.
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  304 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  hypothesis attributes the incident to a conspiracy by the Chinese Com-
  munist Party's northern bureau, under the direction of Liu Shao-chi;
  (3) the "warlord plot" theory is that the clash was plotted by northern
  warlords such as Feng Yu-hsiang; and (4) the final hypothesis is that
  the first shot was fired as part of a private plot by special intelligence
  organs of the Japanese army or those connected with it.6" To make
  matters more complicated, it is possible that those who committed the
  overt act were not those who instigated it. Whatever the truth of the
  matter, to the Japanese government, the Japanese military, and the
  Chiang government, the incident began as an accident.
  There is also disagreement about why conditions had reached the
  point that a local clash could turn into a full-scale war. On the surface,
  Sino-Japanese relations had been in a lull after the end of 1936. There
  were no noteworthy points of contention between the two countries
  except for pending negotiations with Sung Che-yuan concerning the
  economic development of north China. In fact, during the six months
  before the Marco Polo Bridge incident, fewer newspaper articles ap-
  peared on the subject of Sino-Japanese relations than at any time since
  1935. Should the period be viewed as a time of eased tension or as a
  calm before a brewing storm?
  Before the incident, the Kuomintang government had been pursu-
  ing a compromise policy, resisting on the one hand and negotiating on
  the other. In 1935 with help from the British, the Nanking govern-
  ment had effected a currency reform that shifted the country from a
  silver standard to a managed currency, and strengthened the economic
  basis for national unification. In the summer of 1936 the government
  had suppressed the southwestern warlords and used the Suiyuan inci-
  dent to pull together the various warlords in north China. After the
  Sian incident in December 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek was briefly
  confined by Chang Hsueh-liang, there was progress toward coopera-
  tion with the Chinese Communists. An anti-Japanese mood had been
  rising among the Chinese public, whose self-confidence had deepened
  as a result of these gains. But because the Nanking government still
  had not achieved its goal of complete unification, and because its
  military modernization was still in progress, it was premature to
  plunge into a war with Japan.
  From the Japanese point of view, the Nanking government made a
  serious miscalculation when it adopted a confrontational stance and
  64 Hata, Nitchu senso shi, new ed., chap. 4, 1979; Hata Ikuhiko, "Rokokyo dai-ippatsu no
  hannin," Ichiokunin no Shovia shi 3, vol. 2: Nitchu senso (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha,
  1979). P- 44-
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  THE CHINA CONFLICT 
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  directed its central army to move north the day after the Marco Polo
  Bridge incident.6* Japanese army leaders thought that the crisis could
  be resolved by negotiations at the local level, just as other small dis-
  putes had in the past. At first the Japanese high command issued
  instructions calling for nonexpansion and local negotiations. Thus
  when it learned of the movement of the Chinese central army, it was
  perplexed. Within the Japanese army there emerged both expansionist
  and nonexpansionist factions.66 The expansionists wanted to use the
  incident to strike a military blow at China to break the deadlock in
  north China. The nonexpansionists, on the other hand, opposed send-
  ing troops lest a clash with awakening Chinese nationalism drag Japan
  into the morass of a protracted war that, in Major General Ishiwara's
  words, would be like Napoleon's Spanish campaign. It was a reflection
  of this split in army circles that decisions to mobilize were made and
  canceled four times before a final decision was taken to send three
  divisions to north China on July 27. Neither Prime Minister Konoe
  nor Foreign Minister Hirota had clear views about what to do. In the
  final analysis, they simply followed the lead of the expansionist faction
  within the Japanese army. The decision was also much influenced by
  the press and public opinion which, stirred up by the army press,
  rashly called for the "punishment of a disorderly China" (boshiyocho).
  All the while, fighting continued in north China. Peking fell after an
  exchange of fire lasting only one day and night. Sung Che-yuan's
  troops withdrew after offering almost no resistance. Japanese military
  forces then began to move south, heading toward the Yangtze River.
  On August 13 the situation in Shanghai worsened when fighting broke
  out between the Chinese army and Japanese naval landing units. The
  Japanese Navy, which had been passive until this point, called on the
  army for help. The cabinet decided to send a relief force of two divi-
  sions to Shanghai. On August 15 the Chinese general headquarters
  decreed a general mobilization, and with that the two countries
  plunged into a full-scale war that lasted for eight years.
  In comparing the expansion of the China conflict with the Manchu-
  rian incident, there appear to be points of both similarity and differ-
  ence. The occupation of Peking, like the earlier occupation of Muk-
  65 Chiang Kai-shek, Sho Kai seki hiroku 12, Nitchu zenmen sensd (Tokyo: Sankei shinbunsha,
  1976). In his diary on July 8, the day after the Marco Polo incident broke out, Chiang wrote
  that "the time has come now to make the decision to fight back as long as Japan has
  challenged us." On July 9, he ordered Military Bureau Chief Ho Ying-chin to start the
  reorganization of the army in preparation for all-out war and gave instructions to General Sun
  Lien-chung to move two divisions of the central army to North China. Ibid., pp. 21-2.
  66 Hata, Nitchu sensd shi, chap. 5.
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  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  den, ended quickly without bloodshed. Japanese forces achieved their
  ostensible goals of "appropriate self-defense" and "chastisement." But
  whereas the expansion of military action was instigated by the Japa-
  nese forces during the Manchurian incident, Chinese forces were re-
  sponsible in the case of the China war. In this sense, the dispatch of
  Japanese troops to Kirin in 1931 resembled the dispatch of Chinese
  troops to Shanghai in 1937. The Nanking government had taken no
  action to resist the Japanese in 1931 when Chang Hsueh-liang failed to
  do so, but in 1937 it opted for military resistance, even though Sung
  Che-yuan's forces initially offered almost no opposition. The final
  clash of the Chinese troops with a Japanese naval landing force at
  Shanghai, however, finally provoked the dispatch of a Japanese expedi-
  tionary army.
  THE ABORTED PEACE WITH CHINA
  The Sino-Japanese War was the inevitable consequence of the precipi-
  tous continental policy that Japan had pursued since the Manchurian
  incident, but when the war began, not the Japanese government, nor
  the army, nor the military forces in China had the preliminary plans or
  the resolve to embark on a full-scale war. The Japanese army leader-
  ship, which had a low view of Chinese military strength and morale,
  optimistically believed that Japan could achieve a quick victory. Japa-
  nese forces seized Nanking in December 1937 and Hankow and Can-
  ton in October 1938, and in 1939 Japanese airplanes began bombing
  raids on Chungking. But Japanese expectations for quick victory re-
  mained unfulfilled.
  The Chinese Communist Party wanted to engage in a total war of
  resistance against the Japanese. They restrained the peace view in the
  Kuomintang government which was inclining toward a compromise as
  Chinese military operations faltered. In March 1938 when the Suchow
  campaign ended with most of north China in Japanese hands and the
  prospects for China looked bad, Mao Tse-tung enunciated his famous
  "protracted war" theory, calling for final victory and inspiring a na-
  tional fighting spirit. In military strategy as well, the Communists,
  who had acquired much experience in the civil war, advocated arming
  the populace and carrying on guerrilla warfare. Eventually these be-
  came standard tactics for the entire Chinese army and caused the
  Japanese forces much difficulty.
  In the fall of 1938 after the completion of the Hankow campaign,
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  THE ABORTED PEACE WITH CHINA 
  307
  Japanese forces abandoned their pursuit of the Chinese army. The
  Kuomintang government had evacuated from Nanking to Chungking
  in western China, where it assumed a defensive posture. Even with the
  commitment of 600,000 men, the Japanese could barely secure the
  "points and lines," the main cities and the railroad lines in the occu-
  pied territories. Except for a small number of officers in the nonexpan-
  sionist faction, neither the army nor the government had expected the
  hostilities in China to drag out into a long war of attrition.
  Around the time of the fall of Nanking, in December 1937, some
  military leaders began to have second thoughts and urged an early end
  to the fighting. In modern warfare it was common sense that a country
  surrendered when its capital fell, but the Japanese military was upset
  when this common sense did not prevail in China. Impatient to make
  peace with China on appropriate terms and to end the war quickly, a
  host of peace movements came crowding onto the scene. In Shanghai,
  Hong Kong, Tientsin, and other cities with concessions under the
  control of neutral powers, self-proclaimed "China experts" of all
  sorts-military men, politicians, and ronin adventurers-opened secret
  negotiations. All ended in failure.67 On the Japanese side, there were
  disagreements over the severity or leniency of the terms as the war
  progressed; on the Chinese side there was distrust that the Japanese
  would not keep their promises even if the negotiations succeeded. A
  stalemate ensued. In the words of Bradford Lee, "Neither side wanted
  war, but neither adopted a conciliatory stance."68 Even today there
  remain many unanswered questions about the debate within the
  Kuomintang between those who favored resistance and those who
  favored peace, and about which elements in the complex class struc-
  ture supported resistance and which did not.
  The Japanese government finally abandoned the idea of making
  peace. It turned instead to a policy of establishing a puppet govern-
  ment under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek's political enemy,
  Wang Ching-wei, in hope that the Kuomintang regime at Chungking
  and its resistance by attrition eventually would wither away. However,
  the overextended Japanese lines were constantly exposed to guerrilla
  counterattacks launched by both Chiang's army and the Communist
  armies. It also became clear that the Wang Ching-wei government was
  a weak regime, unable to draw popular support and unlikely to survive
  67 Hata, Nitchu senso shi, chap. 3.
  68 Bradford Lee, Britain and the Sino-Japanese War 1937-39 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
  sity Press, 1973), p. 15.
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  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  a day without the backing of the Japanese army. In its treaty with
  Japan, the Wang government accepted humiliating terms, including
  the recognition of Manchukuo, which John Boyle described as far
  more severe than the conditions of the cease-fire treaty in France
  between the Vichy government and the Nazis.69
  Meanwhile, there were new anxieties for the Japanese in the north.
  The Japanese army had traditionally devised its operations plans and
  conducted maneuvers with the Russian (later Soviet) forces in East Asia
  as their principal hypothetical enemy. After the Manchurian incident,
  the Kwantung Army and the Soviet forces faced each other directly
  across the Amur River. Even though the danger of a clash between the
  two armies increased, the main force of the Japanese army was pinned
  down in the China theater. When two border incidents finally
  occurred-the Changkufeng incident (July-August 1938) and the
  Nomonhan incident (May-September i939)-the Kwantung Army,
  which prided itself on the superior morale of its troops, met defeat at the
  hands of Soviet forces equipped with up-to-date military equipment. At
  a time when Europe was moving rapidly toward another great war, it
  seemed that Japan was on the verge of losing its valuable free hand in
  global politics.
  The depth of Japan's frustration was revealed by the zeal with
  which it pursued various peace overtures toward China. The army was
  put in the awkward position of having to explain to the public why the
  continuous string of military victories and the huge dissipation of
  manpower in China did not end with the surrender of the Kuomin-
  tang. Out of this desperate quandary came the Konoe government's
  sudden and unprecedented announcement in January 1938 that Japan
  "would not negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek" (aite ni sezu). This
  opened the way to an endless war.
  The government tried to shift to the powers the blame for the
  prolongation of the China war, by insisting that Chinese military resis-
  tance was kept alive by military and psychological assistance from the
  United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. In fact, the
  Japanese army knew very well that the military value of "aid" from the
  United States, Britain, and France-entering China through the coast,
  over the border with French Indochina, or on the Burma Road-was
  negligible, that it amounted to little more than small-scale smuggling.
  Only the Soviet aid coming in through the northwest was at all substan-
  69 John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War 1937-45: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford,
  Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1972).
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  TO THE PACIFIC WAR 
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  tial.70 Nevertheless, the Japanese government launched a strong anti-
  British movement on the grounds that Britain was a barrier to the
  solution of the war with China. It did so not only because Britain was
  the country with whom the Japanese had most friction over interests
  in China but also because Britain seemed to be a safer scapegoat than
  the United States, as Britain was tied down by pressure from Nazi
  Germany. False logic, however, often turns into real logic. Having
  abandoned any effort to resolve the conflict with China through nego-
  tiations between the principals, Japan moved toward a solution by a
  strange detour, namely, by arranging a military alliance with Germany
  and Italy to confront Great Britain and the United States, the two
  alleged interlopers. Had the same kind of psychology prompted Ger-
  many to abandon the war against Britain and strike against the Soviet
  Union? The war in the Pacific need not have been the logical conse-
  quence of the war in China, but the Japanese leadership, acting as if
  under self-hypnosis, chose the path toward certain self-destruction.
  TO THE PACIFIC WAR
  At the beginning of this chapter was mentioned the grandiose scheme
  devised by Colonel Matsuishi Yasuji in 1906 for the conquest of the
  Asian continent, then Southeast Asia, and finally an invasion of the
  American continent. By 1940 this grand design, which seemed only
  fantasy a generation earner, was on the verge of realization. The only
  difference between Matsuishi's scheme and the scope of the Greater
  East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere enunciated by Foreign Minister Ma-
  tsuoka Yosuke in the summer of 1940 was that Matsuoka substituted
  Australia for South America.71
  The debate between the northern advance and the southern advance
  that had so enlivened late Meiji journalism also reappeared in a some-
  what altered guise. By 1940 the original goals of the northern ad-
  vance-the conquest of China south of the Great Wall by way of Korea
  and Manchuria-had already been achieved. The idea of a northern
  advance now literally meant moving into Siberia, that is, going to war
  with the Soviet Union. The southern advance meant using Hainan
  70 With respect to Soviet assistance to China, see Hirai Tomoyoshi, "Soren no doko (1933 nen-
  1939 nen)" in TSENM, vol. 4. For U.S.-British help, see Nagaoka Shinjiro, "Nanpo
  shisaku no gaikoteki tenkai (1937 nen-1941 nen)" in TSENM, vol. 6. The amount of aid that
  flowed into China, including by way of the northwest route, was at its peak in June 1939 but
  amounted only to about 25,000 tons monthly, or merely two large cargo shiploads, according
  to NGS studies; Nagaoka, "Nanpo shisaku," TSENM, vol. 6, p. 27.
  71 Hatano Sumio, "Toa shin chitsujo to chiseigaku," in Nihon no 1930-nen dai, pp. 33-4.
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  310 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  Island as a springboard to solidify the Japanese position in northern
  Indochina, then heading into Southeast Asia, a treasure house of natu-
  ral resources centering on the Dutch East Indies.
  With outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, two of the major
  colonial powers in Southeast Asia, France and the Netherlands, had
  been overrun by the Germans, and a third, Great Britain, seemed on
  the verge of collapse. Faced with this golden opportunity, advocates of
  the southern advance coined the phrase "Don't miss the bus." But the
  American government, which had continued to remain a spectator to
  the Japanese conquest of China, showed a firm intent to prevent Ja-
  pan's southern advance into Southeast Asia. The Japanese govern-
  ment, hesitant because it was assumed that Great Britain and the
  United States were inseparable, used its first chance to move south in
  the summer of 1940 to occupy the northern part of Indochina. When a
  second chance arrived a year later with the outbreak of war between
  Germany and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, after repeated
  internal debate on whether to invade Siberia or to resume a military
  advance to the south, the Japanese government made the fateful
  choice of occupying southern Indochina. The American government
  retaliated by announcing an embargo on petroleum, which assumed a
  resolve to go to war. From this point onward, war in the Pacific
  became inescapable.
  Although historians have advanced various arguments about the
  immediate and more remote cause for the outbreak of war between
  Japan and the United States, no theory appears to have won universal
  acceptance. The Japanese government blamed the start of war in 1941
  on the Hull note which demanded that Japan withdraw totally from
  China and return to the status quo before the Manchurian incident.
  From that standpoint, the prevailing view has been that the basic
  cause of the Pacific War was the problem of Japan's withdrawal from
  China?2 and that it "clearly and consistently lay in the problem of Sino-
  Japanese relations."73 Hard-line Japanese navy leaders, who called for
  war in 1941, also thought that war with the United States had been
  made inevitable by confrontation with American attempts to "inter-
  fere" with Japan's continental policy under the slogans of maintaining
  the "Open Door" policy and the "territorial integrity of China." As
  Captain Ishikawa Shingo, a leader of the navy hawks, observed, "Ja-
  72 Paul W. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
  University Press, 1971), p. 200.
  73 Yoshii Hiroshi, Showa gaiko shi (Tokyo: Nansosha, 1975), pp. 90-191.
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  TO THE PACIFIC WAR 
  311
  pan and the United States are engaged in a struggle for the China
  mainland."7i» In fact, during the negotiations with the United States
  that began in the spring of 1941, the Japanese concentrated on the
  China problem, especially the withdrawal of Japanese troops. How-
  ever, it is doubtful whether the United States, which consistently
  assigned first importance to the situation in Europe, placed as much
  importance on China as the Japanese thought it did. Stimson's "non-
  recognition doctrine" in 1931 and Roosevelt's "quarantine speech" in
  1938 were harsh in tone. But as Robert A. Divine observed, they
  actually represented nothing more than "hesitancy and indecision."75
  In fact, some American observers at the time thought the war in China
  might be to the United States' advantage. Stanley Hornbeck, adviser
  to the Far Eastern Division of the Department of State, pointed out
  that there might be some benefit if Japan continued to be bogged
  down in China, where it would fritter away its strength.76
  If one looks closely at American reactions to Japan during this
  period, it becomes evident that the United States was extremely ner-
  vous about the Japanese move southward. Just before the outbreak of
  fighting, the United States suddenly withdrew a modus vivendi accept-
  able to Japan and offered instead the Hull note, which in the view of
  some amounted to a declaration of war. The American government
  did so because Washington had received intelligence that a Japanese
  convoy was moving south through the Taiwan Straits.77 "The immedi-
  ate cause of the war," Akira Iriye wrote, "was the Japanese policy of
  advancing to the south by force."78 The Japanese leadership, preoccu-
  pied with the China problem, was not sufficiently cautious about the
  move south and did not understand the decisive impact that the action
  would have on the United States. This does not mean that the United
  States had special vital interests in Southeast Asia, including southern
  Indochina. To be sure, if Japanese air power were deployed to Saigon,
  the Philippines would be threatened by a flank attack, and so would
  Malaya, which produced rubber, the only major resource in which the
  United States was not self-sufficient.
  Nevertheless, the cumulative weight of those factors was rather
  74 Ishikawa Shingo, Shinjuwan made no keii (Tokyo: Tiji tsushinsha, i960), p. 6.
  75 Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
  1969), p. 19.
  76 Hornbeck Memorandum, September 5,1941, in Hornbeck Papers, Box 254, Hoover Institu-
  tion, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
  77 Sudo Sbinji, "Tojo naikaku to Nichi-Bei kosho," Kyoto Sangyo Daigaku ronshu 10 (i98o):33.
  78 Iriye Akira, Nichi-Bei senso (Tokyo: Chud Koronsha, 1978), p. 81.
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  312 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  small. The decisive factor is probably to be found in broad American
  strategic perspectives. Because wars usually occur as the result of a
  gradual intensification of crises, it is not inappropriate to seek the
  turning point toward war or peace in the general world situation imme-
  diately before the outbreak of war. In my view, the point of no return
  regarding war in the Pacific came with the conclusion of the Tripartite
  Pact in the fall of 1940. Of course, even after the point of no return
  had been passed, the possibility of avoiding war did not completely
  vanish. Rather, it should be understood that from the signing of the
  Tripartite Pact to the American embargo on petroleum, an already
  narrow range of choices narrowed even further until ultimately there
  was no way to avoid war. I stress the importance of the Tripartite Pact
  in particular because it determined finally the lines of allegiance and
  belligerence that governed World War II. After the outbreak of Euro-
  pean hostilities in 1939, only two great powers remained neutral, the
  United States and the Soviet Union. It was clear that the entry of these
  two nations into the war would be the decisive key to victory or defeat.
  President Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned priority to the overthrow of
  Nazi Germany. He guided American world strategy by the simple but
  easily understood logic that Germany's friends were America's ene-
  mies and that Germany's enemies were America's friends. Leaders in
  Germany and Japan, on the other hand, seemed to have been under
  the influence of the fashionable Marxist view that confrontation be-
  tween capitalism and socialism was inevitable, and they expected that
  by the end of the war the world situation would conform to this
  perception. In other words, because it was in the interest of the United
  States, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany to cooperate in the com-
  mon goal of an anti-Communist crusade, a compromise among them
  should be possible under suitable conditions.
  Events gradually undercut these expectations, but there remained
  another possible alignment of world powers, a joint front between fas-
  cism and socialism, as suggested by the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression
  Pact. But Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke, who had urged the sign-
  ing of the Tripartite Pact, had an even grander dream. What he had in
  mind was to restore the world balance of power by bringing the Soviet
  Union into the Tripartite Pact so as to pit the Eurasian continent against
  the American continent.^ Opponents as well as supporters of the Tri-
  partite Pact placed considerable hopes on Matsuoka's conception, but
  the idea went no further than the signing of the Japanese-Soviet Neutral-
  79 Miwa Kimitada, Matsuoka Yosuke (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1971), pp. 166-7.
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  TO THE PACIFIC WAR 
  313
  ity Pact in 1941. Because the Soviet Union did not join the Tripartite
  Pact, its global strategic value was decisively reduced. Japan and Ger-
  many lay separated at the opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass with
  the Soviet Union in between.
  On the eve of the Pacific War, when the alignments among the
  powers were changing rapidly, to misread the world situation was to
  invite fatal collapse. The worst possible misreading was for Japan to
  strike an alliance with Nazi Germany that had little direct advantage.
  The effort to use the Axis alliance to promote the resolution of the
  China war and to ease a move southward into Southeast Asia not only
  ended in disappointment, but it also decisively turned the Americans
  and the British into enemies of Japan. Perhaps it was only natural that
  Japan's strategic thinking, which focused exclusively on the Pacific
  and East Asia, could not adjust to strategic thinking on a global scale.
  From the vantage point of the Allied powers, however, Japan had
  become the enemy of the United States by befriending the "Nazi
  devils." Leaders in China, which had been on the verge of collapse,
  sensed this and regained the self-confidence needed to continue its
  resistance. On the day the Tripartite Pact was concluded in September
  1940, Chiang Kai-shek wrote in his diary, "This is the best thing that
  could have happened to us. The trend toward victory in the war of
  resistance has been decided."80
  Germany's inexplicable attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941
  drove the Soviets into the Anglo-American camp, literally turning the
  war between the Axis powers and their opponents (or between the
  fascists and the antifascists) into a confrontation between the "have"
  and the "have-not" nations. In a total war, where materiel and technol-
  ogy were decisive factors, it was obvious from the outset who would
  win and who would lose under such an alignment. With the attack on
  Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, the China war was absorbed into
  the Pacific War. The Pacific Ocean became the main battlefield, and
  Japan shifted to a defensive stance on the Asian mainland.
  For a time the United States considered using China as the shortest
  route to mount an attack on the Japanese home islands, but it became
  clear that the military capacity of China, the weakest ally of the United
  States, was not up to the task.81 The Americans also hoped that China
  would replace Japan in assuming a leadership role in Asia once the war
  ended, but those expectations were also disappointed: It was not the
  80 Sho Kai-teki hiroku, vol. 13: Daitoa senso (Tokyo: Sankei shinbunsha, 1976), p. 61.
  81 Michael Schaller, The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945 (New York: Columbia University
  Press, 1979), p. 39.
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  314 
  CONTINENTAL EXPANSION
  Kuomintang but the Chinese Communists who ultimately took con-
  trol of China.82
  The Japanese defeat in 1945 resulted in the complete withdrawal of
  Japan from the Asian continent, and it returned to the status of the
  small island state it had assumed before the Sino-Japanese war of
  1894-5. However, not only the defeated but the victors as well found
  it difficult to maintain colonialism in the postwar period. The United
  States, which embarked on a continental policy in Japan's place after
  the war, was also unable to secure China, Korea, and Vietnam, and it
  was able to maintain a military presence only in the southern half of
  the Korean peninsula.
  When one looks back at Japan's continental expansion from the
  1890s to 1945, one can draw several conclusions. First, the pace of
  Japan's expansion was extraordinarily rapid. The extent of Japan's
  conquests, especially during the decade that followed the Manchurian
  incident, went even beyond what the Mongols had achieved under
  Genghis Khan. Second, Japan's mode of expansion, which began sim-
  ply as the maintenance of colonies, turned into a policy of pillage and
  plunder. Third, despite that, the costs of Japan's conquest exceeded
  its profits, and it became clear that continental expansion was a losing
  proposition. Finally, it was difficult for Japan to establish Lebensraum
  as a world power on the Asian continent, which was relatively poor in
  resources. In this sense, a continental policy inevitably contained an
  impulse toward the next step, to press on toward a conquest of South-
  east Asia. It was this in turn that led to war between Japan and the
  United States and brought catastrophe to the Japanese empire.
  82 Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 37.
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  CHAPTER 7
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  HYPOTHETICAL ENEMIES
  The general staffs of the Japanese armed forces, like those elsewhere
  in the world, devised contingency plans each year to cope with the
  possibility of hostilities against one or more powers. The Japanese
  army's war plans, reflecting emphases rather than strict numerical
  priorities, ascribed first importance to the Russians as the potential
  enemy from the time of the Russo-Japanese War until the birth of the
  Soviet Union. With the increase in American influence in the Far East
  attending a deterioration in U.S.-Japanese relations, the United States
  replaced Russia after 1918 as the main national enemy. The Japanese
  army was never as serious as the navy was concerning anti-American
  operations because hostilities did not appear imminent. Nevertheless,
  as early as 1918, Japanese war plans included an army-navy seizure of
  the Philippines to deny advanced bases to the United States Fleet in
  the western Pacific.
  In the mid-1920s, civilian politicians pushed forward a program of
  reduction and budgetary retrenchment. Ugaki Kazushige, war minis-
  ter between 1924 and 1927, feared that the lion's share of the limited
  national defense budget would go to the navy if the United States
  remained the prime national foe. To counteract this domestic pres-
  sure, the Japanese army began to draft new operational plans against
  the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s, however, the army general staff
  became more serious about the "northern threat." The first Soviet
  five-year plan was begun in 1928, and the Red Army's offensive
  against Chang Hsueh-liang's forces in Manchuria in 1929 was unex-
  pectedly successful. A recrudescence of Soviet strength in the Siberian
  theater threatened Japan's own aspiration to a dominant position on
  the continent. Many army leaders came to believe more strongly than
  ever that Manchuria, and Siberia as far west as Lake Baikal, would
  become the ultimate battleground for the Japanese army and thus the
  front line of national defense. The reorientation of operational priori-
  ties was hastened by the Japanese Kwantung Army's swift conquest of
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  3l8 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  Manchuria in 1931-2 and the establishment of the client state of
  Manchukuo. Because Japan's self-assigned defensive responsibilities
  now abutted Soviet Siberia and Mongolia, the Soviets were again
  named the primary national enemy in war planning after 1931.
  The Japanese national defense policy was revised further in the mid-
  1930s. After the breakdown of the naval accords in 1935, the navy in
  particular stressed the growing danger of American containment. The
  giant American naval building program, the major American maneu-
  vers conducted near Midway Island, and espionage reports on the top-
  secret Orange War Plan alarmed navy leaders. By 1936, the Japanese
  navy had drawn up new contingency plans based on "defense in the
  north, advance to the south." In other words, the naval general staff
  was looking toward Southeast Asia, a zone of special interest to the
  colonial powers there, especially Britain and Holland. As a result, the
  British were added to the list of national enemies in the revision of
  1936. However, operational planning against England, involving the
  neutralization of Hong Kong and Singapore, was not introduced until
  1939, and anti-Dutch operations not until 1941.
  Japanese military leaders were thinking in terms of strategic self-
  defense, but the details of their envisaged operations remained offen-
  sive. Because Japan had a relatively underdeveloped industrial and
  technological infrastructure, its military leaders planned for a short
  war stressing opening moves and tactical execution, that is, surprise,
  provocation of early battle, and quick decision. There was no change
  in the fundamentals of this philosophy before 1941. Indeed, despite
  the operational refinements, the contingency planning of 1936 under-
  went no fundamental review and, in that sense, proved unhelpful and
  obsolete.
  Part of the reason was the difficulty of meshing the views of the
  fighting services. After all, the navy's hypothetical enemies were great
  sea powers, the United States and Britain, and the army's foes were
  deployed mainly on the landmass of Asia. In an effort to adjust diver-
  gent priorities, the Japanese high command adopted a contradictory
  policy of simultaneous engagement-a concept abhorrent to any objec-
  tive military planner. In 1937, for example, the Fifth and Eleventh
  Infantry Divisions were allocated to the attack plan against the Philip-
  pines at the same time that they were to continue preparations to
  engage the Soviets. Although each branch paid lip service to the
  other's central concern, the army kept its eyes on the continent. Even
  after 1939, when the army general staff was obliged to devote greater
  attention to the eventuality of hostilities involving the United States,
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  THE MORASS IN CHINA 
  319
  operations planning did not progress beyond the visualization of at-
  tacks against the Philippines and Guam, basically designed to com-
  mand the waters of the western Pacific against Plan Orange.1
  THE MORASS IN CHINA
  It is ironic that the Japanese army, which had tended to worry about the
  Soviets and to ignore the Americans, played a vital role in bringing
  about the war against the United States. The single most important
  reason can be found in the China theater. Ever since the unplanned
  Marco Polo Bridge affair at Peking in July 1937, the army had found
  itself sinking into a quagmire that prescient staff officers likened to
  Napoleon's campaigns in Spain. When the first serious clashes erupted
  in north China, the entire Japanese garrison force amounted only to five
  thousand or six thousand men, built around one infantry brigade. At
  Shanghai, the navy had no more than four thousand bluejackets ashore.
  This modest scale of deployment reflected the fact that military plans
  did not envisage China as a principal national enemy. In 1936 the army
  general staff even ordered the China Garrison Army to train for opera-
  tions against the Soviet army. The Japanese unit involved in the fateful
  fire fight at the Marco Polo Bridge in July 1937 was engaged in anti-
  Soviet, not anti-Chinese exercises. As fighting expanded between China
  and Japan in 1937, the original Japanese intention was to strike rapidly
  and capture a few key points. On the basis of fairly recent experience in
  Manchuria in 1931 and at Shanghai in 1932, it was widely thought that
  full-scale hostilities would be unnecessary, that local combat and
  threats of force could overwhelm the Chinese and cause the Nationalist
  government to sue for the cessation of hostilities on terms favorable to
  the Japanese.
  The Chinese fought desperately, but they could not check the invad-
  ers, who soon overran Shantung, north China, and Shanghai. But con-
  trary to Japanese expectations, the Chinese would not yield. Chiang
  Kai-shek ordered national mobilization. In response, Japanese troops,
  artillery, tanks, and aircraft were rushed to China from the homeland,
  Korea, and Manchuria, where the Kwantung Army was anxious to
  1 Cendaishi shiryo (hereafter GSS), Nitchu senso (i) (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 1964), vol. 8, pp.
  686-90; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyo senso rikusen gaishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1951), pp. 2-
  3; Boeicho boeikenshusho senshi shitsu (hereafter BBSS), Senshi sosho, 102 vols. (Tokyo:
  Asagumo shinbunsha, 1966-80), Daihon'ei kaigunbu rengo kantai (1), pp. 173-9,343-50,466-
  78, 500-8; BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (1), pp. 151-93, 287-302; BBSS, Hondo kessenjunbi
  (1), chap. 1; Takagi Sokichi, Taiheiyo senso to riku-kaigun no koso (Tokyo: Keizai oraisha,
  1967), PP- 191-6.
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  32O 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  finish off the Nationalists and the Communists. Chinese resistance, it
  was hoped, would collapse if the capital at Nanking were seized. In
  December 1937 the city fell, Chiang Kai-shek fled, and the inflamed
  Japanese soldiery went on a rampage of killing, looting, and raping.
  The scale of the Shanghai-Nanking campaign is suggested by the casu-
  alties incurred in six weeks: There were over 70,000 Japanese killed and
  wounded and more than 367,000 Chinese casualties.
  At the outset, the Japanese army general staff had not contemplated
  committing more than eleven to fifteen divisions to China or even
  drawing on reserves. Yet by the end of 1937, the Japanese already had
  had to dispatch sixteen divisions and 700,000 men, approximately the
  strength of the entire standing army. Although Tsingtao, Amoy, and
  Hsuchou fell by May 1938, victory was no nearer for the Japanese. A
  new offensive was launched to capture Hankow, Chiang's new capital.
  But neither the seizure of Hankow, nor that of Canton in October
  1938, brought the desired end of hostilities. The Chinese established
  still another provisional capital westward through the gorges of the
  Yangtze at Chungking. It took the Japanese two more years to push
  even halfway closer. In June 1940 they reached Ichang, still about
  three hundred miles from Chungking. Japanese forces in China now
  numbered twenty-three divisions, twenty-eight brigades (the equiva-
  lent of another fourteen divisions), and an air division. The total of
  Japanese troops in China had risen to 850,000, a level maintained until
  19435 when transfers to other theaters began.
  Japanese forces in China suffered from or created a vicious circle of
  their own. The greater the area they managed to carve out, the more
  troop strength they needed. It was not unknown for local commanders
  to undertake new and expensive operations whenever the authorities
  in the homeland spoke of de-escalating the hostilities and limiting the
  forces in the field. Area commands called for a linkup of enclaves. By
  and large, the handling of the campaigns in China was of an ad hoc and
  piecemeal nature, although cumulatively the commitment came to
  represent a major proportion of total national strength.
  Whereas the Japanese army was thinking in terms of Cannae, the
  Chinese were resorting to the less spectacular but calculated strategy of
  attrition to dissipate, overextend, and wear down the enemy. In Japan
  there were widening cleavages between the government and the high
  command, between the War Ministry and the General Staff, between
  the authorities in Tokyo and those in the field, and between the army
  and the navy. Staff meetings in Tokyo often were emotional. Officers
  were at loggerheads while civilian officials looked on impotently.
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  COLLISIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION 
  321
  On the battlefront, the Japanese forces suffered from shortfalls in am-
  munition, tanks and equipment, shipping, and landing craft. Casualty
  tolls from disease and accidents exacerbated combat losses, and there
  was a shortage of officers as well as a lack of trained reinforcements.
  Chinese counterattacks hurt the Japanese locally. From March to
  May 1938, the Japanese high command could no longer avoid divert-
  ing a portion of the troop strength previously reserved for hostilities
  against the Soviet Union. From this time, therefore, can be dated the
  Japanese army's abandonment of hope of localizing the conflict in
  China, and its loss of flexibility in dealing with the "northern prob-
  lem." With the bulk of the Japanese army committed in China, the
  Kwantung Army in Manchuria had only six regular divisions to con-
  front an estimated twenty Soviet rifle divisions, four or five cavalry
  divisions, fifteen hundred tanks, fifteen hundred planes, and 370,000
  men deployed along the three thousand miles of Siberian and Outer
  Mongolian frontier. The Soviet air force included three hundred
  heavy bombers with a range of three thousand kilometers, twice the
  distance from Vladivostok to Tokyo. Soviet power in the Far East,
  economic as well as military, had been steadily building up. In a sense,
  the Kwantung Army was confronting the Soviets with a bluff.2
  COLLISIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION
  While the Japanese high command labored on mobilization matters
  necessary to raise and dispatch new divisions to China, senior planners
  shuddered privately about the danger of Soviet intervention and a
  "premature" two-front war. Just as the Soviet Union supported the
  Loyalist regime in the Spanish civil war, it provided the Nationalist
  regime in China with credits and sent war materiel, aircraft, and "vol-
  unteer" pilots. Meanwhile, between 1937 and 1939, three increasingly
  ominous military confrontations between the Soviet Union and Japan
  occurred on disputed Manchurian or Korean borders. In late June
  J937J Just before the Marco Polo Bridge affair, Japanese artillery bat-
  teries shot up Soviet gunboats plying the Amur River in north Man-
  churia. The Soviet government quickly backed down. A year later, in
  July-August 1938, the Japanese fought a short but severe battle with
  2 GSS, Nitchu senso, (2) vol. 9, passim; Hata Ikuhiko, Nitchu senso shi (Tokyo: Kawade shobo,
  1961), pp. 161-260, 273-343; Horiba Kazuo, Shina jihen senso shido shi (Tokyo: Jiji
  csushinsha, 1962), pp. 81-656; Nihon kokusai seiji gakkai, Taiheiyo senso e no michi (hereafter
  TSM), 8 vols. (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1962-3), vol. 3, pp. 342-63; TSM, vol. 4, chaps.
  12; Usui Katsumi, Nitchu senso (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1967), pp. 33-140; BBSS, Daihon'ei
  rikugunbu(2), pp. 11-39,125-35; BBSS, Honkon-Chosasakusen, pt. 2.
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  322 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  the Soviets for possession of Changkufeng Hill, at a point where north
  Korea, Manchuria, and Siberia meet. This time, the Soviet side com-
  mitted not only infantry but also long-range artillery, armor, and
  planes. Although the Japanese troops clung to the high ground until a
  cease-fire was arranged in Moscow in mid-August, the Korea Army
  voluntarily gave up the contested region afterward. If reconnaissance
  in force had been the intent of the Japanese army, it was soon learned
  that the Soviets in the Far East were no longer quiescent.
  Displeased with the outcome of the Changkufeng episode and blam-
  ing the high command for timidity, the Kwantung Army responded
  with vigor to skirmishes at Nomonhan on the desolate west Manchu-
  rian frontier with Outer Mongolia in May 1939. The escalating but
  undeclared border war raged through the summer. Casualties were
  severe. The Japanese lost eighteen thousand men, the equivalent of a
  division and a half. Both sides used aircraft, armor, and artillery.
  Although Japanese infantrymen and pilots proved their courage and
  tenacity, General Georgy Zhukov's great offensive on August 20
  smashed the Japanese Sixth Army. An armistice was agreed upon in
  the middle of September. 3
  Overwhelmed by Soviet material superiority and the skillful orches-
  tration of combined arms, the Japanese army sought refuge in postmor-
  tem analyses stressing the power of the Japanese spirit and cold steel.
  Operational thinking remained essentially primitive, unscientific, com-
  placent, narrow, and simplistic. Japanese commanders were little bet-
  ter than what Liddell Hart called "bow and arrow generals." The
  army's performance against the despised Chinese had contributed to
  the unshakable faith in spiritual inculcation (seishin kyoiku). Army
  leaders always argued that Japan's inferiority in raw materials, fi-
  nances, and demographic base was counterbalanced by its moral and
  psychological superiority. In a new era of dive bombers, self-propelled
  artillery, and armored divisions, the Japanese continued to glorify a
  wasteful anachronism, an army of brave but unprotected foot soldiers.
  Although the Kwantung Army leadership was purged after the set-
  back at Nomonhan, basic war plans calling for an offensive against the
  Soviet Union were not modified. The new deputy chief of staff of the
  Kwantung Army, Major General Endo Saburo, urged the systematic
  buildup of Manchukuo and an immediate change in the Kwantung
  Army mission. He argued for a defensive strategy for the near future,
  3 The definitive treatment of the Nomonhan incident is by Alvin D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan
  Against Russia, 1939, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985).
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  THE ASCENT OF TOJO 
  323
  entailing engagement of the Soviets on Manchurian soil if hostilities
  did occur. But his words fell on deaf ears. The army general staffs
  1940 contingency plan retained the old offensive concept which re-
  mained on the books for another four years, until 1944.4
  THE ASCENT OF TOJO
  The emperor put his finger on Japan's fundamental dilemma when
  during a liaison conference in February 1938, he expressed doubts
  about the course of events in China. Was it feasible, the monarch
  asked the war minister, to be contemplating three national efforts at
  the same time: protracted hostilities with China, preparations against
  Soviet Russia, and expansion of the navy? General Sugiyama Shige-
  maru attempted to temporize, replying in effect that every effort
  would be made after consultations with the cabinet. Such waffling
  apparently left the emperor extremely dissatisfied, for this was the
  same Sugiyama who had assured the throne in 1937 that the China
  affair would be settled within a month or so.
  Most of the dissonant themes seemed to find resolution in the per-
  son of Tojo Hideki, who became vice-minister of war in 1938. A
  precise, well-connected, and self-righteous general known for his devo-
  tion to detail, Tojo sought to squelch the more cautious elements in
  the army who were not dedicated to winning the conflict in China. In
  the autumn of 1938, Tojo made a simplistic, fire-eating speech before
  the Veterans' Association claiming that the solution of the China prob-
  lem had been delayed by Soviet, British, and American assistance to
  the Nationalists. Japan, he said, must make resolute preparations
  against the Reds in the north and the Anglo-Saxon powers in the
  south. Under banner headlines, the press reported that Tojo advo-
  cated a two-front war.
  After being transferred to the air force for a year and a half, Tojo
  became war minister in the second Konoe cabinet in July 1940. As in
  1938, a number of factors worked in his favor: his demonstrated admin-
  istrative and executive skills in important assignments, his aggressive
  patriotism and political steadiness, his persuasiveness and sincerity,
  and his cultivation of important associates. At the beginning, Tojo was
  impressed by Konoe's caution, by his exhortations to end the China
  war, and by his desire to improve the ties between the high command
  and the government and to harmonize interservice relations.
  4 GSS,Niichusensd(3), vol. 10, pp. 3-68,71-149;BBSS,Kamdgun{\),pt. 4,chap. 3,andpt. 5;
  EndoSaburo, Nitckujugonen sensd to watakushi (Tokyo: Nitchu shorin, 1974), pp. 180-4.
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  324 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  Apparently convinced that the best way to climb out of a hole was to
  widen it, the army leaders had decided that the impasse in China could
  be broken only by occupying Southeast Asia. The thrust of the Konoe
  cabinet's new policy was to transform the China conflict into a Greater
  East Asian War (Dai Toa senso). With the colonial powers distracted
  by German and Italian victories in Europe, Japan could turn toward
  the south, a region rich in vital resources. If Japan controlled the area,
  foreign assistance reaching Chiang Kai-shek from Indochina, Hong
  Kong, and Burma could be cut off. Bases in Vietnam would also prove
  useful as a springboard for further advances against objectives like
  Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. The southern advance was to
  depend on diplomacy, but force might be used if necessary. To both
  Tojo and the experienced, voluble, and tough-minded foreign minis-
  ter, Matsuoka Yosuke, force was the servant of diplomacy, a deterrent
  or lever, not a bluff or provocation. Firmness, not conciliatory ges-
  tures, was needed to prevent encirclement.
  Enthralled by the prowess of the German army and the rosy reports
  from Berlin, Tojo and his associates favored closer ties with the Nazi
  regime. But important navy leaders were not enthusiastic. To per-
  suade them, Tojo argued that Japan ran the danger of "missing the
  bus." The defeat of France and Holland might presage German politi-
  cal control of their Asian colonies. The Germans assured the Japanese
  that the Tripartite Pact would restrain the United States from entering
  the war on Britain's behalf. Matsuoka parried questions by insisting
  that he intended to improve relations with the Soviet Union, that the
  Reich would assist Japan in obtaining oil, that a final decision about
  Japanese participation in the European War would not be automatic,
  that U.S.-Japanese ties would be improved when the opportunity
  arose, and that the chances of America's provoking a "critical situa-
  tion" were only fifty-fifty.
  The Tripartite Pact among Germany, Italy, and Japan, finally
  signed in September 1940, became one of the major stumbling blocks
  to good relations between the United States and Japan. Tojo was glad
  to see pressure exerted on the Americans, who had been steadily
  hampering Japan's "necessary expansion." "World totalitarianism,"
  he claimed, "will take the place of Anglo-Saxonism, which is bankrupt
  and will be wiped out." Japan had to ally itself with forces challenging
  the defunct status quo.5
  5 GSS, Nitchu senso (3), vol. 10, pp. 153-361; TSM, vol. 5, chap 1; TSM, vol. 6, chaps. 1, 2;
  BBSS, Daitoa senso kaisen keii (2), chaps. 6,7.
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  FUMBLING FOR DIRECTION 
  325
  FUMBLING FOR DIRECTION
  Toward the end of 1940, the high command commenced a serious
  examination of potential military and naval operations against the
  Western powers; by the following spring, both the army and the navy
  general staffs were in agreement that if the Japanese used force in the
  south, this would mean war with the United States. There seemed to
  be good reason to downplay the Americans as a military adversary.
  Small, ill-equipped, and lacking trained reserves, the U.S. Army in
  1941 has been compared with the Swedish army, a medium-sized
  military establishment. Japan's military and naval leaders selectively
  used reports that the American public was disunited, isolationist, deca-
  dent, and more interested in conducting business as usual than in
  waging desperate warfare. High-ranking Japanese officers who had
  studied in or been assigned to the United States or Britain began to be
  transferred out of important posts in the War Ministry or general staff,
  in favor of Germanophiles. The Japanese army willingly accepted the
  confident open predictions and estimates of the navy's hawkish ele-
  ments, although a number of admirals entertained serious misgivings
  that they dared not voice.
  Western opposition in Southeast Asia was deemed accurately to be
  disjointed and feeble. As late as 1940, however, when the Japanese
  moved into northern Indochina, the army-unlike the navy-still be-
  lieved that even if the East Indies were occupied, Britain could be
  separated from the United States. The Americans could be expected to
  jettison British interests once the Germans had succeeded in bringing
  the "old and infirm" English to their knees, and hence there would be
  no need to fight. The Japanese army remained convinced that the navy
  would carry the main burden of operations against the Americans, and
  so they drafted only limited plans for ground offensives. They made
  no substantive preparations to defend the zones to be occupied or the
  resources to be exploited. Once Southeast Asia had been overrun, the
  army intended to withdraw its forces to the Manchurian theater to face
  the chief hypothetical enemy, the Soviet Union.
  In early 1941, Foreign Minister Matsuoka decided on a grandiose
  diplomatic scheme designed to exert greater restraint on the United
  States while cutting off China from its last important source of exter-
  nal support. He would try to resolve the major tensions between Japan
  and the Soviet Union after the Nomonhan war, perhaps even bringing
  the Soviets into the Tripartite Pact-the so-called Continental Alliance
  idea. When Matsuoka traveled to Europe in the spring of 1941 he
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  found that Russo-German ties were far more strained than he had
  expected, and so he settled for a five-year Soviet-Japanese Neutrality
  Pact, signed in Moscow in April. The following month, Matsuoka
  finally instructed the ambassador in Washington, Admiral Nomura
  Kichisaburo, to begin formal discussions with the Americans. German
  pressure compelled Matsuoka to adopt a bellicose stance from the
  outset, especially because he was losing hope that the United States
  would try to convince Chiang Kai-shek to negotiate a settlement with
  Japan from a position of weakness. In late May, Matsuoka estimated
  the prospect of success in the parleys with the United States at only 30
  percent.
  Since 1940 the American government had tried to restrain Japanese
  expansion through economic sanctions, a course of action no more
  successful than the Japanese policy of deterring counteraction and
  buildup by the United States by taking a tough stance. To little avail,
  the Americans had abrogated the Commercial Treaty of 1911, im-
  posed embargoes on the export of scrap steel and iron, and reduced or
  threatened to cut off other vital raw materials. By 1941 the acquisition
  of oil from the East Indies was becoming crucial to the Japanese, but
  discussions with the Dutch, bolstered behind the scenes by the United
  States and Britain, were proceeding poorly. If the Japanese were to
  take military action against the Indies, they would also have to mount
  campaigns against Malaya and the Philippines. On May 3, Tojo as-
  serted that to conduct operations in Malaya, bases would be needed in
  Indochina and Thailand. Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama agreed on
  June 12 that troops should be sent into southern French Indochina to
  protect it from the Anglo-Saxons as well as to put pressure on China
  and the southwest Pacific region. When the topic arose again on June
  16, Tojo insisted that unless the task were undertaken by year's end, it
  would become necessary to abandon the whole idea of the Greater East
  Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.6
  THE PERSIMMON THEORY
  Despite many prior indications, the German invasion of the Soviet
  Union on June 22 took most Japanese civilian and military authorities
  by surprise. Complicated discussions ensued about policy vis-a-vis the
  6 GSS, Nitchu senso (3) vol. 10, pp. 365-88; Tanemura Sako, Daihon'ei kimitsu nisshi, new ed.
  (Tokyo: Daiyamondosha, 1979), pp. 41-55; TSM, vol. 5, chap. 2; BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu
  (2), pp. 235-41; Nobutaka Ike, Japan's Decision for War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
  Press, 1967), pp. 53-6.
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  THE PERSIMMON THEORY 
  327
  Russo-German War as well as the question of taking over south
  Indochina. The navy vigorously opposed a Japanese war against the
  Soviet Union, which was not its main hypothetical enemy. Matsuoka,
  however, predicted a swift German victory over both the Soviet Union
  and Britain in 1941 and led a personal campaign to get Japan immedi-
  ately into the war against the Soviet Union. He was sure that the
  United States could not or would not assist Communist Russia if Japan
  attacked quickly. But Tojo and the army resisted Matsuoka's argu-
  ments, as war with the Soviet Union would require giving up on China
  and the southern advance.
  A series of liaison conferences eventuated in the climactic Imperial
  Conference of July 2. The conference endorsed the top-secret Outline
  of National Policies, which envisaged an advance south and, depend-
  ing on the situation, a settlement of the northern question too. It
  reaffirmed specifically that the Japanese would apply pressure from
  the south to bring down the Chinese Nationalist regime. Primary
  attention was to be devoted to Indochina and Thailand. Significantly,
  Japan would not be deterred by the possibility of hostilities with the
  United States and Britain; that is, Japan would begin war preparations
  against both.
  As for the Russo-German War, Japan would not intervene for the
  time being but would secretly improve military preparedness against
  the Soviet Union. This meant that the Kwantung Army would be in-
  creased from 400,000 to 700,000 men and provided with vast amounts
  of additional materiel, equipment, horses, and aircraft. The buildup in
  Manchuria was code-named Kantokuen (Kwantung Army special ma-
  neuvers). Units in Korea, Hokkaido, and southern Sakhalin would also
  be strengthened. Nevertheless, Japan would resort to force to settle the
  northern question only if the Russo-German War developed to Japan's
  own advantage.
  Despite Tojo's expressions of caution, anti-Soviet war fever seemed
  to be sweeping the War Ministry. A catchphrase of the time suggested
  Japan's proper stance toward the Russo-German War: One should
  wait until the persimmon ripened and fell. But there were varying
  interpretations of the idea. An impatient man might knock the persim-
  mon off the tree with a pole when the fruit had only started to ripen.
  Others might believe that the persimmon was ripe only if it fell when
  the tree was shaken. Still others might argue that one should pick the
  persimmon off the ground only after it had dropped of its own weight.
  Tojo was not immune to the hope of savoring the persimmon, al-
  though he remained careful about the method of obtaining it. On one
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  328 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  occasion, he admitted that attention should be given to the possibility
  that the Germans could beat the Soviets if Japan cooperated; fighting
  alone, the Wehrmacht might bog down.
  Meanwhile, Matsuoka's arbitrary activities and outbursts were im-
  peding the progress of negotiations with the United States. For exam-
  ple, as soon as he learned of the German attack on Russia, he dared to
  tell the emperor, without first coordinating his views with those of the
  cabinet, that Japan should join the fray immediately. Prime Minister
  Konoe, discomfited, decided by mid-July that he might resign or else
  get rid of the foreign minister. On July 16, therefore, he adopted the
  latter course, organizing a new cabinet with Admiral Toyoda Teijiro as
  foreign minister. The main advocate of war with the Soviets was now
  out of power.
  The Japanese intelligence service, noting the slowdown of the Ger-
  man invasion of western Russia, predicted in early August that a Nazi
  victory was impossible in 1941 and improbable thereafter. The For-
  eign Ministry also believed that the Russo-German War would be a
  protracted one. Tojo and Sugiyama, however, remained surprisingly
  optimistic about Germany's chances and argued that the Soviets might
  be playing into the invaders' hands. In any case, the Japanese did not
  attack the Soviet Union; the persimmon was too green.7
  THE SOUTH BECKONS
  At the end of July, the Japanese occupation of south Indochina took
  place on schedule, and as a result, Japan's relations with the United
  States, already poor, took a sharp turn for the worse. From Washing-
  ton, Ambassador Nomura sent reports that the United States was
  drawing closer to the Soviet Union and would probably not stand by
  idly if Japan drove northward. Foreign Minister Toyoda felt that the
  Americans were overly excited and that efforts should be made to calm
  them down, but as he admitted to the U.S. ambassador in early Sep-
  tember, he was having difficulty at home controlling opposing influ-
  ences and dissident groups.
  Seeking a path to break the impasse with the Americans, Konoe in
  early August proposed a summit conference between himself and Presi-
  dent Franklin D. Roosevelt somewhere in the Pacific. To the relief of
  7 Matsuoka Yosuke denki kankokai, ed., Maisuoka Ydsuke (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1974), pp. 745-
  1080; Saito Yoshie, Azamukareta rekishi (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1955), chaps. 8-10;
  BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (2), pp. 340-53; BBSS, Kanldgun (2), chap, i; Ike, Japan's Deci-
  s"m> PP- 77-9o> Gomikawa Junpei, Gozen kaigi (Tokyo: Bungei shunjusha, 1978), pp. 37-95.
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  THE SOUTH BECKONS 
  329
  the Germans and of hawkish elements inside Japan, the meeting never
  materialized. On September 6 the Imperial Conference approved a
  new policy paper developed by the high command. Although the
  emperor understood that the government intended to stress diplomacy
  instead of war, the policy paper placed the option for war ahead of the
  option for peace. The document asserted that Japan's own interests
  demanded that it complete war preparations against the south, tenta-
  tively by the last ten days of October, with full resolve to fight the
  United States, Britain, and the Netherlands if necessary. Limited by
  minimum desiderata and maximum concessions, the diplomats should
  try to achieve national objectives, but if the demands could not be met
  by the first ten days of October, the immediate decision should be
  made to commence hostilities against the three Western powers. An
  uneasy emperor expressed his earnest regret to the conferees that the
  army and navy chiefs of staff had not addressed the question of diplo-
  macy's precedence over war.
  Reference materials prepared for the meeting of September 6 reveal
  the high command's fundamental thinking. America in particular
  seemed determined to preserve the status quo in Asia: "To dominate
  the world and defend democracy, it aims to prevent our empire from
  rising and developing in East Asia." Under the circumstances, the
  policies of Japan and the United States were mutually incompatible. It
  was "inevitable historically that the conflict between the two nations,
  sometimes intense and sometimes mild, will eventually lead to war." A
  rationale and warning emerged: Unless the United States changed its
  policy, Japan was "put into a desperate situation, where it must resort
  to the ultimate step-war-to defend itself and assure its preserva-
  tion." Even if Japan yielded and abandoned a portion of its national
  policy for the sake of a transient peace, America-its military posture
  reinforced-was bound to demand even more concessions. Eventually
  Japan would "lie prostrate at the feet of the United States."
  The day after the Imperial Conference, Tojo explained his think-
  ing to Prince Higashikuni: The United States was putting pressure
  on Japan through an encirclement in concert with Britain, China,
  and the Netherlands. Peace on American terms doubtless would
  mean gradual impoverishment for Japan, whereas war offered a fifty-
  fifty possibility of victory. Tojo admitted that there were risks in
  resorting to force but that that was better than "being ground down
  without doing anything."8
  8 GSS, Nitchu senso (3) vol. 10, pp. 531-47; TSM, vol. 6, pp. 245-71; BBSS, Daihon'ei
  rikugunbu{2), pp. 425-53; Ike, Japan's Decision, pp. 133-63.
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  33O 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  THE YAMAMOTO SCHEME
  Victory over the United States, however, would depend mainly on
  victory at sea. The Japanese navy, dominated by battleship admirals,
  had long planned for decisive battles against the U.S. Pacific Fleet
  north of the Marshalls and east of the Marianas. But the outcome was
  not clear, and the war games degenerated into a war of attrition, which
  was unacceptable: The Japanese could not hope to defeat the United
  States by such indirect measures as the destruction of the American-
  Asiatic Flotilla, the conquest of U.S. possessions in the Far East, and
  the disruption of American maritime trade.
  The first realistic plan for an unconventional attack against the U.S.
  battle fleet, redeployed to Hawaii in May 1940, was the idea of Admi-
  ral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander of the Combined Fleet. Whereas
  his colleagues could think only of submarine action and massive sur-
  face operations against targets in Hawaiian waters, Yamamoto drew
  lessons from the aerial torpedo assault tactics against battleships, re-
  vealed in the Japanese naval maneuvers of spring 1940. Major air
  operations against bases in the mainland United States were out of the
  question, but not against objectives farther west. Map maneuvers in
  November suggested to Yamamoto that the oil-rich Indies could not
  be subdued without provoking the United States as well as Britain into
  war, but the Japanese dared not risk inviting a counteroffensive by the
  U.S. Pacific Fleet while the main body of the Japanese navy was
  dispersed in the south. Consequently, by early January 1941, Yama-
  moto recommended to the navy minister that in the unhappy event of
  war against the United States, the Japanese should strive to cripple the
  Americans' main fleet in the Pacific by an air offensive concurrent
  with the initiation of the campaign into Southeast Asia. Enemy mo-
  rale, civilian and military, would be damaged, perhaps to the point of
  helplessness; and the U.S. Navy would be prevented from harrying
  the exposed flank of the Japanese and unleashing psychologically dis-
  turbing air strikes against cities in the homeland.
  Of course, many serious questions vexed Yamamoto. The Hawaii
  operation was spawned by desperation, and annihilation by the foe
  was a distinct possibility. On his own initiative, known only to a few
  trusted naval associates, Yamamoto ordered a top-secret feasibility
  study to be undertaken by Admiral Onishi Takijiro, an expert on
  naval aviation. Onishi was assisted by Commander Genda Minoru,
  who had studied the extremely successful November 1940 raid by
  British carrier-based planes against the Italian naval base at Taranto.
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  THE YAMAMOTO SCHEME 
  331
  Genda concluded that a Japanese strike plan against Pearl Harbor was
  feasible, although dangerous, and that it would require all six of Ja-
  pan's fleet carriers and its best pilots. Approximately four hundred
  aircraft of all types would be necessary. Armor-piercing bombs would
  be useful against the deck armor of battleships, the prime target, but
  torpedoes undoubtedly offered the best method of horizontal attack if
  launched at very low altitude and low speed. A small number of
  submarines should precede the task force.
  After receiving Onishi's recommendations in early April, Yama-
  moto officially ordered the study of the Hawaii plan by his own Com-
  bined Fleet staff. As relations with the United States deteriorated,
  there was a gnawing sense in the Japanese navy that Japan's natural
  resources were being depleted while those of its antagonists were build-
  ing up. In mid-September, after the annual map exercises at the Naval
  War College, Yamamoto tried out his Pearl Harbor scheme with a
  special study team of thirty high-ranking officers. Results were incon-
  clusive. The first map play proved successful; the second, costly and
  far less promising. The participants questioned the possibility of main-
  taining secrecy and of refueling in the wintry north Pacific. When the
  chief of the naval general staff first learned of the Hawaii plan, he
  called it very risky. In the strategic sense, the naval general staff also
  questioned, not without reason, the wisdom of diverting the carriers'
  striking power from the Southeast Asia sector, particularly if the
  American Pacific Fleet did not launch an early offensive sortie. At the
  political level, too, the Japanese navy had not entirely abandoned hope
  for a diplomatic settlement, especially as cautious Admiral Nomura
  was ambassador in Washington.
  Although a number of officers liked Yamamoto's plan, its opponents
  included many senior admirals: the designated task force commander,
  Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, a torpedo expert; his chief of staff, an air
  officer, Admiral Kusaka Ryunosuke; Air Fleet Commander Tsukahara
  Nishizo; and even Admiral Onishi, whom Kusaka had influenced. The
  resistance was overcome by Yamamoto's reasoning, cajolery, and, ulti-
  mately, threat to resign unless the basic plan were adopted. Training for
  air operations was carried out in the shallow roadstead at Kagoshima
  Bay, which closely resembled Pearl Harbor.'
  9 BBSS, Daihon'ei nkugunbu (2), pp. 416-17; BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (3), pp. 146-51;
  BBSS, Hawai sakusen, chaps. 1-3; Agawa Hiroyuki, Yamamoto Isoroku, new ed. (Tokyo:
  Shinchosha, 1969), pp. 234-54; Hara Akinori, Teikoku kaigun shireichokan no nazo (Tokyo:
  Tokuma shoten, 1972), pp. 11-48; Kusaka Ryunosuke, Rengo kantai sanbocho no kaiso (To-
  kyo: Kowado, 1979), pp. 24-45.
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  332 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  JAPAN UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
  As the secret October deadline approached for successful consumma-
  tion of negotiations in Washington, Tojo took the position that Japan
  did not have time to make further adjustments in its final position on a
  draft understanding with the United States. "We are already behind
  schedule," the war minister reminded his colleagues on September 20,
  "and circumstances are pressing." Five days later, the armed forces'
  chiefs of staff shocked Prime Minister Konoe by insisting that October
  15 be the very latest deadline for a peaceable settlement. The prime
  minister thought seriously of resigning. As the Japanese embassy ad-
  mitted privately to the Americans, Nomura would have to show some
  results, or the Konoe cabinet might fall as the result of assassination,
  coup d'etat, or sheer dissatisfaction with the impasse. Any new regime
  would undoubtedly be made up of hard-line military types in the grip
  of the Germans.
  Sugiyama told the liaison conferees on October 4 that the high
  command was opposed to further delay, to which Admiral Nagano
  Osami added, "We want quick action." Clearly, the leadership of the
  armed forces had become convinced that the negotiations were hope-
  less and that the Americans were argumentative and uncompromising.
  The stumbling blocks to understanding were numerous and complex:
  the China problem, equitable access to the resources of Southeast
  Asia, reconciliation of the objectives of the Axis partners, and policies
  toward the Russo-German War.
  At a liaison conference on October 9, Sugiyama reiterated the
  army's hard line. The high command, he insisted, would not extend
  the deadline beyond the fifteenth of the month. Pushed into a corner,
  Konoe tried desperately to win more time for negotiation from the
  service ministers, but Tojo would not back down; risk taking, he told
  Konoe, was imperative on occasion. On the key question of withdraw-
  ing forces from China, Tojo refused to consider compromise. Japan
  was at the point of no return. To change the decree of the Imperial
  Conference of September 6 was unthinkable.
  At the liaison conference on October 14, Tojo insisted that opera-
  tional preparations for war be suspended only in case of diplomatic
  success; he was convinced that the talks were doomed. If Japan bowed
  to American demands regarding China, the protracted and expensive
  conflict on the mainland would have been rendered meaningless. Man-
  chukuo and Korea would be endangered; north China would become
  Communist; and Japan would be entirely undone. Withdrawal from
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  WEIGHING WAR VERSUS DIPLOMACY 
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  China would mean dishonorable retreat. Compromise after compro-
  mise by one side was not diplomacy-it was unilateral capitulation.
  Tojo wanted the parleys ended, preparations for early hostilities to
  continue, and the cabinet to resign.
  Konoe's position was rendered untenable by Tojo's obduracy, which
  presumably mirrored the stand of the senior military leadership. On
  October 16 his cabinet resigned. To the surprise of almost all observers,
  including the highest officers in the War Ministry, Tojo was called on to
  form a new government. Undoubtedly a decisive consideration for the
  senior statesmen and imperial advisers was the expectation that Tojo
  could best control the army if a reversal of the September decision
  provoked military opposition, political murders, or public right-wing
  disorders. The new premier, promoted to full general, was to remain on
  active duty and retain his post as war minister. His cabinet, announced
  on October 18, was made up mainly of army officers, navy officers, and
  top-ranking civilian bureaucrats. In short, the Japanese military was to
  have its turn taking full responsibility for governing the country, with
  no chance for excuses.I0
  WEIGHING WAR VERSUS DIPLOMACY
  Tojo later denied vehemently that his new regime was determined
  from its inception to wage war. According to the chief cabinet secre-
  tary, Hoshino Naoki, time ran out because of the Japanese navy lead-
  ers' contention that if hostilities began after December 1941, Japan
  was sure to lose: "They said that they would certainly not be responsi-
  ble for winning the war if it were to be started beyond the time limit
  after negotiations had failed." The balance-of-strength factor was very
  much on the mind of Tojo and his associates. During the winter of
  1940 the army asked the Economic Mobilization Bureau to evaluate
  Japan's economic position should it go to war against the United States
  and Britain as early as the following spring of 1941. The ensuing
  report pointed out the country's vulnerability in shipping and natural
  resources, especially liquid fuel. A new study undertaken in the sum-
  mer of 1941, geared to a hypothetical deadline of November, found
  that beyond two years after the initiation of hostilities, Japan's indus-
  trial and economic capabilities could not be assured. If Japan launched
  full-fledged hostilities against America and Britain with stocks of fuel
  10 BBSS, Daihon'ei nkugunbu (2), pp. 525-30; Ike, Japan's Decision, pp. 173-84; Shigenori
  Togo, The Cause of Japan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), pp. 53-60.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  available, air operations could last only a year or so, and decisive
  combat could be conducted at sea for only approximately six months.
  Japanese critics have argued that the economic studies by the gov-
  ernment and the armed forces were superficial, tardy, predetermined,
  and poorly coordinated. Nevertheless, the dire predictions fed the
  notion among military and naval chiefs that Japan should go to war
  quickly before its capacity to fight dwindled away. At the October 23
  liaison conference, Navy Chief of Staff Nagano stated strongly that the
  situation was urgent and that concise deliberations were imperative, as
  the navy was consuming four hundred tons of oil per hour. General
  Sugiyama agreed that time was crucial, as matters had already been
  delayed a month. "Hurry up and go ahead," he urged. Although Tojo
  insisted that the government preferred careful, responsible study, the
  psychological atmosphere limited his options. "It would have required
  enormous courage," observed Sato Kenryo, the military affairs section
  chief at the time, "to voice an anti-war view when pro-war fever was
  boiling." Publicly, Tojo thundered, "There is no retreat." Privately,
  he admitted that the army could "manage somehow" in 1942 and 1943
  but that he did not know what would happen after 1944.
  The liaison conferences dragged on. On October 26 there was seri-
  ous consideration of postponing hostilities until March 1942, but the
  service chiefs insisted that time was already working against Japan and
  that the navy in particular needed to get under way by the end of
  November 1941. Finance Minister Kaya Okinori tried to get at the
  heart of the problem of national strength by asking whether war or
  peace would be better to secure materials, but no clear-cut answer
  presented itself.
  By October 30 the study of fundamental alternatives was completed
  at last. Essentially, the liaison conference concluded that although
  hostilities of course entailed risk, proceeding without war would be
  prohibitively costly to Japan's long-term power position. An early and
  successful resolution of the Japanese-American discussions could not
  be expected, and Tojo believed that conditional agreement was not
  feasible. There was considerable discussion of the American insistence
  on a time limit for Japan's military withdrawal from China. The army
  naturally opposed any such limit, but Tojo said he was willing to
  accept Japanese evacuation within twenty-five years, by 1966. The
  foreign minister argued against the general contention that acceptance
  of the American proposals would doom Japan to obscurity. When
  several other ministers, however, mentioned the need for further delib-
  erations, Tojo and the navy chief spoke at great length about the
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  WEIGHING WAR VERSUS DIPLOMACY 
  335
  urgency of a prompt decision, even if the conferees had to meet all
  night on November 1.
  The seventeen-hour marathon meeting of November 1 was marked
  by an unusual lack of consensus between the government and the high
  command. Both services resisted the notion of slicing thin the allow-
  able time between the foreseen suspension of diplomatic negotiations
  and the initiation of hostilities, and both dismissed the "no war" alter-
  native. Debate swirled around setting a date for a final deadline for
  ending talks with the Americans. After the army general staff finally
  accepted the deadline of November 30 for preparations, Tojo asked
  for another day's delay, to which the army twice responded, "Abso-
  lutely not." Navy Minister Shimada Shigetaro finally wheedled an
  understanding from the army that negotiations might go on until at
  least midnight on November 30. Only if the diplomats had failed by
  that hour would there be war.
  Much argument centered on the matter of guidelines for further
  parleys with the United States. The army's opposition to compromise
  was so violent that Foreign Minister Togo intimated that he might
  resign, an action that could bring down the government and force a
  new orientation in policy. Although each conferee privately nurtured
  varying degrees of pessimism regarding the prospects, the army's open
  vehemence had fostered consensus.
  An Imperial Conference met on November 5 to provide formal
  sanction for the recommendations derived from the eight liaison con-
  ferences: Japan had decided to fight the United States and Britain as
  well as Holland; the armed forces would complete preparations tar-
  geted for hostilities at the beginning of December. Meanwhile, efforts
  would continue to be made to reach agreement with America, but a
  deadline of December 1 was set for the achievement of success. Close
  relations with Thailand would be developed immediately preceding
  hostilities, through pressure if possible, by force if necessary.
  During the discussion that followed the formal presentations, Tojo
  insisted that Japan's demands regarding China were not unreason-
  able, considering that a million men had gone to the continent at a
  cost of 100,000 casualties, bereavement of families, hardship for four
  years, and an expenditure of dozens of billions of yen. Premature
  military withdrawal would encourage the Chinese to "behave worse"
  than they had before 1937, even to the point of trying to take over
  Manchuria, Korea, and Taiwan. The foreign minister was obliged to
  confess however that given the short time for decisive talks-a mere
  two weeks-there was little hope for diplomatic success.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  The chiefs of staff then provided a timetable of military and naval
  operations in the event that negotiations failed: a total of five months
  for the entire campaign against the Philippines, Malaya, and the
  Dutch East Indies. The president of the Privy Council praised the
  high command's estimates as realistic yet cautioned that predictions
  usually turned out badly. He understood the need for an early decision
  but identified several vital problems: the difficulty of engaging the
  powerful United States while the China conflict remained unresolved
  and the possibility that the Germans' war against Britain might turn
  into an anti-Japanese war, with the Americans joining the other white
  powers to encircle Japan because of a fancied Yellow Peril. In an
  unusually blunt comment, Hara Yoshimichi also reminded the confer-
  ees that Hitler had called the Japanese a second-class people.
  Admitting that Hara's points were well taken, Tojo argued that
  there was some hope for a breakthrough in the diplomatic deadlock, as
  the Americans were afflicted by various weaknesses of their own,
  centering on two-ocean operations, shortages of materials, and domes-
  tic problems. Through a vigorous deployment of armed forces, Japan
  would actually strengthen its negotiating hand. Anyhow, Tojo con-
  fessed, he could think of no other method, given the present circum-
  stances. His peroration summed up his fundamental outlook:
  How can we let the United States continue to do as it pleases, even though
  there is some uneasiness? Two years from now [1943] we will have no petro-
  leum for military use; ships will stop moving. When I think about the
  strengthening of American defenses in the southwestern Pacific, the expan-
  sion of the U.S. fleet, the unfinished China Incident, and so on, I see no end
  of difficulties. We can talk about suffering and austerity but can our people
  endure such a life for long? . . . I fear that we would become a third-class
  nation after two or three years if we merely sat tight.
  The recommended policy, Tojo stressed, reflected an intensive
  study of problems and probabilities. On the larger question of the
  moral basis for Japan's entry into hostilities, the prime minister stated:
  "There is some merit in making it clear that Britain and the United
  States represent a powerful threat to Japan's self-preservation."
  Neither Tojo nor the other participants explored the fundamental
  question of how the war was to be ended. The prime minister simply
  remarked that if Japan were "fair in governing the occupied areas,
  attitudes toward us would probably relent." The Americans might be
  enraged for a while, but later they would come to "understand" Ja-
  pan's motivations.
  Although the decisions on November 5 laid down the long-range
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  DIPLOMACY FOUNDERS 
  337
  war aims of Japan's leaders, they were concluded in very general
  terms. A liaison conference on November 15 proposed more con-
  cretely that Japan strive quickly to destroy American, British, and
  Dutch bases in Asia and to ensure Japan's self-defense; every effort
  should be made to hasten the fall of the Kuomintang regime, to work
  for the capitulation of Britain in concert with the Germans and Ital-
  ians, and to break the will of the United States; and early victories in
  the southwest Pacific would ensure a powerful strategic position with
  respect to raw materials and routes of transportation and would lay the
  groundwork for a protracted period of self-sufficiency. Views differed
  regarding the need to declare war before initiating hostilities."
  DIPLOMACY FOUNDERS
  As predicted in most quarters and feared in others, diplomatic conver-
  sations in Washington continued to sputter. Togo decided to reinforce
  the well-intentioned but inept Nomura with a professional diplomat,
  Kurusu Saburo. Instead of being dispatched to camouflage a Japanese
  decision for war, as many charged later, Kurusu left for Washington
  on November 5-with Tojo's blessing and the foreign minister's
  instructions-to impress Nomura with the urgency of the situation and
  to help break the impasse quickly. Soon it became apparent to the
  Tokyo government that the envoys in Washington were improvising
  desperately while the American position grew more unyielding. When
  Nomura and Kurusu proceeded to discuss the Japanese concept of the
  modus vivendi, which was largely designed to divert attention from the
  China problem, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull's first reactions
  revealed that the Americans were incensed by any proposal to sever
  aid to Chiang Kai-shek. It was known that the secretary of state was
  already consulting with British, Australian, Chinese, and Dutch diplo-
  mats, which served only to confirm Japanese suspicions of an Allied
  cordon.
  While the Japanese envoys in Washington tried to buy time for
  negotiations beyond November, the high command was hastening the
  state of operational readiness. On November 22, a liaison conference
  was already discussing the wording of a communique on the beginning
  of hostilities. Sugiyama warned that there was no time left from the
  standpoint of the military. Foreign Minister Togo realized, too, that
  II BBSS, Daihon'ei nkugunbu (2), pp. 574-87; ibid. (3), pp. 105-45, 152—72; Ike, Japan's
  Decision, pp. 184-249.
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  338 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  certain intransigent elements in the army and navy were actually try-
  ing to embarrass the negotiations by demanding that the American
  side agree to supply Japan with unreasonable amounts of oil.
  The practical breakdown of U.S.-Japanese negotiations occurred
  even before the deadline allowed by the Japanese high command.
  Togo had hoped to allay American suspicions by promising to with-
  draw Japanese troops from Indochina when the China conflict was
  brought to an end or an "equitable peace" was established in the
  Pacific region. As a first step, Japan was prepared to transfer its troops
  from the southern to the northern part of Indochina as soon as the
  current negotiations with the United States produced agreement. But
  even though the Americans wanted Japanese troops out of Indochina
  entirely, a number of proposals transmitted by Tokyo stirred ire in
  Washington; for example, the United States should release "a required
  quantity" of petroleum to Japan and suspend assistance to Chiang
  Kai-shek. Secretary of State Cordell Hull thought the latest Japanese
  conditions, which were regarded as representing Tokyo's final posi-
  tion, to be uncompromising and intended virtually to force a surren-
  der by the United States. The American government also knew about
  Japanese troop movements toward Indochina, presumably for use
  against Thailand.
  Consequently, instead of addressing the Japanese suggestion of a
  modus vivendi, on November 26 Hull submitted to the envoys a strictly
  confidential, tentative, and uncommitted "outline of proposed basis
  for agreement," embracing four established principles of American
  foreign policy plus six brand-new points bearing on economic matters.
  This document is known as the Hull note, but the Japanese have
  called it the Hull ultimatum ever since. As a basis for Japanese-
  American agreement, it listed such terms as a complete withdrawal of
  Japanese military, naval, air, and police forces from China and Indo-
  china; a mutual surrender of extraterritorial rights in China; and recog-
  nition of only the Nationalist government. Nomura and Kurusu told
  Hull that they found the note unacceptable. In Tokyo, the crestfallen
  Togo conferred immediately with the prime minister and his stupefied
  colleagues, who all agreed that there was nothing further to do. Many
  of the army and navy leaders were elated by the Americans' uncompro-
  mising attitude.
  Once the top-secret Japanese deadline for a diplomatic settlement
  had passed, the Japanese navy released Admiral Nagumo's strike
  force. On November 26 the flotilla set sail from the mist-shrouded
  Kuril Islands, bound for Pearl Harbor. (After the war, Tojo admitted
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  DIPLOMACY FOUNDERS 
  339
  that he was unacquainted with the operational details of the Hawaii
  assault, and the Foreign Ministry knew even less about the surprise
  nature of the impending attack.) On the same day, Tojo advised the
  emperor of the distressing diplomatic developments. The monarch
  requested the further counsel of the senior ministers (jushin). After
  briefings by Tojo and Foreign Minister Togo, some agreed that there
  was no alternative to war, and others expressed concern about the
  prospects. Not one of the elder statesmen suggested that Japan accept
  the terms of the Hull note. Konoe did wonder whether it might still be
  possible "to persevere, to wait and see," but Tojo asserted that discus-
  sions always reverted to the conclusion that war was unavoidable.
  In preparation for the last Imperial Conference on December i, a
  liaison meeting was convened on the preceding day. Togo secured
  agreement to alert the ambassadors in Berlin and Rome that U.S.-
  Japanese negotiations were on the verge of rupture and that the danger
  of hostilities was extremely high. Japan would want Germany and
  Italy to go to war against America immediately and to agree never to
  make a separate peace with the Anglo-Saxon countries. As for Japan's
  policy toward the United States during this last brief phase before war
  erupted, the conferees asked that diplomacy be used to prevent goad-
  ing the Americans into accelerating their own state of preparedness.
  Foreign Minister Togo did not know the date when hostilities would
  commence until Admiral Nagano finally whispered to him, "Decem-
  ber 8." Togo asked that the envoys in Washington be informed, but
  the conferees agreed that the diplomats would have to be sacrificed.
  The Imperial Conference of December i met to review the failure of
  negotiations with the United States and to approve hostilities against
  the Western powers. There was no change in the arguments presented
  by the government or the high command, although efforts were made
  to balance a tone of optimism with ostensible attention to realities. In
  view of the lateness of the hour strategically, Privy Council President
  Hara's interpellations were not especially searching, but he stressed
  the need for psychological solidarity and suggested that early settle-
  ment of hostilities should be on the leaders' minds. Discerning no
  objections to the basic agenda before the conference, the prime minis-
  ter concluded with a ringing declaration of loyalty and devotion to the
  throne at this moment when the empire was standing "at the threshold
  of glory or oblivion."
  The rubber-stamp Imperial Conference was followed up by a liaison
  meeting on December 4. It was agreed that Japan's final diplomatic
  note to the United States, severing relations and in effect declaring
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  34° 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  war, should arrive in Washington neither too early nor too late in
  terms of the high command's operational needs. The most important
  thing now, observed one conferee, "is to win the war." While the
  foreign minister worked on the long final notification, Japanese army
  and navy attack forces moved into position in the southwestern and
  central Pacific. On December 2 the U.S. government asked for an
  explanation of the concentration of Japanese units in Indochina. The
  Japanese replied on December 5 that troop movements had been
  stimulated by Chinese Nationalist activity along the northern border
  of Indochina but that the reports were exaggerated. In receipt of
  sheaves of intelligence reports that Japanese forces were moving to-
  ward Malaya and Thailand, Roosevelt dispatched an urgent personal
  message to the emperor on December 6, urging Japan's withdrawal
  and restraint. The note was delayed by the army in Tokyo for ten
  hours, but it is improbable that prompt delivery would have made any
  difference, for no American guarantees or compromises were dis-
  cerned, and Tojo judged that the message could accomplish nothing.12
  Despite the last-minute ineptitudes and misunderstandings, a cer-
  tain sense of anticlimax characterized the Japanese side during the last
  week before the Pearl Harbor assault. Togo used the word carefreeness
  to describe the attitude of the high command after the decision for war
  had been reached. Under Tojo's leadership, the government was
  about to leap from the veranda of Kiyomizu Temple. As Terasaki
  Hidenari, the first secretary in Washington, admitted privately at the
  end of November 1941: "Japan, like any other nation engaged in a
  protracted war, is psychologically 'abnormal' and a 'little off in its
  thinking."1*
  "TORA! TORA! TORA!"
  After constant experimentation, by about November 11 the Japanese
  navy had resolved its final technical problems concerning aerial torpe-
  12 In Washington, the Japanese embassy had bungled matters by delivering the final notifica-
  tion to Hull eighty minutes late on December 7 (local time)-an hour after the commence-
  ment of the raid against Oahu. That United States signal intelligence analysts had broken the
  Foreign Ministry's sensitive Purple cipher in 1940 and were thus able to intercept and decode
  all diplomatic message traffic does not absolve the Japanese staff in Washington from a charge
  of negligence that Togo himself admitted later. Learning from U.S. radio broadcasts about
  the alleged Japanese duplicity in striking militarily while peace talks were still under way, the
  foreign minister notified Tojo. The latter was astonished, his first reaction being to wonder
  whether the Americans had not deliberately delayed delivery of the fateful telegram.
  13 BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (2), pp. 655-76; Ike, Japan's Decision, pp. 249-85; Togo, The
  Cause of Japan, pp. 198, 210-13; Gwen Terasaki, Bridge 10 the Sun (Harmonds worth, En-
  gland: Penguin, 1962), p. 71.
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  "TORA! TORA! TORA!" 
  341
  does. The staff's last major worry was whether the task force could get
  to the launching site, little more than two hundred miles from Oahu,
  without being detected. An approach by a great circle route, from the
  north instead of the west, was expected to bypass the usual merchant-
  man lanes and to evade enemy reconnaissance. Various deceptive mea-
  sures, for example, the creation of a phony signals network, were used
  to confuse U.S. intelligence and conceal the whereabouts of the fleet
  carriers, even briefly. On December 3, Admiral Yamamoto designated
  December 8 (Japan time) as Y Day. In Honolulu this would be Decem-
  ber 7, a day chosen not merely because it was the Americans' sabbath
  but also because meteorological conditions would be good and the
  Pacific Fleet generally returned to port in full strength each weekend.
  The next combination of favorable factors would not occur until
  March 1942.
  The Combined Fleet's headquarters ordered Admiral Nagumo to
  proceed for Hawaii with the signal "Climb Mount Niitaka!" By De-
  cember 6, the thirty-one warships under Nagumo's command were
  speeding south southeast at twenty-four knots, blacked out, silent,
  and refueled for the last time. The two large carriers and the four light
  carriers each bore about seventy aircraft. The rest of the task force
  included two screening battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers,
  and three submarines on patrol two hundred miles ahead. The fleet
  train of eight precious tankers had been released by December 7.
  Already en route to Hawaii were twenty-seven submarines, five of
  which carried midget submersibles, and eleven launch planes.
  The waters were unexpectedly calm, and a light fog reduced visi-
  bility-"divine grace," in Commander Genda's words. Shortly before
  the launch, however, the anxious Nagumo received an intelligence
  report that eight U.S. battleships lay in the Pearl Harbor roadstead,
  not in open Lahaina anchorage. Unfortunately for the Japanese, ev-
  ery American carrier and heavy cruiser seemed to be absent. Na-
  gumo had been given permission to abandon the operation if he
  encountered an enemy fleet as late as X minus two days, but by
  December 7 (Hawaii time), four hundred miles from the target, it
  was too late to change the plan. The American battleship flotilla was
  well worth the assault, and perhaps some of the carriers would be
  back in port by Sunday. No Japanese planes were diverted to look
  for the absent enemy warships.
  At 6:00 A.M. on December 7, in rather heavy swells 230 miles north
  of Oahu, the initial waves of 183 aircraft began to take off, under the
  overall control of Commander Fuchida Mitsuo-bombers, torpedo
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  342 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  planes, and Zero-sen fighters. Homing in on a Honolulu radio station,
  Fuchida was heartened to hear that visibility was excellent over the
  city. At 7:45 A.M. he ordered the plain code signal for the surprise
  attack. Four minutes later, convinced of victory, he exuberantly radi-
  oed Nagumo's carriers of impending success: "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
  (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!). Astonishingly, the message was picked up by
  Japanese navy receivers in the homeland.
  Only one of the ninety-four U.S. vessels in port was under way
  when, at 7:55 A.M., the dive bombers struck Hickam and Wheeler
  fields. Between 7:57 and 8:05, the torpedo planes hit Battleship Row;
  the Zeros strafed air bases; and the level bombers attacked the battle-
  ships. Observing the disaster from his warplane aloft, Commander
  Fuchida was amazed by the Americans' unpreparedness. Within ap-
  proximately one hour, the first assault was over. At a trifling cost of
  nine planes, the attackers had turned Pearl Harbor into blazing
  chaos.'4 At 8:54 A.M. a second wave of 167 Japanese planes, under
  Commander Shimazaki, thundered in for another hour, concentrating
  on the less damaged warships. Because by then the Americans were
  putting up heavier resistance, Shimazaki's planes suffered somewhat
  more severely, losing 20 aircraft, but these losses were insignificant
  compared with those of the enemy.
  Of the 231 U.S. Army aircraft on Oahu, 97 were written off as lost
  and 88 were considered repairable. U.S. Navy plane losses totaled 80,
  more than half of its inventory. The destruction was particularly se-
  vere because the aircraft were parked wingtip to wingtip for defense
  against saboteurs. Eight battleships were damaged or sunk; three de-
  stroyers were crippled; three light cruisers were damaged; and three
  auxiliaries were sunk or damaged. It took nearly three years to remove
  the fuel that spilled into the harbor. American personnel casualties
  numbered 4,575: U.S. Army, 226 killed and 396 wounded; and U.S.
  Navy and Marine Corps, 876 wounded and 3,077 killed, including 960
  missing, mainly trapped aboard the capsized Arizona, from which the
  haunting tap-tap of the entombed men could long be heard. Japanese
  airmen lost in action amounted to 55.
  14 Of the U.S. battleships, only the flagship Pennsylvania, in dry dock, seemed unscathed. The
  Arizona was shattered and sinking; the Maryland and Tennessee were afire; the West Virginia
  was reportedly hit nine times; the Oklahoma, twelve times (a complete loss); and the Califor-
  nia, three times. The only battleship under steam, the Nevada, had been struck at least once
  before beaching itself to keep the channel open. The Utah, a defenseless target ship, had
  already capsized. Moored next to a minelayer, the cruiser Helena took five torpedoes. Japa-
  nese accuracy had equaled practice performance: 55 percent of the torpedoes struck their
  targets, 25 percent of the high-level bombs, and nearly 50 percent of the dive-bombs.
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  THE NAGUMO CONTROVERSY 
  343
  At the Combined Fleet headquarters in Japan, staff officers were
  excited by the news of unexpected success. Although Nagumo's cau-
  tion and reservations were well known, almost every officer wanted
  new orders rushed to the task force commander, directing him to
  complete the destruction of the Pacific Fleet either that night or the
  next morning. Admiral Yamamoto reportedly agreed that a new strike
  would be splendid, but because the details of Japanese losses were still
  not known, he felt that it would be best to leave matters to Nagumo.
  No follow-up orders were sent to the task force.15
  THE NAGUMO CONTROVERSY
  Debate has raged for decades concerning Nagumo's decision to leave
  the Hawaiian waters in the early afternoon of December 7 after only
  two air strikes. Critics have always argued that despite Japan's obvious
  successes, the Pearl Harbor attack could not be termed decisive. As
  Fuchida told Nagumo at the time, many worthwhile targets remained:
  the American battleships mired in shallow water, dozens of other
  vessels, untouched hangars, shops, and oil tanks. A new air assault,
  launched even closer to Oahu, might conceivably have lured the U.S.
  carriers and heavy cruisers to their doom. Commander Genda and
  others have contended that the Japanese, beset by "medal fever," lost
  sight of unglamorous but important targets such as machine shops
  needed to repair the mauled American fleet and fuel storage facilities
  containing 4.5 million barrels of oil.
  No one argues seriously that the Japanese should have landed an
  army on Oahu. Yamamoto knew that the Southeast Asia campaign
  took priority in amphibious and sealift resources and that a huge
  convoy of troop transports, moving for a month at eight knots, would
  have ruined the vital element of surprise. As Fuchida said, the Japa-
  nese had been thinking of little more than "pulling the eagle's tail
  feathers."
  Apart from the fact that Nagumo, a battleship admiral, was unen-
  thusiastic at best and timid at worst, he had good reasons for leaving
  the scene promptly: As many as five U.S. aircraft carriers might be
  lurking in the region, and the whereabouts of enemy heavy cruisers
  and submarines was unknown. Because the initial strikes had suc-
  15 BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (2), pp. 174-5; BBSS, Hawai sakusen, chaps. 4-15; Agawa,
  Yamamoto, pp. 259-86; Toyoda Jo, Namimakura ikutabizo (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973), pp.
  13-91; Matsushima Keizo, Higeki no Nagumo chujo (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1967), chaps.
  3-4; Kusaka, Rengo kanlai, pp. 45-87.
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  344 
  T H E PACIFIC WAR
  ceeded beyond expectations, little more could be anticipated from
  additional assaults against the same area. U.S. antiaircraft fire had
  been surprisingly strong, and Japanese losses could be expected to
  increase geometrically once the element of surprise was gone.
  In addition, Japanese intelligence reported at least fifty large planes
  (presumably B-17S) still available to the defenders. It was dangerous
  for the Japanese attack force to hover within range of land-based
  enemy aircraft. The six aircraft carriers had to be brought home
  safely, for they represented the entire such force available to the Japa-
  nese navy. Meanwhile, the weather north of Hawaii had deteriorated,
  and the carriers were rolling at fifteen degrees. Attacks against ground
  targets would require refitting the ordnance loads, and any new strike
  would involve night flights and dangerous night landings. Illuminat-
  ing the flight decks would invite retaliation, especially if the missing
  American carriers showed up. As for a follow-up air strike, some have
  argued that the turbid oil fires would only have obscured the bombers'
  aim.
  Admiral Fukudome Shigeru, while deploring the insufficient Japa-
  nese reconnaissance efforts, suggested that Nagumo be credited with a
  wise decision to terminate the attacks. At the time, the naval general
  staff was not unhappy with Nagumo's safe and skillful disengagement.
  If the operation had turned out badly, Yamamoto would have been
  criticized for recklessness and Nagumo praised for caution.
  The Pearl Harbor operation was no battle in the ordinary sense; it was
  a massacre. The overall evaluations may be grouped into three catego-
  ries. Many commentators have called the raid a short-term masterpiece
  but a long-range blunder, which jolted the dozing American giant into
  revenge. As Admiral Hara Chuichi, a carrier division commander, put
  it, "President Roosevelt should'have pinned medals on us."
  A second school argues that the Japanese naval high command was
  foolish to think only of checking the U.S. Pacific Fleet as it proceeded
  with a campaign to seize control of the rich, invulnerable southern
  area, which would be developed during a protracted war. Certainly
  Yamamoto himself had wanted to shatter, not merely neutralize, the
  U.S. battle fleet at the onset of hostilities and to achieve decisive
  strategic results by retaining the initiative while the bloodied Ameri-
  can Navy was in confusion.
  The third school, represented by Fukudome, is convinced that the
  Pearl Harbor raid achieved superb results, nullifying the Rainbow
  Plan and preventing the Americans from retaking control of the sea
  until 1944. In the meantime, the Japanese were able to attain all of
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  FIRST-PHASE EUPHORIA 
  345
  their initial strategic objectives without interruption. Fukudome ar-
  gued that if Oahu had not been attacked and the Japanese had engaged
  the Americans in a conventional surface battle near the Marshalls and
  the western Carolines, "it would have been impossible for the Japa-
  nese to have inflicted greater damage than they did in the Pearl Harbor
  attack, however favorable our estimate."16
  FIRST-PHASE EUPHORIA
  The Japanese high command envisaged an initial perimeter line extend-
  ing from the Kuril Islands in the North Pacific to the Marshalls (includ-
  ing Wake) and the Bismarcks in the Central Pacific, on to Timor, Java,
  and Sumatra in the southwest, and thence through Malaya to Burma.
  Spearhead operations in Southeast Asia were assigned to the new South-
  ern Army, whose commander, General Terauchi Hisaichi, arrived at his
  headquarters in Saigon on December 5. His prime objectives were
  Malaya and the Philippines, the British and American footholds in
  Asia. Operations proceeded like clockwork.
  As the Japanese expected, on December 8 the Thai authorities
  yielded to diplomatic pressure and allowed immediate Japanese occu-
  pation of strategic points in the country. With their Thai flank se-
  cured, the Japanese invaded Malaya. On December 8, advance ele-
  ments of General Yamashita Tomoyuki's Twenty-fifth army landed
  on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula. Two days later, the main
  body of Yamashita's army came ashore without hesitation, as the
  naval air force based at Saigon had just destroyed the core of the
  British Fleet off Malaya: the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales
  and the old battle cruiser Repulse, operating without fighter cover.'7
  The Japanese ground forces drove swiftly toward Singapore. By Feb-
  ruary 15, the entire "impregnable" city had been conquered, with a
  garrison of at least 85,000 (including 70,000 combatants) surrendered
  unconditionally by General Arthur E. Percival. With the loss of Sin-
  gapore, the Allies were deprived of the western anchor of the Malay
  barrier and the home port of the British Far East Fleet. One foreign
  observer called the Malay campaign the most disastrous loss by En-
  gland since Cornwallis capitulated at Yorktown.18
  16 Toyoda, Namimakura, pp. 91-5; Hara, Teikoku kaigun, p. 19; Kusaka, Rengo kantai, pp. 50-
  1.74-5-
  17 BBSS, Hilo Marei homen kaigun shinko sakusen, pt. 2, chap. 3.
  18 BBSS, Marei shinko sakusen, chaps. 1-8; BBSS, Nansei hdmen kaigun sakusen, pp. 161-6,
  219-20, 281-7, 332~6; BBSS, Hito Marei homen kaigun shinko sakusen, pt. 2, chaps. I, 2 , 4 -
  7-
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  346 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  The seizure of weakly defended Borneo, the third largest island in
  the world, was closely connected with the conquest of Malaya. On
  December 16 an expeditionary force of three battalions staged from
  Indochina landed on British Borneo. The official British surrender
  took place on January 19,1942. Meanwhile, in early January, a detach-
  ment of three battalions moved against the southern part of the island,
  oil-rich Dutch Borneo. A stunning series of Japanese successes fol-
  lowed. Tarakan fell on January 11, Balikpapan on January 24, and
  Bandjarmasin on February 16. The small, retreating Dutch defense
  force was caught and forced to give up on March 8. By expeditiously
  overwhelming British and Dutch Borneo as well as Ambon and the
  Celebes, the Japanese acquired rich resources and important bases
  which enabled them to screen their sea and air lanes to Singapore. •»
  In the Philippines, the Japanese plan called for winning aerial su-
  premacy and seizing air bases before the main ground forces made
  landings. The early operations proceeded precisely as scheduled. At
  midday on December 8, despite ample warning, half of the American
  air strength at Clark Field in Manila was destroyed by a one-hour air
  strike. Lead elements of General Honma Masaharu's Fourteenth
  Army began coming ashore on the island of Luzon. The main body
  was able to land at Lingayen Gulf on December 22 and at Lamon Bay
  on December 24. General Douglas Mac Arthur's hope of checking the
  invaders at the beaches ended in failure. Manila, declared an open
  city, was in Japanese hands by January 2,1942.
  The main objective of Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) had
  been attained well before the original deadline of forty-five or fifty
  days. Honma, however, paid scant heed to intelligence that the main
  American and Filipino forces were retreating toward the jungles,
  swamps, and mountains of the Bataan Peninsula and toward Corregi-
  dor Island. The Japanese, obsessed with the importance of Manila,
  wrote them off as enemy remnants. Although control of the harbor
  was still not assured, the high command felt sufficiently confident to
  withdraw Honma's best division (the Forty-eighth) and most of the
  Fifth Air Group for the Java campaign, one month ahead of schedule.
  It soon became apparent to Honma that more than mopping up lay
  ahead, but requests for reinforcements earned him a reputation as a
  whiner. When the target date for decisive victory in the Philippines
  passed without result and Honma dared to suspend offensive operations
  because of alleged logistical, manpower, medical, and other weak-
  19 BBSS, Ran-in Bengaru wan homen kaigun sakusen, pp. 17, 20.
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  VICTORY FEVER CONTINUED 
  347
  nesses, Sugiyama and Tojo thought of sacking him. Imperial General
  Headquarters assumed responsibility for operations in the south Philip-
  pines, leaving Honma free to concentrate against Bataan. His powerful
  offensive, finally begun on April 3, overran Bataan in less than a week,
  not the month that gloomy Honma had been fearing. Corregidor held
  out until May 7. Of the 53,000 combat prisoners taken during the
  fighting in the Philippines, about 9,500 were American. Many died
  during the infamous Bataan Death March. Honma was personally igno-
  rant of the atrocities and certainly did not order or condone them.
  Honma had taken four months more to accomplish his mission than
  Imperial General Headquarters had wanted, and he had committed
  excessive strength. Nonetheless, General Douglas MacArthur, the
  American commander, had managed to escape to Australia. Honma
  was also castigated by higher headquarters for leniency toward the
  Filipinos, who had resisted the Japanese and remained basically loyal
  to the Americans. After a scarcely decent interval, in August 1942 the
  general was relieved of his command and retired in semidisgrace.20
  Hong Kong, the coveted conduit into China, had been taken in
  December. Even with reinforcements, the Commonwealth garrison
  numbered scarcely 12,000 men, ill equipped and almost devoid of air
  or naval support. Japanese forces detached from the Expeditionary
  Army in China attacked on December 8 and took Kowloon on the
  mainland on December 12. After severe preliminary artillery and ae-
  rial bombardment, amphibious troops landed on Hong Kong Island
  beginning on December 18. By the time the British command surren-
  dered on Christmas Day, the defenders were worn down, short of
  water and ammunition, and depleted by about 4,400 casualties. Japa-
  nese losses were 2,754. Hong Kong-like Singapore and Manila, the
  symbol of Western preeminence in Asia-had fallen to the seemingly
  irresistible Japanese.21
  VICTORY FEVER CONTINUED
  The war advanced into its next phase with the Japanese operations
  against Java and Burma. Toward the end of December 1941, Imperial
  General Headquarters moved up the date for the Java invasion by
  about a month. Ground forces assigned to occupy the Dutch East
  Indies came under General Imamura Hitoshi. On January 11 the Japa-
  20 BBSS, Hito koryaku sakusen, chaps, I-IO; BBSS, Nansei homen kaigun sakusen, pp. 49-74,
  224~5> 342-3) BBSS, Hito Marei homen kaigun shinkd sakusen, pt. 1.
  21 BBSS, Honkon-Chosa sakusen, pt. 1.
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  348 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  nese landed in the northern Celebes where paratroopers saw action in
  combat for the first time. During the battle for Singapore, the Japa-
  nese conquered more key points on the road to Java. On February 14
  and 15, Japanese paratroops and amphibious units attacked the air
  base and refineries around Palembang in South Sumatra. By February
  17 the defenders had been driven to Java; the next day, Bali and
  Lombok fell. Timor was stormed on February 19 and 20.
  The Japanese next hurled two invasion armies against Java in accor-
  dance with careful planning by IGHQ, which had reinforced Imamura
  with two infantry divisions. For air defense at the outset, there were
  only thirty operational Dutch fighters and some fifty other Allied
  aircraft. A last heterogeneous collection of old ABDA (American,
  British, Dutch, Australian) warships was shattered in the battle of the
  Java Sea on February 27, whereupon the Allied naval command col-
  lapsed. Japanese troops landed at both ends of Java on February 28
  and March 1 in a great pincers maneuver. The defenders, confused by
  the energy and diffusion of the assaults, surrendered unconditionally
  on March 9. Only mopping-up actions remained for the Japanese
  forces in the Indies.
  A garrison of 93,000 troops, of whom the Dutch numbered few more
  than 20,000, laid down their arms; the Japanese promptly announced
  the release of the Indonesian soldiers. Approximately 5,000 Australian,
  British, and American personnel were also captured. At a time when
  Allied strength and fortunes were at a perilously low ebb, the losses in
  men and equipment were enormous. The campaign had consumed only
  90 instead of the anticipated 150 days. The defenders' attempts at
  sabotaging the rich oil fields proved pyrotechnical but not critical; the
  oil wells and large reserves of fuel were captured essentially intact. With
  the conquest of the Indies, the end of empire was at hand for the
  Europeans and Americans, and Japan's valued Greater East Asia Co-
  Prosperity Sphere had become a reality. As Winston Churchill said of
  the Singapore disaster, "The violence, fury, skill, and might of Japan
  far exceeded anything we had been led to expect."22
  Because cutting off aid to Chiang Kai-shek had been one of the
  reasons for invading Southeast Asia, Imperial General Headquarters
  wanted to occupy Burma without delay. Reserve strength was unavail-
  able for this operation, however, and it was necessary to defer it until
  the conclusion of the other thrusts. When the probable success of the
  22 BBSS, Ran-in kdryaku sakusen, chaps. 3-8; BBSS, Nansei homen kaigun sakusen, pp. 1-30,
  37-48; BBSS, Ran-in Bengaru wan homen kaigun shinko sakttsen, chaps. 1-5 (pp. 12, 14), 6-8.
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  WHAT NEXT? 
  349
  Malay offensive became clear, on January 22, 1942, the high com-
  mand ordered the Southern Army to proceed with the Burma cam-
  paign, although the end point of operations was not clarified. After the
  air bases in south Burma had been neutralized, the Fifteenth Army
  proceeded to defeat the Anglo-Indian forces near Rangoon on March
  7; the Burmese capital fell next day. Further battles ensued in central
  Burma, culminating in an engagement on May 13 at which some
  twenty thousand British and Indian troops were crushed in the vicin-
  ity of Kalewa. The Fifteenth Army held up for the time being.2*
  Rounding out the Japanese conquests was the taking of objectives in
  the Central Pacific. The South Seas Detachment, three battalions un-
  der the direct control of Imperial General Headquarters, seized Guam
  on December 11, and navy forces subdued Wake on January 23.
  Landing parties invaded the Bismarcks also on January 23.
  The keys to the Japanese victories during the first phase of opera-
  tions included achievement of naval and air supremacy by neutralizing
  or destroying the American and British battle fleets, interservice coor-
  dination, and protection of troop convoys. The Allied defenders were
  spread thin, without prospects of reinforcement and usually unsup-
  ported by their colonial subjects. They thus were unable to stage set-
  piece battles or strong counterattacks.
  The relative ease of the early Japanese operations led to undue
  optimism in both the field and the high command. The War Ministry
  suggested seriously that only twenty-one battalions be left in the south
  and that the rest of the forces be reapportioned to the homeland,
  China, and Manchuria. Although the army general staff felt that the
  garrison figure was too low, it accepted the basic concept of redeploy-
  ment. Meanwhile, the Southern Army Headquarters, without bother-
  ing to obtain Tokyo's approval, abolished its Intelligence Section and
  combined it with Operations. This action, born out of contempt for
  the Allied armed forces, meant that the Japanese were unable to pre-
  dict major enemy counteroffensive actions, even in the near future.2*
  WHAT NEXT?
  By the spring of 1942, the Japanese high command was pondering
  subsequent operations. The Soviet Union had "temporarily" survived
  23 BBSS, Biruma kdryaku sakusen, chaps. 2, 3, 7-9; BBSS, Ran-in Bengaru wan homen kaigun
  sakusen, chap. 9.
  24 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (1), pp. 17-47; BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo homen kaigun
  sakusen (1), pt. 2, chaps. 1-4; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyo senso, pp. 70-1.
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  350 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  the German onslaught, but Britain seemed to be tottering. To bring
  down the English and discourage the Americans, thought was given to
  broadening the zone under occupation and to establishing an invinci-
  ble structure for protracted warfare. War potential, especially air
  power, would be built up simultaneously. It was also judged relatively
  easy to defend occupied islands-as they were unsinkable aircraft carri-
  ers. The army did not expect Anglo-American counteroffensives until
  1943: The United States was pursuing a Europe-first policy and could
  not spare much strength for the Pacific theater. In the navy's opinion,
  the Americans would need at least a year to recover from their debacle
  at Pearl Harbor.
  The high command's deliberations over various alternative objec-
  tives convey an impression of opportunism and improvisation rather
  than workmanlike strategy. For example, the navy turned to ways of
  occupying Australia, a project beyond the army's capabilities but ren-
  dered tempting by the ease with which the Bismarcks had been taken.
  For its part, the army considered possible new operations, ranging
  from Cocos Island to Manchuria to Ceylon and eastern India. Eventu-
  ally the two services were able to agree to establish an outer perimeter
  in the Pacific by occupying New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, eastern New
  Guinea, and the Aleutians.2*
  Although none of these objectives was beyond the capability of the
  Japanese, the fundamental fragility of the outer perimeter concept was
  exposed remarkably and unexpectedly by the Doolittle raid of April
  18, 1942. Flying from the carrier Hornet, which was only about 650
  miles from Japan before it was detected, thirteen U.S. Army B-25
  bombers struck at Tokyo without serious opposition, and three addi-
  tional planes hit targets in Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. Although the
  number of aircraft was small and the damage trifling, not one Ameri-
  can plane was shot down over Japan by the befuddled air defense
  command. Humiliated by the violation of airspace over the imperial
  capital, the high command decreed an immediate acceleration of the
  planning for further offensive operations.26
  An operation was launched to seize Port Moresby on the southwest-
  ern tip of New Guinea and, secondarily, Tulagi on the South Solo-
  mons' flank. Seven groups of troop transports and warships were
  staged from Rabaul at the end of April and beginning of May 1942.
  25 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (i), p. 49.
  26 BBSS, Daihon'ei rikugunbu (4), pp. 8-19; BBSS, Hokuio hitmen kaigun sakusen, pt. 1, chap. 4.
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  THE MIDWAY AND ALEUTIANS OPERATIONS 
  351
  American intelligence, thanks to its breaking the Japanese codes, en-
  abled Admiral Chester Nimitz to concentrate his forces at optimal
  locations, whereas the Japanese, despite far greater regional strength
  at this stage of the war, knew little about enemy dispositions and
  assets. The Japanese headquarters in Rabaul suspended plans to land
  directly at Port Moresby when a major naval clash developed on May 7
  and 8. During the battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval engagement in
  history to pit carriers against carriers, aircraft conducted all of the
  combat. No surface ship even sighted an enemy vessel. Few warships
  were hit: the Americans lost their precious fleet carrier Lexington and
  two small vessels; the Japanese lost one light carrier (Shoho) and sus-
  tained damage to one heavy carrier (Shokaku).
  Far greater were the strategic and psychological consequences. The
  twelve Japanese transports heading for Port Moresby, vulnerable to
  the prowling Allied task forces, turned back meekly, a decision for
  which Admiral Inouye Shigeyoshi has been criticized roundly. Sec-
  ond, two Japanese heavy carriers, the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, which
  had lost a considerable number of planes and pilots, were put out of
  action just as the gigantic confrontation between navies loomed at
  Midway. Third, the destruction of the first Japanese carrier of any
  type in the Pacific War boosted Allied morale, which was at a nadir
  after the catastrophe at Corregidor.2?
  THE MIDWAY AND ALEUTIANS OPERATIONS
  Admiral Yamamoto, shaken by the implications of the Doolittle raid,
  forged ahead with offensive planning against the Midway sector. It
  was agreed that this operation should precede the envisioned attacks
  against Fiji and Samoa. In a closely related compromise between the
  army and the navy, a simultaneous diversionary invasion of the Aleu-
  tian Islands was projected. Nagumo's powerful carrier task force,
  which had scoured the Indian Ocean and raided Ceylon in early April
  1942, was called back to the Pacific for the Midway operation. On
  May 5 the jittery Imperial General Headquarters ordered Yamamoto
  to move ahead in conjunction with the army.
  The Midway plan called for the Combined Fleet to move eastward
  in force to seize Midway Atoll, located one thousand miles west of
  27 BBSS, Nanld hdmen kaigun sakusen (1), pt. 1, chap. 5. Also see Tendo Akira, Sangokai
  daikaisen: kantaijugun hiroku (Tokyo: Masu shobo, 1956).
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  352 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  Pearl Harbor, as an advance base and potential threat to Hawaii. More
  importantly, it was expected that the remnants of the U.S. Pacific
  Fleet would be lured into a decisive battle and defeated. For the main
  attack against Midway, Yamamoto amassed 6 aircraft carriers, 234
  planes, 7 battleships, 14 cruisers, 43 destroyers, 13 submarines, 5
  seaplane tenders, a fleet train of 15 ships, and 15 transports carrying
  five thousand troops. Yamamoto's grandiose scheme required superb
  timing and the orchestration of dispersed forces. Unfortunately for the
  Japanese, U.S. intelligence was able to read enemy signals traffic,
  again providing Admiral Nimitz with a considerable advantage in de-
  ploying his overextended forces.
  The battle of Midway commenced on June 4. The Japanese carrier
  strike force commanded by Nagumo was able to overwhelm the out-
  numbered air defense and to smash ground installations on the island.
  Nimitz, however, had concentrated far larger naval forces (including
  carriers) than expected. Although Japanese fighters and antiaircraft
  fire inflicted fearful damage on the American carrier planes attacking
  the Japanese force bravely but in disconnected squadrons, Nagumo
  had to decide whether to rearm his torpedo aircraft with bombs for a
  follow-up strike against Midway and whether to recover returning
  planes or to launch bomber strikes immediately. Unexpected waves of
  American dive bombers from the Yorktown and Enterprise caught the
  Japanese betwixt and between. Aerial torpedoes were still lying on the
  hangar decks of the Japanese carriers instead of being stowed below,
  and aircraft were parked-fueled and armed-before they could take
  off. Nagumo's four carriers were lost in the ensuing action: the Kaga
  and Soryu went down that night, and the Akagi and Hiryu had to be
  finished off by Japanese destroyers next morning. The Japanese also
  lost one heavy cruiser sunk and a second badly damaged; the Ameri-
  cans lost only the carrier Yorktown and one destroyer.
  Yamamoto, aboard the giant battleship Yatnato, had hoped to en-
  gage a crippled enemy fleet during classic night action, but as the
  enormity of Japanese losses became clear, he intelligently withdrew
  his flotilla early on June 5 without major action. Just as the battle of
  the Coral Sea had caused cancellation of the landing at Port Moresby,
  the battle of Midway necessitated the withdrawal of the ground forces
  earmarked to occupy the atoll. Yamamoto had lost not only the four
  fleet carriers but also approximately 2,200 crewmen and most of the
  seasoned pilots of the 234 planes destroyed. Japanese scouting and
  communication had been poor; intelligence, foolishly rosy. The defeat
  at Midway, although kept from the Japanese public at the time, must
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  THE MIDWAY AND ALEUTIANS OPERATIONS 
  353
  be termed the decisive battle of the Pacific War, for it ended Japanese
  supremacy on the high seas.28
  The Aleutians sideshow proceeded as planned. Imperial General
  Headquarters had opted for a diversionary occupation of the islands
  instead of a protracted campaign of destruction. Assigned to the Aleu-
  tians task force were two light carriers, five cruisers, a seaplane tender,
  twelve destroyers, and eight transports with 1,550 men. American
  bases at Dutch Harbor in the eastern chain and Attu, Kiska, and Adak
  in the westernmost portion along the Great Circle route (the shortest
  approach to the Japanese homeland from North America) were to be
  nullified. (The minor Adak phase was eventually scrapped.) The op-
  erational plan resembled the modus operandi employed in Southeast
  Asia, entailing the preliminary neutralization of defenses, broad distri-
  bution of objectives, and multidirectional angles of assault. Consider-
  ations of weather and terrain precluded large-scale mobile action in the
  Aleutians. Although American intelligence possessed considerable de-
  tail concerning the Midway plan, far less was known about Japanese
  operations in the Aleutians.
  Japanese carrier-based planes neutralized Dutch Harbor in raids
  between June 3 and 5, and troops went ashore unopposed at Attu on
  June 5 and at Kiska on June 7. Not until June 10 did the American
  command learn of the landings. Nimitz resisted the temptation to
  divert carriers to the North Pacific after the victory at Midway. Dur-
  ing the next stage, the Japanese tried to maintain bases on the two
  bleak islands while the Americans tried to neutralize them. In August
  and September Imperial General Headquarters first opted to give up
  Attu and concentrate on Kiska, but after actually withdrawing the
  Attu garrison, the high command reversed itself and reoccupied the
  island in October. On February 5, 1943, Imperial General Headquar-
  ters decided to cling to the western Aleutians "at all costs," according
  higher priority to Attu as the Americans were building up their installa-
  tions at Adak and Amchitka.
  On May 11 the Americans landed a division at Attu. The Japanese
  garrison of about 2,600 men fought desperately but was overwhelmed
  by May 29. The body count totaled 2,351, but only 28 prisoners were
  taken, a ratio repeated throughout the Pacific War. Of the 11,000 U.S.
  assault troops, approximately 600 were killed, 1,200 wounded, and
  28 BBSS, Middoue kaisen, chaps. 1-15; BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo homen kaigun sakusen (2), pt. 3,
  chap. 2; Agawa, Yamamoto, vol. 1, pp. 310-36; Toyoda, Namimakura, pp. 223-68; Matsu-
  shima, Higeki no Nagumo chujo, pp. 150-73; Hara, Teikoku kaigun, pp. 8-9; Kusaka, Rengd
  kantai, pp. 120-56.
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  354 
  T H E PACIFIC WAR
  1,500 incapacitated by illness. At the last minute, the high command
  had prepared to evacuate the remnants of the Attu garrison, but events
  overtook them.
  On May 20, Imperial General Headquarters reexamined the deterio-
  rating situation in the Aleutians. Admitting that island operations
  lacking air and sea supremacy were doomed, the conferees reached the
  embarrassing decision to evacuate Kiska, whose garrison was twice as
  large as the one on Attu. Submarines began the slow process in late
  May; a destroyer squadron completed the task, speedily and effica-
  ciously, on July 28. The Americans failed to detect the evacuation for
  more than two weeks after the last Japanese had departed. On August
  15 an American-Canadian army of 34,000 men, in a flotilla of nearly
  one hundred ships, stormed the island only to find it empty.
  Many have argued that the Japanese never should have bothered
  with the desolate Aleutians. At the time, however, the high command
  regarded the islands as a threat to the Kurils and even to the home-
  land, particularly if the Americans teamed up militarily with the Sovi-
  ets. With a force of only 10,000 troops, complemented by indifferent
  naval and air assistance, the Japanese managed to divert as many as
  100,000 Allied troops supported by sizable naval and air forces. Never-
  theless, the Japanese squandered the entire Attu garrison, lost eigh-
  teen vessels and precious logistical and ordnance stores. Combined
  Fleet warships were deployed as backup at times when they were far
  more needed to block enemy operations at Guadalcanal. Additionally,
  the Kurils and even Hokkaido had to be reinforced after the Japanese
  were ousted from the Aleutians. Although the Japanese revealed great
  skill in evacuating endangered island garrisons, Imperial General
  Headquarters earned no luster for its vacillating and unproductive
  conduct during the Aleutian operation. Despite the costs, the cam-
  paign exerted scant influence on the Pacific theater as a whole, from
  either the Japanese or the Allied point of view.2?
  RETAINING THE INITIATIVE
  Because fifteen of the sixteen Doolittle aircraft landed in China (the
  sixteenth came down in Siberia) after bombing Japan, the Japanese
  high command accelerated the campaign to deny Chinese bases to the
  Americans. Three days after the raid, on April 21, 1942, Imperial
  29 BBSS, Hokuto homen rikugun sakusen (i), chaps. 1-3; BBSS, Hokuto homen kaigun sakusen,
  pt. 1, chaps. i,2andpt. 2.
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  RETAINING THE INITIATIVE 
  355
  General Headquarters directed the China Expeditionary Army under
  General Hata Shunroku to knock out Nationalist air bases on the
  central front, mainly in Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces, secondarily
  in Hunan. On May 15, Japanese forces advanced and soon routed the
  enemy in East Chekiang. An offensive by a second field army at
  the end of May and beginning of June had equal success. The two
  Japanese armies then launched a pincers operation that cleared the
  Chekiang Railway by July i.
  After their successes in China during the summer of 1942, the
  Japanese prepared a "last offensive" designed to seize Chungking
  sometime after spring 1943. The intensification of the battles for Gua-
  dalcanal, however, caused suspension of the operation on December
  10. It was becoming clear that the Pacific War was not solving the
  China incident and that victory in the Pacific could not be found in the
  China theater. Indeed, China was becoming of secondary importance
  to the high command, which had begun to realize that, after all, one
  could not climb out of a hole by widening it. 3°
  Still another consequence of the Japanese setback at Midway was the
  high command's decision on July 11, 1942, to suspend any operations
  against New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa. Not only had it learned the
  difficulty of taking a well-defended island, but there was also growing
  opinion that it would be more advisable to step up action in the western
  Indian Ocean, in conjunction with the German campaign against Suez.
  Imperial General Headquarters, however, remained convinced that sev-
  ering the route between the United States and Australia was necessary
  to nip the Allied counteroffensive in the bud. The Seventeenth Army
  under General Hyakutake Haruyoshi was instructed to seize Port
  Moresby and nearby air bases in eastern New Guinea by pushing over-
  land from Kokoda and Buna.
  Without waiting for information from a long-range ground recon-
  naissance force, Hyakutake sent his South Seas Detachment ashore
  near Buna in the middle of July 1942. Pushing toward Port Moresby,
  the soldiers struggled across the wretched Owen Stanley Range, where
  they suffered from the tortuous terrain, disease, and hunger. Austra-
  lian resistance was overcome, but supply proved impossible, and after
  approaching Port Moresby, the Japanese units were ordered to hold
  up on August 28. A month later, the detachment began the retreat
  30 Horiba, Shina jihen, pp. 666-706; Usui, Nilchu senso, pp. 141-62; BBSS, Daihon'ei riku-
  gunbu (4), pp. 19-27.
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  356 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  toward Buna, harried by Australian troops all the way. It took them
  until the end of November to get back to Buna. Because the Seven-
  teenth Army had become preoccupied with the fighting on Guadalca-
  nal, Imperial General Headquarters formed an Eighteenth Army un-
  der General Adachi Hatazo to concentrate on eastern New Guinea.
  The axis of operations now shifted away from Port Moresby, toward
  Buna, Lae, and Salamaua.31
  Over six hundred miles east of New Guinea, between Rabaul and the
  New Hebrides-New Caledonia sector to the southeast, lie the Solomon
  Islands. Several hundred Japanese Naval Landing Force personnel and
  two thousand construction men were at work on an airstrip on Guadalca-
  nal in mid-1942, an operation so secret or at least so uncoordinated with
  higher headquarters that the Japanese army general staff did not learn
  about the project until U.S. troops came ashore in August. In the first
  American ground counteroffensive, the First Marine Division landed
  without opposition on August 7 at Guadalcanal, Gavutu, and Tulagi.
  The incomplete but critical air base (later known as Henderson Field)
  was taken on August 8. Although the American toehold was never
  retaken, months of fierce warfare ensued. In all, each side eventually
  lost twenty-four warships in the battles off Guadalcanal.
  Imperial General Headquarters, underestimating the difficulty of
  recapturing Guadalcanal, ordered Hyakutake to regain the Solomons
  while continuing with his primary mission of conquering Port
  Moresby. By August 29, after enormous casualties were incurred on
  Guadalcanal and Henderson Field was being used by American planes,
  the high command reversed the operational emphasis from New Guinea
  to the Solomons and transferred an infantry division to the Seventeenth
  Army for this purpose.
  In mid-September the Japanese army general staff modified its tacti-
  cal practice on Guadalcanal. Instead of charging blindly forward, piece-
  meal and without much preparation, Japanese assault units were or-
  dered to wait until reinforcements had been assembled and careful
  planning had been conducted in conjunction with the navy. Hyaku-
  take himself left Rabaul for Guadalcanal on October 8. Lacking full
  control of the sea and air, the Japanese lost heavily in men, supplies,
  and ordnance. Japanese ground commanders estimated the American
  superiority in machine guns at six or seven times; in ammunition,
  31 BBSS, Minami Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (i), pp. 76-109, 167-230, 335-60; BBSS, Chubu
  Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen, pp. 194-218, 324-95, 557-604; BBSS, Nansei homen kaigun
  sakusen, pp. 31-6, 373-96; BBSS, Nanio homen kaigun sakusen (1), pt. 1, chaps. 3, 4, and pt.
  2, chap.4.
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  RETAINING THE INITIATIVE 
  357
  beyond comparison. Front-line troops began to perish from hunger as
  well as disease. Transport ships carrying in fresh divisions were being
  sunk in increasing numbers.
  On November 16, 1942, the high command had formed the Eighth
  Army under General Imamura Hitoshi to coordinate the two field
  armies operating in the Solomons and New Guinea. The army general
  staff struggled with the War Ministry to requisition more shipping for
  operational requirements, insisting that Guadalcanal must be retained
  to the last. If the Solomons were ordered to be evacuated, American
  counterattacks would prove too severe to allow a pullout. No less than
  300,000 tons of shipping were imperative. Viewing matters from a
  broader national standpoint, the War Ministry opposed the army gen-
  eral staffs desires. It favored withdrawal from Guadalcanal and rede-
  ployment of forces along a strategic inner perimeter zone. Arguments
  raged, and staff officers even came to blows.
  By December 12 the navy had lost heart in the Guadalcanal opera-
  tion and proposed evacuation. After stubborn army general staff oppo-
  sition was overcome, on December 31 an Imperial General Headquar-
  ters conference of army and navy leaders decided to abandon efforts to
  recapture Guadalcanal and to evacuate the islands by the beginning of
  February. Although forces at Buna were to fall back toward Salamaua,
  the hope of seizing Port Moresby had still not been given up. In other
  words, the Japanese were planning to pull in their horns in the for-
  ward districts and go over to the defensive in the Solomons. But
  neither Rabaul nor eastern New Guinea was to be abandoned.
  No one was sure of the numbers of Japanese troops on Guadalcanal,
  but it was thought that from a force that might total 20,000, as many
  as 15,000 might be lost to enemy action during an evacuation. In fact,
  destroyers managed to bring out between 11,000 and 13,000 soldiers
  and sailors without interference in early February. For the first time in
  the Pacific War, the Japanese army had been forced to go on the
  defensive. During the six-month Guadalcanal campaign, it had lost
  about 25,000 men and 600 planes. American ground casualties were
  approximately 1,500 dead and 4,800 wounded.
  Both Japanese services have been castigated for the reckless han-
  dling of a campaign beyond their capabilities. There had been no
  clear-cut decision as to the cutoff point after the success of the first-
  stage operations in the south in 1941-2. The navy had unrealistically
  considered thrusts as far afield as Australia and Hawaii, and the army
  found itself engaged heavily at Guadalcanal before any joint policy
  could be worked out with the navy. No amount of bravery could
  compensate for logistical impotence. Japanese military critics remain
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  358 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  convinced that given the country's overall strength, the Guadalcanal
  operation was not at all feasible.32
  TIGHTENING THE PERIMETER
  The capitulation of Italy in September 1943, presaging the release of
  Allied forces to the Far East, caused Imperial General Headquarters to
  reconsider its estimates of the enemy's counteroffensive capabilities.
  An Imperial Conference decided on new operational guidelines on
  September 30. The most noteworthy change was apparent in the high
  command's delimitation, for the first time, of an "absolute national
  defense sphere." It encompassed the Kurils, the Bonins, the Inner
  South Sea islands, western New Guinea, the Sunda Islands, and
  Burma. Clearly, the strategic perimeter was being constricted. The
  most pressing problems in the South Pacific were considered to be the
  reinforcement of the zone of absolute national defense, holding opera-
  tions around the northern Solomons and New Guinea, and prepara-
  tions for counteraction north of Australia in the Timor region. The
  Americans were designated the primary national enemy.33
  The shift to a more realistic strategic posture cannot obscure the
  overconfidence that continued to affect the Japanese leadership. They
  continued to assume that the hostilities could be resolved by military
  action, not by diplomatic negotiations. It was not until the end of
  August 1943 that Prime Minister Tojo even considered putting out
  feelers toward Chungking or making efforts to mediate the German-
  Soviet war. The government and military leaders were losing sight of
  the fact that Admiral Yamamoto's scheme of 1941 had been designed to
  buy time for Japan-time to construct a defensible perimeter and to
  negotiate a settlement of hostilities favorable to Japan, not time to fight
  a long drawn-out war. The prime minister's response to the Japanese
  reverses was to redouble his efforts, tighten his control, promote opti-
  mism, and suppress dissent. As General Honma later observed, "Tojo
  believed that he could win such a complicated modern war simply by
  intensifying the people's spirit or by enhancing morale."
  For the most part, the final two years of the Pacific War were
  32 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (i), pp. 68-73, 86-94, 99> BBSS, Minami Taiheiyo
  nkugun sakusen (1), pp. 231-314, 385-534; BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (2), pp. 7-
  23,419-576; BBSS,Nantohdmenkaigunsakusen(1), pp. 201,227, andpt. 2, chaps. 1-3; ibid.
  (2), pts. 1-2; ibid. (3), chaps. 1-7; BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo hdmen kaigun sakusen (2), pt. 3,
  chaps. 3,7.
  33 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo hdmen kaigun sakusen (2), pt. 4, chaps. 1, 4 (2); BBSS, Mariana oki
  kaisen, chaps. I (p. 2), 2-3.
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  TIGHTENING THE PERIMETER 
  359
  characterized by Japan's strategic passivity. The military initiative
  had shifted to the Allies. Enemy counteroffensives were developing
  sooner and were far better articulated than Imperial General Head-
  quarters had anticipated. America's enormous economic and indus-
  trial resources began to have an overpowering impact on the fighting.
  Whereas the Japanese were unable to replace the four fleet carriers
  lost at Midway, American shipyards were turning out innumerable
  escort carriers that became the core of task forces assaulting Japanese
  strongholds across the Pacific. The American strategy also surprised
  the Japanese high command by choosing to bypass certain well-
  defended islands, to leapfrog across the Central and Southwest Pa-
  cific, and to let isolated Japanese garrisons like those at Truk and
  Rabaul wither on the vine.
  The Japanese outer perimeter in the South Pacific began to collapse
  in the summer of 1943 after their disengagement from Guadalcanal
  and the Aleutians. In the Central Pacific, the islands of Makin and
  Tarawa in the Gilberts, though fiercely contested, were lost in Novem-
  ber 1943. Kwajalein and Roi in the Marshall Islands fell in February
  1944. The high command was particularly unnerved by the powerful
  American air and naval bombardment of Truk that month, for it
  proved that Japanese naval aviation was no longer a match for the
  enemy. For the first time in the Pacific War, Imperial General Head-
  quarters ordered divisions pulled out of the Kwantung Army in Man-
  churia and transferred to the south. Japanese army leaders blamed the
  tardy defensive preparation in the central and western Carolines, Mari-
  anas, and Bonins on the navy's lack of concern with ground warfare
  and narrow outlook on jurisdiction in the Pacific, whose defense was a
  naval responsibility. Three days after the Truk raid, Prime Minister
  Tojo took the unprecedented step of assuming the concurrent post of
  chief of army staff. *•
  Symbolic of the enfeebled Japanese control of Pacific areas was the
  ambush of Admiral Yamamoto's aircraft during an inspection tour of
  Bougainville on April 18, 1943. Guided by intercepted intelligence,
  American P-38 fighter planes shot down and killed Japan's most bril-
  liant strategist. 35
  If the defense of isolated atolls and islands posed insuperable logisti-
  cal difficulties and precluded maneuver, the land operations offered
  34 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo homen kaigun sakusen (2), pt. 3, chaps. 4, 5 (p. 2), 6 (p. 4), and pt. 4,
  chaps. 2,4 (p. 5).
  35 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo homen kaigun sakusen (2), pt. 3, chap. 8 (p. 4); Agawa, Yamamoto, pp.
  306-27.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  some hope of success. In 1944 t n e high command focused new atten-
  tion on the China theater, where the Nationalist regime remained
  isolated but American air power was becoming more active, even
  posing a threat to the Japanese homeland. A Japanese offensive,
  launched in mid-April 1944, opened up the entire southern portion of
  the Peking-Hankow Railroad; by early May the northern and central
  fronts in China were linked. Between the end of June and early Au-
  gust, Japanese armies took Changsha and Hengyang (the Americans'
  advance air base). By November a new offensive overran other U.S.
  air installations at Lingling, Kweilin, Liuchow, and Nanning. But it
  proved impossible for the army to neutralize the B-29 long-range
  bomber bases at Chengtu in Szechwan Province, against which the
  Japanese could mount air strikes of only limited strength. The B-29
  bombers continued to hit targets in northern Kyushu, south Man-
  churia, and Korea. When the Americans set up bases on islands in the
  western Pacific in 1945, the B-29S were transferred from China.35
  Some Imperial General Headquarters staff officers saw prospects for
  success in the Burma theater. The Japanese planners were thinking of
  seizing a corner of India, in the Imphal area, to establish a puppet
  government and undercut British authority. Considerable efforts had
  already been made to create collaborationist regimes in Burma under
  Ba Maw and a provisional Indian government under Chandra Bose. In
  March 1943 the Burma Area Army Headquarters under General
  Kawabe Masakazu was formed. The political nature of the envisaged
  Imphal operation became so apparent that some officers were rightly
  convinced that higher headquarters regarded the launching of the
  campaign a foregone conclusion rather than a carefully considered
  option. Whatever reservations Imperial General Headquarters enter-
  tained were assuaged by the self-confidence and enthusiasm of General
  Mutaguchi Renya, commander of the Fifteenth Army on the Burmese
  central front. The notion of a successful campaign in South Asia also
  undoubtedly appealed to the increasingly harried Tojo.
  Allied counteractions had already begun on several Burmese fronts
  in early 1944. Chinese forces attacked in the north and northeast;
  Anglo-Indian troops, in central Burma and on the southern coast. The
  Thirty-third Army was established in April to deal with the Chinese,
  leaving Mutaguchi free for his offensive. His forces had already
  jumped off in early March. Making light of the enemy and almost
  ignoring logistics, Mutaguchi had been thinking in terms of a two-
  36 Horiba, Shinajihen, pp. 707-40; Usui, Nitchu sensd, pp. 162-200.
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  EXIT TOJO 
  361
  week advance, but after initial progress, by early April the Japanese
  bogged down within sight of Imphal. Soon afterward, heavy monsoon
  rains began. Having lost half of its personnel en route to the front, the
  Fifteenth Army ran short of ammunition, supplies, and food. Demand-
  ing that the advance resume, Mutaguchi ordered the troops to devour
  their pack oxen and eat grass. His anger mounting, the general sacked
  two of his three division commanders, alleging that they lacked fight-
  ing spirit.
  While the Anglo-Indian forces, excellently led by General William
  Slim, received aerial resupply and reinforcements, the Japanese units
  continued to disintegrate from sickness, hunger, lack of ammunition
  and antitank weapons, and inadequate air support. By late June the
  Allies had retaken Kohima and had cleared the road from Imphal.
  Mutaguchi, still dreaming of a decisive offensive, relieved the third of
  his division commanders, who defiantly broke off communications
  and retreated in order to save the last remnants of his division from
  destruction.
  Japanese forces in Burma were smashed on every front. The Fif-
  teenth Army lost over half of its 60,000 men in the disastrous retreat
  from the Chindwin River. Kawabe and Mutaguchi have been blamed
  for their inflexibility and unwillingness to withdraw and their reckless,
  emotional, and sophomoric conduct of operations. Imperial General
  Headquarters has also been censured for lack of resolution. Not until
  July 4 did it authorize suspension of the Imphal offensive, even
  though there had been no hope of success since May, when the rainy
  season had begun. Similarly, not until September 25 did the high
  command change the mission of the Burma Area Army from capture
  to interception of communications between China and India, a distinc-
  tion that by then was academic. The Japanese were routed in Burma
  by the time they lost Rangoon in early May 1945. The entire Burma
  campaign of 1944-5, o n e oftne worst debacles of the Pacific War, cost
  Kawabe more than 100,000 men."
  EXIT TOJO
  If euphoria described the mood of Japan during Tojo's early days as
  prime minister, then disillusionment bordering on despair described it
  by 1944. The Americans continued to land at will on Japanese-held
  37 BBSS, Biruma kdryaku sakusen, pp. 271-4; BBSS, Inpdru sakusen, pts. 1-3; BBSS, Irawaji
  kaisen, pts. 1,2; BBSS,ShitlanMei-go sakusen, pt. i;SSNT, vol. 9, passim.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  islands in the Pacific. By the beginning of 1944, the bastion at Rabaul
  had been isolated. In April, U.S. forces came ashore in northern New
  Guinea, seizing the best air bases on the island. Trying to shuffle its
  forces, the Japanese high command appeared to lack an overall plan
  and meddled in operational details. On May 9 the Second Area army
  commander, General Anami Korechika, wrote in his diary: "The
  IGHQ's command is in a whirl." Soon afterward, U.S. troops stormed
  Biak Island, enabling the Americans to dominate the skies over Halma-
  hera, the Strait of Malacca, and the Makassar Channel.
  At the time, the army and navy high commands had been giving
  serious thought to checking the Allied advance by means of a decisive
  battle in the zone of the Marianas, the western Carolines, and New
  Guinea. As soon as Biak Island was invaded, the navy shifted sizable
  air strength to that sector, much to the army's annoyance. With Biak
  under U.S. control, Saipan and Tinian in the northern Marianas suf-
  fered an American preparatory bombardment on June 13, followed by
  troop landings on Saipan on June 15. Waging one of the toughest
  battles of the Central Pacific campaign, the defending Japanese forces
  of about one and one-half divisions were overwhelmed by month's
  end. On July 1, their commander reported to Tokyo that his men had
  not eaten for three days but were fighting on, devouring tree roots and
  snails. The last organized defense ended on July 9.
  The defeat of the Japanese navy in the battle of the Philippine Sea,
  also known as the battle of the Marianas, contributed to the isolation
  and destruction of the Japanese garrison on Saipan. On June 19 and
  20, the Japanese fleet was outfought and outmatched by Admiral
  Raymond Spruance's task force. Although five American warships
  were damaged, the Japanese lost two heavy carriers at the outset (leav-
  ing only one surviving carrier from the Pearl Harbor raid) and a light
  carrier as the battle progressed. Three more Japanese carriers, a battle-
  ship, a heavy cruiser, and a destroyer were damaged by aircraft and
  submarines. In two days of battle, 395 of the Japanese carrier planes
  were destroyed-92 percent of their original strength. The Americans
  lost only 130 planes.
  Once the Saipan garrison was destroyed and the naval forces were
  beaten in decisive battle for the second time, the Marianas island chain
  was doomed. Tinian, defended by one Japanese regiment, was in-
  vaded on July 24 and lost by August 1. Meanwhile, U.S. operations
  against Guam had begun on July 8. After thirteen days of bombard-
  ment by air and sea, American forces came ashore, linked up their
  beachheads by the end of the month after severe fighting, and drove
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  EXIT TOjO 
  363
  the last main defenders to the northern shore by August 10. Another
  Japanese division and a half had been lost in the southern Marianas.
  Japanese leaders well understood the significance of the Marianas
  campaign. On June 25, the emperor convened the first wartime meet-
  ing of field marshals and fleet admirals to review operations. It was
  agreed that the retention of Saipan was imperative but would be diffi-
  cult to accomplish. If the island could not be secured, the enemy's use
  of its air bases should be impeded to the utmost. The defense of the
  inner perimeter had to be strengthened quickly. It was crucial to
  combine army and navy air power and to conduct unified operations.
  Tojo, however, had staked his reputation on the successful defense
  of Saipan. In May 1944, he had made the astonishing statement to the
  navy that the island was impregnable. Even the junior officers won-
  dered whether the army's operational planners had misinformed the
  prime minister or whether he had spoken irresponsibly. A senior navy
  officer never forgot his misleading sense of relief when he learned that
  Tojo had assured an Imperial Conference that ground preparations in
  the Marianas and Carolines were completed and that the Combined
  Fleet could operate at will.
  After the devastating loss of Saipan, army war direction officers
  reached the conclusion that the war was lost and that hostilities must
  quickly be ended, particularly because Germany's days seemed num-
  bered. Despite his reputation as a human dynamo, the narrow-minded
  and overconfident Tojo could not cope with the pressures of supreme
  commandship and of fundamental national weakness. As defeat fol-
  lowed defeat, his star waned rapidly. Plans to unify the army and the
  navy air forces came to naught, as did plans to consolidate the two
  services under a single Imperial General Headquarters leader. When
  Tojo sought to placate serious opposition by proposing that General
  Ushiroku Jun replace him as army chief of staff, he had to back down
  and accept Umezu Yoshijiro, the Kwantung Army commander. On
  July 14, 1944, despite Tojo's opposition, his loyal associate Admiral
  Shimada Shigetaro was obliged to resign as navy minister, keeping
  only his post as navy chief of staff. Although Tojo struggled cunningly
  to retain power, he had lost the confidence of the elder statesmen and
  imperial intimates who had installed him in 1941. In the midst of
  rumors of a coup d'etat and perhaps even an assassination attempt
  against him, Tojo resigned as prime minister on July 18,1944.38
  38 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (i), pt. 3: BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo homen kaigun sakusen
  (2), pt. 4, chap. 3 (p. 3); BBSS, Mariana oki kaisen, chaps. 4-6.
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  364 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  THE KOISO-YONAI PHASE: PHILIPPINES TO IWO
  On July 22, 1944, a new government was organized under two distin-
  guished officers representing both services: General Koiso Kuniaki
  (most recently governor general of Korea) as prime minister, and Admi-
  ral Yonai Mitsumasa (a premier in 1940) as his deputy and also navy
  minister. During this stage of the war, Imperial General Headquarters
  concentrated its attention on four objectives: strengthening sea de-
  fenses on the front from the Philippines to Taiwan, the Ryukyus, the
  homeland, and the Kuril Islands; combining army, navy, and aerial
  strength to engage an enemy offensive against any of these districts;
  continuing the attacks against objectives in Hunan and Kwangsi prov-
  inces in China and offsetting the uncertain maritime routes by using
  transportation facilities on the Asian continent; and selecting offshore
  sea routes to ensure protection of shipping. Battle plans were prepared
  to fend off enemy attacks against the Philippines, the Taiwan-Ryukyu
  area, the three main home islands, and the northern island of Hok-
  kaido. Plans for the defense of the home islands projected potential
  invasion points in south and southwest Kyushu, southern Shikoku, and
  a number of sites in Honshu, such as Ise, Toyohashi, Sagami, Chiba-
  Ibaragi, Sendai, and Aomori.
  When American forces overwhelmed the garrisons at Morotai and
  Peleliu-Angaur in mid-September, the high command concluded that
  the next enemy objective would be the Philippines. New army com-
  mands were established to meet the threat, and on September 22
  Imperial General Headquarters directed the army commanders in Sin-
  gapore, China, and Taiwan to complete operational preparations by
  late October.
  In a fierce air war, U.S. navy planes whittled down the aerial strength
  that the Japanese were feeding southward into the Philippines theater.
  General Mac Arthur's main landings began at Leyte on October 20. A
  series of naval and air clashes ensued between October 23 and 26-the
  battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval engagement in history. In the
  course of daring but expensive maneuvers, the Japanese almost inter-
  cepted the American amphibious forces, but when the combat had
  ended, the Japanese carrier fleet had been destroyed, and other major
  elements had been crippled. The once-mighty Japanese navy would
  never again play an important role in the Pacific War. &
  39 Gaimusho, ed., Shusen shiroku (Tokyo: Shinbun gekkansha, 1952), chap. 9; BBSS, Kaigun
  Sho-go sakusen (1), pt. 3; ibid. (2), pts. 1, 2; Hara, Teikoku kaigun, pp. 180-228; Kusaka,
  Rengo kantai, pp. 288-347.
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  THE KOISO-YONAI PHASE 
  365
  Japanese ground defenses were weakened by insufficient troop train-
  ing, lack of airpower and antitank weapons, and muddled planning.
  Logistics were complicated by the fact that 80 percent of Japanese
  shipping bound for the Philippines had been sunk since the summer of
  1944. In addition, the command structure was brand-new and largely
  unacquainted with local realities. General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the
  recently appointed Fourteenth Area army commander, reached Ma-
  nila only on October 6, and his chief of staff, General Muto Akira,
  arrived on the day that the enemy landed on Leyte. Yamashita had
  been unenthusiastic about the plan to defend Leyte but was forced to
  follow the Southern Army's orders. By mid-November he recom-
  mended that the Southern Army reconsider the operation but was
  turned down. On December 11 the loss of Ormoc and its stores, on the
  west side of the island, virtually sealed the fate of Leyte, and Yama-
  shita abandoned the idea of waging a decisive campaign there. The
  defense of the Philippines was continuously complicated by disagree-
  ments among the Imperial General Headquarters, the Southern Army,
  and Yamashita's Area Army.
  U.S. forces landed on Mindoro Island, northwest of Leyte, on De-
  cember 15. Nevertheless, Yamashita's defense of Leyte delayed the
  American invasion of Luzon at Lingayen by about three weeks, from
  December 20 until January 9, 1945. By February 3 the U.S. troops
  were outside Manila. Japanese navy units, not directly commanded by
  Yamashita, waged a vicious one-month battle for the capital, much of
  which was left in ruins. Corregidor fell to the Americans by February
  26. Manila Harbor was open to Allied shipping by mid-March.
  Yamashita's mauled units fell back into the mountains. The Ameri-
  cans were basically in control of Luzon by mid-June. Separated into
  three ill-supplied sectors, Yamashita's hungry and sick men resisted
  until the end of the war, but they were unable to mount any serious
  counteraction and did not destroy themselves in suicidal charges as
  Japanese troops had in other operations. Meanwhile, other U.S. forces
  had cleared the southern Philippines, invading Palawan, Panay, Cebu,
  and Negros, south and north Mindanao, and the Sulu archipelago. In
  the entire campaign for the Philippines in 1944-5, the Japanese lost
  much of their air strength and most of their navy and also incurred at
  least 317,000 casualties, including 7,200 prisoners.*0
  By early 1945, the high command began to subordinate all strategic
  considerations to the defense of the homeland. Once the Americans
  40 BBSS, Sho-go rikugun sakusen (i), pts. 1-3; ibid. (2), chaps. 1-10.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  had retaken the Philippines, it was thought that they would proceed to
  Okinawa or would occupy the Bonin Islands and strike at Okinawa or
  Taiwan. The nearness of the island of I wo to Japan-660 miles from
  Tokyo-suggested that it would become an early objective of Nimitz's
  counteroffensive, a surmise strengthened by the U.S. naval and air
  bombardments that had begun in June 1944. The well-fortified garri-
  son numbered approximately 17,500 soldiers and 5,500 navy person-
  nel. Despite the isolation of his bastion and the shortage of drinking
  water, General Kuribayashi Tadamichi had managed to amass rice and
  other rations sufficient for sixty to seventy days.
  Beginning in December 1944, the Americans subjected Iwo to the
  most severe preparatory air and naval bombardment ever hurled
  against any Pacific target. After a three-day barrage in the middle of
  February, an American corps began landing. The landmark of Mount
  Suribachi was seized on February 23, but the Japanese took full advan-
  tage of the terrain and the interlocking fire network to delay the
  penetration inland. The Japanese attempted counteroffensive actions,
  but by March 26 the remnants of the garrison, penned in the north of
  the island, were annihilated, many dying sealed into their caves by
  flamethrowers. The U.S. Marine units sacrificed about the same num-
  ber of killed and wounded (23,000) as the Japanese lost in killed. The
  three airstrips on the island were promptly used by the Americans as
  bases for fighter aircraft escorting B-29S from Tinian and as emer-
  gency landing sites for crippled bombers returning from sorties
  against Japan.*1
  THE STRUGGLE FOR OKINAWA
  Unsure where the Americans would strike next, the Imperial General
  Headquarters decided to build up the garrison on Taiwan to eight
  ground divisions. The transfer of the first-class Ninth Division to
  Taiwan left the Okinawa zone with only two and a half divisions.
  Nothing came of a plan to send a replacement division from Japan to
  Okinawa, largely because the army general staff preferred to focus its
  efforts on defending the homeland. New emphasis was given to the
  use of special attack (Tokko) units, suicidal aerial attack forces that
  first saw service in the Philippines campaign and were known popu-
  larly as kamikaze.
  41 BBSS, Chubu Taiheiyo rikugun sakusen (2), pts. 1-3; BBSS, Hondo homen kaigun sakusen, pt.
  3, chap. 3.
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  THE STRUGGLE FOR OKINAWA 
  367
  From the tempo and direction of U.S. Navy task force activity in
  March 1945, the Japanese high command concluded that an invasion
  of Okinawa was imminent. American troops began to land in the
  Kerama chain west of Okinawa on March 26 and occupied their objec-
  tives in five days. Japanese army air squadrons were launched against
  U.S. transports in Okinawa waters, and navy aerial units attacked the
  enemy armada of more than one thousand vessels.
  On April 1 the U.S. Tenth Army invaded the west coast of Okinawa
  and quickly overran two important air bases at Yontan and Kadena.
  Weakened by the transfer of the Ninth Division, the defending com-
  mander, General Ushijima Mitsuru, had decided not to fight on the
  beaches but to fall back with his main body to a line based on Shuri in
  the south, while secondary forces fought in the central and northern
  portions of the sixty-mile-long island. Two miles at its narrowest,
  Okinawa's defenses were severed at the waist by April 4. The Japanese
  launched major counteroffensives on April 8 and May 3 but were
  checked by firepower each time. By May 18 the Americans had bro-
  ken the Shuri line; on May 23 they were outside Naha. Japanese
  strongpoints were reduced steadily. In effect, the Imperial General
  Headquarters gave up the island on May 26 when it transferred air
  strength to the defense of the homeland.
  When U.S. troops reached the southern end of Okinawa on June
  21, General Ushijima sent off a last, poignant message to Tokyo and
  then committed suicide with his chief of staff. Japanese dead exceeded
  107,000; another 24,000 to 28,000 were sealed in caves. Prisoners
  numbered about 11,000, including many Okinawans. In fact, the high
  casualty toll suggests that perhaps 42,000 civilians fell victim to com-
  bat action. American ground and naval battle casualties totaled over
  49,000-the highest U.S. toll in the Pacific War.*2
  The Japanese high command had made desperate efforts to help the
  garrison on Okinawa. Kamikaze air attacks were spectacular and mas-
  sive; the Americans counted 896 raids against Okinawa and another
  1,000 against the fleet, especially destroyer and escort pickets and
  anchored aircraft carriers. In all, the U.S. Navy lost 36 ships sunk and
  386 damaged, as well as 763 planes knocked out by all causes, but the
  grand total of Japanese aircraft downed is estimated at 7,830.
  Despite the loss of aerial supremacy, on April 6 the Japanese navy
  dispatched the remnants of the Combined Fleet toward Okinawa in a
  42 BBSS, Okinawa homen rikugun saktuen, chaps. 1-7, 9-14; BBSS, Okinawa homen kaigun
  sakusen, chaps. 1-3,5-13.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  sacrificial operation designed to draw off U.S. carrier squadrons and
  thus leave Allied surface forces vulnerable to a giant kamikaze as-
  sault. The force included the 72,000-ton superbattleship Yamato sup-
  ported by only one light cruiser and eight destroyers. The Yamato
  lacked oil to return from Okinawa; if it had reached the island, it
  would have been beached and its eighteen-inch cannon employed to
  support the ground forces. On April 7, hundreds of U.S. planes
  caught the pathetic little Japanese flotilla only 175 miles from Kyu-
  shu. Bombs and torpedoes tore apart the Yamato, the cruiser, and
  four of the destroyers, with a total loss of about 3,700 men. The
  sacrifice was in vain. Only about one hundred kamikaze planes were
  able to sortie that day, damaging merely three American warships.
  Although psychologically understandable, the operation spelled the
  end of the Japanese navy.«
  THE SUZUKI CABINET AND INTENSIFICATION OF THE
  AIR WAR
  Almost three and a half years after the outbreak of the Pacific War,
  none of Japan's enemies (the United States, Britain, and China) or its
  potential enemy (the Soviet Union) was remotely near capitulation.
  Instead, one of its allies, Italy, had surrendered, and the other, Ger-
  many, was all but defeated by April 1945. With Iwo Jima in enemy
  hands in March and the "last battle" being waged on Okinawa, the
  ineffective General Koiso, after stumbling along since July 1944,
  stepped down as prime minister on April 5, with a recommendation
  to the throne that he be succeeded by a powerful "IGHQ cabinet."
  None of the service chiefs favored Koiso's idea, and so the choice
  fell to Admiral Suzuki Kan tar 6, president of the Privy Council,
  who was seventy-nine years old, hard of hearing, and nonpolitical.
  No one could be sure whether Suzuki intended to wage a decisive
  struggle to the death or to make peace. He gave reassurances to the
  high command that the war would continue, but he also convinced
  his foreign minister, Togo Shigenori, that diplomacy would have a
  free hand.44
  The Supreme War Direction Council agreed formally on April 30 to
  43 BBSS, Okinawa homen rikugun sakusen, chap. 8; BBSS, Hondo homen kaigun sakusen, pt. 4,
  chap. I (p. 4); BBSS, Okinawa homen kaigun sakusen, chap. 4; BBSS, Hondo kessenjunbi (1),
  pp. 286-90.
  44 Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, chaps. 17, 19; Shimomura Kainan, Shusenki (Tokyo: Kamakura
  bunko, 1948), pp. 3-13; Togo, The Cause of Japan, pp. 268-71; Shdwa shi no lennb (hereafter
  SSNT), 30 vols. (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1967-75), vol. 1, pp. 292-336.
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  THE SUZUKI CABINET 
  369
  continue the hostilities.45 If reason had played a part, the collapse of
  the Third Reich in May should have provided the rationale for a
  decision to end the war. Doom stalked from the skies as the Americans
  mounted air attacks on the home islands using the B-29 Superfortress,
  a powerful land-based bomber with a range exceeding 3,000 miles, a
  speed of 350 miles per hour, and a bomb load of more than eight tons.
  Japanese fighter planes encountered difficulty in climbing to the
  30,000 feet of the bombers' daylight raids; only a few interceptors
  were able to make more than one pass at the B-29 formations. Night
  fighter units, ineffectually equipped and trained, could not cope with
  the medium-altitude night raids that the Americans mounted with
  overwhelming fury from February 1945. The Japanese warning sys-
  tem and ground control of interceptor operations were notoriously
  poor; there was a lack of early warning radar of effective quality or
  adequate quantity. The army and the navy failed to cooperate in the
  air defense. According to U.S. Twentieth Air Force records, only
  seventy-four B-29S were lost in 31,387 sorties between June 1944 and
  August 1945, a loss percentage of 0.24. It must be admitted, however,
  that after April 1945 the Japanese high command ordered the conserva-
  tion of aircraft for defense against invasion of the homeland.
  A total of sixty-six Japanese cities, congested and flammable, were
  devastated by B-29 incendiary raids. With the introduction of low-
  level night raids, blind bombing began to supplant attacks against
  strictly military targets. The scale of the B-29 assaults, which often
  lasted more than two hours, was staggering to the Japanese: May 23-
  Tokyo, 520 bombers; May 25-Tokyo, 564; May 29-Yokohama, 450;
  July 8-10-Sendai, and so forth, 497; July 12-13-Utsunomiya, and
  so forth, 506; July 24-Osaka-Nagoya, 599; July 28-Tsu, and so
  forth, 562; August 1-2-Nagaoka, and so forth, 766. The capital was
  leveled by particularly catastrophic bomber raids on February 25 and
  March 10, which took tens of thousands of civilian lives. "Tokyo has
  finally become scorched earth," the emperor lamented.
  It has been calculated that the B-29S destroyed 40 percent of Osaka
  and Nagoya; 50 percent of Tokyo, Kobe, and Yokohama; and 90
  percent of Aomori. At least 241,000 persons died, and 313,000 were
  injured in the raids against the homeland. Conventional bombing
  killed almost as many people as did the two atomic bombs in August.
  The evacuation of the major urban centers, begun in 1944, was intensi-
  45 This body (Saiko senso shido kaigi), made up of the highest civilian, military, and naval
  leaders, was established in August 1944. It met in the presence of the emperor on crucial
  occasions.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  fied the next year. Absenteeism at war factories grew to 70 or 80
  percent. Those who survived the raids recall the tension, exhaustion,
  and lassitude brought on by the incessant alarms and alerts.46
  TOWARD A DECISIVE BATTLE
  By the spring of 1945, Imperial General Headquarters expected enemy
  offensives against Taiwan, central and perhaps south China, Hainan,
  south Korea, and the Kuril Islands. Japan itself was being isolated
  from the Asian continent and the southwest Pacific, and attrition of
  production resources had begun. The main naval, air, and field forces
  were being engaged and destroyed, and the homeland was being
  brought within range of land-based fighter planes. If the situation
  continued to deteriorate rapidly, an invasion of Japan might be antici-
  pated as early as the summer of 1945.
  In fact, defensive preparations in the homeland were deplorable.
  There were labor shortages, and difficulties with mobilization and
  billeting, food and ordnance, jurisdiction and duties. Civilian war
  weariness was deepening. Coastal defenses were behind schedule, and
  secondary sectors were still in the planning stage. Because the high
  command had drafted no definitive guidelines for the Kan to region,
  most of the defense works there were inadequate or worthless. Weap-
  ons were poor; manpower quality was deteriorating; ammunition was
  short; and training levels were primitive. The transfer of troops and
  munitions from the continent grew extremely difficult in the face of
  Allied surface, air, submarine, and sea mining actions. By July, enemy
  warships dared to penetrate Hokkaido waters and bombarded land
  targets at Muroran Bay, Kamaishi, and Hakodate. Interservice contro-
  versies complicated the situation, particularly concerning homeland
  air defense operations.
  Imperial General Headquarters labored throughout the spring and
  summer of 1945 to activate new ground and air units, to bring some
  forces home from the Kwantung Army, to transfer others from China to
  Korea and Manchuria, to husband precious fuel and aircraft, and to
  improve fortified belts. Although the China Expeditionary Army had
  been advocating a "last push" against Chungking, the central authori-
  ties in Japan demurred and ordered the redeployment of troops against
  possible enemy landings along the China coast. The high command
  46 BBSS, Hondo boku sakusen, pts. 1-5; BBSS, Hondo homen kaigun sakusen, pt. 4, chap. 2; Ha-
  yashi Shigeru, Nihon shusenshi, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1962), vol. 3, pp. 66-78.
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  TOWARD A DECISIVE BATTLE 
  371
  expected that sometime after the fall of 1945 the Americans' main
  invasion effort would come against the Kanto Plain in Japan or against
  Kyushu and then the Kanto district. Although some expected the Sovi-
  ets to intervene militarily in Manchuria when the Japanese homeland
  was in danger, others guessed that the Soviet Union would not be able to
  undertake a new war so soon after surviving the hostilities against Nazi
  Germany. At least, it was hoped, there was still some breathing space if
  the Soviet Union gave one year's notice to abrogate the Neutrality Pact
  of 1941, which was not scheduled to expire until April 1946.
  Unable to shore up the tattered inner perimeter, military leaders
  called for a decisive battle in the homeland. The navy had been de-
  stroyed, but its support was no longer needed. The army still had
  about 5.5 million men, 169 infantry divisions, 4 tank divisions, and 15
  air divisions, including scraped-together training units. Of the total of
  nine thousand operational aircraft, six thousand were held in reserve
  for the final battle. The way to certain victory, stressed Army Chief of
  Staff Umezu in mid-1945, lay in making everything on imperial soil
  contribute to the war effort and in combining the nation's total fight-
  ing strength, both material and spiritual, to annihilate the invaders.
  The fostering of a metaphysical will was the first rule; above all, a
  vigorous spirit of attack was required.
  In keeping with the "bamboo spear psychology," the Diet passed
  the Volunteer Military Service Law mobilizing all males between 15
  and 60 and all females between 17 and 40. The public was exhorted to
  pit flesh against iron, spirit against materiel, in the Japanese tradition
  of despising surrender. Defense plans centered on the mass use of
  special-attack tactics by regulars and guerrillas, and aggressive beach-
  line defense and death-defying combat. If by welding together the
  entire population, the Japanese could force the Americans to compre-
  hend the tremendous manpower costs of an invasion, it might be
  possible to end the war on terms far better than unconditional surren-
  der. The home islands, after all, were not the little atolls that had
  already cost the enemy dearly, nor was there any prospect that Japa-
  nese shipping could be destroyed or that all air bases could be elimi-
  nated. The Japanese army knew every cranny in the homeland and
  could prepare in depth beforehand against a foe of questionable stam-
  ina whose supply lines would be stretched to the maximum.
  Imperial General Headquarters strategists sought a silver lining in
  the darkening clouds. Although the end of the war in Europe had
  given the United States a comfortable reserve of national war poten-
  tial, they argued that a desire to "grab postwar profits" had already led
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  to industrial demobilization. American fighting morale was being
  weakened by the fear of huge casualties. There had been an increase in
  labor strife, criticism of the military, and agitation from the ranks to
  engage in a precipitous demobilization. Should the United States be
  defeated in the assault on Japan itself, public confidence in the presi-
  dent and military leaders would decline abruptly; its fighting spirit
  would deteriorate in a flurry of recriminations; and Japan would find
  itself in a much more favorable strategic position.
  Public pessimism was taboo, but privately Japanese military leaders
  were far from sanguine. Despite boasts about chances for a successful
  defense of the home islands, they had no real confidence of defeating
  second and third waves launched continuously, even if the American
  initial landing could be frustrated. When they appraised conditions
  objectively and concretely, the high command staff officers sensed
  that it would be impossible to defeat the invasion because Japan lacked
  weapons, ammunition, and foodstuffs. Increasingly, they realized that
  only one battle, the struggle for Kyushu, could ever, be waged in
  practice. Lieutenant Colonel Fujiwara Iwaichi summed up the army's
  outlook in the summer of 1945:
  Relying for the most part on the suicidal bravery, ardent patriotism and fierce
  loyalty of the people, Japan prepared to wage the final decisive battle against
  an enemy far superior in both technical resources and manpower. In spite of
  the odds building against them, the Japanese people well knew that if their
  leaders were determined to carry out decisive combat on the sacred soil of the
  homeland, there was no alternative but to fight to the bitter end.
  Added an Imperial General Headquarters staff officer: "We merely
  prepared for the final operations with the philosophy that we must
  fight in order to glorify our national and military traditions, that it was
  an engagement which transcended victory or defeat."v
  JAPAN IN EXTREMIS
  By the summer of 1945, Allied pressure on Japan, from air and sea,
  grew so severe that it amounted to near-strangulation of the economy.
  In June, at a cabinet advisers' briefing at Premier Suzuki's residence,
  one elder statesman asked, "What if the enemy does not invade this
  year or next but instead pursues a policy of wiping out Japan by
  bombardment alone?" The Army's briefing officer was obliged to
  47 BBSS, Hondo kessen junbi (i), chaps. 2-11; ibid. (2), chaps. 2-7; BBSS, Hondo homen kaigun
  sakusen, pt. 4, chap. 3; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyosenso, chaps. 19,21 (p. 3).
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  JAPAN IN EXTREMIS 
  373
  admit, with painful candor, that "that would pose the most trouble-
  some course which could be adopted against us."
  There was fear that the Americans might attempt to deepen Japan's
  worsening food crisis by razing its rice fields with a massive incendiary
  bombardment just before harvest time. The ineffectiveness of the air
  defense system also meant that portions of the homeland might soon
  be isolated from one another as unrelenting enemy air raids crippled
  the overtaxed and vulnerable transportation network. Aviation fuel
  reserves had dwindled to a point that there was not enough for all
  available planes to mount a final sortie. Oil had become more precious
  than blood.48
  As an army general staff planner admitted at a secret conference on
  July 25, national strength and combat effectiveness had been decreas-
  ing day by day; the conduct of the war had become hopeless. Neverthe-
  less, when the United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam
  Declaration calling for Japan's unconditional surrender on July 26, the
  authorities in Tokyo dared not move rapidly to terminate hostilities.
  The Allied leaders had warned that they would brook no delay, but
  the official response was to ignore the terms publicly while covertly
  requesting clarification and revision. Although the emperor had as-
  serted unhesitatingly that the text of the Potsdam Declaration, as
  explained by Togo, was acceptable in principle, the government still
  attempted to conduct routine diplomacy at the eleventh hour. Hope
  was nurtured, for example, that the Soviet Union, which had not
  coauthored the Potsdam document, might serve as honest broker and
  intermediary.«
  The consequences of the decision not to accept the Potsdam Declara-
  tion were calamitous for the Japanese. Whether from misunderstand-
  ing or a search for a pretext, both the Americans and the Soviets seized
  upon the presumable "rejection" of the terms to justify unlimited
  violence unleashed against tottering Japan. At 8:15 A.M. on August 6,
  after the all-clear had been sounded from an earlier reconnaissance
  alert, a single B-29 dropped the world's first atomic combat weapon on
  the city of Hiroshima. Between 130,000 and 200,000 people perished
  in agony or suffered horrible injury. The city ceased to exist.
  With all communications severed, military authorities in the Hiro-
  shima district could not notify Tokyo until the afternoon of August 6
  48 Hayashi Shigeru, Nihon shusenshi, vol. 3, pp. 52-65; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyo sensd, p. 242;
  SSNT, vol. 2, pp. 19-22.
  49 Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, chaps. 35-36,44,46, 50; Togo, The Cause of Japan, pp. 304-14;
  SSNT, vol. 3, pp. 247-412; Shimomura, Shusenki, pp. 87-94.
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  374 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  that a bomb of unprecedented destructive power had been employed
  by the enemy. The next day President Harry S Truman confirmed
  publicly that the weapon was atomic and warned that worse was in
  store unless the war was ended. The central government leaders were
  torn between skepticism and fear of revealing the possible truth to the
  populace. The newspapers of August 8 carried only a simple Imperial
  General Headquarters communique that Hiroshima had suffered con-
  siderably from a "new type of bomb." Meanwhile, investigations were
  conducted by intelligence, ordnance, medical, and scientific experts.
  On August 9 the high command received a report that a special kind of
  bomb had indeed been used but that burns could be prevented if one's
  body were covered. The local army headquarters indicated that people
  wearing white clothing and those hiding in air raid shelters had been
  burned only slightly, and that the huge fires were attributable to the
  fact that the bomb was dropped while the inhabitants were preparing
  breakfast. The army was not only trying to prevent panic but was also
  hoping to play down the effects of atomic weapons on existing plans
  for the decisive campaign in the homeland.*0
  Even before the field team's report arrived from Hiroshima, For-
  eign Minister Togo decided to recommend to the throne that the
  Potsdam Declaration be accepted immediately. When the emperor
  received him on the afternoon of August 8, the foreign minister con-
  veyed everything that was known about the disaster, from both Japa-
  nese and enemy sources, and recommended that peace be sought right
  away. The monarch agreed that continuation of the war was hopeless
  and warned that precious time would be lost if attempts at bargaining
  were continued. Inconceivably, an emergency meeting of the Supreme
  War Direction Council was delayed because some members were re-
  portedly unable to attend.
  Troubles came not singly to Japan. Early on August 9, Foreign
  Ministry radio monitors picked up a Soviet broadcast announcing that
  the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and that the Red Army
  was invading Manchuria. A cable from the Japanese ambassador in
  Moscow never reached Tokyo. Official word was not conveyed to the
  Foreign Ministry by the Soviet ambassador until August 10, two days
  after Soviet forces launched attacks not only on Manchuria but also on
  south Sakhalin, the Kurils, and Korea.
  50 BBSS, Hondo boku sakusen, pp. 626-43; SSNT, vol. 4, pp. 77-316; Hayashi Shigeru, Nihon
  shiisenshi, vol. 3, pp. 80-95; Togo, The Cause of Japan, pp. 314-16; Shimomura, Shusenki,
  pp. 94-9; Matsumura Shuitsu, Semen kara shusen made, new ed. (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1969),
  pp. 15-66; Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, chap. 37.
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  JAPAN IN EXTREMIS 
  375
  Many Japanese sources assert that the shock of the Soviet Union's
  "betrayal"-the violation of the remaining term of the Neutrality Pact
  of 1941 -caused greater consternation than did the news of the oblitera-
  tion of Hiroshima by a single bomb. On learning of the Soviet inva-
  sion, War Minister Anami Korchika observed that "the inevitable has
  come at last." When Premier Suzuki asked Ikeda Sumihisa, the chief
  of the Cabinet Planning Board, whether the Kwantung Army was
  capable of repulsing the Soviets, Ikeda replied that the situation was
  hopeless. "Is the Kwantung Army that weak?" the prime minister
  sighed. "Then the jig is up."
  While the Supreme War Direction Council was arguing about condi-
  tions for accepting the Potsdam Declaration in principle, a B-29
  dropped the second atomic weapon, often called "the unnecessary
  bomb," on the city of Nagasaki at 11:30 A.M. on August 9. Approxi-
  mately 80,000 to 100,000 were killed, injured, or left missing. The
  Japanese army announced that the Nagasaki bomb was not formidable
  and that the military had "countermeasures." The high command,
  Anami assured the cabinet on the same day, did not believe the war
  was lost. Together with Army Chief of Staff Umezu and Navy Chief of
  Staff Toyoda Teijiro, he spoke vigorously in favor of fighting on or at
  least of obtaining better conditions. Although victory was not certain,
  total defeat was by no means inevitable. Meanwhile, Japanese intelli-
  gence learned from imaginative Allied prisoners of war that the Ameri-
  cans possessed a hundred of the fantastic new bombs and that Tokyo
  was marked for final erasure.
  The decision to surrender was made, in essence, by the emperor in
  the early hours of August 10. Unexpectedly asked by Prime Minister
  Suzuki to render his decision and thus break a deadlock in the cabinet,
  the monarch stated that he accepted Togo's recommendation to accept
  the Potsdam terms. The planning of the army and the navy had been
  "erroneous and untimely," despite the avowed intention to wage a
  decisive campaign on homeland soil, and the air raids were increasing
  in severity. "To subject the people to further suffering, to witness the
  destruction of civilization, and to invite the misfortune of mankind,
  are entirely contrary to my wishes." Disarmament of the loyal armed
  forces and indictment of citizens as war criminals were indeed painful
  to contemplate, but it was inevitable for the salvation of the country.
  Japan must bear the unbearable.
  Nevertheless, the military and the government remained in conflict.
  As late as August 12, Umezu and Toyoda (without consulting Navy
  Minister Yonai) had recommended to the emperor that the govern-
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  376 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  ment resolutely reject the enemy's clarification of terms, which called
  for the emperor's subordination to the authority of a Supreme Com-
  mander, Allied Powers. The high command judged that the foe in-
  tended to make Japan a tributary state and to debase the dignity of the
  throne, the apex of the national polity (kokutai). Despite these compli-
  cations, the policy of seeking peace proceeded. On the morning of
  August 14, the emperor demanded and received military and naval
  compliance from the highest officers on active duty available. Shortly
  afterward, in an emotional Imperial Conference, the last of the war,
  the monarch bravely reiterated his decision for peace, in order to
  preserve the country's national polity and to save the population from
  annihilation. If necessary, he would personally appeal to the armed
  forces to maintain order.
  On the night of August 14, the emperor signed and affixed his seal
  to the rescript ending the war. The cabinet then countersigned the
  document. Diehard army opponents of surrender in Tokyo tried to
  reverse the decision by force that same night but were foiled by ele-
  ments loyal to the government. At noon on August 15, in an unprece-
  dented radio broadcast, the voice of the emperor conveyed to the
  public in elliptical language the word of the decision to lay down arms
  instead of defending the homeland to the death.
  Prime Minister Suzuki resigned on August 15 and was replaced by
  Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko on August 17. The surrender of Japan,
  attested to by the new foreign minister, Shigemitsu Mamoru, on be-
  half of the emperor and government and by General Umezu for the
  armed forces, took place formally aboard the American battleship
  Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2,1945.5I
  OVERVIEW
  By any standard of measurement, Japan paid an enormous price in
  human and material terms for its part in the Pacific War.*2 The main
  51 Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, chaps. 43, 54; Shimomura, Shusenki, pp. 113-68; BBSS, Hokuw
  homen rikugun sakusen (2), pts. 1—2; BBSS, Hondo boku sakusen, pp. 646—50; BBSS, Kanwgun
  (2), chaps. 7, 8; Togo, The Cause of Japan, pp. 316-39; Man-Mo shusenshi (Tokyo: Kawade
  shobo shinsha, 1962), pt. 1, chaps. 1,2.
  52 Japanese army wartime casualties have been estimated at 1.525 million to 1.675 million. The
  higher figure includes 1.140 million killed, 295,000 wounded, and 240,000 whose fate is
  unknown. Japanese navy records list 420,000 dead or missing and 9,000 disabled, for a total of
  429,000. In addition, 31,000 merchant sailors were killed in action, an estimated casualty rate
  of 43 percent.
  Civilian casualties have been placed at 300,000 dead and 24,000 missing in the homeland.
  Over 99 percent of these losses were caused by air bombing. Estimates of the injured range as
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  OVERVIEW 
  377
  proximate causes of that war have long been understood, although
  unevenly assessed: the China conflict, dependence on external sources
  of energy, and ties with the Axis powers. Nevertheless, once the war
  began, the exuberance of the early phase tended to obscure fundamen-
  tal Japanese disadvantages that ultimately proved fatal against a super-
  power like the United States.
  Half of the population, for example, was engaged in feeding the
  country, but 20 percent of the annual rice demand still had to be im-
  ported. In 1941, a relatively benign year, the total food level could
  support an average caloric intake, which was little more than 6 percent
  above the accepted minimum for subsistence. Yet between 1930 and
  1940, the population of the home islands had increased by about 10
  million, to more than 73 million, including the armed forces. By 1944
  the total population exceeded 77 million. The standard of living, al-
  ready in decline since the outset of the China conflict in 1937, fell
  catastrophically afterward. As a fraction of the gross national product,
  consumer expenditures were reduced by;37 percent in 1944. By the end
  of the Pacific War, Japan was isolated and on the brink of starvation.«
  To cope with its huge civil and military requirements, the Japanese
  possessed what can best be termed a pygmy economy. Steel and coal
  production, at most, amounted to only one-thirteenth that of the
  United States; munitions production was never more than 10 percent.
  Productive capacity, vulnerable and essentially unenlarged, was insuffi-
  cient to support the wartime demand. The military services never ob-
  tained their main production targets. Gross national product and real
  output rose unimpressively during the war years, although military
  expenditures consumed about 85 percent of national income by 1945.
  To make up for deficiencies in raw materials by drawing on the
  resources of the conquered colonies of Southeast Asia, it was imperative
  that import-oriented Japan maintain a giant merchant fleet and keep the
  sea lanes open. Neither prerequisite was met as the wartime years went
  high as 625,000. In Manchuria and China, after the war ended, 170,000 civilians are thought
  to have died; in Okinawa, 165,000.
  In major naval categories, the loss-to-survival numbers were as follows: battleships-8/4;
  aircraft carriers-19/6; cruisers-36/11; destroyers-133/41; submarines-131/59.
  Aircraft wastage of all types amounted to about 20,000 in combat, 10,000 in training
  accidents, 20,000 attributable to other noncombat causes, and 4,000 planes to miscellaneous
  reasons. Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, app. 18; BBSS, Hondo boku sakusen, pp. 659-66;
  Shimomura, Shusenki, p. 19; Hayashi Shigeru, Nikon shusenshi, vol. 3, pp. 70, 72-3; GSS,
  Taiheiyosenso (5) (1975), vol. 39, pp. 803,820-3.
  53 Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, app., pp. 41-2; Jerome B. Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and
  Reconstruction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1949), pp. 52, 56, 287-8. Also
  see Thomas R. H. Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (New
  York: Norton, 1978), chap. 7.
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  378 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  by. Because Japan had 6.35 million tons of available merchant shipping
  in 1941-double the minimum amount deemed necessary-new con-
  struction remained relatively low. By the end of 1942, about 1.25 mil-
  lion tons had already been lost to enemy action, a scale of decrease that
  grew steadily worse: 2.56 million tons were lost in 1943, 3.48 million
  tons in 1944. By the war's end in 1945, Japan had only 2.6 million tons
  of shipping left, of which one-third was unserviceable. Premier Higa-
  shikuni told the Imperial Diet in September 1945 that "the basic cause
  of defeat was the loss of transport shipping."™
  Japan's military and naval failures in the Pacific War inevitably
  exacerbated the underlying national weaknesses. Obsessed by the no-
  tion of surface engagements between grand fleets as in 1905 and 1916,
  the battleship admirals neglected the protection of merchantmen and
  downplayed the role of the submarine. Although the Japanese "Long
  Lance" torpedo far surpassed the capabilities of U.S. torpedoes in the
  initial stages of the war, Japanese submarine operations in general
  proved to be a dismal failure. In addition, both the army and navy
  underestimated the Allied ability to conduct air operations against
  Japanese industry and urban centers. The B-29 bomber was never
  countered successfully. That Japan was wide open to aerial bombard-
  ment, remarked Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, "came as a thunderbolt
  to the whole nation."
  The Japanese themselves did not develop a strategic air command
  capable of sustained and heavy raids at long range against economic
  targets or rear zones. Apart from the attack on Pearl Harbor, the best
  that could be done was to dispatch carrier-borne planes against Dar-
  win and Townsville in Australia and Colombo and Trincomalee in
  Ceylon; submarines against Sydney Harbor in Australia and Santa
  Barbara in California; and, strangest of all, thousands of ineffective
  little balloon bombs against North America. There was hope of perfect-
  ing "miracle weapons" such as atomic or bacteriological devices, but
  the comparatively low state of Japanese science and technology could
  not turn out weapons that were realistic or timely. The desperation of
  Japanese tacticians is demonstrated by the wasteful and indecisive
  commitment of thousands of kamikaze pilots in the Philippines and
  Okinawa campaigns.
  54 BBSS, Kaijo goeisen (1971), charts 1-2, 6-8; Gaimusho, Shusen shiroku, app., p. 27; Hayashi
  Shigeru, Nihon shusenshi, vol. 3, p. 186; GSS, Taiheiyo senso (5) (1975), vol. 39, pp. 803-26;
  Cohen, Japan's Economy, pp. 51 ("pygmy economy"), 52-8; Toyama Saburo, "Lessons from
  the Past," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (September 1982): 68; Shoda Tatsuo, Jushintachi
  noShmua shi, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Bungei shunjusha, 1981), pp. 335-6.
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  OVERVIEW 
  379
  The Japanese also did not devise a joint-command system. After
  1941-2, interservice cooperation and coordination were largely nomi-
  nal. Rivalry and hostility were worsened by the customary contempt
  for and neglect of logistical considerations, despite the demands of a
  fast-moving war. Although the soldiers, sailors, and airmen fought
  with great tenacity, courage, and devotion, the quality of Japanese
  commanders was undistinguished. The Imperial General Headquar-
  ters seemed to excel only at shuffling forces and devising evacuations.
  Certainly the configuration of the atolls in the Pacific militated against
  maneuver and set-piece engagements, but when sizable forces were
  committed on landmasses, disaster also ensued in the face of superior
  firepower, mobility, and air cover, as at Imphal and Leyte.ss
  On the geostrategic level, Japanese thinking was characterized by
  wishful thinking, preconceptions, and insufficient attention to mate-
  rial factors. Less than helpful guidance, for example, was provided by
  the vague directives governing crucial phase-three operations: to inter-
  cept and destroy any attacking force that might threaten the strategic
  defense perimeter and to activate plans to destroy the American will to
  fight. Their early successes lulled the Japanese into a false sense of
  security. For far too long, they tended to think in terms of the out-
  classed Allied forces originally encountered in Southeast Asia and
  China. When Imperial General Headquarters bestirred itself to re-
  think strategy toward the end of 1943, it was too late. In addition,
  coalition planning and operations, concerted with the Germans, were
  nearly nonexistent. *6
  The Japanese had had no intention of conquering the United States.
  Compromise terms were the most that could ever have been expected,
  especially after the Allies called for unconditional surrender in 1943.
  From the objective point of view, as early as mid-1942 the more
  55 Umihara Osamu, Senshi ni tnanabu (Tokyo: Asagumo shinbunsha, 1970), pp. 73-139;
  Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan and Her Destiny, ed. F. S. G. Piggott, trans. Oswald White
  (London: Hutchinson, 1958), pp. 324-5; Toyama, "Lessons," pp. 68-9; Paul S. Dull, A
  Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-^45) (Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Insti-
  tute, 1978), pp. 103-n; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyo senso, pp. 189-92.
  56 BBSS, Nantd homen kaigun sakusen (1), pt. 1, chap. 6; BBSS, Nansei homen kaigun sakusen,
  pp. 85-9, 171, 176-7, 227; BBSS, Ran-in Bengaru wan homen kaigun shinko sakusen, chap. 5
  (p. 13); Hara, Teikoku kaigun, p. 7; Imai Takeo in Nihon gaiko gakkai, ed., Taiheiyo senso
  shuketsuron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1958), chap. 2; Takagi, Taiheiyo senso, pp.
  139-43; Hayashi Saburo, Taiheiyo senso, pp. 109-14. Also see Toyama Saburo, Daitoa senso
  to senshi no kyokun (Tokyo: Hara shobo, 1979); Hata Ikuhiko, Taiheiyo senso: roku dai kessen:
  naze Nihon viayaburetaka (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1976); Fukudome Shigeru, Kaigun
  no hansei (Tokyo: Nihon shuppan kyodo, 1951); Takayama Shinobu, Sanbo honbu sakusenka:
  Sakusen ronso no jisso to hansei (Tokyo: Fuyo shobo, 1978), chap. 6; Umihara, Senshi ni
  tnanabu, pp. 5-42.
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  380 
  THE PACIFIC WAR
  sensitive Japanese leaders knew that the only long-range hope for the
  country's salvation lay in a quick settlement of the war, on as favorable
  terms as possible. The emperor, for one, told the Privy Seal that after
  he learned of the results of the battle of Midway, prospects were "not
  bright." But as long as Tojo remained premier, until 1944, nothing
  came of the monarch's hope for an early peace, although dealing from
  a position of strength was not to Japan's advantage beyond the first
  phase of hostilities, as Admiral Yamamoto had warned.
  The rising Allied preponderance of tridimensional strength in the
  Pacific, already visible in the counteroffensives of 1942-3, became
  overwhelming as the defeat of Germany drew near. Allied forces were
  becoming available for transfer to the Far East, and the Soviets' entry
  into the Pacific War became more probable. In April 1944 Prince
  Mikasa suggested that the military leaders consider declaring Kyoto
  and Nara open cities. With the loss of Saipan in July 1944, the chief of
  naval staff later stated, "Hell was upon us." Upon hearing of the
  defeat in the Marianas, Imperial Guard Division Commander Muto
  Akira told his aide, "Japan is defeated." When Iwo Jima was about to
  fall in March 1945, the deputy chief of staff warned that "Tokyo will
  become a battleground in a month.""
  Although there was thus no dearth of realism in appraising Japan's
  chances for "victory" in the Pacific War, there was the problem of
  "being defeated gracefully." Japan as a nation had had no experience
  with invasion, capitulation, or foreign occupation. According to Colo-
  nel Obata Kazuyoshi, an Eighteenth Army staff officer, "It was
  thought that the struggle for the homeland would be difficult and
  would require years but, with the help of [the Kwantung Army in]
  Manchuria, would be fought to a draw." When Marquis Kido learned
  of the high command's high-sounding but impractical talk of a "deci-
  sive battle," he wondered whether Japan's chances were even "fifty-
  fifty": The army and navy seemed to be resisting out of "sheer obsti-
  nacy." It was well known to the leaders that the Kwantung Army had
  been enfeebled by the withdrawal of forces and equipment to various
  locations in the Pacific theater and Japan, leaving Manchuria helpless
  when the Soviet invasion came.*8
  In short, the Japanese leadership's decisions for war in 1941 and for
  capitulation in 1945 were colored by emotionalism. It was far easier to
  start the war than to end it, given the ascendancy of the short-sighted
  57 Shoda, Jushintachi, pp. 319-21; Alvin D. Coox, Japan: The Final Agony (New York: Ballan-
  tine, 1970), pp. 8,10. 
  58 Coox, Japan, pp. 86-87, 100,153.
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  OVERVIEW 
  381
  hawks and the timidity of the doves. Japanese conduct of hostilities
  was characterized by calculated risk, gambles, intuition, inflexibility,
  and poorly defined objectives. In view of the pigheadedness to the last
  by many members of the high command, it is remarkable that the
  country somehow escaped the complete catastrophe promised by U.S.
  Air Force General Curtis LeMay in 1945: "We had two or three weeks
  of work left on the cities, a bit more to do on precision targets, and
  were just getting started on transportation. Another six months and
  Japan would have been beaten back into the Dark Ages."59
  LeMay's tough language was typical of Western wartime propagan-
  dists and postwar prosecutors. The Allied Occupation authorities and
  the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) charged
  the Japanese with cunning, bestiality, and conspiracy in waging an
  illegal war of aggression. The alleged criminality was traced back to
  the Manchurian incident of 1931 by the Americans and to the Russo-
  Japanese War of 1904-5 by the Soviets. Indeed, use of the old termi-
  nology of "Greater East Asia War" (Dai Toa senso) was prohibited, and
  "Pacific War" (Taiheiyo senso) replaced it officially.
  Since Japan's recovery of sovereignty in 1952, a new outlook on the
  war has evolved in Japanese historians', journalists', and veterans'
  circles. A large number of widely read books and articles have resur-
  rected the term "Greater East Asia War," on the grounds that "Pacific
  War" unduly emphasized the fighting against America and seemed to
  exclude the long war against China. Among the more famous works
  employing Greater East Asia War in their title were ex-Colonel Hattori
  Takushiro's early four-volume history (1953) and Hayashi Fusao's
  controversial two-volume study (1964-6). The newer literature re-
  vealed various strands of thinking about the war of 1941-5: "Greater
  East Asia War" implied that Japan had a mission civilisatrice in Asia;
  "Pacific War," that it was an aggressor; "imperialistic war," that it
  became embroiled in capitalistic bandits' struggles for world re-
  sources; and "war of liberation," that it nobly freed colonial peoples
  from Western oppressors.
  Hayashi Fusao saw the war of 1941-5 as the culmination of a century
  of struggle against Western imperialism which began with Commodore
  Matthew Perry's arrival off Japan in 1853-4. To Ishikawa Tatsuzo, the
  war was the product of fifty years of "brainwashing" or militaristic
  education by the Japanese authorities. Others spoke of a fifteen-year
  59 Coox, Japan, p. 154; Curtis E. LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My
  Story (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 368-84.
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  THE PACIFIC WAR
  war going back to the Manchurian incident, as the IMTFE prosecutors
  had charged for other reasons. Usui Katsumi, however, called the idea
  of a fifteen-year war "monochromatic." He preferred to consider 1937
  as the start of the wartime period and to extend the point of termination
  beyond 1945 in include the entire Occupation period through 1951 or
  1952. *>
  In recent times, a bitter controversy arose concerning textbook revi-
  sion in Japan. Residents of countries that had been invaded and occu-
  pied by the Imperial Army were incensed by reports of the softening
  of language regarding the war, whereby the Ministry of Education
  certified the "sanitizing" of certain passages in high school texts. Par-
  ticularly offensive was the playing down of atrocities such as the Rape
  of Nanking, and the frequent suppression of the harsh wording for-
  merly used to describe "invasion," "aggression," and "thrust." Critics
  in Japan and abroad feared that governmental attempts to control
  textbooks represented "part of a well-orchestrated, systematic plan to
  push the country to the Right." The critics had another profound
  concern: that survivors of the war would view it with nostalgia and
  that new generations would glamorize it out of ignorance.61 In short,
  the matter of attitudes toward the war of 1941-5 remains vivid in
  Japan and those countries that it fought, whether the hostilities are
  termed the Greater East Asia or the Pacific War.
  60 Cited works include Hattori Takushiro, Daitoa senso zenshi, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Masu shobo,
  '953); Hayashi Fusao, Daitoa senso koteiron, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Bancho shobo, 1964-6);
  Ishikawa Tatsuzo, "Kokoro no naka no senso," Chid Koron, March 1963; Usui Katsumi,
  "On the Duration of the Pacific 'War," Japan Quarterly, October-December 1981, pp. 479-
  88. Also see Tamura Yoshio, ed., Hiroku daitoa senshi (Tokyo: Fuji shoen, 1952-5); Ueyama
  Shunpei, Daitoa senso no imi (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1964); and the powerful critique by
  Ienaga Saburo, Taiheiyo senso (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968).
  61 For excellent summaries, see Yamazumi Masami, "Textbook Revision: The Swing to the
  Right," Japan Quarterly, October-December 1981, pp. 472-8; Murata Kiyoaki, "Emotion
  in Disputes," Japan Times Weekly, August 28, 1982; Taro Yayama, "The Newspapers Con-
  duct a Mad Rhapsody over the Textbook Issue," Journal of Japanese Studies 9 (Summer
  1983): 301-16.
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  PART III
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CHAPTER 8
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND
  TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, 1885-1920
  ECONOMIC GROWTH, 1885-I920
  The stabilization of the economy following the Matsukata deflation of
  the early 1880s marks the end of a transitional period in Japan's eco-
  nomic development and the beginning of the initial phase of modern
  economic growth that continued to the end of World War I. By the
  mid-18 80s the costs of the Restoration and its aftermath had largely
  been met, and a start had been made on building an economic infra-
  structure. Although economic activity and life-styles were still scarcely
  touched by modern technology and organization, the seeds of a mod-
  ern economic sector in industry, trade, and finance, on which Japan's
  future was to depend, were being sown.
  It is from the 1880s that a reasonably reliable and comprehensive set
  of quantitative estimates (the LTES series) is available.1 Prepared in
  the 1960s and subsequently adjusted in some details, these estimates
  have provided the material for some sophisticated analyses of Japan's
  experience.2 The importance of quantitative data for the description
  and understanding of economic growth scarcely needs emphasizing.
  There are, however, caveats regarding these estimates. Although
  based on the consideration and evaluation of all available data, these
  estimates have been made into a consistent system by reference to an
  overall model that makes assumptions about the relationships of the
  various individual series to one another. Gaps in the data for the
  period before the late 1880s, moreover, can be filled only on the basis
  of some preconceptions about the speed and direction of growth. If
  1 Ohkawa Kazushi, Shinohara Miyohei, and Umemura Mataji, eds., Choki keizai tokei-suikei to
  bunseki (hereafter LTES), 14 vols. (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1965-); Kazushi Ohkawa
  and Miyohei Shinohara with Larry Meissner, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Development:
  A Quantitative Appraisal(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979).
  2 Good examples are by Ohkawa and Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Develop-
  ment; Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth: Trend Acceleration in
  the Twentieth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973); and Allen C. Kelley
  and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Lessons from Japanese Economic Development. An Analytical Eco-
  nomic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
  385
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  these have resulted in inaccurate estimates for the 1880s, the impres-
  sion they give of growth rates through the first phase of economic
  growth will be distorted. In fact, it is likely that as James Nakamura
  suggested,3 production in traditional sectors for which information is
  hard to collect, such as agriculture and handicraft industry, has been
  seriously underestimated for these years. Despite these reservations,
  the figures become more reliable for later years and, for most of our
  period, may be accepted as reliable enough to indicate at least the main
  outlines of production, expenditure, and employment.^
  International comparisons of output per capita in the early stages of
  Japan's economic development are impressionistic at best. Simon
  Kuznets estimated Japan's output per capita for the late 1870s at $74
  in 1965 prices, which is between one-quarter and one-third of the
  levels in advanced countries at a similar initial stage.5 Ohkawa thought
  this figure implausibly low and doubled it. The LTES estimates indi-
  cate a figure of $172 for 1887, still very low in comparison with initial
  levels elsewhere. Those who view the process of economic develop-
  ment in Japan as similar to that in other countries may feel that it
  should have been higher. Ohkawa and Shinohara believe that it could
  have been as high as $251 but concede that even in 1887, the Japanese
  economy was at a relatively low level.
  By 1920, the end of the period covered in this chapter, gross domes-
  tic product in real terms (1934-6 average prices) had risen 2.8 times
  since 1885. Output of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries grew by 67
  percent; commerce, services, and other by 180 percent; mining and
  manufacturing by 580 percent; transport, communications, and pub-
  lic utilities by over 1,700 percent; and construction by 170 percent. As
  a result of these differential raj;es of growth, the share of agriculture,
  forestry, and fisheries in total output fell from 42 percent to 25 per-
  cent; mining and manufacturing rose from 8 percent to 19 percent;
  and transport, communications, and public utilities rose from 1.5
  percent to almost 10 percent, whereas the shares of other sectors
  changed little. Within these sectors the composition of output and the
  technical and organizational features of production changed consider-
  3 James I. Nakamura, Agricultural Production and the Economic Development of Japan (Princeton,
  N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966).
  4 For critiques of the early years of the LTES series, see Nakamura Takafusa, "Choki tokei no
  seido ni tsuite- 19-seiki Nihon no jakkan no suji o megutte," Keizai kenkyu 30 (January 1979):
  1-9; Yasuba Yasukichi, "Senzen no Nihon ni okeru kogyo tokei no shinpyosei ni tsuite,"
  Osaka daigaku keizaigaku 17 (1977-8). and Nishikawa Shunsaku, " 'Choki keizai tokei' no
  keiryo keizaigaku - Okawa hoka Kokumin sholoku no tenbo rombun," Kikan riron keizaigaku 27
  (August 1976): 126-34.
  5 Simon Kuznets, Economic Growth of Nations: Total Output and Production Structure (Cam-
  bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 24.
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  ECONOMIC GROWTH 
  387
  ably. We shall examine these changes in later sections of this chapter,
  but we note here that although the greatest absolute increases in out-
  put came from the large food and textile sections, which were largely
  traditional in organization and technique, growth was fastest in mod-
  ern transport and communications and in the metals and machinery
  industries in which technical change was most rapid.
  Over the same period, the uses to which this growing production was
  put also changed. Personal consumption, which absorbed 85 percent of
  the rather low output in 1887, increased 2.4 times by 1920, but because
  total national expenditure had meanwhile increased 2.6 times, the share
  of personal consumption fell to 76 percent. Gross domestic fixed-capital
  formation, a major growth-promoting factor, increased over 6 times,
  and its share of total national expenditure rose from 9 percent to 21
  percent. Japan's involvement with the world economy deepened dra-
  matically, with its exports of goods and services and other foreign earn-
  ings rising 9.4 times and its payments for imports of goods and services
  and other current payments abroad rising nearly 12 times.
  From 1885 to 1920, the population increased by 45 percent, and so
  the per-capita rates of increase were not as high as the total growth
  rates. Thus, although the total output of the Japanese economy (gross
  domestic product) rose 2.6 times, output per capita of population rose
  only 1.8 times. The rise in real personal consumption per capita, a
  rough measure of the rise in average standards of living, was a rela-
  tively modest 67 percent. The gainfully employed population rose by
  some 22 percent. Whereas the number of workers engaged in agricul-
  ture and forestry actually fell by about 1 million, the nonagricultural
  work force doubled from about 6.5 million to about 13 million, with
  the biggest increase in manufacturing, followed by commerce, trans-
  port and communications, and the service industries.
  The Japanese government is widely credited with having played a
  large part in Japan's economic growth. Except during the Sino-
  Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, the government's current and capi-
  tal expenditures, including military expenditures, was between 7 and
  11 percent of gross national expenditures, a rather modest proportion
  by today's standards. The government's role in capital formation, how-
  ever, was much larger. From 1897 until the private investment boom
  during World War I, the government was responsible for 30 to 40
  percent of all capital investment. Government investment was, more-
  over, heavily concentrated in the strategic heavy and engineering indus-
  tries and in facilities such as railways which contributed in a number of
  crucial ways to the development of modern industry in Japan.
  The economy did not grow at a constant speed between 1885 and
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  1920. Over the whole span of Japan's modern history the rate of
  growth has tended to accelerate. Along the way, however, there have
  been marked variations, often described as cycles, which suggests that
  they are associated with patterns inherent in the growth process itself.
  These variations were, however, associated also with specific events.
  For example, the depressing, though salutary, effects of the Matsu-
  kata deflation lasted through the mid-i88os. Recovery was then fairly
  rapid, based mainly on the development of the textile and traditional
  handicraft industries, railway building, and the stimulus of the Sino-
  Japanese War. Establishment of the gold standard in 1897 put a brake
  on expansion, and growth was much slower until about 1903. The
  Russo-Japanese War then boosted the heavy and engineering indus-
  tries, and after a short postwar recession, growth picked up again.
  World War I effectively removed most of the advanced industrialized
  nations from competition in world markets as well as in the Japanese
  market, thus providing Japan with the opportunity to substitute do-
  mestically produced goods for imports and to increase exports of manu-
  factures despite the relative backwardness of its manufacturing sector.
  The result was an unprecedented boom in which all sectors of the
  economy participated, but those industries in the forefront of modern
  developments, like engineering, shipbuilding, machine tools, and elec-
  trical engineering, grew the fastest. Despite a postwar slump and a
  succession of economic difficulties throughout the 1920s, the World
  War I boom firmly established the viability of modern industry in
  Japan. Although the traditional sectors of agriculture and small busi-
  ness were still responsible for the bulk of output and employment, by
  1920 the economy's future growth clearly lay with the modern sector.
  In the Meiji era, the traditional and modern sectors had grown
  concurrently. Although the still-small modern industrial system inter-
  acted with the existing economy, the relationship had been comple-
  mentary rather than competitive. By World War I, however, the de-
  mands of the rapidly expanding modern sector increasingly conflicted
  with the needs of the traditional sector which supplied most of the
  consumers' needs. Thus there came into being a dual or differential
  economic structure that included a wide range of technology, produc-
  tivity, wages, scales of production, profit rates, management prac-
  tices, and forms of industrial organization. There were also characteris-
  tic differences in the nature of the markets in which products were
  sold and from which capital, labor, technology, intermediate goods,
  and managerial talent were acquired. Governments after the early
  Meiji era systematically used all the powers at their disposal to pro-
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  ECONOMIC GROWTH 
  389
  mote the growth of modern industry in what they saw as the national
  interest, even, if necessary, at the expense of the traditional sector. In
  the long run this policy made Japan into the advanced industrial coun-
  try that it is today, but by favoring armaments, investment goods, and
  exports over consumption goods, for a long time government policy
  kept the living standards of most Japanese lower than they might have
  been and contributed to the social and political strains of the turbulent
  1930s and 1940s and even later.
  The availability of quantitative estimates of many aspects of Japan's
  economic activity tempts observers to explain its growth solely in
  terms of those quantitative aggregates and the relationships among
  them. Economic growth is not, however, a natural phenomenon sub-
  ject to the operation of mindless natural laws but is the result of
  purposeful human behavior. What were the motives for economic
  growth and development in Japan? In one sense there were as many
  motives as there were individual economic decisions. Japan's leaders
  did not, however, believe that the sum of decisions about what was
  best for each individual would achieve the national objectives of pro-
  moting industrial development, catching up with the West, and be-
  coming a world power. On the contrary, the importance of national
  policy and its implementation in shaping the course of Japan's eco-
  nomic development were stressed by the government, accepted by the
  average Japanese, and increasingly acknowledged in the public utter-
  ances of businessmen. As Takahashi Korekiyo said in his 1889 fare-
  well to the students of Tokyo Agricultural College, "Gentlemen, it is
  your duty to advance the status of Japan, bring her to a position of
  equality with the civilized powers and then carry on to build a founda-
  tion from which we shall surpass them all."6
  Depending on the relative importance ascribed to public and private
  motives, Japan's experience has been described as either "growth from
  above" or "growth from below." These two views should not be re-
  garded as mutually exclusive. The production of goods for domestic
  consumption, for example, was in general the result of individual
  decisions and market behavior, but it was also influenced by public
  decisions about the rate of investment relative to consumption and
  official encouragement to retain traditional Japanese ways of life. Gov-
  ernment decisions on defense and defense-related industries, foreign
  trade and payments, and education affected both the pace and the
  6 Reproduced in Takekazu Ogura, Can Japanese Agriculture Survive? 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Agricul-
  tural Policy Research Institute, 1980), p. 14. Ironically, Takahashi was assassinated by ul-
  tranationalists in 1936 for trying to put a brake on government expenditures.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  direction of industrial development. Leading entrepreneurs like Iwa-
  saki Yataro may have been as devoted to personal profit as were their
  counterparts elsewhere, but that profit depended heavily on the good-
  will of the government. Entrepreneurs were constrained by public opin-
  ion, sometimes forcibly expressed, to conform to the image of the na-
  tionally minded businessman. In general, the state seems to have played
  an important role in countries like Japan that began their economic
  development relatively late. Irrespective of judgments about the mo-
  tives, methods, and outcomes of public policy in Japan, to explain its
  economic development without referring to these factors would be to
  tell only part, and probably a misleading part, of the story.
  Before World War I, growth from above and growth from below
  proceeded together. In any case, the modern sector was so small that its
  growth did not conflict with the expansion and development of the
  existing traditional economy. On the contrary, each complemented the
  other. Agriculture and the handicraft industry produced food and con-
  sumption goods for a growing population, as well as most of the exports
  that helped pay for imports of equipment and raw materials needed by
  modern industry. After the 1890s, modern industry provided inputs
  such as fertilizers for agriculture and cotton yarn and dyes for cottage
  weaving. Productivity rose in both traditional and modern occupations.
  The expansion and improvement of traditional activities still contrib-
  uted most of Japan's economic growth, if only because of their over-
  whelming weight in the economy. The modern sectors of industry and
  commerce were still small, but it was in these that productivity was the
  highest and was rising the fastest and expansion was the most rapid. By
  1920 the further growth of these modern sectors required some sacrifice
  of the interests of traditional producers. As the modern sectors ex-
  panded, their further growth increasingly required resources to be trans-
  ferred from less productive traditional employments to new and more
  productive activities. The further this transfer proceeded, the faster
  was the growth of total output. This "trend acceleration"? became par-
  ticularly noticeable after the Pacific War, but before World War I the
  modern sector was still an infant nurtured by the traditional economy
  rather than the engine of growth that it later became.
  This chapter divides at 1913 the period between 1885 and 1920.
  Before World War I, the building of infrastructure was a large and
  productive field of investment. Economic growth came mainly from
  the expansion of existing activities, without any radical innovations in
  7 See Ohkawa and Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth, pp. 39-42.
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
  391
  technology or organization. Most of the developments in the heavy
  and engineering industries were directly or indirectly related to de-
  fense and included government involvement. World War I is treated
  as a separate phase because it was then that the modern sector, al-
  though still small in terms of share of total output, became self-
  sustaining and began to provide the momentum for further growth. It
  was also in this period that problems associated with the dual, or
  differential, structure of the economy began to surface as the interests
  of new developments began to conflict at some points with those of
  existing activities.
  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE, 1 8 8 5 - 1 9 1 3
  From 1885 to 1913, Japan's gross national product grew at an average
  annual rate of somewhere between 2.6 and 3.6 percent.8 This growth
  was mainly achieved not by radical technological change but by the
  diffusion of existing techniques, a series of small technical improve-
  ments, increasing specialization, and an economic climate that re-
  warded producers better than the pre-Meiji system had done. A sub-
  stantial contribution to economic growth both at this time and later,
  however, was made by the heavy investment in infrastructure such as
  ancillary services like banking, transport and communications, public
  utilities, education, and economic institutions. With the experience of
  the advanced industrial countries in front of them, Japan's leaders
  anticipated and provided for future needs for such infrastructure.
  Banking
  The early decision, embodied in the National Banking Act of 1872 and its
  amendment in 1876, to base the Japanese banking system on the Ameri-
  can model resulted in the establishment of nearly 150 national banks.
  Organized as joint stock companies, they were the first modern business
  enterprises in Japan. Along with a large number of small local quasi
  banks, the new national banks replaced the traditional system of financ-
  ing productive industry, commerce, land development, and mining.'
  8 This rather wide range reflects a corresponding degree of doubt about the estimates' accuracy.
  Ohkawa and Shinohara's Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, based on LTES, indi-
  cates about 2.7 percent whereas Nakamura Takafusa, Senzenki Nihon keizai seicho no bunseki
  (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), pp. 5ff, prefers 3.6 percent.
  9 For the development of banking in this period see Hugh T. Patrick, "Japan 1868-1914," in
  Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization, ed. Rondo Cameron et al. (London: Oxford
  University Press, 1967), pp. 239-89.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  The banks' large issues of inconvertible bank notes, however, contrib-
  uted to the inflation of 1878-81. Consequently, this privilege was
  withdrawn as part of the Matsukata deflationary policies of the early
  1880s, and a new central bank, the Bank of Japan founded in 1882,
  was granted the sole right to issue paper currency. Ordinary banking
  functions were gradually taken over by private commercial banks.
  A few private banks were large city banks, such as the Mitsui and
  Konoike banks, which were part of the premodern financial system,
  or the Sumitomo and Mitsubishi banks, which originated in the finan-
  cial operations of the large industrial combines (zaibatsu) and became
  central to their subsequent expansion. Most private banks, however,
  were relatively small local banks, of which there were about eighteen
  hundred by the turn of the century. Much of their capital came from
  local landowners and businessmen, and they did much to foster local
  production and development as well as to integrate local activity into
  the national economy and channel local finance into national projects.
  Recessions in the early 1900s forced consolidations and takeovers of
  some small banks, but unit correspondent banking on the United
  States pattern, rather than branch banking of the British type, was still
  the rule in Japan up to World War I.10
  The Japanese banking system was nearly complete around 1900,
  with the establishment of several special-purpose banks that, although
  their capital was raised by public subscription, operated under govern-
  ment direction and mobilized longer-term finance for enterprises con-
  sidered to be in the national interest. These special banks, based on
  German and French models, included the Hypothec Bank of Japan,
  the Industrial Bank of Japan, the Hokkaido Colonial Bank, and the
  Bank of Taiwan. The Industrial Bank in particular raised funds at
  home and abroad for long-term investment, including direct invest-
  ment in the promotion of Japanese interests on the Asian mainland. In
  the absence of a developed bond market, the activity of these special
  banks was an important source of investment funds, even though
  political influence over the direction of their investment sometimes led
  to heavy losses.
  A postal savings system, introduced as early as 1875, grew rap-
  10 Unit banking is a system in which a large number of banks operate only from their head
  offices or from a small number of local offices. It is sometimes known as correspondent banking
  because the small unit banks are linked to wider financial markets through correspondent
  banks that act as their agents and hold their deposits. Branch banking is a system in which a
  few large banks provide banking services over a wide area through a large number of
  branches. The Japanese banking system of today, like that of France, is best described as a
  hybrid of these two types in which branch banking by the major city banks predominates.
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
  393
  idly, especially during and after the Russo-Japanese War, because
  although interest rates were low, it provided a convenient service to
  small savers. The government used these substantial funds to fi-
  nance war expenditures and projects of national importance. Follow-
  ing the Savings Bank Act of 1893, many private savings banks were
  established, and as they paid a somewhat higher rate of interest
  than did the postal savings system, they attracted a large amount of
  deposits.
  By World War I the banking system had developed, with the govern-
  ment's encouragement, to a point that it could act as an intermediary
  between savers and investors. Even before the Meiji era, Japan had a
  well-developed financial system serving trade and commerce and pro-
  viding circulating capital for handicraft production as well as loans to
  domains on the security of their tax revenues. These loans were often
  for quite long terms and were sometimes employed in land reclama-
  tion, public works, or industrial development within the domain.11
  This stock of experience doubtlessly facilitated the establishment of a
  modern banking system at such a relatively early stage of Japan's
  economic development, but the new system went far beyond the old
  one. Banks were the first institutions in Japan to be organized on
  modern joint stock company lines and to use Western business meth-
  ods. The early banks acted as promoters of commercial and industrial
  enterprises and were often the agents through which Western business
  technology was transferred. By the early twentieth century, moreover,
  the development of a unified national financial system had greatly
  reduced regional variation in interest rates. Most loans still went to
  finance trade, commerce, land improvements, agriculture, and local
  handicraft production, but the larger city banks, the zaibatsu banks,
  and the special banks played an increasingly important part in develop-
  ing new factory industries, raising funds abroad, and financing govern-
  ment deficits. As Hugh Patrick pointed out, Japan's modern banking
  system did not simply develop in response to the needs of economic
  growth but was created in advance of demand and played a positive
  part in facilitating economic development.
  Railways
  Almost from the start, the Meiji government gave high priority to
  transport and communications, partly for their commercial value, but
  11 See E. S. Crawcour and Kozo Yamamura, "The Tokugawa Monetary System: 1787-1868,"
  Economic Development and Cultural Change 18 (July I97o):pi 1, pp. 489-518.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  also for their value for administration and internal security. Before
  World War I this sector absorbed more public and private investment
  than did any other single industry. The development of railways and
  shipping services provides good examples of how government and
  private groups combined in various ways to perform tasks of national
  importance.
  Japan's first railway line, linking Tokyo with the port of Yokohama,
  was built by the government with funds, materials, and technical
  services provided by Great Britain through the good offices of the
  British minister, Harry Parkes. The construction of this line was fol-
  lowed by one linking Otsu on Lake Biwa with the port of Kobe via
  Kyoto and Osaka, and another across Honshu from Tsuruga on the
  Japan Sea to Handa on Ise Bay via the northern shore of Lake Biwa,
  Gifu, and Nagoya. When Matsukata Masayoshi became minister of
  finance in October 1881, however, Japan still had less than two hun-
  dred miles of railway in operation. As the result of his sharply defla-
  tionary fiscal policy, funds to finance further government railway
  building were scarce despite a clear national need. In 1880 Iwakura
  Tomomi persuaded a group of peers to invest their commutation
  bonds in a company to build a trunk railway from Ueno (Tokyo) north
  to Aomori. Railways, he told them, were a project of national impor-
  tance, and as the inner bastion of the Imperial House, they should feel
  bound to invest in them. Summoning the governors of the prefectures
  along the proposed route, Iwakura directed them to raise subscrip-
  tions from suitable people under their administration, but Matsukata's
  tight money policy was beginning to bite, and so the response was
  disappointing.12 The peers themselves asked for a government guaran-
  tee of a 10 percent return on their capital but eventually settled for 8
  percent. In 1881 they obtained a railway license providing for national-
  ization after fifty years. When interest rates fell soon afterwards, the
  guarantee looked generous. With the announcement of profits of 10
  percent on the first section of the line, shares were at a premium and
  further capital was raised without difficulty. The Ueno-Aomori line
  was completed in 1892, some three years behind schedule but virtually
  without foreign technical assistance.
  12 See speeches by Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu, and many others involved in railway
  projects in the late nineteenth century that appeared in Tetsudo jiho between 1899 and 1909
  and were reprinted in Tetsudo Jiho Kyoku, ed., 10-nen kinen Nihon no tetsudo ron. This work
  is included in Noda Masaho, Harada Katsumasa, and Aoki Eiichi, eds., Meiji-ki tetsudoshi
  skiryo, suppl. vol. 1 (Tokyo: Nihon keizai hyoronsha, 1981).
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
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  The government guidelines for private railways issued in 1887 pro-
  vided for nationalization after twenty-five years. By this time railways
  were such an attractive investment that over the following decade
  some twenty railway companies were formed, with capital ranging
  from ¥40,000 to over ¥13 million, much of it raised from local busi-
  nessmen. Private lines were built where traffic was the densest, and in
  the absence of competition, charges could be set high. Interest rates
  and construction costs fell, and operating costs were well below those
  of the national railways, as indeed they have been ever since. By
  licensing private railway companies, the government hoped to get
  lines built quickly. In this it was not disappointed, but most lines were
  built to serve local needs or in anticipation of immediate profits, and
  without a coherent overall plan. The Railway Construction Act of
  1892 provided for a coordinated national network of trunk lines fi-
  nanced by issues of railway bonds totaling ¥36 million. From 1883 to
  1903, operating track rose from a mere 245 miles, most of it built and
  operated by the state, to 4,500 miles, of which 70 percent was built
  and operated by private railway companies.'3
  In the late 1890s the government prepared to acquire the major
  private railways. When Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi introduced
  the Railways Nationalization Bill in 1906, he claimed that the govern-
  ment had always favored state operation of the railways because of
  their national economic and strategic importance and had licensed
  private companies only because of fiscal exigencies. Although in the
  early 1870s there had been some support for private enterprise in
  principle, by the end of the century the importance of the state's role
  in national development had become widely accepted. By then, more-
  over, railways were no longer as profitable as they had once been, and
  most private companies were happy to accept the rather generous
  takeover terms. After 1906 the government acquired the assets of
  seventeen companies, including 2,800 miles of trunk line, for a total of
  ¥476 million.'4 By 1914 the capital investment of the Imperial Japa-
  nese Railways amounted to ¥1.007 million, more than the paid-up
  capital of all industrial companies combined. Through the World War
  I boom, track in operation increased by about 25 percent, but traffic
  13 See Toyo keizai shinposha, ed., Meiji Taisho kokusei smart (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha,
  1927), PP- 615-19.
  14 For details, see Teishin sho, ed., Tetsudo kokuyu shimatsu ippan (1909), reprinted in Takimoto
  Seiichi and Mukai Shikamatsu, eds., Nihon sangyo shityd taikei (Tokyo: Chugai shogyo shin-
  posha, 1927), pp. 11, 543-617.
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  396 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  increased much more,1* and some 90 percent of this traffic was carried
  by the Imperial Japanese Railways.
  The contribution of the railways to Japan's economic development,
  both then and later, was enormous.16 They greatly reduced transport
  costs, thus promoting geographical specialization and mobility of la-
  bor and benefiting all sections of the population in the areas they
  served. They also increased the reach and efficiency of government
  administration and trained large numbers of engineers and skilled
  workers.
  Shipping
  The development of Japan's shipping services is another example of
  collaboration between the state and private enterprise. During and
  after the Formosa expedition of 1874, Iwasaki Yataro's Mitsubishi
  Company, with the official support of Okuma Shigenobu, obtained
  large subsidies from the government and, with every conceivable form
  of state aid and protection, used ruthless price cutting to overcome
  competition from the Imperial Japanese Steamship Mail Company
  (Nippon teikoku yubin jokisen kaisha), itself a recipient of govern-
  ment subsidies. After absorbing this rival, continued subsidies en-
  abled Mitsubishi to eliminate the American Pacific Mail Steamship
  Company and the British Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Com-
  pany from coastal steamer traffic, thus obtaining a virtual monopoly.
  In the climate of the 1881 budget cuts, Okuma's opponents in the
  15 Table showing traffic increase, 1913-18:
  1913 
  1918
  Freight (million tons/miles)
  National 
  3,054 
  5,609
  Local 
  115 
  334
  Total 
  3,169 
  5,943
  Passengers (million pass./miles)
  National 
  3,691 
  6,569
  Local 
  309 
  687
  Total 
  4,000 
  7,256
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, ed., Meiji Taisho
  kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha,
  1927), pp. 617, 618. Local traffic was calculated
  from revenue figures on the assumption that local
  railway charges were the same as those of the na-
  tional railways.
  16 For details, see Tetsudoin, ed., Honpo tetsudo no shakai oyobi keizai ni oyoboseru eikyo (Tokyo:
  Tetsudoin, 1930).
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
  397
  government thought that Iwasaki was overcharging for his well-
  publicized services to the state and that a good part of the government
  subsidies granted for specific shipping services were being channeled
  into other projects of his own choosing and for his own enrichment. In
  the course of a government-orchestrated public outcry, Iwasaki was
  pilloried for being a self-centered capitalist entrepreneur when he
  should have realized that he had been granted the subsidies as an agent
  of the state. In 1882 the government promoted a new state-subsidized
  shipping concern, the Kyodo unyu kaisha. With a capital of ¥6 mil-
  lion subscribed largely by shipowners in the Kansai and Echigo re-
  gions, the new company was intended to break the monopoly of the
  Iwasaki "sea monster," but after two years of wasteful competition
  that almost broke both companies, a government offer of a guaranteed
  8 percent return induced them to merge into the Nippon yusen kaisha
  (NYK), with Mitsubishi holding just over half the shares.'7 In 1884,
  Osaka shipowners led by Sumitomo founded the Osaka shosen kaisha
  (OSK), which also received an annual subsidy of ¥50,000 to operate
  routes in and around the Inland Sea.
  When NYK began operations in 1885 with 58 steamships totaling
  some 68,700 tons and 13 sailing ships totaling some 4,700 tons, it was
  clearly understood that the company was to operate as a semigovern-
  ment agency and that its ships were to be at the state's disposal in time
  of war or emergency. The government also stipulated the routes it was
  to service among Japan's main ports, as well as to the outer islands,
  Shanghai, Vladivostok, Inchon, and Tientsin. By 1893 Japan's mer-
  chant steamer fleet had grown to 642 vessels, with a total tonnage of
  102,352 tons. Meanwhile, NYK had considerably raised its fleet's
  efficiency and began services to Manila, Hong Kong, Southeast Asian
  ports, and Australia, with a liner service to Bombay to carry Japanese
  imports of Indian cotton. Before 1900 many NYK masters and chief
  engineers were foreigners, but by 1920 all officers were Japanese.
  Despite these developments, only 14 percent of the steam tonnage
  entering Japanese ports in 1893 was Japanese. National flag ships
  carried only 7 percent of exports and less than 9 percent of imports.
  After the Sino-Japanese War the Diet passed government-initiated
  bills for further subsidies. Between the Sino-Japanese War and the
  17 For details and an assessment of Iwasaki Yataro, see Yamamura Kozo, "The Founding of
  Mitsubishi: A Case Study in Japanese Business History," Business History Review 41 (1967):
  141-60. For monographic treatment of the NYK line, see William D. Wray, Mitsubishi and
  the N.Y.K., 
  1870-1914: Business Strategy in the Japanese Shipping Industry (Cambridge,
  Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
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  398 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  Russo-Japanese War, Japan's merchant steamship tonnage doubled
  with the help of massive subsidies. Although NYK incurred an operat-
  ing loss of ¥1.8 million in 1903, it was able to pay a 12 percent
  dividend, owing to government subsidies amounting to 24.3 percent
  of its paid-up capital. During the Russo-Japanese War, subsidies fell
  briefly when partly replaced by generous government charters. In
  1909, general subsidies were replaced by subsidies for particular over-
  seas routes specified by the government, which controlled services and
  freight rates.
  Between 1883 and 1913, massive government shipping subsidies
  expanded the merchant steam fleet from 45,000 tons to 1.577 million
  tons and raised its share of the tonnage entering Japanese ports to just
  over 50 percent. The cost to the taxpayer was high, partly because the
  fleets of established mercantile nations with which Japan was compet-
  ing were also heavily subsidized. Yet the expenditure was considered
  justified on grounds of national prestige and security. At the same
  time the benefits were considerable. Construction and maintenance of
  the merchant fleet provided a stimulus to the heavy engineering indus-
  tries at a stage when there was otherwise little demand for their prod-
  ucts. The early introduction of shipbuilding technology and skills
  promoted the development of other branches of engineering and, in-
  deed, modern industry in general, enabling Japanese industry to take
  full advantage of the opportunities presented by World War I.
  Posts and telegraphs
  Even before the Meiji Restoration, the effectiveness with which gov-
  ernment communicated with the population right down to the individ-
  ual household and the volume of information so communicated seem
  to have been exceptional for a society at such a comparatively low level
  of per capita income. These means of communication, designed pri-
  marily to serve the government's needs, were energetically developed
  over the next three decades.
  The number of post offices in Japan roughly doubled from about
  3,500 in 1883 to over 7,000 in 1913; the number of postal articles
  handled increased from just over 100 million in 1882 to 551 million in
  1897 and 1,664 million (plus 24 million parcels) in 1912.18 Over this
  thirty-year period the number of postal articles (excluding parcels) per
  18 The statistical information on posts and telecommunications in this section comes from Toyo
  keizai shinposha, ed., Meiji Taisko kokuseisoran, pp. 672-3.
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
  399
  capita rose from about three a year to thirty-two a year, reflecting both
  the spread of literacy and the growing need for communication beyond
  the range of word of mouth. By the eve of World War I, mail usage
  was comparable to that of European nations.
  Japan's first telegraph line was built from Tokyo to Yokohama in
  1869, and telegraph services were expanded rapidly after 1890, largely
  for strategic and administrative purposes. The use of this service also
  grew quickly. From 2.7 million telegrams sent in 1882, the number
  rose through the Sino-Japanese War to reach 14 million in 1897 and
  again through the Russo-Japanese War to 27 million by 1907. By 1913
  it had risen again to 40 million.
  Telephones were introduced in 1890, with just under 400 subscribers
  connected to 2 exchanges. Here, too, expansion was rapid, and by 1913
  there were over 200,000 subscribers connected to 1,046 exchanges.
  Over this period the average number of calls per subscriber per day rose
  from seven to twelve, a rather high figure suggesting that many of the
  telephones were installed in government or business offices.
  By 1912, post offices and telecommunications as a whole employed
  some 84,000 people. The development of these services and the high
  circulation of newspapers and magazines indicate that Japan was even
  then becoming an information-based society. Thus the state acquired
  in this period the means of effective intervention and control in ways
  that only forty years earlier would have been beyond the capacity of
  the most advanced nations of Europe. At the same time these develop-
  ments speeded the movement of goods and services and facilitated the
  spread and exchange of ideas.
  Electric power
  Until the 1880s the main alternative to human effort in Japan was
  water power, which indeed remained well into the twentieth century
  an important source of power for food processing, silk reeling, and
  various handicraft industries. Large modern industrial plants for tex-
  tiles, metals, machinery, ceramics and food processing, however, were
  steam-powered from the outset, and by 1887, steam had outstripped
  water as a source of industrial power. Yet it was not widespread and
  was so soon replaced by electricity that Japan never experienced a
  "steam age" like that of Western Europe from the mid-nineteenth
  century to World War I. The generation and distribution of electric
  power provided large economies external to individual enterprises and
  made possible changes in technology, scale, and organization in many
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  400 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  industries and even in domestic life, substantially affecting the course
  of industrialization as a whole.
  The first supplies of electric power were for lighting and were pro-
  vided by private companies that proved extremely profitable from the
  start. The electric power industry required no state aid or encourage-
  ment and was subject to little regulation. The first electric company,
  the Tokyo Electric Light Company, was formed by Hachisuka Mo-
  chiaki and other peers, Shibusawa Eiichi, some of Shibusawa's busi-
  ness associates, and a number of rural businessmen-a group not un-
  like the backers of early railway development. The company began
  supplying electricity in 1887 and had installed 21,000 lamps by 1890.
  With falling charges and more efficient bulbs, electric lighting became
  increasingly popular. The number of lamps rose from 464,000 in 1905
  to over 3 million in 1911 and about 5 million in 1913. Even so, over
  half of Japanese households were still without electric light. In 1903,
  electric power companies had a total generating capacity of 25,000
  kilowatts. Generators attached to government or private industrial
  plants and electric railways provided another 25,000 kilowatts, most of
  which was for power rather than light. By 1913, electric companies
  produced 80 percent of all electricity. Although two-thirds of their
  sales were still for lighting, the demand for electricity as a source of
  power was rising sharply. Between 1911 and 1915, the number of
  electric motors quadrupled to nearly 43,000, and their total capacity
  rose from 44,000 horsepower to 182,700 horsepower.
  Between the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, electrification
  was promoted by two technological developments, hydroelectric gen-
  eration and high-tension transmission. The first hydroelectric genera-
  tor for public supply had been built in 1892 in connection with a
  project to provide Kyoto with water by aqueduct from Lake Biwa. By
  1910, electric power companies were producing more from hydroelec-
  tric than from thermal power, and by World War I, the ratio was two
  to one. Long-distance transmission technology, introduced into Japan
  soon after its first use overseas, made possible the development of
  large hydroelectric sites at a distance from consumption centers.
  When the Inawashiro Hydroelectric Plant in Fukushima Prefecture
  was linked to Tokyo in 1914, power was transmitted at 37,500 volts
  over a distance of 228 kilometers, one of the longest transmission lines
  in the world at the time.1'
  19 See Minami Ryoshin, Doryoku kakumei to gijutsu shinpo: Senzen-ki seizogyo no bunseki (Tokyo:
  Toyo keizai shinposha, 1976), p. 213. Quantitative information on the electric power industry
  is taken from this work and Minami Ryoshin, Telsudo to denryoku, LTES, vol. 12, 1965.
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  BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE 
  401
  These technological advances, combined with competition among
  the power companies, kept charges low, especially for lighting, and
  thus promoted the use of electricity. By buying power from electric
  companies and replacing cumbersome shaft-and-belt transmission by
  motors attached to individual machines, manufacturers raised me-
  chanical efficiency and cut direct power costs. Labor and capital costs
  were sharply reduced as well. The low capital cost of electric motors
  compared with that of steam engines or generating plants put the use
  of electric power within the reach of small plants and even many
  cottage industries. This change led to new relationships between small
  plants originating in the traditional sector and larger firms based on
  imported technology and organization. In some cases smaller firms
  became suppliers or subcontractors to larger modern establishments.
  In others the market was divided so that the larger plants concentrated
  on standardized products and long runs that maximized the economies
  of scale, leaving other products to small plants using much less capital-
  intensive methods. The cotton textile industry, for example, was di-
  vided between large-scale producers of standard yard goods like sheet-
  ing and drill, and small-scale producers of kimono fabrics that differed
  from the traditional cottage industries only in their use of power
  looms.
  By 1913 the capital stock employed in electricity generation was
  almost one-third of that employed in the railways. It was the high-
  technology industry of its time, but before World War I, almost all
  generating plants were imported and installed under the supervision of
  foreign engineers and technicians sent out by the manufacturers. The
  technological transfer effect was therefore slight until the spurt in
  electrical engineering that took place during the war.
  Education
  The advantages of an educated, or at least a literate, population for the
  nation's economic and political development now seem obvious, but
  they were not widely appreciated in Europe before the mid-nineteenth
  century. Although traditional Japanese society was relatively literate
  for its economic level, the early Meiji government devoted few of its
  Summaries of this work are available in Ryoshin Minami, "The Introduction of Electric
  Power and Its Impact on the Manufacturing Industries: With Special Reference to Smaller
  Scale Plants," in Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Consequences, ed. Hugh Patrick
  (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 299-325; and Ryoshin
  Minami, "Mechanical Power in the Industrialization of Japan," Journal of Economic History
  37 (December 1977): 935-58.
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  402 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  own limited resources to education, placing responsibility for elemen-
  tary education on local authorities with little more than exhortation
  from the center. But in the new cabinet system of 1885, the Ministry
  of Education was given responsibility for the central direction and
  control of formal education at all levels. As the Imperial Rescript on
  Education of 1891 proclaimed, the aim of elementary education was to
  prepare young Japanese to perform their duties as imperial subjects, as
  laid down in the constitution of the previous year. The purpose of
  education was not only to impart literacy, numeracy, and basic skills
  but also to inculcate those virtues of discipline, obedience, harmony,
  and loyalty that have since been widely represented as traditionally, or
  even uniquely, Japanese.
  From the start, the official emphasis was heavily on elementary
  education, four years of which became compulsory in 1890. Although
  financed by local authorities, public education was not yet free, but
  even so compliance was virtually universal by 1900.20 Secondary educa-
  tion developed more slowly and on a limited scale. In 1903 only 4
  percent (8 percent if miscellaneous semiofficial institutions are in-
  cluded) of the fifteen-to-nineteen age group were receiving education
  beyond the elementary level. This figure rose to 19.8 percent (27.7
  percent) by 1908, but even in 1920 between one-half to three-quarters
  of young Japanese got no formal education beyond the compulsory
  elementary level, by then extended to six years. From 1890, secondary
  education was offered in a multitrack system designed to channel
  young people into broad occupational categories.
  Vocational training was systematized under an ordinance in 1899
  but remained patchy. Most training in industrial skills was provided
  outside the formal education system, at first in schools attached to
  government industrial establishments or by apprenticeship to crafts-
  men or associated with "patrons" (oyabun or oyakata). Despite the
  proliferation of technical schools, vocational colleges, and institutes
  after the Russo-Japanese War, as the demand for modern industrial
  skills expanded during World War I, vocational training tended to
  become internalized within the larger firms, as it has remained to this
  day. This development fragmented and internalized the market for
  20 Of the ¥41.4 million of public funds spent on education in 1900, 55 percent was allocated to
  elementary education from village or town ward finances. If we add to this the fees paid by
  the villagers, it is clear that most of the cost of education was borne by the users. By 1920,
  total public expenditure on education had risen to ¥313 million, but half was still raised and
  allocated at the village level. For information on the role of education in Japan's economic
  development, see Solomon B. Levine and Hisashi Kawada, Human Resources in Japanese
  Industrial Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  403
  skilled labor, placing an unusually high value on those "traditional"
  virtues of loyalty and a sense of obligation to the employer. Concentrat-
  ing training within the larger firms also reinforced their advantage vis-
  a-vis the small businesses.
  Tertiary education was provided by a small number of national
  "imperial" universities (Tokyo, 1877; Kyoto, 1897; Kyushu, 1909)
  that trained personnel primarily for the higher administrative levels of
  the civil service and secondarily for big business. Then, as since,
  graduation from Tokyo University's law faculty was the entree to a
  distinguished civil service career. After the 1890s, the larger compa-
  nies followed the government's lead in recruiting university graduates
  as managerial staff. By 1900 the first generation of self-educated men
  or managers who had come up through the ranks was being replaced
  by graduates of Tokyo Imperial and Keio universities or the Tokyo
  Higher Commercial School (now Hitotsubashi University). Graduates
  of tertiary institutions were a very small elite who tended to be general-
  ists and administrators rather than scientists or engineers. This shared
  university background created a sense of solidarity among the top
  echelons of both government and business.
  Japan's education system took shape in the climate of reaction to
  early uncritical enthusiasm for Western culture, and it was character-
  ized increasingly by nationalist ideology. Its aim, like that of conscrip-
  tion, was to create loyal subjects and docile workers, and it was effec-
  tive in producing Japanese who not only did what they were told but
  even believed and felt what they were told to believe and feel. Perhaps
  a different kind of education might have avoided later political and
  military disasters, but there can be no doubt that the Japanese educa-
  tion system had positive effects on the nature of the industrial labor
  force, industrial relations, and the government's ability to manipulate
  economic life and economic growth. At the relatively liberal tertiary
  level, this type of education was not calculated to produce innovative
  scientists or thinkers. But at a time when Japan could draw on and
  adapt a large international pool of scientific knowledge and when
  technical competence was more valuable than innovative brilliance,
  the advantages of its system of education outweighed its disadvantages
  if judged solely from the standpoint of economic growth.
  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR, 1885-1913
  The introduction and growth of industries using technologies and
  methods of organization developed in the advanced industrial coun-
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  404 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  tries were central to Japan's economic development. To understand
  this development, therefore, we need to distinguish these "modern"
  activities from the indigenous or "traditional" economy. Conceptually
  this is not difficult. The modern sector includes manufacturing in
  factories using inanimate power and equipped with machinery im-
  ported from abroad or based on overseas models, whether the output
  be a new product like soap or a traditional one like cotton yarn or steel
  produced by new methods. Mining by engineering methods intro-
  duced from abroad is "modern," as are railways, merchant shipping,
  banking and insurance, and utilities like gas and electricity. Govern-
  ment services provided by central and local bureaucracies, education,
  the police, and the armed services are also part of the modern sector.
  The traditional sector consists of agriculture, traditional industry,
  and traditional commerce and services. Agriculture is classed as tradi-
  tional, as the techniques and organization of farming and the farmer's
  way of life have changed very little, despite the greater use of new items
  like chemical fertilizers. Cottage industries or very small workshops,
  even though they may use modern materials like chemical dyes and
  machine-spun yarn or produce new products like pencils or matches,
  are classed as traditional because here, too, their technology and organi-
  zation of production did not require a sharp break with traditional
  practice. Retail trade, the construction industry, and transport by
  packhorses and riverboats all are traditional. (Transport by rickshaw, a
  mid-nineteenth-century innovation, may be a borderline case.)
  When we try to quantify modern and traditional economic activity,
  however, two serious problems arise. The first is separating modern
  from traditional industry. Before 1914, quantitative information was
  collected and classified by industry-by what was produced rather
  than how it was produced-and so the statistical information for this
  period does not generally distinguish between production in a large
  modern factory and handicraft production by farmers as a side occupa-
  tion. From time to time, information was collected and classified by
  size of workplace as measured by the number of workers. This infor-
  mation has been used to distinguish between traditional and modern
  industry on the assumption that production in plants with five or more
  (sometimes ten or more) workers could be regarded as modern indus-
  try.21 The results of this procedure must be regarded as impression-
  21 Estimates of the occupational distribution of the work force between 1872 and 1920 were
  made by Hijikata Seibi, "Shokugyo betsu jinko no hensen o tsujite mitaru shitsugyo
  mondai," Shakai seisaku jiho no. 108 (September 1929). His estimates are reproduced in
  Yamada Yuzo, Nihon kokumin shotoku suikei shiryo, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha,
  1957)> PP- 152-3. Umemura Mataji prepared revised estimates for occupational distribution
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  405
  istic. Nevertheless, because modern economic development is the
  growth of modern, as opposed to traditional, industry, any attempt to
  analyze that process without differentiating between them will miss
  the point; econometric analysis that treats Japanese industry as homo-
  geneous can scarcely be taken seriously.
  The second problem is separating traditional industry from agricul-
  ture, particularly for the early years of our period when a large part of
  industrial output was produced in rural villages by people classified as
  farmers. Even in the late 1880s well over half of Japan's cotton yarn
  and raw silk, for example, is estimated to have been produced in this
  way. Farming, however, carried greater social prestige than did other
  rural occupations, and so shopkeepers, pedlars, industrial workers, or
  entrepreneurs with traditional family links with the land tended to
  give their occupation as "farmer," even though their own or their
  families' involvement in agriculture might have been minimal. As
  manufacturing gradually became more clearly separated from agricul-
  ture, fewer nonfarmers were classified as farmers. This statistical
  anomaly accounts for part of the apparent reduction in the agricultural
  labor force. Although the transfer of labor and other resources from
  agriculture to traditional industry was important to the growth of the
  Japanese economy during this period, the extent of that transfer was
  less than the official statistics imply.
  Although we must acknowledge and emphasize the data's shortcom-
  ings, changes in the relative size of the agricultural, traditional non-
  agricultural, and modern sectors are so central to Japan's economic
  growth that we must make some attempt to quantify them.
  In the early 1880s most-98 percent-of Japan's 22 million gainfully
  employed persons were engaged in economic activities that had
  changed little since the Meiji Restoration. Although just over 70 per-
  between agriculture and nonagriculture for 1872 to 1905 and in the industrial sector
  between 1880 and 1883 and between 1906 and 1920. See Umemura Mataji, "Sangyo betsu
  koyo no hendo: 1880-1940-nen," Keizai kenkyu 24 (April 1973): 107-16. Umemura's
  revisions of Hijikata's figures indicate a larger nonagricultural work force in the 1880s, a
  smaller agricultural work force between 1885 and 1905, and a more pronounced movement
  of labor out of agriculture during World War I. A revised version of Umemura's estimates
  appears in Okhawa and Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, pp.
  392-4; while retaining his estimate of the total labor force, Umemura increased the
  numbers in agriculture and reduced those in nonagriculture and also raised the numbers in
  service industries at the expense of manufacturing.
  If estimates of occupational distribution by industrial sector, especially for the early years,
  are still tentative, classification of the labor force into traditional and modern occupations
  should be regarded as impressionistic. The best are by Nakamura Takafusa, Senzen-ki
  Nihon keizai seicho no bunseki, pp. 338-9, and, for 1920 only, Nakamura Takafusa, "Zairai
  sangyo no kibo to kosei- Taisho 9-nen kokusei chosa o chushin ni," in Suryo keizaishi
  ronshu, vol. 1: Nihon keizai no hatlen, ed. Umemura Mataji et al. (Tokyo: Nihon keizai
  shinbunsha, 1976), pp. 195-219.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  cent were officially classified as farmers, agriculture probably ab-
  sorbed closer to 60 percent of Japan's labor supply in actual work
  hours. On the same labor input basis, fishing and the construction
  industry each employed about 2 percent of the work force, traditional
  mining and manufacturing roughly one-sixth, and commerce and ser-
  vices a slightly smaller proportion. Only about 400,000 people worked
  in the modern sector. Of these, more than half were employed by
  central or local government as bureaucrats, police, servicemen, teach-
  ers, or workers in government arsenals and factories. Modern private
  enterprise employed fewer than 200,000 people. In the early 1880s,
  over 90 percent of Japan's net domestic product was produced by
  traditional activities. Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries with just over
  70 percent of the labor supply produced just under half of the net
  domestic product. Traditional production of goods and services other
  than agricultural accounted for another 45 percent or so, and the
  modern sector contributed only about 5 percent of output. As Naka-
  mura Takafusa observed, modern industry was like sparsely scattered
  islands in a sea of traditional industry.22
  Between 1883 and 1913, Japan's labor force increased from 22 mil-
  lion to 26 million, and its sectoral distribution changed. The official
  statistics show the number of people engaged in agriculture falling
  slightly, whereas the nonagricultural labor force almost doubled, but in
  actual labor input the change was considerably smaller than these fig-
  ures indicate. Within the nonagricultural sector, modern employment
  increased four times, whereas employment in traditional occupations
  rose by only 60 percent. Nevertheless, because of the overwhelming
  weight of traditional commerce and industry, those sectors absorbed
  most-over three-quarters-of the increase in the work force. Over
  these three decades the output of the Japanese economy increased by
  almost three times. Of this increase, the growth of agricultural output
  contributed about 20 percent, and other traditional-style production
  added 40 percent or more. Although the modern sector expanded two or
  three times as fast as did the traditional sector, it was so relatively small
  initially that it contributed less than a third of the growth of the national
  output. These figures are admittedly impressionistic, but the picture
  they give of the Japanese economy before World War I is not un-
  realistic. In particular, they highlight the importance of traditional
  activities and their contribution to economic growth.
  22 Nakamura Takafusa, "Shijo kozo to sangyo soshiki," in Nihon keizai ron-Keizai seicho 100-
  nen no bunseki, ed. Emi Koichi and Shionoya Yuichi (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1973), p. 301.
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
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  Agriculture
  Because agriculture was such a large part of the Japanese economy at
  the start of its modern growth, its performance had an important
  bearing on the growth process. There have been various estimates of
  what that performance was. Using government statistics, Ohkawa and
  others estimated the rate of growth of real income produced in agricul-
  ture from around 1880 to World War I (1913-17 average) at just over
  2.4 percent a year, with a rate of 3.3 percent to the turn of the century
  and just over 1 percent thereafter.2^ However, government statistics
  were very inaccurate for the early years. James Nakamura claimed that
  concealment of output and underreporting of yields had resulted in
  government figures for the period from 1875 to 1882 that showed only
  about half the actual output. Correcting for this, he derived an annual
  rate of growth of agricultural output from 1880 to World War I of
  between 0.8 and 1.2 percent, with the rate rising rather than falling
  after the turn of the century.24 Ohkawa's estimate must be regarded as
  high because it implies for the early years a per capita caloric intake
  too low to be credible, but Nakamura's estimate must be regarded as
  low because it does not allow for any rise in per capita caloric intake as
  incomes rose. A more recent reworking of the statistics has produced
  results halfway between the two, indicating the gross farm value of
  production as growing at an average annual rate of 1.7 percent in
  constant 1934-36 prices, with the rate rising from 1.5 percent before
  1900 to 1.8 percent after the turn of the century.2* Although this
  estimate cannot be regarded as final, it is probably accurate enough for
  our purposes. Although the estimate scarcely indicates the kind of
  agricultural spurt once thought to be a major element in the initial
  phase of Japan's economic growth, it suggests a significant accelera-
  tion, as compared with the pace of agricultural progress in the century
  before the Restoration.
  The expansion of agricultural output, both before and after 1900,
  was associated with the increasing use of conventional inputs like land,
  labor, machinery, and fertilizer, as well as with changes in organiza-
  tion and technology. Changes in composition also affected the value of
  the total output. From 1880 to 1900, agricultural inputs grew rela-
  23 Kazushi Ohkawa et al., The Growth Rate of the Japanese Economy Since 1878 (Tokyo:
  Kinokuniya, 1957), p. 17. 
  24 Nakamura, Agricultural Production, p. 115.
  25 Umemura Mataji et al., LTES, vol. 9. Their estimates have not been significantly altered by
  subsequent minor adjustments. See Saburo Yamada and Yujiro Hayami, "Agriculture," in
  Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, pp. 85-103; and Yamada Saburo, "Nogyd," in
  Nihon keizai ran, pp. 109-10.
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  408 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  tively slowly. The agricultural population appears to have been almost
  constant, even though actual labor input may well have risen when
  those who had devoted relatively little of their time to agriculture
  moved into other sectors. Reported rice paddy area was almost un-
  changed. Although the area of upland or dry fields increased, because
  of underreporting in the early years, this increase may have been more
  apparent than real. In any case, the average annual increase in arable
  land area was less than 0.5 percent. Fixed capital rose by less than 1
  percent a year, and although current inputs rose somewhat faster,
  even in 1900 the use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides was quite
  limited.
  After 1900 the farming population fell slightly, but the arable land
  area expanded faster than before; the use of implements, simple ma-
  chinery, fertilizer, and other current inputs increased rapidly. This
  more widespread use of implements and fertilizers is consistent with
  the faster growth of output after the turn of the century, but over the
  whole period, agricultural output increased much more than did the
  resources devoted to agriculture. This disparity has sometimes been
  attributed to the more effective use of resources made possible by
  improvements in technology or organization. But the pace of such
  change in agriculture is typically slow, and before World War I, Japan
  seems to have been no exception.
  In fact, the organization of Japanese farming changed little, and the
  scale of farming remained small. Average arable land per farm house-
  hold was under one hectare in 1880, rose slowly to about one hectare
  in 1900, and then remained stable, but the median, or typical, farm
  was much smaller and changed only marginally in size. The only
  major organizational change during this period was in the structure of
  land ownership. With the removal of legal obstacles to land transfer,
  ownership tended to become more concentrated, and the relative sup-
  ply of land and labor was such that those with more land than they
  could cultivate themselves found it advantageous to lease the surplus
  to tenants rather than to hire workers. Thus the proportion of land
  farmed by tenants increased gradually throughout the period, from
  about 35 percent in the early 1880s to about 45 percent by World War
  I, with the rate of increase highest in periods of economic depression.
  Between 1884 and 1886, in the aftermath of the Matsukata deflation,
  foreclosures-many for the nonpayment of taxes-transferred almost
  one-eighth of the country's cultivated land into the hands of creditors.
  By the end of the century, landlords, who had not been a particularly
  influential group at the beginning of the Meiji era, annually collected
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  409
  rents equivalent to almost a quarter of Japan's rice crop. With land
  taxes falling in real terms, the revenue lost by the government accrued
  mainly to landlords, who by 1900 had become a major source of local
  investment and enterprise as well as a powerful force in both local
  affairs and national politics.
  Another significant organizational change was the establishment of
  village cooperatives under the industrial cooperatives (sangyo kumiai)
  legislation of 1900. Although these were voluntary organizations, they
  had become almost universal in rural villages by 1914. Together with
  the landlords, they acted as intermediaries between the farmers and
  the markets for materials and products, as vehicles for the introduc-
  tion of new technology and equipment and as channels of communica-
  tion with the government in a wide range of matters. These coopera-
  tives were intended to strengthen the competitiveness of the small
  farmers, to help them survive in an increasingly capitalist environ-
  ment, and to forestall the widening inequality and social unrest that
  might result from the unfettered operation of free competition. Al-
  though the lot of most farmers, especially tenants, was seldom happy
  and sometimes desperate, the cooperatives did improve productivity
  and reduce social tension.
  Technological innovation in agriculture before the 1900s was lim-
  ited. Early attempts to introduce European farming methods were not
  successful and were abandoned in the 1880s in favor of measures to
  promote and improve traditional small-scale farming through the com-
  bined efforts of the Mim'stry of Agriculture and Commerce, landown-
  ers, and expert farmers. Rather than introducing new technology,
  these measures encouraged the dissemination of existing expertise by
  pooling local knowledge and transferring it from the more advanced
  regions of Kinki and north Kyushu to the relatively backward regions
  in the east and north. Rising rice yields and narrowing variations
  within and among districts may indicate some diffusion of improved
  plant varieties, better seed selection, and more productive cultivation
  practices.26 Nevertheless, change seems to have been marginal except
  in sericulture, in which an important technological development made
  possible a silkworm hatch in the late summer-autumn season as well
  as in the spring, thus increasing the output of cocoons by utilizing
  labor from fanning families during what had been a slack season. By
  1900 this "second crop" contributed over one-third of all Japan's co-
  26 See Yujiro Hayami with Masakatsu Akino, Masahiko Shintani, and Saburo Yamada, A
  Century of Agricultural Growth in Japan, Its Relevance to Asian Development (Minneapolis:
  University of Minnesota Press, and Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1965), pp. 113-31.
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  4IO 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  coons. From 1880 to 1900 the growth of sericulture accounted for 20
  percent of the growth of the gross value of agricultural production. If
  sericulture is excluded, the growth rate of agricultural output over this
  period is reduced to about 1.3 percent, but even this seems high
  compared with a 0.4 percent rate of growth of total inputs. What we
  know of technical progress seems scarcely sufficient to account for
  such a difference. It may well be that the growth of conventional
  inputs, especially labor, has been underestimated.
  Between 1900 and 1920 the average growth rate of agricultural pro-
  duction (gross value) rose to 1.8 percent a year. Although the farm
  population fell, all other inputs increased considerably: arable land by
  0.7 percent a year, farm implements and machinery by 2.0 percent, and
  current inputs by 4.7 percent, including a massive increase in the use of
  commercial fertilizers. Technological change, too, speeded up after the
  turn of the century. With government supervision and support, land-
  owners realigned plots and improved drainage to raise fertility. A four-
  fold increase in the application of fertilizers would have been largely
  wasted without new plant strains and deep plowing. New varieties such
  as Shinriki, which were highly responsive to fertilizers, were propa-
  gated rapidly in the 1900s, and the development of the reversible short-
  bottomed plow in 1900 made deep plowing practicable. Soon after, the
  introduction of a rotary weeder, which was used between straight equi-
  distant row of plants, greatly increased efficiency.
  Apparently these changes were not greeted with universal enthusi-
  asm, however, for some fourteen improvements were made compul-
  sory under instructions issued in 1903 to the agricultural associations
  by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. These included use of
  the brine flotation method of seed selection, oblong seed beds, and
  their conversion to paddy fields when the seedlings were planted out,
  improved seeds and implements, plowing with animals, and rice plant-
  ing in equidistant checkrows. Similar regulations to improve agricul-
  ture were issued by prefectural governments and enforced by fines and
  an occasional jail sentence. Even so, the program achieved only lim-
  ited results.2? During the Russo-Japanese War, seed selection by the
  brine method was extended from one-half to two-thirds of all rice
  seed; plowing with draft animals became more common; and the plant-
  ing out of rice in checkrows to facilitate tillage and weeding rose from
  one-third to almost half of the planted acreage.28 It is surprising that a
  27 See Takekazu Ogura, ed., Agricultural Development in Modem Japan (Tokyo: Fuji, 1963), pp.
  159-71. 
  28 Ibid., p. 305.
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  411
  practice now so firmly entrenched is of such recent origin. That ineffi-
  cient or negligent farmers should be punished was generally accepted
  during the Tokugawa period, but attempts to apply this concept in the
  twentieth century met with widespread resistance. By 1910, punish-
  ments were generally abandoned in favor of encouragement by a sys-
  tem of subsidies and other financial incentives, although the govern-
  ment retained control over a wide range of agricultural matters.
  Taken singly, these changes were small, but they were mutually
  reinforcing. New early-maturing strains of rice and other grains ex-
  tended the area capable of double cropping, and more responsive
  varieties made profitable heavier applications of fertilizers and deep
  plowing. The greater use of commercial fertilizer, mainly Manchurian
  soybean cake, made possible some reduction in the area of grassland
  needed for green manure and fallow, thus releasing land for forestry
  and other direct production. All these changes were further reinforced
  by the emergence of greater opportunities for profitable farming. For
  pre-Meiji villagers, farming had been a duty rather than a profitable
  activity, and the burden of taxes fell so heavily on agriculture that
  villagers tried to maximize the time that they could devote to more
  profitable industrial and commercial pursuits. After the Restoration
  the incidence of direct taxation was still much heavier on agriculture
  than on industry, but the percentage of agricultural income taken by
  direct taxes fell from over 20 percent between 1883 and 1887 to just
  under 10 percent between 1918 and 1922.29 Although traditional atti-
  tudes changed slowly, by World War I, farming had become more
  professional as developments in technology and marketing created
  new opportunities and incentives for the use of labor in agriculture at a
  time when other sources of rural income were beginning to decline.3°
  Agricultural progress in the initial phase of Japan's modern eco-
  nomic growth may not have been as fast as was once thought, nor was
  it by any means the only source of inputs for economic growth. As we
  shall see, industrial growth during this phase was mainly the growth of
  traditional production financed by the traditional industrial sector it-
  self. Nevertheless, Japan did not suffer from the sort of agricultural
  lag that seems to have restricted economic growth in countries like the
  Soviet Union or China. Food production kept up with demand until
  1900 and thereafter did not lag far behind. In 1880 an agricultural
  29 See Tobata Seiichi and Okawa Kazushi, eds., Nihon no keizai to nogyo (Tokyo: Iwanami
  shoten, 1956), vol. 1, p. 381.
  30 See E. S. Crawcour, "Japan, 1868-1920," in Agricultural Development in Asia, ed. R. T.
  Shand (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1969), pp. 1-24.
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  412 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  labor force of 17 million fed a total population of 36 million at a rather
  low average level of nutrition. In 1920, with an agricultural labor force
  of just over 14 million, a population of 55 million or more enjoyed
  modest increases in food consumption per capita, with food imports,
  mainly from Korea and Manchuria, at no more than 8 percent of total
  consumption. This balance or near-balance was not achieved solely by
  improvements in agricultural output; to an important extent it de-
  pended on the fact that population growth was moderate and that the
  per-capita demand for food rose remarkably little.
  The experience of other developing countries suggests that as per
  capita incomes rise from a fairly low level, more than half of the
  increase is spent on more or better food. In Japan, however, the
  proportion was much smaller, even though the average levels of nutri-
  tion were clearly well below the optimum. Traditional eating habits
  changed very little, and caloric intake per capita rose only slowly.3'
  The reasons for this are not obvious. Estimates of the change in per
  capita food consumption and national income are not very reliable,
  and although it seems unlikely that they underestimate the change in
  food consumption, the rise in national income may be somewhat exag-
  gerated by increasing statistical coverage. It may well be that cultural
  attitudes encouraged frugality in food consumption, especially by
  women, and that with increasing urbanization, the need to buy indus-
  trial products once produced in the household may have reduced the
  income that could be spent on food. Most important, however, increas-
  ing demands from other sources, especially investment and exports,
  kept the rise in personal consumption below that of national income
  per capita, so that its share of gross domestic expenditure fell from
  about 85 percent in 1880 to 70 percent in 1920. In addition, the greater
  inequality of personal incomes tended to raise average savings and
  reduce average consumption as the richer saved while the poorer went
  short.
  The role of agriculture as a source of capital for industrial invest-
  ment may have been exaggerated in the past by the difficulty of distin-
  guishing agriculture from rural industry and commerce, but the land
  tax was certainly a vital source of revenue without which the Meiji
  government could not have survived, let alone have played such a
  central role in capital formation, the introduction of technology, and
  31 See Hiromitsu Kaneda, "Long-Term Changes in Food Consumption Patterns in Japan," in
  Agriculture and Economic Growth, Japan's Experience, ed. Kazushi Ohkawa et al. (Princeton,
  N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 406-9.
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  413
  the coordination of economic enterprise. In 1880, taxes on land and
  rural households provided about 70 percent of all national and local
  tax revenue. By the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, their share had
  fallen to one-third as revenues from income, business, and consump-
  tion taxes, especially the liquor tax, rose; and by World War I it was
  below 30 percent.32 As the government's share of agricultural produc-
  tion fell, however, the share accruing to landlords rose in almost the
  same proportion, and landlords, as we have seen, had a high propen-
  sity to save and invest in both local and national enterprises.
  The growth of foreign trade was a key factor in the initial phase of
  Japan's economic development. In the mid-i88os, total transactions
  with the outside world represented only 6 percent of all economic
  activity, but by the Russo-Japanese War they had risen to 20 per-
  cent, and by World War I, to 28 percent. In the 1880s over two-
  thirds of Japan's exports consisted of agricultural products, princi-
  pally raw silk. By the Russo-Japanese War this proportion had fallen
  to one-third, whereas homegrown cotton, unable to compete in cost
  or quality, had been replaced by imports, greatly reducing agricul-
  ture's contribution to the balance of payments. Over the whole pe-
  riod, however, agricultural exports played a very valuable role in
  foreign trade and even during World War I provided a quarter of
  commodity exports.
  In summary, the performance of agriculture during this period, if
  perhaps not so outstanding as once thought, was adequate. The intro-
  duction, dissemination, and sometimes enforcement of better methods
  of farming and the increasing operation of economic incentives, par-
  ticularly via landlords, enabled a more efficient use of land and labor
  with a consequent expansion of output. On the other hand, the ade-
  quacy of supply depended also on limited rises in demand and the
  persistence of traditional patterns of consumption. The broad struc-
  tural outlines of small-scale farming scarcely changed. Tenancy in-
  creased, and landlords and agricultural associations took over some of
  the functions of the daikan and village headmen of earlier times. Eco-
  32 Estimates vary. See Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, "The Role of Agriculture in
  Modern Japanese Economic Development," Economic Development and Cultural Change 9
  (October i960): pt 2, p. 61, where Table 14 shows land tax as a percentage of revenue from
  four "main taxes" (income tax, land tax, business tax, and customs duty) falling from 85.6
  percent in the five years centered on 1890 to 55.8 percent for the five years centered on 1905
  and 37.6 percent for the five years centered on 1915. By 1915, however, the four main taxes
  accounted for only 54.6 percent of the national tax revenue. I have calculated the sum of
  national, prefectural, and local {choson) land taxes and local household tax as a percentage of
  all national and local tax revenue. Note that 90 percent of choson were rural villages.
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  414 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  nomic horizons and opportunities may have widened in theory, but for
  the average farmer it was still a hard life with worse to come in the
  depressed conditions of the 1920s.
  Traditional industry
  The policy of the early Meiji leaders was to catch up with the advanced
  countries of the West by "enriching the country and strengthening the
  armed forces," and they believed that the way to achieve this was to
  replace as quickly as possible the "backward" Japanese methods of
  production with the latest Western technology. Consequently, little
  thought was given to supporting or improving the existing industrial
  structure. In the 1870s, attempts to transplant Western production
  methods were generally unsuccessful, partly because a supporting in-
  frastructure had not yet been built, but perhaps more importantly
  because methods developed in the Western nations proved unprofit-
  able in Japan where capital equipment was much more expensive
  relative to labor. The initial policy response to this problem was either
  to establish modern industries as government enterprises or to reduce
  the cost of industrial plants to selected firms-broadly speaking the
  "political merchants" who developed into the zaibatsu-by making it
  possible for them to raise capital on favorable terms, while assisting
  with the selection, purchase, and import of machinery and providing
  technical assistance. The cost of this policy was substantial at a time
  when other demands were straining fiscal resources to the limit. In the
  course of Matsukata's fiscal reforms, government enterprises were
  sold to selected buyers at prices low enough to bring the cost of capital
  equipment more into line with Japanese conditions.
  The recession that followed the Matsukata deflation, however,
  brought severe hardship to Japan's traditional industry. In 1884
  Maeda Masana, a senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture and
  Commerce who had recently returned from a study tour of Europe,
  suggested after a thorough survey of Japan's economic grass roots that
  traditional industry was an indispensable resource; that with support
  and improvement it was capable not only of providing for rising con-
  sumption needs and exports to earn badly needed foreign exchange
  but also of being gradually developed to a level of productivity compa-
  rable to that of Western industry. Industrial modernization along
  these lines, he submitted, would result in methods suited to Japanese
  conditions of scarce capital and abundant labor, would involve far less
  cost than would the direct transplantation of Western factories, and
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  415
  would relieve the economic distress that constantly threatened rural
  Japan and was particularly acute in the postdeflation recession."
  Although not fully convinced by Maeda's arguments, the govern-
  ment did recognize the important role of traditional industry in the
  economy. Japanese consumer goods were produced in ways that had
  not changed since the country's opening. The kinds of housing, cloth-
  ing, processed foods, and household utensils that made up the distinc-
  tive Japanese way of life retained their traditional patterns, and tradi-
  tional industry continued to supply them. In this respect Japan differed
  from territories such as the Dutch East Indies, where a colonial system
  producing staple exports and importing many consumer goods had
  brought about the decline of the indigenous industrial system.
  Personal consumption represented 80 percent of Japan's gross na-
  tional expenditure in the 1880s but fell to 75 percent by the Russo-
  Japanese War and 72 percent by 1915. Consumption of nonagricul-
  tural goods and services,** however, was 35 percent of gross national
  expenditure in the 1880s and actually rose to 38 percent during the
  Russo-Japanese War and to 43 percent at the start of World War I.
  These figures show that it was a lag in consumption of agricultural
  products that kept total personal consumption relatively low. The
  consumption of nonagricultural goods and services expanded faster
  than did the economy as a whole. Because there were virtually no
  imports of these traditional goods, their production expanded as fast
  as consumption did.
  As well as supplying consumer goods, traditional industry contrib-
  uted to capital formation and exports. A large part of construction,
  road building, and other public works was carried out using tradi-
  tional methods by workers employed and organized in traditional
  ways. Until the 1890s as much as half of Japan's major export item,
  raw silk, was produced by hand reelers. Handicraft products such as
  lacquerware, cloisonne^ and damascene were prominent among Japa-
  nese exports after the opening of foreign trade in 1859. After 1900,
  Japan exported increasing quantities of pencils and other products
  that, though new to Japan, were produced by traditional cottage indus-
  try methods.
  33 Maeda's findings and recommendations were presented in Kdgyo iken in 1885. This work
  with related materials and commentary is published as Ando Yoshio and Yamamoto
  Hirofumi, eds., Kdgyo iken hoka Maeda Masana kankei shiryo (Tokyo: Koseikan, 1971). See
  also Soda Osamu, Maeda Masana (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1973).
  34 Calculated as personal consumption less nonprocessed food. For this purpose, rice is re-
  garded as an unprocessed food, even though rice milling was quite a large industry. This is
  partly balanced by the inclusion of the full cost of processed foods.
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  416 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  Traditional industry was important also as an employer of labor.
  During Japan's modern economic growth, its agricultural labor force
  declined, but the total gainfully occupied population rose. Until the
  1930s the difference was absorbed almost entirely by the traditional
  sectors of secondary and tertiary industry. In the process the propor-
  tion of the work force in traditional nonagricultural occupations rose
  from 22 percent between 1882 and 1885 to 30 percent by the Russo-
  Japanese War, 32 percent by the eve of World War I, and 37 percent
  by 1920. These figures are conservative, as they assume that all work-
  shops in which more than five persons were employed represented
  modern industry, whereas in fact many had continued virtually un-
  changed since before the Meiji Restoration.
  In output of manufactures, the importance of traditional industry is
  hard to quantify because output data do not distinguish between tradi-
  tional and modern production. According to a rough estimate, the
  proportion of manufactures produced by traditional means fell from
  nearly three-quarters in the 1880s to about one-half around the Russo-
  Japanese War and about one-third by World War I. This estimate of
  the importance of traditional industry as a producer of manufactures is
  probably conservative and may well exaggerate the speed with which
  production methods changed.
  Apart from some brewing, oil-pressing, and metallurgical industries
  using water power and employing twenty or more workers, and city-
  based decorative craft industries, most traditional industries began as
  rural, largely part-time cottage industries. Circulating capital, often in
  the form of materials and sometimes equipment, was provided by
  merchants (ton'yd) who controlled the production process and mar-
  keted the output in the major cities. In the post-Restoration transition,
  "orderly marketing," once supervised by licensed merchant guilds or
  official marketing boards, largely broke down because of adverse ef-
  fects on quality, prices, and credit arrangements. Food processing, the
  cotton industry from ginning to weaving, silk reeling, and some silk
  weaving were typical of this type of industry.
  During the initial phase of Japan's economic growth there were a
  number of changes. First, some production moved from rural villages
  to nearby towns or larger cities where household workers or small
  workshops clustered in areas specializing in a particular trade. During
  the economic depression that followed the Sino-Japanese War and
  continued almost uninterrupted until the eve of the Russo-Japanese
  War, many people moved from villages to towns in search of work.
  When available, such work was usually of a kind to which these people
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  417
  had been accustomed in the villages and at wages similar to rural rates.
  Between 1898 and 1918 the urban population almost trebled. Al-
  though much of the increase was in tertiary occupations, the growth of
  urban manufacturing was considerable.
  Second, traditional industries were reorganized into trade associa-
  tions or cooperatives. Early attempts by the Meiji government to co-
  ordinate and control the production, financing, and marketing of tradi-
  tional products through national agencies (shohoshi, tsushoshi) were
  soon abandoned in favor of policies that promoted new industries
  based on the latest technology from abroad. In 1879 the Osaka Cham-
  ber of Commerce began to reestablish order in the traditional trades,
  and at the end of 1880 it reported the formation of 189 trade associa-
  tions, broadly similar to the pre-Restoration guilds (nakatna). The
  following year the Osaka municipal government responded by issuing
  official regulations for the formation and management of trade associa-
  tions. These regulations included provisions for registering members,
  electing officials, and maintaining product quality and commercial
  ethics, with penalties for offenders under the general supervision of
  the Osaka Chamber of Commerce. Similar moves were made in Tokyo
  and Kyoto. In 1884 the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce issued
  national guidelines for the formation and management of trade associa-
  tions. These provided for persons in agricultural, commercial, or in-
  dustrial occupations to form local nonprofit organizations ostensibly
  for the members' mutual benefit. Registration and reporting provi-
  sions were similar to those of the Osaka municipal ordinance. Once an
  association had been approved and registered by the prescribed author-
  ity on the application of three-quarters or more of those eligible to
  join, membership by the remainder became compulsory. In Osaka at
  least, many trade associations so formed were actually the direct suc-
  cessors of guilds or associations that had continued in one form or
  another since before the Restoration.
  In 1897 a new law enforced membership in the Major Export Trade
  Associations (Juyo yushutsuhin dogyo kumiai); and three years later all
  trades, whether export or otherwise, were required to organize into
  Major Product Trade Associations (Juyo bussan dogyo kumiai). These
  associations, which embraced the production and marketing of virtu-
  ally all traditional manufactures, replaced the associations formed un-
  der the 1884 guidelines. The new trade associations were intended to
  maintain product standards, raise productivity, and control excessive
  competition (although price rigging was expressly forbidden), improve
  managerial skills, and achieve certain economies of scale. At the same
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  418 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  time, like their premodern predecessors, they were a vehicle for the
  exercise of official control to ensure that free enterprise did not work to
  the disadvantage of the trade as a whole and that traditional industry
  developed in a way consistent with the national interest.35
  Third, although Maeda Masana's gradualist proposals for industrial
  development based on progressive upgrading of existing industry were
  not accepted-largely because although they might "enrich the coun-
  try," they would not immediately "strengthen the armed forces"-they
  alerted the government to the gains attainable at relatively little cost by
  improving technical standards and raising productivity in traditional
  industries.36 With official encouragement some traditional industries
  achieved technological advances that enabled them to survive and com-
  pete alongside new enterprises based on imported technology. In the
  silk-reeling industry, for example, attempts to operate the most modern
  imported machine filatures proved unprofitable in conditions in which
  cheap experienced labor was plentiful and capital scarce and expensive.
  Under such conditions hand (zakurt) reelers were well able to compete.
  Hand-reeled silk was inferior in quality to machine-reeled silk, but a
  series of improvements raised both quality and productivity. Mean-
  while, machine filatures were modified to suit Japanese conditions, and
  their cost fell rapidly. From an astonishingly high ¥1,500 per basin for
  the filatures imported from France in 1871 to equip the pioneer
  Tomioka mill, the cost per basin fell to ¥13.5 within a few years.
  Output per operative also almost doubled in the decade following the
  installation of the Tomioka plant and almost doubled again by the end
  of the century. Even so, hand reeling remained competitive, and its
  output continued to rise until the turn of the century, even though by
  1894 filature silk exceeded hand-reeled silk in quantity and had cap-
  tured the bulk of the export market because of its higher, more even
  quality. Hand-reeled output showed no tendency to fall until the 1920s
  when machine production expanded rapidly. In this industry, as in
  others, imported technology became successful only after it had been
  adapted to local conditions. In the process, the gap between "acclima-
  tized," largely water-powered machine filatures and improved indige-
  nous hand-reeling technology was narrow enough for each industry to
  learn from the other. In the absence of great economies of scale and with
  35 See Miyamoto Mataji, "Shoko kumiai," in Nihon keizaishi jiten, ed. Keizaishi kenkyukai
  (Tokyo: Nihon hydronsha, 1940), vol. 1, pp. 801-4, which clearly shows the continuity
  between Japan's modern trade associations and those of the pre-Meiji period. See also
  Watanabe Shin'ichi, Nihon no keiei kozo—Semen hen (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1971), pp. 53-79.
  36 See Soda Osamu, Chiho sangyo no shiso to undo (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1980).
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  THE TRADITIONAL SECTOR 
  419
  an abundance of cheap labor, the indigenous technology was thus able
  to remain viable for over fifty years.37
  Even in the cotton textile industry, one of the first to be successfully
  modernized, the indigenous industry survived and developed. Despite
  imports of cotton yarn and cloth in the early Meiji era, the domestic
  production of raw cotton and its traditional processing industries contin-
  ued to flourish until the 1890s, when hand ginning and spinning be-
  came unable to compete in either quality or cost with the modern mills
  by then established in Japan. The traditional cotton-weaving industry,
  on the other hand, flourished, and the output of narrow-width cloth for
  Japanese clothing increased fourfold between 1885 and 1910, making
  this one of the period's high-growth industries. Growth was achieved by
  improvements in equipment and materials and by greater specializa-
  tion. Nevertheless the predominantly semirural cottage-industry na-
  ture of the trade remained practically unchanged. Even in 1910, 87
  percent of looms were hand powered, and of these well over half were in
  cottages and another third in "factories", with not more than ten weav-
  ers.38 By the 1930s the narrow-width cotton-weaving industry was con-
  verting to electric-powered looms but retained its traditional organiza-
  tion and character. The continued viablility of this industry owed much
  to the survival of the cotton kimono as everyday dress until the Pacific
  War and to the demand for a great variety of woven and dyed patterns
  that made long runs and mass production uneconomic.
  This same demand for variety aided the survival and expansion of
  other traditional consumer goods industries such as ceramics, lac-
  querware, bamboo products, and handmade paper.39 In addition, new
  products including matches, straw hats, brushes, Western-style um-
  brellas, and buttons were also produced by traditional methods,
  largely for export. Matches, for example, were made by a very labor-
  intensive putting-out system. The "maker," who financed the indus-
  try, often with funds from a local bank, provided the materials and
  sometimes simple equipment. One or more households shaped pine-
  wood into billets; others split and cut the billets into matchsticks; and
  still others dipped them to make the heads, while other teams were
  making matchboxes and pasting labels on them. Finally, yet more
  37 See Otsuka Katsuo, "Seishigyo ni okeru gijutsu donyu" in Nihon keizai no hatten, pp. 159—
  78, and Nakamura, Senzen-ki Nihon keizai seicho no bunseki, p. 64.
  38 See Nakamura Takafusa, "Zairai men orimonogyo no hatten to suitai-Oboegaki" in Suryo
  keizaishi ronshu, vol. 2: Kindai iko-ki no Nihon keizai-Bakumatsu kara Meiji e, ed. Shinbo
  Hiroshi and Yasuba Yasukichi (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1979), pp. 219-33.
  39 For further examples, see Chihoshi kenkyu kyogikai, ed., Nihon sangyoshi taikei, 7 vols.
  (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, i960).
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  420 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  teams of household workers packed the matches in the boxes and
  wrapped them in packets for shipment. The whole process took place
  within an area small enough for the goods and materials to be trans-
  ferred from one stage to the next by handcart. One "maker" might
  employ several hundred people working in their own homes at rates of
  pay so low that often the whole family needed to work long hours to
  make a living.
  From the 1880s to World War I, the growth of the traditional sector
  was a vital part of the whole economy's development. Not only was it
  responsible for the bulk of output growth, but it also nurtured the
  infant modern sector by providing and maintaining labor, contribut-
  ing capital, and earning foreign exchange. Several factors account for
  its growth.1*0 First, as we have already noticed, the persistence of
  traditional patterns of consumption provided a growing demand for
  traditional products as the population increased and incomes rose.
  Second, until World War I, traditional industry was the principal
  beneficiary of the new infrastructure, especially cheaper transport and
  a modern financial system. Third, the development of modern indus-
  try provided cheaper and better materials, like machine-spun cotton
  yarn, dyes and other chemicals, cardboard, and glass, which lowered
  costs in traditional industries. Investment in modern infrastructure,
  industry, and defense, moreover, raised incomes and thus demand for
  traditional goods and services. Finally, the export markets and the
  official encouragement of the traditional labor-intensive industries as
  export producers also stimulated growth. Because of the low labor
  costs, these industries were able to compete successfully with more
  highly mechanized producers in the relatively capital-rich advanced
  industrialized countries, much to their irritation.
  Ohkawa and others have credited Japan with being able to main-
  tain growth in both agriculture and industry.*1 It is now clear, how-
  ever, that Japan's industrial growth before World War I was largely
  the growth of traditional industry. What appears as the concurrent
  growth of agriculture and industry was in fact the growth of the
  traditional sector as a whole. When the modern sector became self-
  sustaining and established itself as the leader in economic growth
  around World War I, the growth of the traditional sector, including
  both agriculture and the traditional industries, slackened as modern
  40 See Nakamura Takafusa, "Zairai sangyo no hatten kiko-Meiji Taisho-ki no Nihon ni oite,"
  Keizai hydron, new series, 16 (January 1967): 134-56.
  41 See, for example, Kazushi Ohkawa, Differential Structure and Agriculture: Essays on Dualistic
  Growth (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1972), pp. 165-81.
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  421
  technology drew ahead, the sphere in which simple hand production
  was competitive narrowed, export prices declined, and consumer
  taste began to change. With the wartime surge in modern industrial
  development, the complementary relationship between the tradi-
  tional and modern sectors changed to one of competition for re-
  sources, in which all the advantages were on the side of the modern
  sector. In the postwar recessions, as more and more people were
  unable to find employment elsewhere, incomes and living standards
  in the traditional sector fell markedly below those of the modern
  sector, creating in the 1920s a dual or differential economic structure
  that was characteristic of the interwar period and persisted well into
  the high-growth era of the 1960s. The problems of this differential
  structure were of great significance for both Japan's economic devel-
  opment and its social and political development but are outside the
  scope of this chapter.
  THE MODERN SECTOR, 1 8 8 5 - I 9 1 3
  In late nineteenth-century Japan, manufacturing was a very small part
  of a modern sector which was itself very small in relation to the whole
  economy. The new bureaucracy, the army and navy, the education
  system, modern railways, shipping, and finance provided the bulk of
  modern employment in the 1880s and even in 1913 employed over half
  of this sector's labor force. All contributed directly or indirectly to
  Japan's economic growth. But in the long run it was the development
  of the modern secondary industries that made it possible to employ a
  steadily increasing proportion of the work force at levels of productiv-
  ity far higher than could be achieved with traditional organization and
  technology, thereby producing a sustained and in fact accelerating
  increase in overall output. In the late nineteenth century, however, the
  modern sector, including most modern manufacturing industries, still
  depended for its existence and growth on resources from the tradi-
  tional economy and to some extent from abroad.
  The order in which modern industries developed in Japan has inter-
  ested economic theorists. Experience in the older industrial countries of
  the West suggested a progression from light industries, especially tex-
  tiles, through mining and metallurgical industries, railways, and the age
  of steam to heavy engineering, chemicals, and the mass production of
  motor cars and other appliances. This was thought to be a natural
  progression, as capital accumulation and technological progress re-
  duced the cost of capital, encouraging the introduction of increasingly
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  422 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  capital-intensive methods of production. In Japan, too, this sequence,
  although compressed into a shorter span of time, was generally similar
  but had some important differences. We have seen how the develop-
  ment of railways and the merchant marine was able to precede the
  emergence of the iron and steel industry by relying on imports of rails,
  girders, rolling stock, ships, and other equipment. Mining developed
  early largely to supply export markets. Although cotton spinning and
  some other branches of the textile industry were the first modern manu-
  facturing industries to be profitably established, modern iron and steel
  mills, shipbuilding, and some other branches of heavy engineering
  followed so closely as to overlap with them. In the few years that sepa-
  rated the beginnings of light and heavy industry, changes in the relative
  costs and availability of labor and capital were certainly not great
  enough to make relatively capital-intensive heavy industries profitable
  or competitive with imports. On the contrary, those heavy and engineer-
  ing industries were established at great cost either as state enterprises or
  with government subsidies, guarantees, and protection. Most did not
  become economically viable until the World War I boom.
  Here we see a major difference between the modern Japanese textile
  industry and, for example, the iron and steel industry. Both received
  government encouragement and assistance in one form or another-the
  textile industry to replace imports and reduce the drain on foreign
  exchange, and heavy industry to produce in the interests of national
  security. The former soon adapted to Japan's relative abundance of
  labor and thereafter became an attractively profitable investment. In
  the latter, however, the proportions of labor and capital were fixed
  within narrow limits by the technology, and so their establishment was
  justified on grounds of national security rather than economic viability.
  Enterprises established in the national interest rather than in re-
  sponse to business opportunities tended to be promoted and managed
  by people with administrative experience and good government con-
  tacts rather than by those with sound business backgrounds. This has
  prompted the view that the typical entrepreneur of the Meiji era was of
  samurai rather than merchant background and that Japan's traditional
  business class was conservative and unable to adapt to the competitive
  world of free enterprise.'*2 Whenever the criteria of the marketplace
  indicated genuine business opportunities, however, businessmen were
  42 See, for example, Tsuchiya Takao, Zaibaisu o kizuiia hitobito (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1955); and
  Tsuchiya Takao, Nihon no keieisha seishin (Tokyo: Keizai oraisha, 1959). For a more recent
  discussion, see Johannes Hirschmeier and Tsunehiko Yui, The Development of Japanese
  Business, 1600-1973 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975).
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  423
  not slow to exploit them, as they did in the textile industry in the
  1890s.
  However, investment decisions based on grounds other than free-
  market considerations are not necessarily less effective or desirable in
  promoting modern economic growth. Neither economic theory nor
  experience suggests that the unhampered operation of free-market
  forces in a situation such as Japan's in the late nineteenth century
  allocates resources over time in a way that optimizes economic develop-
  ment. The Japanese authorities had no compunction about channeling
  resources into import-replacement projects designed to conserve for-
  eign exchange, to enhance national security, or otherwise to promote
  what they saw as the national interest. The development of industries
  established for such reasons often itself helped create the conditions
  under which they could eventually be justified in terms of normal
  business calculations. The relationship between market forces and the
  pursuit of national objectives is woven into Japan's modern economic
  development in intricate patterns that need more detailed study.«
  Light industry
  The textile industry was the only light industry to be firmly estab-
  lished on the basis of modern technology and organization before
  World War I. It consisted overwhelmingly of silk reeling and cotton
  spinning. Of the two, raw silk was superior in value of output and was
  far more important as an export commodity.
  The moderri silk-reeling industry began in the 1870s with the impor-
  tation of filatures from Europe by the government and a few others.
  The cost of these filatures was high; the government's three-hundred-
  basin model plant at Tomioka, for example, was completed in 1872 at
  a cost of ¥198,000. But because of their high capital cost, poor man-
  agement, and inexperienced labor, these early filatures could not com-
  pete successfully with traditional hand reeling. Not until the develop-
  ment of modified equipment at much less cost did machine reeling
  become profitable. After the late 1880s this "acclimatized" modern
  technology spread rapidly, especially in Nagano, Yamanashi, and
  Gumma prefectures, and by 1894 it produced more and better-quality
  43 The many suggestive insights on this topic in the final chapter of William W. Lock wood, The
  Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change 1868-1938 (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1954), have only recently begun to be followed up with as much
  enthusiasm as they deserve. See Sydney Crawcour, "Japanese Economic Studies in Foreign
  Countries in the Postwar Period," Keizai kenkyii 30 (January 1979): 49-64.
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  424 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  silk than did the traditional hand-reeling industry. The output per
  basin rose markedly and the production of filature silk continued to
  expand. After the 1890s the growth of the industry was firmly based on
  the new technology. Raw silk was already Japan's leading export before
  the introduction of modern technology, but with the improved quality
  of filature silk, promoted by producers' associations and checked by a
  government-sponsored system of inspection, the value of raw silk ex-
  ports rose from an annual average of ¥17.7 million between 1883 and
  1887 to ¥50 million between 1893 and 1897, ¥92.5 million between
  1903 and 1907, and ¥ 206.8 million between 1913 and 1917.«
  The success of the modern silk-reeling industry can be attributed
  only indirectly to government initiative. The technology as first intro-
  duced by the government was too capital intensive for the indigenous
  conditions of plentiful labor and scarce capital, but it did inspire local
  mechanics to produce modified capital-saving equipment. Although
  the scale increased over time, the optimum remained fairly small so
  that filatures could enjoy the advantages of being located close to
  sources of raw materials and local labor. As the industry became con-
  centrated in Nagano Prefecture, however, it increasingly drew its
  workers from Toyama and other neighboring prefectures. Modern silk
  reeling was, moreover, well served by financial institutions that had
  grown up with the traditional hand-reeling industry, and it benefited
  from the buoyant export demand and elastic supplies of cocoons.«
  Whereas Japan's raw silk was competitive from the start in interna-
  tional markets, Japan's indigenous cotton yarn could not compete
  with imports in either price or quality. Cotton yarn and fabric had
  been Japan's biggest imports throughout the 1870s, amounting in
  1880 to ¥13.2 million, or 36 percent of the value of all imports. Faced
  with a shortage of foreign exchange, the government hoped that a
  more efficient domestic spinning industry could replace the imported
  product. At first officials believed, by analogy with silk reeling, that
  this could be achieved by using Western spinning machinery in small
  water-powered mills located in the cotton-growing areas and em-
  ploying hand spinners then being made redundant by competition
  from imports. The government therefore imported ten, two-thousand-
  spindle-sets of spinning machinery and sold them on credit to entrepre-
  neurs in various parts of the country. The importation of three more
  44 With the growth of other export industries, raw silk's share of total export value fell over this
  period from 42 percent to 22 percent.
  45 See Katsuo Otsuka, "Technological Choice in the Japanese Silk Industry: Implications for
  Development in LDCs," Working Paper Series no. A-05, mimeographed (Tokyo: Interna-
  tional Development Center of Japan, March 1977).
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  425
  sets was financed with public funds. The Akabane workshops of the
  Ministry of Industry, commissioned to make another set on a trial
  basis, eventually produced a copy of imported Platt Brothers equip-
  ment, but at twice the landed cost of the original and of such inferior
  quality as to be unusable. The whole program of introducing two-
  thousand-spindle mills proved a costly failure involving the expendi-
  ture of over ¥1.6 million of public funds between 1880 and 1884,
  from which virtually nothing was recovered.
  Meanwhile, with the encouragement and support of the ubiquitous
  promotor Shibusawa Eiichi, a group of Kansai businessmen and oth-
  ers, including some outstanding managers with close government con-
  nections, raised ¥240,000 to found the Osaka Spinning Company,
  which began operation with 10,500 mule spindles in 1884. Learning
  from the earlier mills' mistakes, the new company used imported raw
  cotton (initially from China) which was cheaper and of somewhat more
  suitable quality than the domestic was. The mill was therefore located
  near the port and used steam in place of less reliable water power. No
  attempt was made to modify the equipment, as the silk-reeling indus-
  try had done, but operations were brought into line with indigenous^
  conditions of plentiful labor and scarce capital by the simple but cru-
  cial capital-saving device of working two shifts around the clock. Be-
  cause labor was already used very intensively, the Osaka mill em-
  ployed roughly four times as many workers per unit of capital as its
  English or American counterparts did. The company was an immedi-
  ate success. Within four years of coming into operation, it was paying
  dividends of 30 percent on a paid-up capital which had by then been
  increased fivefold to ¥1.2 million. Other businessmen were quick to
  follow suit. In 1888 the Japan Cotton Spinners' Association was reorga-
  nized to exchange information and experience, promote the develop-
  ment of the industry, and coordinate employment policies, with the
  members agreeing not to hire away one another's workers. Neverthe-
  less, in the boom conditions of the time there were incessant disputes
  over the poaching of skilled workers.46
  In the recession of 1890 the association worked to obtain subsidies
  and other incentives to penetrate overseas markets. The 5 percent ex-
  port duty on cotton yarn was abolished in 1894, and the import duty on
  raw cotton was lifted in 1896. Meanwhile, the industry was converting
  from mules to ring-frame spindles, which were 50 percent more produc-
  46 By contrast, in the early days, skilled hands were lent freely to act as instructors in new mills.
  The change is no doubt connected with the transition of the cotton-spinning industry from a
  "national interest" to a "profit motive" basis.
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  426 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  tive and could spin finer counts of yarn. The new spindles, however,
  required finer and longer staple cotton than was available from China,
  so in 1892 the association entered into an agreement to purchase Indian
  cotton in Bombay through its trading organ (Nichimen), and the follow-
  ing year negotiated favorable terms with NYK for cotton shipments
  from Bombay. After 1895 the domestic consumption of cotton yarn
  began to level off, and exports became the main avenue for further
  growth. Export growth was retarded by disruption of the Chinese mar-
  ket during the Sino-Japanese War, but in 1897 exports exceeded im-
  ports for the first time. The following year, however, a slump in domes-
  tic demand, rising costs, and a shortage of finance sharply reduced
  profits. To some extent the spinning companies had themselves contrib-
  uted to these difficulties by their practice of paying high dividends
  while failing to make adequate provision for reserves, but the associa-
  tion prevailed on Minister of Finance Inoue Kaoru to bail them out by
  arranging export credits on favorable terms and low-interest loans total-
  ing ¥2.371 million (8 percent of the total paid-up capital of all spinning
  mills at that time). This enabled the cotton spinners to repay loans and
  finance further expansion at a cost of capital well below the Japanese
  market rate. Although the recession continued, accompanied by short-
  time work and concentration through a series of takeovers by the top six
  firms, with government assistance, exports continued to rise.*7
  The weaving of cotton fabric was largely a cottage industry before
  World War I. Japanese-made power looms for weaving standard-
  width piece goods appeared around the turn of the century and in-
  creased in number after the Russo-Japanese War. By 1913 about
  25,000 such looms, nearly 80 percent of them in weaving sheds oper-
  ated by the largest spinning mills, produced 345 million yards valued
  at ¥215 million.
  Cheap labor has often been cited as a reason for the success of the
  Japanese cotton-spinning industry. A high and rising proportion of the
  mill hands were female-over 80 percent in 1913 compared with about
  two-thirds in the United Kingdom and less than half in the United
  States. Most were uneducated teenaged girls recruited from rural areas
  where the decline of the cottage textile industry was reducing farmers'
  cash incomes. Although the girls lived under poor conditions virtually
  unregulated by legislation and worked twelve-hour shifts for cash wages
  47 On development of the modern Japanese cotton-spinning industry, see Fujino Shozaburo et
  al., eds., LTES, vol. n (Textiles); Sanpei Takako, Nihon mengyo haltatsu shi (Tokyo: Keio
  shobo, 1941). On government assistance to the industry, see Tsusho Sangyosho, ed., Shoko
  seisaku shi, vol. 15: Sen'i kogyd(i) (Tokyo: Shoko seisaku shi kankokai, 1968), pp. 158-208.
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  427
  lower than the earnings of a cottage weaver or silk reeler and lower still
  than those of an Indian cotton mill worker, rural conditions were such
  that they could be readily recruited by smooth-talking agents prepared
  to pay a lump sum to the head of the household.*8 Once hired, however,
  few worked long enough to acquire a useful degree of skill. Despite the
  efforts of the Japan Cotton Spinners Association and although most of
  them lived in closely supervised company dormitories, about half ab-
  sconded within a few months, and only about one in ten stayed for three
  or more years. The Kanebo Company tried to improve its labor supply
  by remaining outside the cotton spinners association and offering some-
  what better pay and conditions. Although this does not seem to have
  reduced labor turnover, the association was worried enough to put
  heavy pressure on Kanebo to join.49
  Compared with the United Kingdom or the United States, Japanese
  labor was cheap relative to capital, and the expansion of the cotton-
  spinning industry depended on using large numbers of workers in
  round-the-clock operations. It depended also on coordinating produc-
  tion through the cotton spinners association, promoting exports, and
  offering government assistance, including official warnings to mill own-
  ers against paying themselves more generous dividends than sound
  long-term management warranted. Nevertheless, by international stan-
  dards, the industry was still small in 1913 when Japan had a total
  capacity of 2.34 million spindles, as compared with 55.5 million in the
  United Kingdom and 30.6 million in the United States. Even in the
  China market, where Japanese exports were heavily concentrated, the
  value of Lancashire's share was two and a half times that of Japan.5°
  Although cotton and silk were by far the biggest modern light indus-
  tries, others had begun before World War I. The woolen textile indus-
  try began as a government enterprise because demand was overwhelm-
  ingly for military or official use and because production costs were too
  high to make it commercially profitable in the face of competition
  from imports. Early government policy was no more successful here
  than in the other examples already described. The first official move
  48 A good source of detailed information, though rather questionable in regard to analysis, is by
  Takamura Naosuke, Nihon bosekigyo shijosetsu (Tokyo: Hanawa shobo, 1971).
  49 See Gary R. Saxonhouse, "Country Girls and Communication Among Competitors in the
  Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry," in Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Conse-
  quences, ed. Hugh Patrick (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976),
  pp. 97-125; and Morita Yoshio, Nihon keiesha dantai hatlen shi (Tokyo: Nikkan rodo
  tsushin, 1958), pp. 37-43-
  50 See David S. Landes, "Technological Change and Development in Western Europe, 1750-
  1914" in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, ed. H. J. Habakkuk and M. Postan, vol. 6,
  pt. 1 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 443,467-8.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  was an unsuccessful attempt to introduce merino sheep as a domestic
  source of raw material, and in 1877 a government woolen mill was
  established at Senju to weave imported yarn into serge for uniforms.
  Not until the 1900s when wool muslin began to be used for everyday
  Japanese dress was the private woolen industry, with the aid of a 25
  percent ad valorem import duty, able to compete with imports.51 Other
  modern light industries established before World War I include sugar
  refining, brewing, printing, papermaking, and glassmaking, but in
  the overall development of Japanese industry in this period, they were
  of minor importance compared with textiles.
  Heavy and engineering industries
  Heavy industries like iron and steel, shipbuilding, and engineering
  emerged at a relatively early stage in Japan's modern industrial devel-
  opment, not because they presented attractive opportunities to inves-
  tors, but because the government was convinced that national military
  and economic security required a fair degree of self-sufficiency in
  those fields. The Japanese government was well aware that the world
  powers' strength and influence depended on their capacity to produce
  iron and steel, ships, and munitions, and it was convinced that catch-
  ing up with the West implied a commitment to the development of
  these industries.
  Iron and high-quality steel had been made in Japan for centuries;
  indeed, Japanese swords were prized in China and Southeast Asia as
  early as the sixteenth century. Excellent though it was, however, Japa-
  nese steel was produced by small-scale labor-intensive methods totally
  inadequate for military requirements in the late nineteenth century.
  Small experimental blast furnaces built by various domains in the
  1850s and 1860s used a smelted iron ore with charcoal and produced
  wrought iron by puddling, a technology already out of date. Neither
  the Meiji government nor private firms were able to operate these
  plants profitably, and so their output was negligible.52 For railways,
  51 See Keiichiro Nakagawa and Henry Rosovsky, "The Case of the Dying Kimono: The Influ-
  ence of Changing Fashions on the Development of the Japanese Woollen Industry," Business
  History Review 37 (Spring-Summer I963):64.
  52 See Thomas C. Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan: Government
  Enterprise 1868-1880 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955). Smith stresses the
  contribution to Japan's economic development made by the government's industrial under-
  takings in this period. Their contribution to output, however, was small. Most embodied
  technology inappropriate to Japan and were not, on the whole, the direct progenitors of
  modern Japanese industry. They did provide important opportunities for learning by doing,
  but in most cases the knowledge and experience so gained could have been acquired more
  easily and at less cost in other ways.
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  429
  bridges, ships, and munitions, Meiji Japan relied on imported iron
  and steel. From 1888 to 1893 those imports averaged some 35,000 tons
  a year, valued at about ¥2 million. Military expenditures increased
  fourfold during the Sino-Japanese War and, under the ten-year arma-
  ment plan initiated in 1896, remained high at around 5.3 percent of
  gross national expenditure, or nearly two and a half times the prewar
  ratio. With the additional demands of a railway-building boom, steel
  imports rose between 1898 and 1900 to an annual average of 182,000
  tons, valued at over ¥10 million, compared with home production of
  less than 2,000 tons.
  With little prospect of any growth in its steel industry, the Japanese
  government, itself the largest consumer of steel, had been considering
  establishing a government steel works since 1880. In 1891 the govern-
  ment put such a bill before the Diet, with an explanatory statement
  that included the following:
  Steel is the mother of industries and the foundation of national defence.
  Without a steel industry other industries cannot flourish and the armed
  services cannot be properly equipped. We all know that a country's prospects
  can be gauged by the state of its steel industry. If we want to make this
  country rich and strong we ought to set up a steelworks.
  The statement went on to make a case for state intervention on the
  grounds of substantial external economies. To the private investor,
  selling imported steel was more profitable and required much less
  capital than establishing a steelworks in Japan. Nevertheless, because
  Japan was not short of iron ore, a Japanese steel industry would be
  able to compete profitably with imports if pig iron were available in
  sufficient quantities.
  If we put enough effort into exploration, discovery of iron ore is certain. The
  reason we have not made any discoveries to date is simply that, not having a
  •steelworks, there was no demand for large quantities of pig iron. Thus, while
  the establishment of a steelworks would promote the development of the iron
  industry, there is no hope of a steelworks starting unless an iron industry
  develops. In these circumstances we shall never get a private enterprise steel
  mill so there is really no alternative but that the state should establish a mill.53
  Prime Minister Matsukata Masayoshi, better known for selling off
  government industrial undertakings than for creating them, supported
  the bill in a speech stressing the defense need for steel and warning of
  the strategic dangers of relying on imports. He further claimed that
  53 Tsusho sangyosho, ed., Shoko seisaku shi, vol. 17: Tekko (Tokyo: Shoko seisaku shi kanko-
  kai, 1970), pp. 70-1.
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  43O 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  home-produced steel would be cheaper in the long run and pointed to
  the drain on foreign exchange reserves associated with the rapidly
  rising demand for steel.
  An uncooperative House of Representatives rejected the bill by a
  large majority. In the following year a second attempt failed to obtain
  an appropriation of ¥2.250 million to establish a steel mill under the
  Ministry of the Navy. A third attempt, this time under the auspices of
  the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, passed the House of Peers
  but was rejected by the House of Representatives which also slashed
  naval construction. Not until the Sino-Japanese War had been in prog-
  ress for six months did the government finally obtain the Diet's ap-
  proval for an integrated steel mill, at a cost of ¥4.095 million. In 1901
  the Yawata Ironworks began operation with a designed capacity of
  210,000 tons of steel and planned to rise to 300,000 tons in 1906 and
  380,000 tons in 1911.54 By 1911 the total capital cost had risen to over
  ¥50 million, and another ¥27 million in state-backed loans had been
  invested to develop the Hanyenping iron mines in central China.« In
  its first ten years, Yawata accumulated operating losses of ¥9.7 mil-
  lion, but with experience and tariff protection after 1911, the enter-
  prise began to operate at a profit, producing rolled steel competitive
  with imports. Rolled steel output was, however, far below expecta-
  tions at 5,000 tons in 1901, 64,000 tons in 1906, and 181,000 tons in
  1911. By 1913 it had risen to 216,000 tons, but Japan's total produc-
  tion still met only one-third of its domestic requirements.
  The private iron and steel industry produced less than 10 percent of
  Japan's steel output before the Russo-Japanese War. During that war,
  however, it made some headway and by 1913 was responsible for about
  a quarter of the domestic production of pig iron and rolled steel.
  Whereas a private enterprise steel mill had been unthinkable twenty
  years earlier, several now emerged without overt subsidies. What made
  this possible was the assurance of government orders at profitable
  prices. With the huge increase in money available for defense-the
  Russo-Japanese War cost ten times as much as did the Sino-Japanese
  War- costs seemed unimportant to the government compared with the
  urgent needs of national security.
  In an instructive example of state-private cooperation in "national
  interest" heavy industry, Hokkaido tanko (Hokkaido Coal Mining)
  54 Yawata seitetsusho, ed., Yawata seitetsusho so-nen shi (Tokyo: Yawata seitetsusho, 1950), pp.
  62-3.
  55 These loans to the Hanyeping (Han-yeh-p'ing) company were the subject of some of the
  Twenty-one Demands served on the Chinese government in January 1915.
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  joined with Vickers Armstrong in forming Nippon seikosho (Nippon
  Steelworks) to supply ordnance and other equipment to the navy.
  After the nationalization of their railway lines in 1906, the directors of
  Hokkaido tanko found themselves with funds to invest, whereas the
  navy, frustrated by its experience of intransigent Diets, was looking
  for ways to satisfy its steel requirements and enhance Japan's self-
  sufficiency in armaments, by promoting private investment. Through
  the good offices of successive navy ministers, Admirals Yamamoto
  Gonnohyoe and Saito Minoru, the Hokkaido men came to an arrange-
  ment with the commander of the Kure naval base, which in turn
  interested Vickers Armstrong in the project. By 1913 Nippon seiko-
  sho, with fixed capital of ¥22 million and rated annual capacity of
  157,500 tons of steel, was second only to Yawata.
  Several mills to make finished steel from ingot and scrap were
  founded during this period. Some, like Nippon Steel Pipe, Fuji Steel,
  and Kobe Steel, eventually became major steel manufacturers. All
  received technical assistance and profitable orders from government
  agencies. Kobe Steel (originally Kobayashi Steel) owed its success to
  Kosugi Tatsuzo, a senior engineer of the Kure Naval Arsenal who
  moved to the firm in 1904, bringing eight of his most promising
  colleagues with him. The whole group received a year's training at the
  Vickers steelworks in the United Kingdom before setting up an open-
  hearth furnace and ancillary plant at Kobe. With assurances of orders
  from the Kure Naval Arsenal at prices five to six times the prime cost,
  the project could scarcely fail. Under the navy's policy of raising the
  Japanese content of its hardware, this and other plants became virtual
  auxiliaries of the naval arsenals. Sooner or later most came under the
  aegis of one or another of the major zaibatsu. Coordination of private
  and public interests was then handled through channels of institu-
  tional communication between zaibatsu and government rather than
  through personal connections.
  In 1913, Japan produced 255,000 tons of rolled steel, of which
  Yawata produced 85 percent, but relied on imports for over half of its
  pig iron and two-thirds of its rolled steel. Japanese steel production
  was only one-hundredth that of the United States, and U.S. Steel's
  Gary, Indiana, mill alone produced five times as much as did the
  whole Japanese industry. On the eve of World War I, Japan's steel
  output may have been, in G. C. Allen's words, "of very slight impor-
  tance,"56 but it was more than any country in the world had produced
  56 G. C. Allen, A Short Economic History ofModem Japan (London: Allen & Unwin, 1946), p. 74.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  in 1870, a measure of the industry's novelty and of the relative short-
  ness of Japan's lag behind the Western powers.
  Shipbuilding, like the steel industry, was closely linked to national
  security and consisted of state and private enterprises. Of the dock-
  yards inherited by the Meiji government, Yokosuka became a naval
  dockyard, and Nagasaki passed to Mitsubishi, Hyogo to Kawasaki,
  and Ishikawajima, after being closed by the government, to a company
  promoted by Shibusawa. By World War I, dozens of shipyards had
  sprung up, but only the naval dockyards at Yokosuka, Kure, and
  Sasebo and the private yards of Mitsubishi at Nagasaki and Kawasaki
  at Kobe, were capable of building large modern steamers. Until the
  Sino-Japanese War, Japanese shipyards were mainly used for repairs
  and refits. Equipment and technical competence were limited, and
  materials had to be imported at high prices. The then small domestic
  fleet of steamships consisted almost entirely of foreign-built vessels of
  which seventy-three (a total tonnage of 100,000 tons) were imported
  between 1880 and 1893. Under the major naval expansion plan initi-
  ated in 1883, only one naval vessel, the Hashidate, was built at the
  Yokosuka Naval Dockyard. All the rest were ordered from the United
  Kingdom or France. The Sino-Japanese War clearly showed the inade-
  quacy of Japan's shipbuilding capacity. During the war years, all of
  the merchant marine's suitable vessels were pressed into service; more
  than eighty ships (a total tonnage of 160,000 tons) were bought from
  abroad; and many more were chartered. Most of these ships were
  steel-hulled steamers of two thousand or more tons. The only civilian
  shipyard capable of handling even repairs to vessels of this size was
  Mitsubishi's Nagasaki dockyard.
  With a coming confrontation with Russia in mind, the government
  made strenuous efforts after 1895 to expand the naval fleet, but again
  all of the larger ships had to be ordered from foreign yards, and only
  seven torpedo boats were built or assembled in Japan. The Shipbuild-
  ing Encouragement Act of 1896 was designed to promote the domestic
  construction of merchant ships. Under its provisions, steel steamships
  built by wholly Japanese-owned private shipyards attracted a subsidy
  of ¥12 per ton for ships of between seven hundred and one thousand
  tons and ¥20 per ton for those of one thousand or more tons. A
  further subsidy of ¥5 per horsepower would be paid if the engines
  were made in Japan. These subsidies, however, scarcely made up for
  the higher cost of steel plate and other materials. Japanese shipping
  companies still found foreign shipyards cheaper, far better technically,
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
  433
  and more prompt in delivery than were the domestic yards. The
  Mitsubishi dockyard build the six-thousand-ton Hitachi Maru in 1898
  with much help from the navy's experts, but it was not until the
  Navigation Subsidy Act was amended in 1899 to reduce subsidies
  payable for foreign-built ships to half that for domestically built ves-
  sels that Japanese shipyards received enough orders to warrant upgrad-
  ing their facilities. Between 1899 and 1904, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki
  built twenty-six steamers of one thousand or more tons, including six
  of over five thousand tons.
  Despite this modest progress, the Russo-Japanese War again found
  the industry wanting.5? Once more, nearly the whole Japanese mer-
  chant marine was requisitioned for the duration, and imports of mer-
  chant ships soared to 314,000 tons. Deliveries of warships from for-
  eign sources were cut off by suppliers anxious to maintain neutrality.
  Light though Japanese losses were compared with those of the Russian
  fleet, they included two battleships, two cruisers, and fourteen smaller
  ships. Under wartime pressure and regardless of cost, the naval dock-
  yards succeeded in building a battleship, an armored cruiser, and two
  second-class cruisers, and the Mitsubishi and Kawasaki yards, which
  in 1904 could build nothing bigger than a torpedo boat, built destroy-
  ers. Even the naval dockyards, then much better equipped than the
  private yards were, used very labor-intensive methods. The battle
  cruisers Tsukuba and Ikoma, for example, were built by workers oper-
  ating like waves of shock troops without the aid of large gantry cranes
  or pneumatic riveters.
  As a result of this wartime progress, however, Japan became practi-
  cally self-sufficient in naval construction. Of the seventy-eight naval
  vessels totaling 360,000 tons commissioned between 1905 and 1915,
  all but seven were built in Japan, a quarter of them by private indus-
  try. Merchant shipbuilding also advanced. With tariff increases on
  imported ships from 5 percent ad valorem in 1897 to 10 percent in 1906
  and 15 percent in 1910, the subsidies, though still of great benefit to
  the major shipping companies, became a relatively less important
  source of encouragement to shipbuilders. *8
  Because of both the official recognition of shipbuilding as essential
  to national defense and naval influence and technical assistance, by
  57 The Russo-Japanese War cost ten times as much as did the Sino-Japanese War and stretched
  the Japanese economy to the limit. Casualties, too, were heavy.
  58 Mitsubishi zosen KK, somuka, ed., "Honpo kindai zosen hogoseisaku no enkaku," reprinted
  in Nihon sangyo shiryo taikei, vol. 5, pp. 729-822.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  1914 the industry had, with the aid of subsidies and tariff protection,
  reached a position from which it could profit from the exceptional
  opportunities presented by World War I.
  The development of the engineering industries generally belongs to
  the post-World War I period, but their origins date back to the 1880s
  when military arsenals and the Miyata Small Arms Company began to
  manufacture rifles in some quantity. We have already described the
  early progress in the manufacture of marine engines. This was followed
  by the manufacture of rolling stock, and by the 1890s Japan was produc-
  ing a growing proportion of the goods wagons and passenger carriages
  required by its expanding railway network. The first Japanese-built
  locomotive was assembled in the government's Kobe railway work-
  shops in 1893 under the direction of an English engineer,& but this was
  hardly more than an advanced exercise in technical training. Even in
  1912, of Japan's stock of 2,636 locomotives, only 162 were of Japanese
  manufacture.60 In textile machinery, the Toyoda Automatic Loom
  Company produced powered looms in quantity by 1913 in what may
  have been Japan's first mass-production engineering plant, but almost
  all spinning machinery was imported before World War I.
  The manufacture of electrical equipment began with telegraphic
  and telephonic equipment. Although government workshops played
  an important role in introducing the technology, most of the develop-
  ment was by private enterprise. One of the leading firms, Oki Kiba-
  taro's Meikosha (now Oki denki kogyo), used profits accumulated
  during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars to become a com-
  petitive producer of telephones, whose price was brought down from
  ¥55 to ¥10 or even less within fifteen years.61 The production of
  electric generators and motors was in the experimental stage and in-
  volved a good deal of tinkering until Tokyo Electric in 1905, and then
  the Shibaura (now Toshiba) works, obtained access to General Electric
  capital, patents, and technology in return for a share in their compa-
  nies. Other firms like Nippon Electric (NEC), Mitsubishi Electric,
  and Fuji Electric later made similar arrangements with major foreign
  electrical concerns, but for a decade or more after the Russo-Japanese
  War, General Electric technology dominated the industry. Other
  59 Richard Francis Trevithick, brother of Francis Henry, also a locomotive expert with the
  Japanese railways and a grandson of Richard (i 771-1833), whose inventions entitle him to be
  considered the inventor of the locomotive steam engine.
  60 Arisawa Hiromi, ed., Gendai Nihon sangyo koza, vol. 5: Kikai kogyo (/) (Tokyo: Iwanami
  shoten, i960), p. 50.
  61 Oki Kibataro denki hensan gakari, ed., Oki Kibataro (Tokyo: Oki Kibataro denki hensan
  gakari, 1932), p. 105.
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  THE MODERN SECTOR 
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  branches of engineering were of little significance before World War I.
  The value of Japan's machine tool output, a good indicator of the state
  of its engineering industries, was a mere ¥30,000 in 1914. To put the
  matter in better perspective, even in 1930 "the entire complex of
  mining, metallurgy and machinery industries furnished no more than
  8% of Japan's national product."62
  The development of heavy industry and engineering clearly de-
  pended on state support, most of which was linked to considerations
  of national security and defense. The effect of war and preparations
  for war on Japan's modern economic development has been the sub-
  ject of some debate. Until World War I the growth of the modern
  sector was strongly correlated with military expenditure. When mili-
  tary expenditure rose sharply during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-
  Japanese wars, the modern sector grew rapidly. After each of those
  wars both the share of military expenditure in gross national expendi-
  ture and the share of the modern sector's output in GNP fell somewhat
  but remained above prewar levels. According to Harry Oshima, "the
  most important lesson of Meiji public finance is that rapid economic
  growth and rapid militarization of the economy are fundamentally
  incompatible."^ William Lockwood stressed "the continual drain of
  armaments on Japan's limited capital resources, on her advanced ma-
  chine skills; and especially on the government budget itself and sug-
  gested that "a small fraction of these sums spent on reducing disease
  and accident rates in urban industry, for example, would have in-
  creased productive efficiency as well as human well-being."6'* In the
  1930s and 1940s the heavy and engineering industries were indeed so
  closely geared to defense that their contribution to the civilian popula-
  tion's living standards was far from obvious. On the other hand, as
  Kozo Yamamura pointed out, military preparedness was "the prin-
  cipal motivation behind creating and expanding the arsenals and other
  publicly-financed shipyards and modern factories which acted as
  highly effective centers for the absorption and dissemination of West-
  ern technologies and skills" and provided "at critical junctures" the
  demand for private firms.6' Whether in the long run the game was
  worth the candle is a matter for individual judgment rather than eco-
  62 Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, p. 575.
  63 Harry T. Oshima, "Meiji Fiscal Policy and Agricultural Progress" in The Stale and Economic
  Enterprise in Japan: Essays in the Political Economy of Growth, ed. William W. Lockwood
  (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 381.
  64 Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, p. 577.
  65 Kozo Yamamura, "Success Illgotten? The Role of Meiji Militarism in Japan's Technical
  Progress," Journal of Economic History 37 (March 1977): 113.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  nomic calculation. Attempts to assess what the effect on national in-
  come would have been if military had been replaced by civil invest-
  ment must fail, if only because military investment was not simply a
  component of national income but an inseparable part of a whole
  economic, political, social, and ideological system.
  WORLD WAR I
  World War I rescued Japan from fiscal and balance-of-payments prob-
  lems that might otherwise have retarded its economic growth. Victory
  over Russia cost, along with appallingly high casualties, a direct expen-
  diture of ¥2 billion. The strains of the war affected Japan's economy
  for nearly a decade. A large part of the war's cost was financed by
  overseas borrowing that raised foreign indebtedness from less than
  ¥100 million in 1903 to ¥1.4 billion in 1907. Between 1909 and 1913,
  deficits in current international payments continued to run at around
  ¥80 million to ¥90 million annually, precluding an expansionary
  fiscal policy and prolonging the postwar recession. During this same
  five years the tax burden per capita, although almost double the pre-
  1904 level in real terms, did little more than cover military expendi-
  tures and service the national debt. But despite these difficulties,
  output grew at a respectable 3 percent a year, well above the prewar
  average.
  The outbreak of war in 1914 did not bring immediate benefits to
  Japan. Indeed, the dislocation of the world economy initially added to
  its difficulties. After 1915, however, the war transformed the eco-
  nomic climate. Although formally engaged on the Allied side, Japan
  took virtually no part in the hostilities, and so its economy benefited
  not only from Allied orders for munitions and manufactures but also
  from the removal of Western competition in both domestic and Asian
  mainland markets. Between 1914 and 1918, Japan's real gross national
  product rose by 40 percent, an average annual rate of nearly 9 percent.
  This growth was accompanied by a massive turnaround in interna-
  tional trade and payments and a spurt in private industrial investment.
  Because such a high proportion of output went into exports and in-
  vestment and because productivity in consumption goods industries
  lagged, gains in personal consumption and average standards of living
  were much more modest. The distribution of income, too, became
  more unequal as some investors and speculators made large profits
  from the boom, whereas those on relatively fixed incomes found then-
  living standards reduced by inflation. As private enterprise in modern
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  WORLD WAR I 
  437
  industry and commerce, hitherto heavily dependent on government
  support, suddenly became highly profitable, the modern business es-
  tablishment (zaikai) acquired a new degree of confidence and political
  influence. The foundation of the Industrial Club of Japan in 1917 by
  leaders of modern industry headed by representatives of the zaibatsu
  was symbolic of their new status. When economic conditions returned
  to normal early in 1920, much of the optimism and confidence of the
  war years was shown to have been misplaced, but modern industry
  had made real progress, and the foundations had been laid for self-
  sustaining industrial growth. This growth continued even in the diffi-
  cult conditions of the 1920s, whereas change in traditional industries
  producing consumer goods for the home market was much slower,
  and the gap between these and modern large-scale industry began to
  widen.
  Foreign trade
  In 1913 Japan paid around ¥70 million a year in interest abroad, and
  partly for this reason, current international payments were running a
  deficit of about ¥90 million a year. Had this situation continued under
  the gold standard system in operation at the time, it would have necessi-
  tated a fairly severe retrenchment that would have further hampered
  recovery and led to a period of slower growth. But the export opportuni-
  ties provided by the war removed this balance-of-payments restraint
  and permitted an investment boom of unprecedented proportions.
  The initial disruption of trade at the outbreak of war caused both
  exports and imports to fall, but in 1915 receipts from exports and
  shipping services rose sharply, though imports continued to decline,
  producing a record current surplus of over ¥200 million. This surplus
  reached a peak of ¥1 billion in 1917 and totaled ¥3 billion between
  1915-1919. Over the same period Japan was a net exporter of long-
  term capital to the extent of ¥1.5 billion, changing from a debtor
  nation to a substantial international creditor. Although merchandise
  exports increased by only a third in volume, world prices rose so high
  that their value rose over threefold and the value of manufactured
  exports, mainly textiles, rose sixfold. Asian markets absorbed about
  half of these exports. There was little change in the geographical
  distribution of exports until 1919 when European demand collapsed
  and was replaced by increased sales to the United States. The war
  years also brought a huge increase in foreign exchange earnings from
  shipping services. With the Allied merchant fleets suffering heavy
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  438 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  losses, freight and charter rates soared to ten or twenty times their
  1914 level. Japan's merchant marine expanded from 1.58 million gross
  registered tons in 1914 to 2.8 million in 1919. Net annual foreign
  earnings from shipping rose from ¥41 million to a peak of over ¥450
  million in 1918.
  The financial system could not cope with so large and so sudden a
  change in international payments at a time when international gold
  movements were suspended because of the war. The inflationary ef-
  fects of foreign payments surpluses therefore went unchecked, and the
  subsequent failure to bring down prices far enough in the postwar
  years was the main reason that the foreign balances accumulated dur-
  ing the war were run down. Nevertheless, the gains of the war boom
  were not entirely wasted. Most of the postwar increase in imports went
  for raw materials, semifinished goods (mainly iron and steel), and
  machinery to support an expanded manufacturing sector.
  Although the output of all sectors increased between 1914 and 1919,
  the greatest percentage gains (valued at constant 1934-6 prices) were
  in manufacturing (72 percent) and transport, communications, and
  power (60 percent). Increases in mining (26 percent) and agriculture
  (11.5 percent) were much lower.66 The farm-labor force fell by 1.8
  million, but there was a rise of 2.6 million in nonagricultural employ-
  ment. The mining and manufacturing share of net domestic product
  in current prices rose from 20 percent to 30 percent but fell back after
  the war and did not again regain the wartime peak until 1935.67 Thus,
  in both output and employment, the share of primary industry fell,
  but that of the secondary and tertiary industries, especially the mod-
  ern manufacturing sector, rose during the war.
  Agriculture
  Improved agricultural productivity, due partly to the diffusion of tech-
  nical advances introduced in the decade before 1914, was stimulated by
  increased domestic and export demand for agricultural products that
  resulted in more than a trebling of prices. Much of the wartime increase
  in agricultural output was, in fact, due to a 60 percent increase in the
  output of cocoons to supply the strong United States demand for raw
  silk. But the steep rise in food prices ultimately proved disadvantageous
  to farmers when widespread discontent among urban consumers, cul-
  66 Ohkawa and Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, pp. 289 (agricul-
  ture), p. 305 (manufactures), and p. 313 (commerce and services). The figure for mining is
  from LTES, vol. io, p. 265. 
  67 LTES, vol. 1, p. 240.
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  WORLD WAR I 
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  minating in the rice riots of 1918, and political pressure from manufac-
  turers to keep down wage costs forced the government to abandon
  agricultural protection in favor of increasing imports of cheaper rice and
  other staple foods from the colonial territories of Korea and Taiwan.
  Heavy industry and machinery
  It was in industry that change was fastest and most far-reaching.
  Between 1914 and 1919, manufacturing output increased by 72 per-
  cent, with only 42 percent more labor, representing a substantial pro-
  ductivity gain per worker. This was achieved by a large increase in
  capital investment. Paid-up capital of manufacturing companies in-
  creased five- or sixfold, but business was so good that for the leading
  companies, the rate of profit on paid-up capital rose from around 15
  percent to over 50 percent. The highest output growth was in machin-
  ery (29 percent per annum), with slower growth in textiles (11 per-
  cent), iron and steel (9 percent), and food products (5 percent) and
  other consumer goods. In the machinery industry, including shipbuild-
  ing, vehicles, and machine tools, expansion and technical progress was
  mainly the work of private industry, whose capacity increased greatly
  relative to that of government establishments.
  Shipbuilding, which had made considerable advances in scale and
  technology during the Russo-Japanese War, was stimulated by a rise
  in the price of new ships from ¥120 to a 1918 peak of ¥800 per gross
  registered ton. The industry increased its work force from 26,000 to
  95,000 and its output from eight vessels totaling 40,500 gross regis-
  tered tons in 1915 to 174 totaling 600,000 gross registered tons in
  1918. With prices soaring, the value of output increased from ¥7
  million to ¥405 million, but the cost of materials rose sharply too. By
  1918, steel plate was fifteen times its 1914 price and in such short
  supply in April of that year that the major shipbuilders contracted to
  receive 128,000 tons of American steel in return for an equal dead-
  weight tonnage of ships, and the following month they contracted for a
  further 123,000 tons of steel in exchange for twice that weight of
  ships.68 Demand was so buoyant and profits so large-ships under
  construction were frequently sold and resold at a huge profit-that
  even the small, ill-equipped yards that had proliferated during the war
  yielded good returns. The leading builders greatly raised productivity
  68 The United States' embargo on steel exports was one reason for the shortage. These swap
  deals were exempted from the embargo.
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  44° 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  by standardization and improved programming, almost halving con-
  struction times. Mitsubishi installed a model-testing tank and other
  research facilities, and several yards upgraded their technical stan-
  dards to meet the navy orders' requirements. When demand collapsed
  at the end of the war, most of the small yards failed, but Mitsubishi,
  Kawasaki, and three or four other advanced yards were kept going by
  orders from the navy, which was anxious for these builders to main-
  tain their technical staff and facilities as a national defense resource.69
  In the manufacture of rolling stock as well, the role of private
  enterprise increased under the patronage of the Ministry of Rail-
  ways, which adopted a policy of placing orders with private firms
  and providing technical assistance where necessary. Confidence in
  these firms' technical standards was apparently limited, as the minis-
  try's own workshops produced and supplied wheels, axles, bogies,
  and other parts crucial to safe operation and entrusted little more
  than coach building and assembly to the private contractors. Loco-
  motives and tenders, however, were fully built by larger specialist
  firms with technical standards comparable to those of the ministry's
  own workshops.70
  During the war, the leading shipbuilding firms, like Mitsubishi and
  Kawasaki, also expanded their general engineering capacity, building
  large steam and water turbines for the rapidly growing electric power
  industry. The output of steam engines, turbines, pumps, and internal
  combustion engines rose sharply as the major makers expanded their
  work forces tenfold. By the end of the war Japan was close to self-
  sufficient in these products. Stimulated by rapid electrification and
  with technical and managerial assistance from the major firms' Ameri-
  can partners, the manufacture of electric motors and equipment was
  the most advanced branch of the engineering industry, boasting mod-
  ern machinery, capital-intensive methods, and high standards of qual-
  ity. As in other branches of engineering, few of the small firms that
  mushroomed during the war survived the return of overseas competi-
  tion, but the larger firms that had greatly improved their capacity
  during the war remained competitive in medium-to-small generators,
  motors, transformers, and switching gear and even made some head-
  way in the Chinese market.
  With so many manufacturers eager to expand during the war, the
  demand for machine tools was extremely strong, and with imports
  69 "Honpo kindai zosen hogosaku no enkaku," pp. 778-821.
  70 "Kikai kogyo," in Nihon sangyo shiryo taikei, vol. 7, p. 33.
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  WORLD WAR I 
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  reduced to a trickle, domestic producers did their best to fill the gap.
  Output rose from a very low prewar level to a 1918 peak of nearly
  seventeen thousand tons, mainly general-purpose lathes but including
  as well a few turret lathes; planing, milling, and boring machines;
  radial drills; and gear hobbers. Although the Ikegai Ironworks, one of
  the oldest and most advanced tool makers, produced good, well-
  designed precision machinery, much of the domestically produced
  equipment was of inferior quality. This in turn affected the quality of
  the goods the equipment was used to produce. Because products of
  better quality could not be obtained, even indifferent machinery
  found a ready market, but when imports resumed (with the United
  States replacing the United Kingdom as the main supplier), the ma-
  chinery could not be sold. Only the best makers, like Ikegai, were able
  to survive, owing to orders from the army and navy, which regarded a
  domestic machine tool industry like shipbuilding as essential to de-
  fense purposes.
  The most severe wartime shortages were in iron and steel. Private
  steel-making capacity was still very small in 1914. Even with the
  expansion of the state steelworks at Yawata after the Russo-Japanese
  War, Japan produced only one-third of its rolled steel requirements.
  The price of pig iron skyrocketed from the 1913 average of ¥49 per
  ton to a maximum of ¥541, steel rod from ¥75 to ¥559, and steel
  plate from ¥85 to as much as ¥1,285.7I 1° January 1916 the govern-
  ment obtained the Diet's approval to double Yawata's output by 1922,
  at a cost of ¥35 million, but escalating costs and difficulties in obtain-
  ing equipment abroad delayed the plan's implementation. By 1919 the
  plant's output had risen by only about 20 percent. In the wartime
  sellers' market, however, its operations were highly profitable. In
  contrast with losses of over ¥11 million accumulated during its first
  decade of operation, Yawata's wartime profits totaled ¥151 million,
  more than enough to cover the accumulated losses and the whole
  capital investment. Leaders of private enterprise, who had long be-
  lieved that too much of the taxpayers' money had been invested in the
  state's steel industry, now resented the profits it was making. With the
  backing of the newly formed Industrial Club of Japan, private iron
  and steel makers obtained a substantial quid pro quo for dropping
  their opposition to the state-operated Yawata works, in the form of the
  Iron and Steel Promotion Act of 1917. Under its provisions, compa-
  nies with an annual capacity of 35,000 or more tons were eligible to
  71 "Honpo kindai zosen hogoseisaku no enkaku," pp. 809-10.
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  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  acquire land on very favorable terms and to import plants and materi-
  als free of duty, and individual plants with a capacity of 5,250 or more
  tons were exempted from business and income taxes. With this encour-
  agement, several small steel mills were set up, many using pig iron
  from Manchuria and Korea, but the greatest gains were made by large
  producers such as Nippon Steel's integrated mill in Hokkaido, Mitsu-
  bishi's mill in Korea and the Okura group and the South Manchurian
  Railway Company using Manchuria's rich mineral deposits. By 1919,
  the private enterprise output of pig iron had risen from 80,000 tons to
  over 500,000 tons, and the output of rolled steel from 52,000 tons to
  277,000 tons. This was twice as much pig iron and almost as much
  steel as Yawata produced at the time, but in the postwar recession,
  private output fell, whereas that of Yawata continued to rise.72 Al-
  though Japan still produced only half of its rolled steel requirements,
  with new capacity coming on stream, this proportion was rising, and
  imports came increasingly from Manchurian and other mainland
  sources under Japanese control.
  Textiles
  The demand for textiles, though not as strong as for the products of
  heavy industry and engineering, was buoyant during the war. Cotton
  spinners were able to raise their dividends from an average of 13
  percent between 1910 and 1913 to an average of 46 percent between
  1918 and 1920 on a paid-up capital that had trebled in the interval.
  Financial expansion was not matched by the expansion of productive
  capacity. Between 1914 and 1919 the number of spindles in operation
  rose by about one-third, but output increased by only one-sixth,
  mainly because high-quality imported equipment and parts were not
  available. The output per worker, however, rose significantly, as a
  fourfold wage rise stimulated spinning companies to use their workers
  more economically.73 With output barely able to supply strong domes-
  tic demand, Japanese spinners were unable to exploit opportunities in
  the Chinese market and instead invested some of their profits to ac-
  quire cotton-spinning capacity in China itself. On the other hand, the
  spinning companies increased their weaving capacity by 75 percent
  and their output of cotton cloth by 50 percent. Exports of cotton cloth
  also rose greatly in value, though much less in quantity.
  72 "Honpo seicekkogyo gaikyo," in Nihon sangyo shiryd laikei, vol. 7, pp. 620-1.
  73 Meiji Taisho kokusei soran, pp. 610—11.
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  WORLD WAR I 
  443
  The silk industry, after suffering from the disruption of its overseas
  markets at the outbreak of war, enjoyed an unprecedented boom as
  domestic and United States markets expanded. From a low of ¥700
  per one hundred catties in November 1914, the price of raw silk rose
  to a peak of almost ¥4,000 in January 1920 before plummeting to
  ¥1,195 m August. Production and exports rose by 60 percent in
  volume and by far more in value, bringing comparative prosperity to
  hundreds of thousands of sericulturalists and cottage silk weavers.
  From "traditional industry" to "small-scale industry"
  In contrast with the industries producing for military or investment
  demand, those producing for domestic or foreign consumption re-
  mained mainly labor-intensive, small in scale, and slower to accept
  technological innovation. The main change was the application of
  electric power to traditional production processes. By 1919, 26 percent
  of plants with five to fourteen workers used electric power, compared
  with only 7.8 percent in 1914.74 In organization and style of produc-
  tion, these industries changed little, but their role in the economy,
  especially their relationship with large modern businesses, was under-
  going a transformation. Whereas the traditional industry of the Meiji
  era had been the mainstay of the economy and its growth had been the
  necessary complement to the growth of the modern sector, in the
  post-World War I recession, small-scale industry became very much
  the poor relation or even the servant of modern business. By that time,
  small-scale industry included not only traditional consumption-goods
  industries but also small engineering workshops that had emerged to
  meet wartime shortages, often as suppliers to larger firms. Those that
  survived the postwar slump received cast-off equipment and even
  workers from the larger firms and acted as a reserve of capacity to
  meet temporary or peak demand.
  Although small-scale industries continued to employ the majority of
  industrial workers, their labor productivity fell far below that of the
  capital-intensive modern enterprises that responded to the postwar
  recession by drastically reducing their work forces and more effi-
  ciently using those they retained. It was at this time that gaps began to
  open in wage and profit rates, as between small businesses and leading
  modern firms. The postwar recession also saw the emergence of differ-
  ences in the structure of markets for products and factors of produc-
  74 LTES, vol. 12, pp. 228-45.
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  444 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  tion that later characterized what has been called the "dual" or "differ-
  ential" economic structure.7'
  THE ROLE OF THE STATE
  No explanation of industrialization and technological change in Japan
  between 1885 and 1920 would be complete or satisfying without con-
  sidering the role of the state. Its part in creating the infrastructure of
  administration, transport and communications, financial institutions,
  and education was of major importance in providing the environment
  in which industry and commerce could expand and develop. All sec-
  tors of the economy benefited, but throughout the Meiji era, tradi-
  tional sectors were the greatest beneficiaries, if only because of their
  aggregate size. We have already discussed the part played by official
  subsidies, protection (after tariff autonomy was gained), technical as-
  sistance, and government demand in the establishment of modern
  industries like shipping, shipbuilding, and engineering. Let us turn to
  a consideration of the general impact of the state on the economy.
  Fiscal and monetary policy
  The Meiji government inherited a taxing power that had put at the
  disposal of central and local authorities about 20 percent of the na-
  tional output, a high proportion for a preindustrial country.?6 In the
  twenty years after the Restoration, the fiscal system was renovated,
  and the tax base altered and enlarged. Between 1880 and 1920, central
  and local government income averaged 14 percent of Japan's gross
  national product, giving the government the power to allocate substan-
  tial resources without increasing customary levels of taxation.
  Fiscal policy, that is, influencing the economy through the level and
  structure of central and local budgets, has generally been regarded as
  important to Japan's economic development in this period. In the
  1880s, about half of the government's revenue was raised from agricul-
  ture. Although this proportion fell steadily as taxes on consumption,
  income, and property rose, taxation on the whole before World War I
  fell more heavily on agriculture and traditional businesses than on the
  modern sector. Its regressive nature tended to restrict consumption
  and to promote saving, with positive effects on the rate of growth.
  75 Ohkawa, Differential Structure and Agriculture, p. 61.
  76 Cf. E. Sydney Crawcour, "The Tokugawa Heritage," in The State and Economic Enterprise in
  Japan, p. 31. The figure of 25 to 27 percent given there now seems on the high side.
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  THE ROLE OF THE STATE 
  445
  Military expenditures absorbed the greatest percentage of total gov-
  ernment outlays (including capital expenditures), rising from 15 per-
  cent in the late 1880s to an average of 34 percent between 1890 and
  1900 and 48 percent between 1901 and 1910, before falling back to 41
  percent between 1911 and 1920. Whatever its other implications,
  these expenditures stimulated the growth of the modern sector. Trans-
  fer payments,77 mainly interest on public debt, the second largest
  budget item, were as high as 15 percent of all government expendi-
  tures in the late 1890s and averaged 9 or 10 percent for the remainder
  of the period. On the whole, these transfers were from lower to higher
  income groups and so tended to promote income inequality and there-
  fore saving. Over the period as a whole, about 10 percent of all expen-
  ditures was for transport and communications.78 Direct subsidies to
  industry, though a relatively small budget item, could be quite crucial
  to particular industries like shipbuilding.
  Through monetary policy, governments affected price trends and
  general business conditions. About half of the period between 1888
  and World War I was characterized by the sort of mildly inflationary
  climate in which business is said to thrive. Budget deficits during the
  Sino-Japanese War raised the inflation rate to about 10 percent, but
  with the introduction of the gold standard, prices steadied. The move
  from silver- to gold-based yen facilitated overseas borrowing, but at
  the sacrifice of the stimulus to exports that had until then been pro-
  vided by the steady depreciation of silver. Partly for reasons connected
  with the move to the gold standard, business conditions were only fair
  until the Russo-Japanese War, when budget deficits again raised
  prices, especially of manufactures, despite large foreign borrowings.
  The war was followed by a period of contractionary fiscal policy de-
  signed to maintain the external value of the yen and to facilitate service
  of the foreign debt. Prices stabilized until the rapid World War I
  inflation which reflected wartime shortages and the financial system's
  inability to cope with the surge in foreign exchange holdings. For the
  period as a whole, fiscal and monetary policy might best be described
  as moderately benign rather than as a major positive factor in eco-
  77 Transfer payments are government expenditures that are not spent on goods and services
  supplied in the year of payment. Other examples are welfare payments and government
  pensions. Transfer payments are not included in the national accounts as part of the gross
  national product.
  78 These figures are from Ohkawa and Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Develop-
  ment, pp. 370-4. The figure for transport and communications is derived from Harry T.
  Oshima, "Meiji Fiscal Policy and Agricultural Progress," in The State and Economic Enter-
  prise in Japan, pp. 370-1.
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  446 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  nomic growth. Considering the strains with which policy had to cope,
  however, this was a creditable performance.
  The polity and the market
  Did the Japanese government simply provide an infrastructure and a
  business climate favorable to economic enterprise, leaving investment
  and production decisions to be determined by market forces? Or
  were there important areas in which the government effectively pre-
  empted those decisions, overriding such considerations as relative
  factor prices and demand conditions? Is it possible, in other words,
  that state intervention brought about more growth than would other-
  wise have occurred?7'
  Some economists oppose state intervention on the grounds that it
  cannot raise total output above the level that would be produced by
  the operation of competitive markets. Free competitive markets are
  not, however, necessarily the best strategy for long-run dynamic
  growth. Specifically, market forces do not maximize long-run growth
  when the returns from an investment depend on other developments
  outside the investor's control. We have already seen that in the 1890s
  neither an ironworks nor a steel mill in isolation was a profitable
  investment on market grounds, though both together were profitable.
  A coal mine might not be profitable without a railway to carry its
  product to the market, but a railway might not be economical without
  the development of both the coal mine and other industries along its
  route. Yet all of these might be highly productive investments as parts
  of a state-supported development program.
  In the advanced industrial countries with which economists were
  most familiar, these facts were thought to be minor exceptions to the
  general proposition, and in any case the state could not be expected to
  see far enough into the future to identify them.80 Such situations are,
  however, typical of a backward economy whose development requires
  introducing many new activities. In a late-developing economy, more-
  over, they can readily be identified by reference to advanced econo-
  79 This question was raised in Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of
  Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982), pp. 3-34.
  See also David E. Williams, "Beyond Political Economy: A Critique of Issues Raised in
  Chalmers Johnson's MITI and the Japanese Miracle" Social and Economic Research on
  Modern Japan, Occasional Paper no. 35 (Berlin: East Asian Institute, Free University of
  Berlin, 1983).
  80 Those who oppose government intervention in the economy on economic or ideological
  grounds attribute Japan's economic success to the triumph of free enterprise rather than to
  effective government policy. See R. P. Sinha, "Unresolved Issues in Japan's Early Economic
  Development," Scottish Journal ofPolitical Economy i6(June 1969): 141-8.
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  THE ROLE OF THE STATE 
  447
  mies in which a more productive industrial system is already operat-
  ing. In those circumstances, a government with the will and the means
  to carry out or coordinate investment in new industries can play an
  important role. This may, in fact, be the greatest advantage of eco-
  nomic backwardness.81
  Japan's leaders had the knowledge, the will, and the means to play
  such a role, and they had no ideological inhibitions about doing so.
  They had before them a working model, as it were, of an industrial
  economy acquired by observing Britain, France, Germany, and the
  United States. This is not, of course, to suggest that the Japanese
  government's economic measures were systematically designed accord-
  ing to a long-term master plan. Even though the bureaucracy had
  access to detailed economic information, it made mistakes, such as the
  early uncritical introduction of Western technology without sufficient
  regard for Japanese conditions. Much government intervention was
  piecemeal or opportunistic. After 1890, disbursements were often
  more influenced by electoral tactics than by development strategy, and
  government leaders were often at cross-purposes. Nevertheless, the
  extent of Japan's success seems to indicate the existence of such a
  wealth of possibilities for constructive intervention that many were
  realized, despite the less-than-optimal government strategy.
  The Japanese government's will to promote economic growth is
  clear from the political history of the period and needs no elaboration
  here. Its power to do so derived from its considerable fiscal resources,
  amplified through control of the Bank of Japan, the Hypothec Bank,
  the Industrial Bank of Japan, other special banks, and the postal
  savings funds. By selectively guaranteeing loans and dividends, more-
  over, the government could influence the investment of private funds.
  The active role of government in economic life derived also from a
  tradition of state intervention in pre-Restoration times, when the pri-
  macy of the administrative power and the detailed regulation of eco-
  nomic life were taken for granted.82
  In the older industrial countries of the West, classical economic
  doctrines postulated the universal pursuit of profit as the "invisible
  hand" that maximized total outputs. This theory both justified busi-
  81 Cf. the title piece in Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspec-
  tive: A Book of Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962); and Ronald
  Dore, British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Rela-
  tions (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), pp. 404-20.
  82 Tokugawa political theory assumed that the labor and ingenuity of the people was at the
  disposal of the administrative power. This view, though greatly modified during the Meiji
  era, never entirely disappeared and enjoyed a spectacular revival in the 1930s and 1940s.
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  448 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  ness activity and limited the economic role of the state. Although the
  libertarian ideas of John Stuart Mill and others were introduced to
  Japan soon after the Restoration, they did not take root. After the
  1880s it was the German Historical school, especially Wagner, Stein,
  and List, that formed the mainstream of academic economic thought
  and set the tone of the Nihon Shakai Seisaku Gakkai, the professional
  association to which almost all Japanese economists belonged from the
  late 1890s until it disbanded in 1924.8* The German Historical school
  not only provided a rationale for the state's role in economic develop-
  ment but was more in tune with Japanese nationalist feeling than were
  the English Classical economists.8<*
  In Japan, the concept of the "invisible hand" was never widely ac-
  cepted; profit beyond what was necessary for a decent livelihood re-
  quired some other ethical basis, usually a claim of service to the state, a
  justification that was fully consistent with Confucian thought.85 Even
  Shibusawa Eiichi, the champion of private enterprise, said that his aim
  was "to build modern enterprise with the abacus and the Analects of
  Confucius."86 The more successful the entrepreneur was, therefore, the
  more dependent he would be on the government, not only for material
  protection and subsidies, but also for validation of his claim to be
  working for the good of the nation. Failure to obtain this validation
  could be both socially and financially disastrous, a situation that gave
  the government great power vis-a-vis the top ranks of modern business
  leadership.
  Early attempts at the direct state operation of modern industries
  were on the whole unsuccessful and were later dismissed as experimen-
  tal or for demonstration purposes, although there is little evidence to
  suggest that this was the original intention. Much more successful
  were arrangements that gave private concerns, conspicuously the zai-
  batsu, the responsibility for establishing elements of a modern indus-
  trial system with government backing and the assurance that comple-
  83 See Sumiya Etsuji, Nihon keizaigaku shi, rev. ed. (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1967).
  84 "The Germans are fond of saying that the Physiocrats and the school of Adam Smith under-
  rated the importance of national life; that they tended to sacrifice it on the one hand to a
  selfish individualism and on the other to a limp philanthropic cosmopolitanism. They urge
  that List did great service in stimulating a feeling of patriotism, which is more generous than
  that of individualism, and more sturdy and definite than that of cosmopolitanism." [Alfred
  Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1949), p. 634.]
  85 Note the contrast with nineteenth-century China where there was a much sharper separation
  between business and the state. Successful Chinese entrepreneurs could maintain a claim to
  be serving the state only by investing their profits in enrolling their families in the ranks of
  the scholar-gentry class from which they could then enter the bureaucracy.
  86 Quoted in Johannes Hirschmeier, "Shibusawa Eiichi: Industrial Pioneer," in The Slate and
  Economic Enterprise in Japan, p. 243.
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  THE ROLE OF THE STATE 
  449
  mentary elements would materialize. While operating in the context of
  a basically capitalist economy, these private concerns acted in part as
  agents of a government committed to the success of their enterprise.
  The relationship was reminiscent of that between Tokugawa domain
  administrations and merchants who ran industrial and commercial
  enterprises on the domains' behalf for the profit of both parties. Be-
  cause the zaibatsu were ready to use their financial strength, ties with
  government, and managerial resources to adopt new technology in
  various industries, they were well placed to realize gains from exter-
  nalities not available to a single firm in a single industry. The zai-
  batsu's advantage was cumulative and accounts in large measure for
  their dominance of the modern sector in the interwar period.
  State intervention in traditional economic activity was quite differ-
  ent. Traditional handicraft and cottage industries were not, as a rule,
  critical to national security or prestige. Observation of European indus-
  trial economies suggested that except for corner stores, custom-made
  luxury trades, and other enterprises in which small scale was an advan-
  tage, the fate of traditional industries was to decline and eventually
  disappear. In these areas, government policy was to intervene only to
  alleviate the social stresses expected to accompany this inevitable de-
  cline or to prevent excessive competition from lowering product qual-
  ity or reducing export prices. In the former policy category fell encour-
  agement of agricultural and industrial cooperatives, credit unions, and
  trade associations; in the latter, agricultural extension work, inspec-
  tion stations, and research establishments. The advocacy of cottage
  industry employment as a source of supplementary cash income for
  marginal farmers was a premodern legacy persisting well into the
  twentieth century.87 Otherwise, the traditional economy was left to the
  operation of market competition and the effort and initiative of mil-
  lions of those ordinary men and women for whom William Lockwood
  had such respect.88
  The sphere of the free-market economy was quantitatively large, but
  it would be misleading to infer that free-market competition was there-
  fore the paramount force in Japan's economic development or that the
  role of administrative action was marginal. Insofar as free-market forces
  tended to maximize the output of the traditional economy in a static or
  short-run sense, they increased the resources available for investment in
  economic development. The more dynamic features of that develop-
  87 For details, see Dai Nihon fukugyo shoreikai, ed., Nikon no fukugyd (Tokyo: Dai Nihon
  fukugyo shoreikai, 1911). 
  88 Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, passim.
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  45O 
  INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
  ment, however, were shaped by decisions emerging from consultation
  and cooperation between government and modern business leaders.
  The government's policies certainly do not merit unqualified ap-
  proval. Some resulted in massive waste and unnecessary suffering for
  both Japanese and the victims of Japanese aggression overseas. If,
  nevertheless, government intervention and manipulation were an im-
  portant positive factor in Japan's economic development up to 1920, it
  is because they did not on the whole counteract the underlying eco-
  nomic conditions and in fact enabled a fuller realization of the econ-
  omy's development potential than would have been achieved without
  them.
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  CHAPTER 9
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR,
  1920-1945
  INTRODUCTION
  The Japanese economy experienced great changes as a result of World
  War I. With the disappearance of European and American products
  from Asian and African trade, these extensive markets suddenly be-
  came wide open to Japanese products. Export volume and prices shot
  up, and Japan's industries reveled in an unprecedented boom. A spate
  of new firms appeared in rapid succession; stock prices soared; and the
  whole country rang with the sound of hammers at work on new-
  factory construction. Products like steel, machinery, and chemicals,
  for which Japan had been dependent on imports, began to be pro-
  duced domestically. From its status as a debtor nation to the tune of
  ¥1.1 billion on the eve of the war in 1913, Japan had, by the end of
  1920, transformed itself into a creditor nation with a surplus exceeding
  ¥2 billion. Despite social unrest such as the 1918 rice riots and the
  intensification of the labor and peasant movements that accompanied
  the galloping inflation produced by the war boom, the Japanese econ-
  omy expanded as a result of the war.
  When the war ended, however, so did the boom. Because of the
  renewed export competition and the resumption of imports that had
  long been suspended while Europe was at war, the international
  payments balance reverted to a deficit, and holdings of gold and
  foreign exchange began to diminish. This chapter will trace the path
  of the Japanese economy from the 1920s to the end of the Pacific
  War.1 This period may be divided into three parts: the deflation and
  depression from the 1920s to 1931, recovery and chemical and heavy
  industrialization from 1932 to 1937, and the era of war and collapse
  through 1945.
  Table 9.1 indicates the growth rates of real gross national expendi-
  1 An excellent study in English is Hugh Patrick's "The Economic Muddle of the 1920s," in
  Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, ed. James W. Morley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1971).
  451
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  TABLE 9 . 1
  Growth rates of real spending and income, 1900-1944
  1900-13
  1913-19
  1919-31
  1931-37
  1937-44
  GNE
  1.9
  6.2
  1.6
  6.2
  -1.3
  Gross domestic
  fixed capital
  formation
  4.8
  8.4
  -0.7
  8.3
  6.2
  Private
  consumption
  spending
  1.8
  4.7
  2.2
  3.2
  -6.9
  Exports and
  income from
  abroad
  8.4
  6.5
  5.8
  12.3
  -11.4
  Imports and
  mcome going
  abroad
  7.2
  5.1
  5.8
  5.2
  -8.5
  Primary
  industries
  1.4
  3.3
  -0.7
  3.3
  Secondary
  industries
  6.2
  6.2
  4.7
  7.7
  Tertiary
  industries
  2.2
  7.4
  0.7
  4.9
  GNE
  deflator
  3.8
  13.6
  -2.8
  1.2
  18.9
  Source: Calculated from Ohkawa Kazushi et al., Kokumin skotoku: Choki keizai tokei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha), 1974, pp. 213, 214, 217.
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  INTRODUCTION 
  453
  TABLE 9.2
  International comparison of real growth rates
  United States
  Great Britain
  Germany
  Italy
  Denmark
  Norway
  Sweden
  Japan
  1870-1913
  4.6°
  2.1
  2.7
  1.5
  3.2
  2.2
  3.0
  2.4*
  1913-1938
  1.1
  0.7
  1.8
  1.7
  1.9
  3.0
  2.4
  3.9
  • From the average for the years from 1869 to 1878 and then
  to 1913.
  'From 1887 to 1913.
  Source: United States: U.S. Department of Commerce, His-
  torical Statistics of the United Stales (Washington D.C.: U.S.
  Government Printing Office, 1975). European countries:
  B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics (New York:
  Macmillan, 1975). Japan: Ohkawa Kazushi et al., Kokumin
  shotoku: Choki keizai tokei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Toyo keizai
  shinposha, 1974), pp. 213,214,217.
  tures (GNE) for these periods and the growth rates of real gross output
  by type of industry. This table shows that during each period there
  were large differences in the growth rates of GNE and its components
  and of gross output by type of industry. The rate of price increase
  varied as well. The principal features of these three periods can be
  seen in these variations. Table 9.2 presents an international compari-
  son of real GNE growth rates. Japan's rapid growth from the 1950s
  onward is well known, but its growth rate following World War I was
  also outstanding by international standards and may be viewed as the
  prelude to the rapid growth following World War II. It is also possible
  to regard such growth as the material basis for the policies of military
  expansionism that led to the Pacific War.2 Both these contradictory
  perspectives contain some truth. Hence emerges an additional theme
  of this chapter: How was rapid growth achieved in this period, and
  what did Japan obtain as a result?
  2 Yamamura Kozo, "Kikai kogyo ni okeru seid gijutsu no donyu," in Washinton taisei to Nichibei
  kankei, ed. Hosoya Chihiro and Saito Makoto (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1978).
  Yamamura contends that technological progress in the machine tool industry during the 1920s
  provided the material foundation for the military adventures of the 1930s.
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  454 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS
  Although prices in the United States and Britain soared to more than
  twice their prewar levels after World War I, both countries returned to
  the gold standard without devaluing their currencies against the price
  of gold. It was thought that reinstituting the gold standard at prewar
  parity would constitute a "return to normalcy" (in the words of Presi-
  dent Warren G. Harding). However, this amounted to adopting a
  severely deflationary policy that would cut back postwar prices to
  prewar levels, about half of the current prices. World prices did in fact
  fall in the 1920s. John Maynard Keynes, author of Monetary Reform
  and The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, publicly criticized
  these policies, but his warnings went unheeded. As is well known,
  Keynes was also critical of the harsh reparations demands imposed on
  Germany, but this, too, was ignored. As it turned out, international
  finance during the 1920s was sustained by the international capital
  flow, whereby Germany used the capital it received from America to
  make reparations to England and France, which used the same money
  to redeem their war debts in the United States. But after the New
  York stock market crisis in 1929, American capital was withdrawn
  from Europe, causing a financial strain in Germany that eventually
  provoked a crisis that brought on world depression.
  These events had immediate repercussions in Japan as well. The
  goal of Japan's economic policy, like that of Britain and the United
  States, was to return to the gold standard at the prewar price of gold.3
  The Japanese government did not do so until the advent of the world
  depression in 1929, but during the 1920s the economy was constantly
  constrained by the worldwide deflation and by the government's goal
  of returning to the gold standard. Accordingly, the Japanese economy
  showed a mild deflationary trend after World War I. Moreover, the
  balance-of-trade deficit persisted. The gold and foreign exchange (spe-
  cie) holdings that had accumulated during the war declined steadily.
  For these reasons, Japan's domestic financial policy also shifted to-
  ward austerity. This was a period of unprecedented testing for the
  Japanese economy, which had developed under the influence of infla-
  tionary trends since the Meiji period. It was particularly difficult for
  the new heavy and chemical industries and for capital-weak new firms
  that had emerged during and after the war. It was also difficult for
  3 Okurasho zaiseishi hensanshitsu, Shawa zaiseishi-Dai 10-kan: kin'yu (I) (Tokyo: Toyo keizai
  shinposha, 1955), pp. 155-80.
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  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS 
  455
  agriculture, which was troubled by competition from cheap rice im-
  ported from Korea and Taiwan and highly susceptible to trends in the
  New York silk market.
  Chronologies of the Japanese economy of the 1920s often refer to
  this period as one of recurring panics of greater or lesser magnitude.4
  The post-World War I boom turned into a panic with the stock
  market crash of 1920. The death knell of wartime prosperity had
  sounded. Domestic funds dried up as monetary austerity was imposed
  in order to suppress inflation and the mounting outlays for imports
  that accompanied the shift toward deficit in 1919 in the international
  payments account. Despite this, the business community continued to
  expand and speculate boldly. The result was ruin. In only a few
  months, stock market prices and commodity market prices for rice,
  raw silk, and cotton yarn collapsed to less than half their former
  values. There was a stream of trading company, bank, and factory
  bankruptcies, and economic conditions became chaotic.
  The government and the Bank of Japan did their utmost to provide
  relief. For example, purchasing companies (kaitorigaisha) were orga-
  nized to handle inventory backlogs of raw silk, and a policy of bold
  lending to depressed industries was established. Losses suffered by
  smaller zaibatsu like Furukawa, Suzuki, Kuhara, and Masuda, espe-
  cially hard hit by failures of speculative enterprises during the finan-
  cial panic, provided new opportunities for the four leading zaibatsu:
  Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda. Because they maintained
  sound management policies and did not depend on speculative profits,
  even during the war boom, the large zaibatsu suffered few losses in the
  panic. In addition, the leading spinning companies like Kanebo and
  Toyobo had built up large secret reserves during the war, and so they
  were able to cover the declining prices of their inventories, which were
  caused by the panic and losses due to customer bankruptcies, thereby
  maintaining their position unshaken. The dominant position of the
  four great prewar zaibatsu and the large spinning companies remained
  firm.
  In April 1922, when it appeared that the financial crisis had at last
  been resolved, a small panic was touched off when a trader (Ishii
  Sadashichi) went bankrupt after losing heavily on daring rice specula-
  tions. At the end of 1922, eleven small banks in western Japan failed in
  rapid succession. Then, on September 1,1923, the Tokyo-Yokohama
  4 Nihon ginko chosakyoku, "Sekai taisen shuryogo ni okeni honpo zaikai doyoshi," and "Kanto
  shinsai yori Showa 2-nen kin'yu kyokoni itaru waga zaikai," in Nihon kin'yushi shiryo: Meiji
  Taisho ken, vol. 22 (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsu kyoku, 1959-60).
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  456 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  region was dealt a crushing blow by a powerful earthquake and the
  devastating fires that spread in its wake. This crisis was weathered
  with the help of a government-implemented month-long moratorium
  on payments in the Kan to area. The Bank of Japan also averted a
  panic by rediscounting commercial bills that were to have been paid in
  the area ("earthquake bills.") The Bank of Japan's rediscounts totaled
  ¥430 million.5 The devastation wrought by the great earthquake was
  enormous. According to estimates made at the time, in seventeen
  prefectures, but primarily in Tokyo, 554,000 out of 2.288 million
  households lost their homes; 105,000 people lost their lives; 30,000
  were injured; and 250,000 lost their jobs. The gross national wealth in
  1909 was estimated at ¥86 billion, and losses due to the earthquake
  were put at between ¥5.5 billion and ¥10 billion.6 These blows made
  impossible a return to the gold standard. Exports declined sharply,
  albeit temporarily, and supplies for reconstruction increased imports.
  Consequently, the balance of payments went deeply into the red, and
  the exchange rate fell sharply. Early in 1924 the government raised
  some foreign exchange by issuing ¥600 million in foreign bonds in
  Britain and the United States. However, the extraordinarily high inter-
  est rate, reflecting Japan's international credit standing at the time,
  became the target of criticism at home. The reconstruction of the
  Tokyo-Yokohama area firms that had sustained losses because of the
  disaster was of course not simple, and the balance sheets of many
  deteriorated. In 1925, as the postwar business slump continued,
  Takada shokai, a large trading company, failed.
  A "financial crisis" occurred in March and April of 1927.7 A large
  Kobe trading company, Suzuki shoten, which was hard hit by the
  panic of 1920, had just barely managed to stay in business by borrow-
  ing huge sums from the Bank of Taiwan, a colonial bank of issue. In
  March 1927 the firm found itself unable to settle its loans of ¥67
  million. At the time there was a proposal before the Diet calling for
  the government to dispose of a total of ¥207 million in outstand-
  ing earthquake bills and to indemnify the Bank of Japan for losses
  amounting to ¥100 million. The Bank of Japan was to extend long-
  term loans to banks holding earthquake bills, and each bank in turn
  was to have its holders of earthquake bill liabilities redeem their
  obligations over a period of ten years. While this proposal was being
  debated, Suzuki shoten's internal condition was revealed, including
  its relationship with the Bank of Taiwan, and the unsound manage-
  5 Toyo keizai shinposha, ed., Meiji Taisho kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1927),
  PP-759-6o. 
  6 Nihonginkochosakyoku, "Sekai taisen,"p. 876. 
  7 Ibid., p. 866.
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  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS 
  457
  ment of some other banks as well. This set off a run on several
  banks, resulting in the suspension of operations for many. The earth-
  quake bill proposal was ultimately voted down. In April 1927 when
  the Privy Council rejected a proposal for an urgent imperial order for
  the relief of the Bank of Taiwan, the bank temporarily closed down;
  Suzuki shoten went bankrupt; and the Wakatsuki cabinet collapsed.
  The bank run had nationwide repercussions. Banks throughout the
  country were closed on both April 22 and 23. In the meantime, the
  government announced a twenty-day nationwide payments morato-
  rium. It then decided on a policy for reorganizing the Bank of Tai-
  wan and providing general relief measures for the banks through the
  Bank of Japan. Calm was thus at last restored. Eleven percent of all
  bank deposits nationwide were withdrawn during this bank run, and
  as many as thirty-two banks suspended operations.8 Among the latter
  were such presumed bastions of financial soundness as the Fifteenth
  Bank, a depository for the Imperial Household Ministry (Kunaisho),
  and the Bank of Omi, which had provided extensive credit to the
  textile industry.
  Owing to continuing deflationary declines in commodity prices and
  in the value of real estate and other financial assets, many business
  firms continued to operate in the red and to depend on borrowed
  funds. But the banks supplying these firms with capital were unable to
  collect on their loans. The deterioration of economic conditions turned
  into a quickly spreading financial panic.' The smaller panics earlier in
  the decade had occurred for virtually the same reasons as this one, but
  the failures of such nationally known Japanese firms as the Bank of
  Taiwan, Suzuki shoten, and the Fifteenth Bank touched off a nation-
  wide crisis. To cope with the situation, the Bank of Japan distributed
  large quantities of capital. The crisis was resolved, but the return to
  the gold standard was thereby once again postponed.
  One reason that the business conditions of companies and banks
  deteriorated during this period was that the executives of many small
  regional banks often were managing other firms as well. After their
  banks had invested in these companies, their operations stagnated.
  Finally, these companies went bankrupt and, with them, their credi-
  tor banks as well. Concerned about this, the Ministry of Finance
  amended the Banking Law in March 1927 to prohibit bank managers
  from simultaneously managing other businesses and stipulated that
  8 Ibid., pp. 927-9.
  9 Nakamura Takafusa, Showa kyoko to keizai seisaku (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1978),
  pp. 47-51.
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  458 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  any bank with capital of under ¥i million (¥2 million or less in the
  large cities) should increase its capital to ¥1 million or merge with
  another bank within five years. For this reason, the number of banks,
  which had stood at 1,575 at the end of 1926, fell to 651 by the end of
  1932.10 The banks' business conditions markedly improved as a result
  of these measures, but at the same time local industries and small
  businesses also felt the financial pinch.
  Because of the prolonged slump that lasted from the postwar crisis
  of 1920 until the financial panic of 1927, bankruptcies occurred in
  rapid succession, particularly in the secondary industries that had
  expanded during the war. Firms that managed to survive were forced
  to scale down their operations, and many workers lost their jobs. New
  hires were held down, too. On the other hand, however, the number
  of small- and medium-sized factories increased. Many workers who
  lost their jobs set up small factories in order to earn a livelihood.
  However, these firms were low-income, small urban commercial and
  service enterprises that absorbed people who could not choose their
  working conditions and who sought employment simply in order to
  survive. For this reason, the populations of the large cities continued
  to increase.11 The farm villages were in a continuous recession from
  1925 onward owing to the worldwide surplus of agricultural commodi-
  ties and the fall in prices. Farmers were forced to increase their produc-
  tion of silk cocoons in order to maintain their incomes. But this re-
  sulted only in a further drop in international prices, and so the farmers
  were caught in a vicious circle whereby their redoubled efforts to
  increase production only pushed prices lower.
  Again, the only firms that continued stable operations in the midst
  of this turmoil were the leading textile companies and companies be-
  longing to the big zaibatsu groups such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumi-
  tomo, and Yasuda, which had abundant funds and sound management
  policies. Some zaibatsu banks were even hard pressed to find ways to
  use the large influx of deposits from the smaller and weaker banks
  after the financial panic.12 The zaibatsu extended their network of
  influence in the economy by taking over, through stock transfers, the
  sounder firms owned by companies such as Suzuki shoten or by found-
  ing new firms in fields such as rayon and chemicals. Each of the
  zaibatsu amassed for itself tremendous power in every field of indus-
  10 Okurasho zaiseishi hensanshitsu, Showa zaiseishi, pp. 79-117.
  11 Takafusa Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan, trans. Robert A. Feldman (New
  Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 218,220.
  12 Ikeda Shigeake, Zaikai kaiko (Tokyo: Konnichi no mondaisha, 1949), pp. 116-17.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS 
  459
  try, from finance and insurance to mining, foreign trade, warehous-
  ing, chemicals, paper, metals, and textiles. As a group they reigned
  supreme over the Japanese industrial world.'3 The power of the
  zaibatsu at this time probably attained its highest peak since the end of
  the Meiji period. However, with this notable exception, the outlook
  for the Japanese economy did not appear bright. Nevertheless, as
  Table 9.3 shows, the economy, mainly secondary industry, continued
  to grow in this troubled period. Why?
  The fundamental condition for this growth likely resulted from the
  fact that the economy adjusted the balance of social demand and sup-
  ply not by quantitative controls but by price fluctuations.'t As in the
  example of the vicious circle of expanding cocoon production volume
  and the falling price of cocoons, it was impossible to regulate the
  volume of production in agriculture. The core of the manufacturing
  industry at this time was the production of consumer goods such as
  raw silk, cotton cloth, sugar, and flour. Competition among the firms
  in these fields was fierce. Even though temporary cartels were formed,
  it was difficult to limit production volume and stabilize prices, as the
  interests of the individual firms did not coincide. Intense competition
  among the three large firms in the paper industry shows that even in
  an oligopolistic industry, it was not possible to support prices by
  restricting production. There were additional examples, too, such as
  the impact of international dumping of products like ammonium
  sulphate and matches, or the heavy blow suffered by domestic coal as a
  result of imports from Manchuria.
  Oligopolistic tendencies became conspicuous in a number of indus-
  tries such as electric power in which firms continued to merge. Cartels
  were formed autonomously in every industry as a way of dealing with
  chronic slumps. Thus, during this period, monopolistic economic
  power rapidly strengthened and the domination of "monopoly capital"
  became conspicuous. But although it is clear that large firms occupied
  a high position in Japan's economic world, it cannot be said that they
  used their power to maintain price supports or price rigidity in the
  markets. Monopoly prices emerged after the passage of the Important
  Industries Control Law in 1931 as a means of dealing with the world
  depression. The law required outsiders to keep cartel agreements and
  13 See Takahashi Kamekichi, Nihon zaibatsu no kaibo (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1930).
  14 Sato Kazuo, "Senkanki Nihon no makuro keizai to mikuro keizai" in Senkanki Nihon keizai
  no kenkyu, ed. Nakamura Takafusa (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1980), pp. 3-30. Sato's
  clarification of the function of price fluctuations is applicable to the Japanese economy of this
  period.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 9 . 3
  Employed population by industry (thousands of persons)
  Primary industries
  Agriculture and forestry
  Secondary industries
  Manufacturing
  Tertiary industries
  Commerce
  Totals
  1920(A)
  14.388
  13.855
  6.274
  5.071
  5.355
  3.398
  27.260
  1925(A)
  - 14.056
  13.540
  6.324
  5.109
  6.432
  4.260
  28.105
  1930(A)
  14.648
  14.084
  6.151
  4.848
  7.331
  4.902
  29.619
  1935(A)
  14.450
  13.871
  6.811
  5.498
  8.410
  5.482
  31.211
  1940(A)
  14.523
  13.974
  8.212
  6.565
  7.728
  5.000
  32.500
  1940(B)
  14.192
  13.363
  8.419
  6.845
  9.403
  4.083
  32.231
  Feb. 1944(B)
  14.028
  13.155
  9.951
  8.089
  7.575
  1.555
  32.695
  Dec. 1945(B)
  18.053
  17.520
  5.670
  4.314
  6.346
  1.794
  30.069
  Source: Figures in columns marked A are annual averages from Umemura Mataji, "Sangyo-betsu koyo no hendo 1880-1940-nen" in Hitotsubashi
  University Economic Research Institute, Keizai kenkyit, April 1973. Figures in columns marked B are estimates from Cabinet Statistics Office, Kokusei
  chosa, October 1 (for 1940 data); Cabinet Statistics Office, Showa 19-nenjinkd chosa (for 1944 data); and Rinji kokumin loroku (for 1945 data). Presented in
  Arai Kurotake, Taiheiyo sensoki ni okeruyugyojinko no suitei, report of the Japan Statistical Association.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS 
  461
  reinforced their powers of control. The foregoing shows that economic
  growth was achieved in conjunction with the expansion of industries,
  but at the same time, it also indicates why business profits accompany-
  ing growth did not necessarily increase as well.
  The second main factor in Japan's economic growth was the supply
  of capital and the protectionist policies toward industry. For example,
  in 1920 when the silk-reeling industry formed the Imperial Silk Fila-
  ture Company (Teikoku sanshi kabushiki kaisha) as a cartel to buy up
  and freeze surplus raw silk in order to support silk prices, the govern-
  ment provided assistance in the form of huge loans.'5 Many large firms
  borrowed low-interest funds indirectly from the Bank of Japan when
  facing crises. There were also instances in which the government as-
  sisted companies by leasing plants and equipment.16 In agriculture, a
  rice law was passed in 1921. The government began buying and selling
  operations to stabilize rice prices, and it paid out subsidies under a
  variety of guises.17 The tariff revision of 1926 substantially raised
  duties on steel machinery and gave liberal protection to the heavy and
  chemical industries.18
  The third main factor was an increase in the government's public
  investment. Under the slogan of a "positive policy," the Seiyukai
  party, in power from 1918 to 1922, vigorously spent public funds on
  the construction and expansion of railroads, harbors, highways and
  bridges, riparian improvements, new and expanded educational facili-
  ties, and subsidies for the improvement and reclamation of arable
  land.1' These policies were an expression of the personal views of
  Prime Minister Hara Takashi and Finance Minister Takahashi Kore-
  kiyo regarding the promotion of regional industries. At the same time
  they were a means of expanding party power at the regional level. The
  party's main rival, the Kenseikai (renamed the Minseito in 1928),
  stressed fiscal balance and strove to reduce public investment, but
  when the party came to power in the mid-i92os, public investment
  spending remained at prior levels owing to the need for post-192 3
  earthquake reconstruction. Large provincial cities also actively in-
  vested in order to modernize. As a result of the impact of public
  investment, a large drop in the growth rate was avoided.
  The fourth factor behind growth was the development of the elec-
  15 Nihon ginko chosakyoku, "Sekai taisen," pp. 585-8, 598. 
  16 Ibid., pp. 591-620.
  17 Ouchi Tsutomu, Nihon nogyo no zaiseigaku (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1950), pp.
  116-59.
  18 Discussed in detail in Miwa Ryoichi, "1926-nen kanzei kaisei no rekishiteki ichi," in Nihon
  shihonshugi: Tenkai to ronri, ed. Sakasai Takahito et al. (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai,
  1978). 
  19 Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan, pp. 157-73.
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  462 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  trie power industry and the effects of its spread.20 Investment in elec-
  tric power generation in the mountainous areas and its transmission to
  regions around Tokyo and Osaka, where demand was great, flour-
  ished during this period. Electrochemical industries using this electric
  power (ammonium sulfate, electric hearth furnace industries, and the
  like) sprang up, and small factories using electric power expanded.
  The production of electric machinery, electric cables, light bulbs, and
  radios naturally increased as well. The development of streetcar net-
  works in the suburbs of the major cities, the opening up of new
  residential areas, and the attendant stimulus to residential construc-
  tion also encouraged growth.
  In addition, those industries built up during World War I, such as
  machinery, steel, and chemicals, acquired foreign technology during
  this decade and eventually moved into full-scale production. Japan,
  which had once depended on imports for virtually all its machinery, was
  at last able to achieve self-sufficiency in this area. Second, as the heavy
  and chemical industries were taking root, heavy industrial belts grew up
  between Tokyo and Yokohama and between Osaka and Kobe, and a
  pool of skilled male workers formed in these areas. In order to retain the
  skills and know-how of these workers within their own organizations
  and to thwart the budding labor movement, many firms gradually
  adopted policies such as the lifetime employment system and the senior-
  ity pay system, later considered to be the distinguishing features of
  "Japanese management." The joint labor-management conference sys-
  tem, which was the prototype of the "company labor union," was also a
  product of this era.
  The Japanese economy, which had continued to grow despite these
  difficulties, was stricken by a severe crisis when the Great Depression
  suddenly hit in 1929 and the Minseito cabinet simultaneously lifted
  the embargo on gold exports at the old parity.21 Since 1897 the Japa-
  nese yen had been valued at 0.75 grams of gold. The rate of exchange
  against the dollar during this period was ¥100 to $497/8. In 1916, Japan
  and the other world powers placed an embargo on gold exports. Al-
  though the European powers and the United States lifted their gold
  embargoes by 1928, Japan alone kept its intact. The nation had an
  excess of imports over exports (see Figure 9.1); the exchange rate was
  considerably lower than it had been at the old parity; and gold and
  foreign exchange reserves steadily decreased. Even in 1929, the yen
  reached a minimum rate against the dollar in the range of ¥100 to $43.
  20 Minami Ryoshin, Doryoku kakumei to gijutsu shimpo (Tokyo; Toyo keizai shinposha, 1976),
  provides a full-scale study of this question.
  21 Nakamura Takafusa, Showa kyoko to keizai seisaku (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1978).
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  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS
  463
  Thousand million yen
  (at 1934-1936 prices)
  1920 22 24 26 
  28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44
  Figure 9.1. Fluctuations in foreign trade, the exchange rate, GNE,
  and prices. [From Yamazawa Ippei and Yamamoto Yuzo, Choki
  keizai tokei—14: Boeki to kokusai shushi (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shin-
  posha, 1974)-]
  Removal of the gold embargo at the old parity would mean a rise in the
  exchange rate, causing a further increase in the already excessive im-
  ports. In order to prevent this, domestic demand would have to fall,
  and deflationary policies would have to be adopted to pull prices
  downward. This meant forcing still further hardships on industry.
  Nevertheless, Inoue Junnosuke, the Finance Minister in the Hama-
  guchi cabinet, resolutely lifted the gold embargo at the old parity.
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  464 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  Theoretically it would also have been possible to lift the embargo at
  the so-called new parity, under which the yen's value in gold would
  have declined in accordance with the market rate of foreign exchange,
  without damaging business and economic interests.22 Removal of the
  embargo at a new parity was hinted at the conclusion of the Genoa
  Conference of 1922. Ishibashi Tanzan, Takahashi Kamekichi, and
  other economic journalists, following Keynes's criticism of Winston
  Churchill, advocated lifting the embargo at this new parity. But there
  were at least two reasons that Finance Minister Inoue did not choose to
  do so. The first was his political judgment that a currency devaluation
  would adversely affect the national prestige. The second reason was his
  doctrine of "consolidating the business world," according to which
  deflationary policies should be adopted to promote exports and improve
  the balance of payments, noncompetitive firms should be eliminated,
  and the economy's international competitiveness should be strength-
  ened. The Minseito government took the same course that Churchill
  had chosen for Great Britain in 1925. Both academic and financial
  circles supported Inoue's policy and applauded its resoluteness.
  While the impact of the American panic of October 1929 was still
  reverberating throughout the world, the Japanese government lifted
  the gold embargo at the old parity in January 1930. These two blows
  struck the Japanese economy simultaneously, and the country was
  plunged into a severe depression. As the advanced nations began
  dumping and domestic demand declined, the chemical and heavy in-
  dustries, which were uncompetitive by international standards, sank
  and were forced to reduce their work forces. The mining industry,
  too, confronted with competition from Manchurian coal, dismissed
  nearly 40 percent of its workers. Although Japan's world-class textile
  industry was highly competitive, many firms nevertheless chalked up
  losses. Osaka godobo, one of the five leading spinning companies, was
  forced to merge with Toyo Spinning (Toyobo). Even at Kanebo, re-
  puted to be the top firm, a fifty-four-day strike occurred when man-
  agement proposed a 40 percent wage cut. Every industry formed car-
  tels, striving to reduce output and maintain prices. The government
  enacted the Important Industries Control Law, which empowered it
  to compel firms to follow the cartel agreements, and it worked to
  strengthen the "self-regulation" of industry.23 Hardest hit, however,
  22 Takahashi Kamekichi, Taishd Showa zaikai hendoshi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha,
  1954), consistently criticizes Inoue's financial policies from this position.
  23 Maeda Yasuyuki, Shoko seisakushi Dai u-kan: Sangyo tosei (Tokyo: Tsusho sangyo kenkyu-
  sha, 1964), pp. 47-76.
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  THE ERA OF RECESSIONS 
  465
  were the farm villages, already having been battered by economic
  slumps throughout the 1920s. The countryside reeled under the sud-
  den drop in the prices of key commodities such as rice and silk co-
  coons. *4 There were many instances reported of salary payments for
  village primary schoolteachers being postponed for half a year due to
  shortfalls in local tax revenues, and of increases in the number of
  homes that had their electricity cut off. In metropolitan areas the
  number of unemployed grew, and the majority of recent university
  graduates were unable to find work.
  To cope with this crisis, the Minseito government did not change its
  policies. Instead, it continued fiscal and monetary austerity, waited for
  a recovery from the depression, and attempted to maintain the gold
  standard. Figure 9.1 shows that even between 1929 and 1931, imports
  and exports increased steadily in real terms, as did real GNE. In nomi-
  nal terms, however, there was a marked decline in all three. This demon-
  strates that the depression was concentrated in a decline in prices,
  reflecting the special characteristic of the Japanese economy. In 1931,
  export prices had fallen to 40 percent, and the GNE deflator to 73
  percent of their respective 1929 levels. As a result, both firms and farm
  households went into the red, and unemployment grew. Although this
  pattern was typical of depressions since the nineteenth century, this one
  was the most severe in Japan's history. Amid the growing social unrest,
  Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was wounded by a right-wing
  youth's bullet that claimed his life after he retired from office. Neverthe-
  less, the Minseito cabinet did not depart from its original policies.
  On September 18,1931, the Manchurian incident occurred. Despite
  Tokyo's policy of nonexpansion, the Kwantung Army produced a suc-
  cession of military faits accomplis and expanded the battlefront. This
  put the government in a difficult position. On September 23, immedi-
  ately after the incident, Great Britain went off the gold standard. Be-
  cause of the financial crisis in Germany, it had become impossible to
  recover British funds there. As orders to reclaim funds invested in
  Britain came pouring in from continental investors threatened by this
  situation, it had finally become impossible to cope with the volume.
  From the perspective of the world economy as a whole, the abandon-
  ment of the gold standard by Great Britain, the home of the world's gold
  standard system, marked a shift toward the international managed cur-
  rency system of the 1930s and afterward. In Japan, speculators, who
  had already recognized that maintaining the gold standard was impossi-
  24 Nakamura, Showa kyoko to keizai seisaku, pp. 107-12.
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  466 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  ble, began both to sell yen and to buy dollars in hopes of realizing profits
  on the forthcoming decline of the yen. The major speculators were
  actually foreign banks in Japan and wealthy individuals, but the
  zaibatsu banks, especially the Mitsui and Mitsubishi banks, were con-
  sidered to be the principal actors at the time. The Mitsui Bank, for
  example, had been investing in British government securities via the
  United States because it was difficult to make stable investments in
  Japan during the depression. When those funds were frozen, the bank
  bought dollars to cover them, but this was erroneously reported as
  "dollar buying" speculation.25
  In the face of these trends, the Minseito cabinet continued to sup-
  port the gold standard in accordance with its established policy. The
  matter turned into an issue that affected the political fate of the
  Minseito cabinet. Finance Minister Inoue harshly criticized those pur-
  chasing dollars. Mitsui and Mitsubishi, regarded as the main specula-
  tors in dollars, thus became the targets of social opprobrium. Because
  the government and the Bank of Japan tightened monetary conditions
  by raising the discount rate in order to absorb the speculators' funds,
  the depression became even more severe. Dollar speculators, particu-
  larly the foreign banks, could not readily reverse their course and
  cancel their dollar buy-orders. As the end-of-December delivery date
  rapidly approached for the bulk of the foreign-exchange dollars sold,
  their expected hope of realizing speculative gains grew steadily dim-
  mer. On December 11, the Minseito cabinet finally collapsed, disagree-
  ing over Home Minister Adachi Kenzo's insistence on a coalition with
  the Seiyukai. It is said that a speculator's plot lay behind Adachi's
  actions, but even today the facts are not clear.
  Succeeding to power, the Seiyukai cabinet of Inukai Tsuyoshi
  brought Takahashi Korekiyo to the office of finance minister. On
  December 13, 1931, gold was reembargoed, and payments of specie
  were suspended. This act proclaimed the end of the gold standard in
  Japan forever. The relationship of trust and cooperation between Ja-
  pan's financial circles and those in Britain and the United States gradu-
  ally cooled afterward. This relationship, cultivated by Japanese finan-
  cial circles since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, had made it possible
  for Japan to raise foreign capital after the Kanto earthquake and to
  float local bond issues and electric power company bonds repeatedly
  during the 1920s. But with the Manchurian incident, the founding of
  Manchukuo and the outbreak of the Shanghai incident, Thomas La-
  25 Ikeda, Zaikai kaiko, pp. 135-53.
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  RECOVERY 
  467
  mont of the Morgan Bank began to take an unfriendly view of Japan.26
  This cooling of international financial relationships meant that when
  Japan faced a balance-of-payments crisis, it could no longer look
  abroad for help. However, for several years after Japan's departure
  from the gold standard, the Japanese economy followed a course of
  rapid revival and development, and so the balance-of-payments prob-
  lem became a severe constraint for Japan only after war began with
  China in 1937.
  RECOVERY
  With the exception of a six-month interim out of office, Takahashi
  Korekiyo was at the fiscal and monetary helm as minister of finance
  from the time Japan left the gold standard in December 1931 until he
  was felled by an assassin's bullet in February 1936.27 This was the era of
  the so-called Takahashi finance. While avoiding abrupt changes, Taka-
  hashi gradually relaxed the monetary conditions and promoted industry
  and foreign trade. In order to do so, he began lowering the discount rate
  from 1932 onward, reducing it from 6.6 percent to 3.7 percent by July
  1933. He took a laissez-faire position on the falling exchange rate.
  Allowed to settle to its natural equilibrium level, the rate of exchange
  against the U.S. dollar had dropped from ¥100 to $497/8 to around $26
  by mid-1932 and, after falling below $20 at the end of that year, settled
  at about $30.80. This was a devaluation of more than 40 percent. Fiscal
  spending for the military and for rural village relief increased, growing
  in 1932 by 32 percent over 1931 levels. Central government expendi-
  tures declined from ¥1.74 billion in 1929 to ¥1.48 billion in 1931 and
  then increased to ¥1.95 billion in 1932 and ¥2.25 billion in 1933, after
  which they were fixed at a level of about ¥2.2 billion. Spending in-
  creases were financed with government bonds, but in order not to
  siphon private funds off the market with a huge government debt issue,
  a "Bank of Japan acceptance issues" formula was adopted.28 The Bank
  of Japan underwrote the bonds when issued, and whenever there was a
  surplus of funds on the market as fiscal spending proceeded, the Bank
  of Japan would sell bonds to financial institutions.
  26 Mitani Taichiro, "Kokusai kinyu shihon to Ajia no senso," in Kindai Nihon Kenkyu, vol. 2:
  Kindai Nihon to Higashi Ajia, ed. Kindai Nihon kenkyukai (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,
  1980), pp. 126-7. This study is an outstanding piece of research on the Morgan Trading
  Company's Thomas W. Lamont.
  27 An excellent summary of Takahashi's ideas and policies from the point of view of his contem-
  poraries may be found in Fukai Eigo, Kaiko 70-nen (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1941), chap.
  21.
  28 Ibid., pp. 268-70.
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  468 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  At the heart of the early phase of "Takahashi finance," which lasted
  until 1933, was a triad of policies consisting of low interest rates, a low
  exchange rate, and increased fiscal spending. Under these policies the
  Japanese economy began to recover rapidly. In 1929, at the time the
  gold embargo was lifted, Takahashi had argued publicly that there was
  a difference between a nation's economy and that of an individual.29
  Saving and economizing produced increases in individual assets, but
  for the nation as a whole, they caused a decline in demand and de-
  pressed production. Even the money spent at geisha houses became
  income for the geisha and cooks, and this in turn was respent, increas-
  ing demand for the nation as a whole. If gold were disembargoed,
  fiscal spending squeezed, and public works investment suspended,
  Takahashi argued, contractors and their employees would lose their
  jobs first; then as their expenditures declined, the effects would spread
  to other fields, and both incomes and employment in general would
  fall, thereby inviting a business slump. Takahashi intuitively under-
  stood the "theory of effective demand" subsequently advanced by
  Keynes, and from that point of view, he criticized lifting the gold
  embargo at the old parity. As finance minister, Takahashi's policies
  were based on the concept of promoting effective demand.
  These policies were successful. The economy expanded first as a
  result of the revival of exports and then under the stimulation of in-
  creased fiscal spending. According to a survey of the data in Table 9.4
  for the years 1932 to 1936, the largest contribution to growth was made
  by exports. Chiefly responsible for the export increase were textile
  products such as cotton and rayon fabrics, industries in which depres-
  sion-induced rationalization-that is, efforts to increase productivity-
  meshed with the low exchange rate to produce remarkable advances.
  The rapid increase in Japanese exports during the depression provoked
  boycotts of Japanese goods in countries such as Britain, India, and the
  United States. Discriminatory tariffs and import quotas were imposed
  on Japanese goods, and there were numerous trade disputes.30 The
  second-fastest-growing sector after exports was private investment,
  with both production facilities and residential construction growing at
  about the same rate. Purchases in government spending were lower
  than expected. From 1933 onward, Takahashi strove to hold down
  29 Takahashi Korekiyo, "Kinshuku seisaku to kinkaikin," in Zuisoroku, ed. Takahashi Kore-
  kiyo (Tokyo: Chikura shobo, 1936).
  30 For the recollections of Inoue Kiyoshi, Okada Gentaro, Tawa Yasuo, and others, see Ando
  Yoshio, ed.,Shotua seijikeizashi e no shogen, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1972), vol.
  1, pp. 283-306.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 9.4
  Increases in real gross national expenditure (¥ billions)
  1931
  1936
  Amount of increase
  during this period
  Rate of increase
  during this period (%)
  GNE
  13-323
  19.338
  6.013
  45-1
  Personal
  consumption
  expenditure
  9-754
  13.328
  3-574
  36.6
  Government
  operating
  expenditures
  1.685
  2.183
  0.498
  29.6
  -
  Gross government
  fixed-capital
  formation
  0.902
  1.427
  0.525
  58.2
  _ 
  y
  39-5
  Gross private
  fixed-capital
  formation
  1.058
  2.209
  1.15:
  108.8
  Exports and
  income from
  abroad
  2.029
  4.580
  2.551
  125.7
  (Less) Imports
  and income
  going abroad
  2.105
  4.389
  2.284
  108.5
  Source: Calculated from Ohkawa Kazushi et al., Kokumin shotoku: Choki keizai tokei, vol. I (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1974), pp. 214, 218-21.
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  470 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  fiscal spending increases, including military spending, and to reduce
  the issuing of public bonds. It was once widely believed that the revival
  of prosperity in the early 1930s was due to increased military spending,
  but this is incorrect. According to Miwa Ryoichi, the rate of depen-
  dence of heavy and chemical industrial output on military demand was
  at its maximum in 1933 at 9.8 percent and then declined to 7 percent in
  1936. For the machinery industry, this rate peaked in 1932 at 28 percent
  but fell to 18 percent in 1936.3' Even though the political clout of the
  military grew stronger, the influence of military spending on the econ-
  omy was not all that great.
  Along with military spending, an important item of fiscal expendi-
  ture during this period was the outlay for public works projects for
  rural village relief ("expenditures to meet the national emergency" -
  jikyoku kyokyuhi).*2 At the beginning of 1932, rural village relief be-
  came a major issue. The assassins of former Finance Minister Inoue
  Junnosuke, Dan Takuma of the Mitsui zaibatsu, and Prime Minister
  Inukai Tsuyoshi in the May 15 incident, were farm village youths
  from Ibaraki Prefecture. In the wake of the bloody May 15 incident,
  representatives from the peasantry and the provinces submitted a
  stream of petitions to the Diet. The political parties aligned them-
  selves with their demands. In the summer of 1932 they settled on a
  plan that called for joint expenditure by the central and regional gov-
  ernments of a total of ¥800 million on rural public works projects
  creating opportunities for peasants to obtain cash incomes during the
  three-year period from 1932 to 1934. The plan also provided for low-
  interest loans of ¥800 million to farm villages over the same period
  and for the amortization of high-interest obligations. The level of
  government expenditure on rural relief compares favorably with the
  increases in military spending during the same period. If the supply of
  low-interest funds is included as well, the implementation of the plan
  may even be considered to have had a stimulating effect on the econ-
  omy, surpassing even that of military spending. The situation of the
  rural villages gradually improved as the Ministry of Agriculture en-
  couraged the industrial associations movement and the self-reliance
  movement (jiriki kosei undo).
  Policies protecting infant industries were also reinforced. In 1932,
  tariffs were raised on most chemical and heavy industrial products,
  particularly pig iron. Considering the roughly 80 percent increase in
  31 Miwa Ryoichi, "Takahashi zaiseiki no keizai seisaku," in Senji Nihon keizai, ed. Tokyo
  daigaku shakai kagaku kenkyujo (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1979), pp. 165, 167.
  32 Ibid., pp. 120-2.
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  RECOVERY 
  471
  TABLE 9 . 5
  The progress of chemical and heavy industrialization
  Share of gross output produced by the
  Index of gross output 
  steel, nonferrous metals, machinery,
  for manufacturing industries 
  and chemical industries (%)
  1920 
  61.4 
  32.3
  1930 
  100.0 
  35.0
  1936 
  175.8 
  45.0
  1940 
  218.2 
  59.2
  Source: Calculated from Shinohara Miyohei, Kokogyo (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1972), vol.
  10, pp. 142, 143.
  import prices from 1931 to 1933, caused by the declining exchange
  rate, it may well be that the chemical and heavy industries found it
  substantially easier to secure domestic markets for themselves. The
  shipbuilding and marine transport industries benefited when the gov-
  ernment began to pay subsidies in 19^2 for the dismantling of old
  ships and the construction of new ones.33 Incentives had been granted
  to the automobile industry since the beginning of the depression, and
  after 1936 still more substantial protection was added in connection
  with munitions production. In this way various industries made a
  steady recovery, seizing on new opportunities for development.
  The rapid growth of the rayon industry attracted much attention in
  industrial circles. By improving their technology, leading firms like
  Toyo Rayon, Teijin, and Asahi Bemberg became the world's largest
  producers of artificial fibers, establishing themselves as a major export
  industry in the latter half of the 1930s. The technology of such indus-
  tries as electrical machinery and machine tools, represented by Toshiba
  and Hitachi, also began to approach world standards and at last became
  capable of meeting domestic demand. With support from the military,
  the aircraft industry also raised its level of technology. As Table 9.5
  shows, the expansion of chemical and heavy industrial output was re-
  markable. Its share in the value of the output of manufacturing indus-
  tries rose by 10 percent from 1931 to 1936 to constitute 45 percent of the
  total.
  Another feature of this period was the emergence of the "new
  zaibatsu" such as Ayukawa Yoshisuke's Nissan (Japan Industrial Com-
  pany), Noguchi Shitagau's Nitchitsu (Japan Nitrogen Company), Mori
  Nobuteru's Showa hiryo (Showa Fertilizer, later known as Showa
  33 Ibid., pp. 123-5.
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  472 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  denko), Nakano Tomonori's Nisso (Japan Soda), Okochi Masatoshi's
  Riken, Inc., and Nakajima Chikuhei's Nakajima hikkoki (Nakajima
  Aircraft).34 Nissan controlled firms in mining, automobiles, chemicals,
  fisheries, records, marine transport, and civil engineering through its
  holding company. This new zaibatsu grew rapidly by progressively
  buying up at low prices the stocks of firms whose operations were
  foundering, improving their performance, and channeling the profits
  into Nippon sangyo, Nissan's holding company. When Nippon san-
  gyo's stock rose as a result, its capital increased, and these funds were
  used to expand still further Nissan's sphere of activities. Nippon chisso
  (Japan Nitrogen Corporation), using electric power obtained from its
  own hydroelectric generating operations to enter the chemical industry,
  built a large hydroelectric generating plant in north Korea in the 1920s
  and produced ammonium sulphate, gunpowder, and methanol with the
  abundant and cheap electrical power generated there. The cost of Nip-
  pon chisso's ammonium sulphate was especially low, making this com-
  pany one of the strongest firms in Japan at the time. Noguchi Shitagau,
  the firm's founder, also achieved great success in the rayon industry.
  Showa Fertilizer, which started out as a tiny provincial company, ex-
  panded by adopting the process that the Tokyo Industrial Laboratory
  had developed for manufacturing ammonium sulphate and by linking
  this process to the development of hydroelectric stations. Nakano
  Tomonori attained success in the soda industry by presiding over Japan
  Soda and branching out into related fields. As a Tokyo Imperial Univer-
  sity professor, Okochi headed up the Institute of Physical and Chemical
  Research. Devoting his attention to industrial applications of the tech-
  nology and products developed there, he engaged in a broad range of
  projects, from piston rings to synthetic sake. Nakajima, a navy officer
  promoting a domestic airplane industry, turned his hand to producing
  military aircraft. Toyota had produced automobiles since the 1920s,
  building on the technology it had developed to manufacture automatic
  looms.
  These new zaibatsu grew by taking advantage of technology that
  had been accumulating since the 1920s, the economic development
  that followed the reimposition of the gold embargo, and the stagnation
  of monetary conditions. The managers of these new zaibatsu had sev-
  eral things in common: They were technical and military men, not
  management specialists; they developed their firms on the basis of new
  34 See Miyake Seiki, Shinkokontserun tokuhon (Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1937); and Wada Hidekichi,
  Nissan kontserun tokuhon (Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1937).
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  RECOVERY 
  473
  technology; they had few links with the existing zaibatsu and financial
  institutions; and they had little capital. All of them also started up new
  industries using state capital. Whereas they were engaged mainly in
  the chemical and heavy industries and had the capability to produce
  munitions in wartime, their technology was also useful in peacetime.
  As such, their firms could easily adapt to postwar economic growth.
  Because the economy of the 1930s had already produced pioneers like
  Toyota and Nissan, it also had clear links with the post-i95os eco-
  nomic growth.
  Special laws to promote the development of the chemical and heavy
  industries passed the Diet in rapid succession.35 Beginning with the
  Oil Industry Law passed in 1934 and the Automobile Manufacturers'
  Law in 1936, special laws covering the synthetic oil, iron, machine
  tools, aircraft-manufacturing, shipbuilding, aluminum and light met
  als, organic chemicals, and heavy machinery industries had bt.
  passed by 1941. Their provisions were generally similar. Government
  approval was required for the firms' yearly plans via a government
  licensing system; unified standards and control over manufacturing
  and distribution were imposed; firms were directed to respond to the
  requirements of the military and the public interest; and the govern-
  ment could order the expansion and improvement of plants and equip-
  ment as well as changes in methods of operation and production plans.
  These special laws ruled that enterprises incurring losses be compen-
  sated according to government decree. The laws also provided other
  forms of protection, such as exemption from land expropriation, in-
  come taxes, and corporate taxes; the granting of bounties and subsi-
  dies, special privileges for debenture flotations; and the compulsory
  amortization of plant and equipment. The protectionist policy embod-
  ied in these special laws contributed greatly to the development of the
  chemical and heavy industries during the war and may be regarded as
  the genesis of the postwar policy of promoting these industries.
  In the meantime, the older established zaibatsu, which had become
  the targets of social opprobrium, did their best in the early 1930s to
  avert criticism. The Mitsui zaibatsu, partly because it was the most
  severely criticized, set up a foundation called the Mitsui hoonkai
  (Mitsui Repayment of Kindness Association) to perform social work
  services and forced the resignation of Mitsui bussan's managing direc-
  tor, Yasukawa Shunosuke, who had been criticized for his "aggressive"
  activities. Mitsubishi and Sumitomo made similar efforts. Frequently
  35 Maeda Yasuyuki, Shoko seisakushi Dai li-kan, pp. 238-50.
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  474 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  likened to the "conversion" (tenko) of Communist Party members, such
  behavior was called "zaibatsu conversion." The activities of the older
  zaibatsu were generally conservative in this period, and their influence
  in the economy as a whole declined. Because fiscal spending increases
  went to farm villages or to small- and medium-sized enterprises, the
  expansion of deposits in zaibatsu banks was also slow. After 1933 the
  Sanwa Bank of Osaka, which had many provincial branches, led in
  volume of deposits.
  But as a consequence of the Showa financial crisis, oligopolistic con-
  trol in individual industries advanced. During the recovery period,
  huge trusts were formed in the iron and paper industries. In 1933 seven
  private iron-steel manufacturing firms merged with the government-
  operated Yawata Iron and Steel Works to form the Nippon seitetsu KK
  (Japan Steel Company), which controlled 97.5 percent of domestic pig
  iron production and 51.5 percent of domestic steel ingot production.
  Before the Showa financial crisis, the market had been controlled by
  means of a cartel centered on the Yawata Iron Works, but as a result of
  the merger it became possible to control the market through a single
  giant firm. The same year, Mitsui's Oji Paper Company, Okawa
  Heizaburo's Fuji Paper Company, and Sakhalin Industries merged to
  form the Oji Paper Company, a large trust that controlled 90 percent of
  newsprint production. Because imports of steel products and machine-
  made paper were depressed by the low exchange rate, these monopolies
  ended up dominating their respective domestic markets, and after the
  war they were broken up by the economic deconcentration policy.
  During 1932 and 1933, large-scale business mergers were also carried
  out in rapid succession in banking, beer, and machinery. The functions
  of cartels were also strengthened. The large electric power companies,
  hard-pressed during the depression and plagued by the pressure of their
  loans from financial institutions, acceded to the demands of the zaibatsu
  banks to form an electric power federation. When prices for goods
  produced in industries dominated by trusts and cartels increased as a
  result of these trends, the criticism of these monopolies grew stronger.
  In 1936 the Important Industries Control Law was amended so as to
  suppress the activities of the cartels. *6
  In the 1930s, Japan also focused on the economic development of
  the puppet state Manchukuo and the economic penetration of north
  China. With support from the government in Tokyo the Kwantung
  Army, in de facto control of Manchuria, collaborated with the South
  36 Ibid., pp. 68-72.
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  RECOVERY 
  475
  Manchurian Railway Company (Mantetsu) to set up the Mantetsu
  Economic Research Bureau and the First Economic Construction Plan
  for Manchukuo. The plan's essential goals, which rested on an ideol-
  ogy critical of a free economy and domestic capitalism, were to prevent
  "capitalists" from monopolizing profits, to "promote the good of all
  the people," "to place key economic sectors" under state control, and
  to develop economic interdependence between Manchuria and Japan.
  With regard to currency, the Manchukuo Central Bank was estab-
  lished, and a managed currency (the yuan) linked to the Japanese yen
  at parity was issued." Japan and Manchukuo thus had a shared cur-
  rency, and the "Japan-Manchukuo Economic Bloc" came into be-
  ing. 38 This measure was in line with general worldwide trends after the
  abandonment of the gold standard, that is, the creation of a "sterling
  bloc" centered on Great Britain and the Commonwealth, and a "dollar
  bloc" centered on the United States. In industrial development, key
  industries such as steel, gold mining, coal mining, oil, ammonium
  sulphate, soda, coal liquefaction, electric power, automobile trans-
  port, and air transport were placed under state control. Following the
  principle of establishing one company per industry, special corpora-
  tions were created by the Manchukuo government and the South
  Manchurian Railway, each putting up 30 percent of the capital and the
  remainder being raised from the general public.39 The Manchukuo
  government supervised the personnel and accounting of these special
  companies, but it also granted them special privileges such as profit
  subsidies and tax exemptions. Because Manchukuo was originally
  founded under the slogans of "Denounce capitalism" and "Keep out
  the zaibatsu," direct investment from metropolitan Japan was ex-
  cluded. The capital for industrial development was raised through the
  issue of South Manchurian Railway debentures. Domestic capital was
  permitted to be used in industries not considered key, but a policy was
  adopted to discourage the development of industries that competed
  with domestic Japanese production, such as rice cultivation and cotton
  spinning.
  Because this conception of Manchurian development was based on
  the anticapitalist ideology of the Kwantung Army and the South Man-
  churian Railway, the domestic economic community was hostile. The
  37 Kobayashi Hideo, "Manshu kinyu kozo no saihensei katei-1930 nendai zenhanki o chushin
  to shite," in Nihon teikokushugika no Manshu, ed. Manshushi kenkyukai (Tokyo:
  Ochanomizu shobo, 1972), pp. 151-74. 
  38 Ibid., pp. 196-206.
  39 Hara Akira, "1930 nendai no Manshu keizai tosei seisaku," in Nihon teikokushugika no
  Manshu, pp. 44-9.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  47 6 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  flotation of South Manchurian Railway debentures thus fared poorly.
  Furthermore, it was impossible for the South Manchurian Railway,
  whose personnel came mainly from railroad or military backgrounds,
  to provide the workers necessary for extensive industrial development.
  This was the Achilles' heel of the South Manchurian Railway Com-
  pany, which, on the pretext of cooperating in building the new coun-
  try, was attempting to control the Manchukuo economy. It was also
  the reason that the company gradually became estranged from the
  army. After 1933 the Kwantung Army drew up a plan to split the
  South Manchuria Railway Company into a group of independent affili-
  ates (kogaisha), one for each sector. The South Manchurian Railway
  Company's functions were limited to managing the railroad and acting
  as a holding company for the affiliate companies. The Kwantung
  Army also devised a plan to strengthen its control over the affiliate
  companies. The plan came to naught, but rather than abandon it, the
  army continued to look for an opportunity to put it into effect.40
  Driven by a sense of crisis and aware that it might he necessary to
  comply with the army's plan, the South Manchurian Railway planned
  to move south of the Great Wall into north China. After 1934 the
  Kwantung Army cooperated with the North China Garrison army to
  establish a de facto sphere of influence in north China by cutting it off
  from Kuomintang control and setting up pro-Japanese political re-
  gimes. It also developed plans for obtaining from the area raw materi-
  als such as iron ore, coal, and salt, which were in short supply in
  Manchukuo. The South Manchurian Railway did the research for this
  project.*1 In 1935 the railway established the Hsingchong ("Revive
  China") Company as its affiliate. The North China Garrison Army
  succeeded in establishing a pro-Japanese regime in eastern Hopei and
  a regime with a certain degree of autonomy from Nanking in Hopei-
  Chahar. After 1936 the Japanese negotiated with both these regimes
  for rights to develop their raw material resources, but the effort did
  not make much progress, owing to opposition from the Chinese. But
  these practical maneuvers did enable the advance by Japan's big spin-
  ning companies into the Tientsin area, particularly after 1936.
  The domestic situation in Japan changed radically with the in-
  creased power of the military after 1936. On February 26, 1936,
  40 Hara Akira, " 'Manshu' ni okeru keizai seijisaku no tenkai-Mantetsu kaiso to Mangyo
  soritsu o megutte" in Nihon keizai seisakushi ton, ed. Ando Yoshio (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
  shuppankai, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 211-13, 296.
  41 Nakamura Takafusa, "Nihon no kahoku keizai kosaku," in Kindai Nihon kenkyukai, vol. 2,
  pp. 159-204.
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  RECOVERY 
  477
  Takahashi Korekiyo was killed by a military assassination squad. Un-
  der the newly formed Hirota cabinet, which was dominated by the
  demands of the military, the economy strayed from the path of eco-
  nomic rationality. Since 1934 Takahashi had consolidated the level of
  fiscal spending, had done his utmost to curb the expansion of military
  spending, and had tried to reduce the size of government bond issues.
  These policies seem to have reflected the views of Fukai Eigo, gover-
  nor of the Bank of Japan and a close partner of Takahashi, who agreed
  with Keynes's theory of true inflation. According to this theory, if
  there is a surplus of capital plants and equipment, raw materials, or
  labor, an expansion of demand will not induce inflation, but if that
  margin of surplus is lost, inflation will occur. Fukai appears to have
  believed that Japan had achieved virtual full employment in the latter
  half of 1935.42 Takahashi's opposition to an expanded scale of military
  and fiscal spending was thus based on such thinking.
  Finding it impossible to oppose the demands of the military, Fi-
  nance Minister Baba Eiichi of the Hirota cabinet attempted to cooper-
  ate with them. He approved a five-year large-scale armament expan-
  sion plan for the army and a six-year plan for the navy.43 The national
  budget for fiscal year 1937 was almost 40 percent larger than that of
  FY 1936. This budget expansion was to be covered by a large tax
  increase and national bond issues. To facilitate the issue of public
  bonds, Baba lowered the discount rate and revived a low-interest-rate
  policy. Business leaders resisted the proposed tax increase, but at the
  same time they moved to increase imports in anticipation of inflation
  and a stronger demand for imported raw materials accompanying the
  expansion in military demand. As a result, the balance of payments
  was heavily in the red at the end of 1936. At the beginning of the year,
  the country had to begin shipping gold abroad. Price increases also
  became noticeable. Baba's policies failed immediately, and after a
  clash with the Diet in January 1937, the Hirota cabinet was replaced
  by the Hayashi cabinet. The new finance minister, Yuki Toyotaro,
  reduced Baba's budget, curtailed the tax increases, and mended rela-
  tions with business leaders. When the first Konoe cabinet was orga-
  nized in June 1937, Kaya Okinori and Yoshino Shinji, two leading
  bureaucrats, took office as minister of finance and minister of com-
  merce and industry.
  In the army, Ishiwara Kanji, the planner and executor of the Man-
  42 Fukai, Kaiko yo-nen, pp. 322-331. See also Yoshino Toshihiko, Rekidai Nihon ginko sosai ran
  (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1976), pp. 186-8.
  43 Aoki Nobumitsu, Baba Eiichi den (Tokyo: Ko Baba Eiichi-shi kinenkai, 1945), pp. 263-4.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  478 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  churian incident, took the lead in formulating a plan to expand direct
  military preparations for the expected outbreak of war with the Soviet
  Union, to expand the chemical and heavy industries, and to establish a
  firm base for munitions production. This plan's objective was to ex-
  pand the productive capacity of the Japan-Manchukuo economic
  bloc, swiftly drawing on the resources of Japan, Manchukuo, and
  north China. Table 9.6 shows that ¥6.1 billion of the needed capital
  was to come from domestic Japan and ¥2.4 billion from Manchuria.**
  The army plan, which took approximately one year to draft, was
  presented to the Konoe cabinet, which was organized with the mission
  of implementing it. In the summer of 1936, Ishiwara, seeking a review
  of the plan, had shown the newly completed first draft to a few politi-
  cians, including Konoe, and to members of financial circles such as
  Ikeda Shigeaki, Ayukawa Yoshisuke, and Yuki Toyotaro. He ob-
  tained their informal consent to cooperate in implementing the plan.
  Yuki's appointment as finance minister, Ikeda's appointment as gover-
  nor of the Bank of Japan during the Hayashi cabinet, and Konoe's
  subsequent appointment as prime minister all were intended to encour-
  age the realization of this plan.
  The Konoe cabinet was unable to use such methods as fiscal
  and monetary stringency, suppression of domestic demand, reduction
  of imports, and promotion of exports to eliminate the balance-of-
  payments deficit. Immediately after taking office, Finance Minister
  Kaya and Commerce and Industry Minister Yoshino announced three
  economic principles: "expansion of productive capacity, balance of pay-
  ments equilibrium, and regulation of the supply and demand for
  goods." This announcement indicated that their attention would be
  turned to establishing priorities for commodity imports and expanding
  productive capacity within the constraints imposed by preserving the
  balance-of-payments equilibrium. It implied the necessity of imple-
  menting direct national controls over commodity imports and capital.
  Economic controls were thus invoked across the board after the out-
  break of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, but even if the war had not
  occurred, it is highly likely that sooner or later controls would have
  become unavoidable.
  In Manchuria, the Manchuria Five-Year Development Plan, based
  on Ishiwara's first draft, was drawn up and immediately put into effect
  in 1937. It was thought that to carry out this plan, skilled specialists
  should manage industrial production. In November 1937 Nissan's
  44 Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan, pp. 268-85.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 9 . 6
  Production targets in the five-year plan for key industries
  Ordinary automobiles (1,000s)
  Machine tools (1,000s)
  Rolled steel (1,000s of tons)
  Oil (1,000s kl)
  Coal (1,000s tons)
  Aluminum (1,000s tons)
  Magnesium (1,000s tons)
  Electric power (1,000s kw)
  Shipbuilding (1,000s tons)
  (A) Production targets
  Total
  100
  50
  13,000
  5,650
  110,000
  100
  9
  12,750
  930
  Japan
  90
  45
  9,000
  3,250
  72,000
  70
  9
  11,170
  860
  Manchuria
  10
  5
  4,000
  2,400
  38,000
  30
  3
  1,400
  70
  Total
  37
  13
  4,850
  364
  55,560
  21
  0.5
  7,210
  500
  (B) Present capacity
  Japan
  37
  13
  4,400
  210
  42,000
  21
  0.5
  6,750
  500
  Manchuria
  —
  45
  154
  13,560
  —
  —
  460
  —
  (A) as a proportion of (B)
  Total
  2.7
  3.8
  2.7
  15.6
  2.0
  4.8
  4.8
  1.7
  1.9
  Japan
  2.4
  3.5
  2.0
  15.5
  1.7
  3.3
  3.3
  1.7
  1.7
  Manchuria
  —
  8.9
  15.6
  28.0
  —
  —
  3.0
  Note: Other than these, the production target for weapons was ¥960 million, a 2.1-fold increase over current capacity, and the target for airplanes was
  10,000 (Japan, 7,000; Manchuria, 3,000).
  Source: "Juyo sangyo go-ka-nen keikaku jisshi ni kansuru seisaku taiko (an)," Ministry of the Army, May 29, 1937. Shimada Toshihiko and Inaba Masao,
  eds., Gendaishishiryo, vol. 8. MtcAusens6(l) (Tokyo: Misuzushobo, 1964), pp. 730,746.
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  480 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  Ayukawa Yoshisuke founded Manchurian Heavy Industries (Mangyo).
  Using Nissan's capital and technology, he gathered all the Manchurian
  companies in the heavy and chemical industries under its control.45 The
  South Manchurian Railway become a holding company concentrating
  on operating the railroad, and its reorganization was accomplished only
  after many setbacks.
  WAR
  In July 1937 Japan plunged into an undeclared war with China. Con-
  trary to expectations that it would be decided quickly, the war
  stretched on. The nation's economic strength was strained by short-
  ages of key raw materials, particularly oil, and the tightening of eco-
  nomic controls. Economically, the outbreak of the China war was but
  a continuation of the trajectory along which the country had already
  been hurled. The Japanese economy was administered with the sole
  object of meeting the military demand. Ordinary industry and popular
  livelihood were sacrificed to that end. Although several factors linked
  to postwar economic growth were developed during this period, the
  process as a whole was a march to destruction.
  The most persistent feature of the war economy was the continual
  strengthening of economic controls. War with China broke out just
  after the government accepted the army's plan for heavy and chemical
  industrialization. There was no alternative but to administer the econ-
  omy by strengthening controls and by giving priority in allocating
  limited materials and capital to meet military demand. The necessity
  for economic controls had been urged by young bureaucrats, military
  personnel, and even economists since the 192OS.46 The worldwide
  depression made clear that the capitalist free economies had come to a
  standstill. The need to control the economy and to institute planning
  could be seen from the success of the Soviet Union's five-year plans.
  The military also contended that World War I had demonstrated that
  the next war would be a total war requiring the mobilization of the
  economy as well as the polity. Research on the development of a
  mobilization structure had in fact been conducted at the Natural Re-
  45 See Hara, " 'Manshu' ni okeru keizai seijisaku no tenkai," in Nihon keizai seisakushi ran, vol.
  2, pp. 209-96.
  46 Nagata Tetsuzan, "Kokka sodoin junbi shisetsu to seishonen kunren" in Kokka sodoin no igi,
  ed. Tsujimura Kusuzo (Tokyo: Aoyama shoin, 1925), is a good example of early ideas on
  mobilization. An outstanding summary of the mobilization scheme focusing on the military
  may be found in Mikuriya Takashi, "Kokusaku togo kikan setchi mondai no shiteki tenkai,"
  in Kindai Nihon kenkyu, vol. 1: Shoma-ki no gunbu (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1979),
  sec. 1.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  WAR 
  481
  sources Agency since 1927. Ideological demands for a system of eco-
  nomic control had been tried in Manchukuo after 1932, but at home
  their realization was limited to the unification of the electric power
  generation and transmission industry in 1938. Full-scale economic
  controls in Japan proper were instituted only when other alternatives
  were discounted.
  During the first three months of the China war in 1937, military
  expenditures came to ¥2.5 billion, an amount virtually equal to the
  national budget for the year. Faced with a pressing need to check
  increases in imports and currency expansion, the government passed
  the Temporary Capital Adjustment Law and the Temporary Export
  and Import Commodities Law. In March 1938, the Diet enacted the
  National General Mobilization Law. Under these laws, the government
  acquired sweeping powers: (1) The establishment of firms, capital in-
  creases, bond flotations, and long-term loans came under a licensing
  system; (2) the government was empowered to issue directives concern-
  ing the manufacture, distribution, transfer, use, and consumption of
  materials connected with imports and exports, particularly their restric-
  tion or prohibition; and (3) the government was also empowered to
  issue directives on the conscription of labor power, the setting of work-
  ing conditions, the disposition of firms' profits, the use of funds by
  financial institutions, the administration, use, and expropriation of fac-
  tories and mines, and the formation of cartels.^7 These measures were
  invoked one after another as the war situation became more grave.
  In October 1937 the Cabinet Planning Board (Kikakuin), charged
  with comprehensive planning, began operations.«8 Its major responsi-
  bilities were to regulate the supply and demand for major commodities
  necessary for economic activity and to draw up a materials mobiliza-
  tion plan. The required volume of key raw materials imports on which
  Japan depended-for example, iron and steel, oil, copper, aluminum,
  raw cotton, wool, and rubber-was calculated as the difference be-
  tween the combined military, government, and industrial demand and
  the domestic supply. Within the constraints set by the amount of
  available foreign exchange, an import plan was drawn up for each
  commodity, and the commodities were allocated among the army, the
  navy, and the private sector. These plans were initially made for Octo-
  ber to December 1937. From then until the defeat, plans were first
  prepared every year and then subsequently every quarter. To imple-
  47 Maeda, Shokd seisakushi Dai n-kan, chaps. 2, 3.
  48 Mikuriya, "Kokusaku togo kikan setchi."
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  482 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  ment the Five-Year Plan for Key Industries, the planning board also
  prepared the Industrial Capacity Expansion Plan, which it put into
  effect in 1939.49
  Japan thus quickly entered a wartime controlled economy. Eco-
  nomic control policies were unavoidable because of the political neces-
  sity of raising funds for huge military outlays, ensuring raw materials
  for the import-dependent chemical and heavy industries, and produc-
  ing munitions. Japan's foreign trade situation at this time is shown in
  Table 9.7. After 1938 the aggregate foreign trade balance was in the
  black. A breakdown of these figures, however, shows that an export
  surplus was maintained in the yen bloc, in which settlements were
  made in yen, but in other areas, in which convertible foreign exchange
  was required, there was a continuous import surplus. For key raw
  materials such as coal, iron ore, and salt, Japan could be self-sufficient
  in the yen bloc; but for oil, bauxite, scrap iron, rare metals such as
  nickel and cobalt, crude rubber, raw cotton, and wool, Japan was
  compelled to depend on imports from dollar and sterling areas. Efforts
  to promote further its chemical and heavy industries increased Japan's
  dependence on the British and American currency areas. The materi-
  als mobilization plan, launched at a time of large import surpluses in
  1937, was drawn up on the assumption that an estimated ¥3 billion in
  foreign exchange revenues from 1938 exports would be available, but
  owing to a slump in the United States and the slack production of
  cotton textiles for export, the figure was slashed to ¥2.5 billion by
  midyear. Because priority in the allocation of imported goods was for
  munitions and for use in expanding productive capacity, the import of
  materials used for consumer production, such as raw cotton and wool,
  was cut back. Because of the increasing squeeze on consumer goods as
  well as poor rice harvests, a rationing system for rice, matches, and
  sugar was adopted in 1940. Fearing soaring prices, the government
  fixed prices and initiated price controls. But these new controls only
  stimulated black market dealings. In order to crack down on such
  activity, the economic police was established. Allocations of munitions
  goods were made on the basis of a coupon system, but it was not
  always easy to obtain the actual goods. Everywhere, complicated con-
  trols proliferated.
  The Japanese continued to do their utmost to develop the resources
  of Manchuria and China. The North China Development Corporation
  49 See commentary in Nakamura Takafusa and Hara Akira, eds., Kokka sodoin, vol. i: Keizai
  [Gendaishi shiryo^i) (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 1970).
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 9 . 7
  The balance of international trade in the 1930s (¥ millions)
  1931
  1932
  1933
  1934
  1935
  1936
  1937
  1938
  1939
  1940
  1941
  Exports
  1.147
  1.410
  1.861
  2.171
  2.499
  2.693
  3.175
  2.690
  3.576
  3.656
  2.651
  Totals
  Imports
  1.235
  1.431
  1.919
  2.283
  2.472
  2.764
  3.783
  2.663
  2.918
  3.453
  2.899
  Settlement balance
  -89
  -21
  -56
  -111
  27
  -71
  -608
  27
  658
  203
  -248
  Trade with the yen bloc
  (China, Manchuri:
  Exports
  0.221
  0.276
  0.411
  0.520
  0.575
  0.658
  0.791
  1.166
  1.747
  1.867
  1.659
  Imports
  236
  206
  281
  311
  350
  394
  437
  564
  683
  756
  855
  i, and Kwantung)
  Settlement balance
  -15
  70
  130
  209
  225
  264
  354
  602
  1.064
  1.111
  804
  Exports
  0.926
  1.134
  1.450
  1.652
  1.924
  2.035
  2.384
  1.524
  1.829
  1.789
  992
  Trade with the world
  outside the yen bloc
  Imports
  1.000
  1.226
  1.636
  1.972
  2.122
  2.370
  3.346
  2.099
  2.235
  2.697
  2.044
  Settlement balance
  -74
  -72
  -186
  -320
  -198
  -335
  -962
  -575
  -406
  -908
  -1.052
  Source: Japan Ministry of Finance, Customs clearance statistics, 1931-41.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  484 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  and the Central China Promotion Corporation set up affiliates in their
  respective regions to develop natural resources. Coal and iron ore
  development were given top priority in China, and the Japanese army
  went as far as to reduce the number of trains transporting local food
  supplies in order to send coal to Japan. In Manchuria, Manchurian
  Heavy Industries, headed by Ayukawa Yoshisuke, worked to establish
  every kind of industry in the region, including automobile production.
  However, Ayukawa's plan to try to introduce American capital and
  technology into Manchuria proved overly optimistic. It ignored Amer-
  ica's nonrecognition of Manchukuo and the Open Door principle.
  When his plan finally failed, Ayukawa had to resign.'0
  In July 1939 the United States announced the abrogation of its
  Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan. In January 1940 the
  United States became free to restrict exports to Japan as a form of
  economic sanction. The outbreak of the European war in September
  1939 led to expectations that strategic goods imports would become
  more difficult. From 1939 to 1940, Japan mobilized all the gold and
  foreign exchange it could and boosted its imports of petroleum prod-
  ucts, rare metals, and other strategic goods. The Bank of Japan's gold
  reserves were nearly depleted.*• In July 1940, observing Nazi Ger-
  many's successful invasion of France and expecting the imminent
  defeat of Britain, Japan's military drew up plans to invade Singapore
  and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to gain access to their
  abundant supplies of raw materials such as oil, rubber, and tin. Sup-
  port was growing for the reckless view that the war in China remained
  unresolved because Britain and the United States were backing the
  Kuomintang government and that Japan should act in concert with
  Germany to defeat Britain and force the United States to withdraw
  from Asia. In September 1940, Japan advanced into northern French
  Indochina (present-day North Vietnam) and signed a treaty of alliance
  with Germany and Italy. The United States responded by tightening
  its export restrictions against Japan and then steadily turned the
  screws to reduce Japanese economic power.
  In 1939, Japan instituted general wage and price controls and estab-
  lished a unified nationwide wage system. The workers in the com-
  merce and service industries were conscripted for compulsory work in
  munitions production. The companies' dividend rates were restricted,
  and finance was placed under comprehensive controls as well. Intend-
  50 Hara, " 'Manshu' ni okeru keizai seijisaku no tenkai," pp. 248-95.
  51 See the explanatory comments in Nakamura and Hara, eds., Kokka sodoin, vol. 1, pp. lxix-
  Ixxii. See also in the same volume, "Okyu butsudo keikaku shian" and "Setsumei shiryo."
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  WAR 
  485
  ing to increase munitions production, the government in the fall of
  1940 put forth plans for a New Economic Order parallel to the New
  Political Structure being organized at the same time.52 The intent of
  this plan was to shift firms from a profit basis to a production basis; to
  separate the owners of capital from the managers of the firms; to
  designate government officials as managers; to make firms increase
  their production in accordance with government directives; and to
  organize cartels called industrial control associations to implement
  government economic controls such as production quotas and materi-
  als allocations. The business community opposed this plan, on the
  ground that it was a "communist" idea that threatened the fundamen-
  tal principles of a capitalist economy. A compromise was finally
  reached, but just barely.
  In early 1941 Japanese-American negotiations began. During their
  stormy course Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In July, Japan
  advanced into southern French Indochina. In response, the United
  States froze Japanese assets in America and imposed a total embargo
  on petroleum exports. The embargo on petroleum, Japan's most criti-
  cal war materiel, was the biggest trump card the United States held.
  Japan's army and navy had reserves of 8.4 million kiloliters of petro-
  leum products, an amount that could meet its military demand for no
  more than two years of fighting. Opinion within the army and navy
  was dominated by the belligerent view that Japan should go to war
  with Britain and the United States to obtain raw materials from South-
  east Asia rather than give in to external pressure. This mood propelled
  the country into the Pacific War.«
  Six months after the beginning of hostilities, Japan occupied a vast
  area demarcated by a boundary running through Burma, Thailand, the
  Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the Celebes, and
  the Solomon Islands. Some observers thought that with petroleum sup-
  plies safely in hand, the dream of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
  Sphere had been realized. Many firms moved to invest in the develop-
  ment of mines, rubber, and raw cotton in the region, and some even laid
  plans for hydroelectric power and aluminum refining. The government
  drew up the optimistic Plan for the Expansion of Productivity, using
  "Greater East Asia" as its arena. The plan projected that within fifteen
  years, production would be expanded from three to five times the cur-
  52 See Nakamura Takafusa and Hara Akira, "Keizai shin taisei" in Nihon seiji gakkai nenpo
  1972-nen (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1972).
  53 Nakamura Takafusa, "Senso keizai to sono hokai," in Iwanami koza, Nihon rekishi, vol. 21:
  Kindai 8 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1977), pp. 115-16.
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  486 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  TABLE 9.8
  Figures on the Pacific War and ocean-going transport
  Losses of ship tonnage
  No. of ships
  No. of tons (1,000s)
  Ship construction
  No. of ships
  No. of tons (1,000s)
  Volume of oceangoing transport
  Planned (A) (1,000s tons)
  Achieved (B) (1,000s tons)
  Rate of plan achievement (B/A %)
  Of amount achieved:
  1941
  (December only) 
  1942
  12
  56
  4
  6
  41,408°
  39,601°
  95.6
  Japan, Manchuria, and China (1,000s tons)
  Southeast Asia and others (1,000s tons)
  202
  948
  77
  265
  40,368
  39,486
  97.8
  21,914*
  862*
  Volume of Southeast Asian raw material shipments to Japan
  Oil (1,000s kl)
  Bauxite (1,000s tons)
  Crude rubber (1,000s tons)
  Manganese ore (1,000s tons)
  Totals, including other items
  (1,000s of tons, except for oil)
  -
  -
  -
  -
  -
  1,428
  323
  65
  71
  1,514
  1943
  437
  1,793
  254
  769
  33,397
  33,047
  99.0
  29,624
  3,605
  2,623
  792
  78
  89
  1,581
  1944
  969
  2,058
  699
  1,700
  27,820
  20,720
  74.5
  18,151
  2,627
  1,500
  . 565'
  68°
  67J
  909''
  1945
  639(271)
  1,503(756)
  188
  560
  9,400
  7,279
  77.4
  2,003'
  137'
  _
  _
  _
  _
  -
  • Totals for Apr. to Dec. 1941.
  * Jul. to Dec. 1942. 
  <Jan. to Mar. 1945.
  d Figures for 1944 are forecasts.
  Source: Nakamura Takafusa, "Senso keizai to sono hokai," in Iiuanami koza, Nihon rekishi, vol.
  21: Kindai 8 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1977), Tables 5,8,9.
  rent level. The immediate problem, however, was how to fight a war
  with the raw materials Japan now controlled.
  There were no longer any foreign exchange restrictions for raw
  material imports from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
  Payment was made with Japanese military scrip or with Southeast Asia
  Development Bank vouchers. Marine transport capacity rather than
  foreign exchange became the critical bottleneck. The tonnage of Ja-
  pan's ocean-going capacity at the beginning of the Pacific War was 6.5
  million gross tons, of which about 5.5 million gross tons, excluding
  tankers and repair vessels, could be mobilized (see Table 9.8). It was
  thought that even if 2.9 million gross tons of army and navy warships
  were used for combat or military service, 3 million gross tons, includ-
  ing tankers, would be kept in service for freight transport to provide
  the transport capacity necessary to keep production going at the level
  called for by the 1941 Materials Mobilization Plan. At the beginning of
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  WAR
  487
  10,000
  tons
  700
  600
  500
  400
  300
  200
  100
  Total holdings of
  shipping capacity
  Total weight
  of all goods
  shipped in ordinary
  commercial vessels
  Holdings of
  private vessels
  Total volume of
  private shipping capacity 
  \
  capable of operation
  (excluding tankers)
  Jan July Jan July Jan July Jan July
  1942 
  1943 
  1944 
  1945
  Figure 9.2. Shipping capacity and shipment of goods during World
  War II. [From Oi Atsushi, Kaijo goeisen (Tokyo: Nihon shuppan
  kyodo, 1952), appended tables.]
  the war, based on estimated annual losses of 800,000 to 1 million tons
  and estimated annual production of 600,000 tons of new ships, it was
  forecast that Japan could maintain 3 million gross tons of capacity.
  This forecast proved excessively optimistic.™
  In reality, the army and navy vessels were not replaced easily, and
  losses exceeded expectations. Realizing the importance of shipping,
  the Japanese government tried to increase shipbuilding output, but
  marine transport tonnage continued to decline. As Table 9.8 indicates,
  shipments of Southeast Asian raw materials, in particular, failed to
  meet expectations. Figure 9.2 shows the decline in shipping capacity
  as a barometer of fighting strength. Japan's ship tonnage (civilian
  vessels) for transporting general commodities reached a peak in Octo-
  ber 1942 as a result of the cancellation of military vessel requisitioning,
  but after the battle of the Solomon Islands, its ship tonnage shifted
  54 Ibid., pp. 116-17.
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  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  into decline. After the latter half of 1943, in particular, it fell steadily
  because of the all-out American sea and air offensive. Especially nota-
  ble was the decline of volume shipped, which dropped in conjunction
  with the ships' falling rate of operation. After the fall of the Marianas
  in July 1944, t n e s e a lanes t 0 Southeast Asia were blocked, and so it
  became impossible to procure raw materials anywhere but Japan, Man-
  churia, and China. In 1945, when food shortages in the homeland
  reached crisis proportions, the transport of grains and salt from China
  and Manchukuo became the ultimate mission for shipping, but even
  that was brought to a standstill by air attacks. In regard to marine
  transport, Japan had already lost the war in the summer of 1944.55
  Jerome Cohen summarized this situation: "It may be said that in large
  measure Japan's economy was destroyed twice over, once by cutting
  off of imports and secondly by air attack, "s6
  Domestic production trends until defeat are shown in Table 9.9.
  Wartime controls clearly expanded Japan's chemical and heavy indus-
  trial production and reduced the output for private demand in such
  industries as textiles. For this reason, production in industries cater-
  ing to private demand, including agriculture, continued to decline
  after the latter half of the 1930s. The Japanese were forced to endure
  extreme hardship. Even within the heavy and chemical industries, the
  outputs in various sectors achieved maximum levels in different years.
  Because production priorities focused on aircraft and ships during the
  Pacific War, the production of materials such as steel and chemicals
  fell from 1943 onward. Production efforts were concentrated solely on
  final products such as weaponry, military aircraft, and ships. As a
  result of extraordinary effort, aircraft production increased from 6,174
  planes in 1941 to 26,507 in 1944, and the production of warships grew
  from 201,000 to 408,000 tons, both peak levels of output." However,
  the eleventh-hour production effort was unable to turn around the
  deteriorating war situation.
  At the beginning of the Pacific War, the Japanese government was
  behind in its efforts to organize a wartime economic mobilization, and
  began only in the fall of 1942. Because Japan's early military successes
  exceeded expectations, government leaders overlooked the necessity
  of all-out economic mobilization efforts. When the American counter-
  55 See ibid., pp. 123-36.
  56 Jerome B. Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis: University of
  Minnesota Press, 1949), p. 107.
  57 According to Okazaki Ayakoto, Kihon kokuryoku doiai soran (Tokyo: Kokumin keizai kenkyu
  kyokai, 1953).
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 9 . 9
  Wartime production indexes (1937 = 100)
  Agriculture 
  Mining 
  Manufacturing
  production 
  production 
  production
  index 
  Rice 
  index 
  Coal 
  index 
  Steel 
  Machinery 
  Chemicals 
  Textiles 
  Foods
  85
  100
  103
  114
  119
  123
  120
  121
  124
  53
  Source: Agriculture: Production indexes compiled by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry using 1933-5 as the base period (Dai 30-ji Norinshd tokeihyo).
  Mining and manufacturing: Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Showa 3S-nen kijun kokogyo shisu soran. (Italicized figures are the maximum
  values reached by each index during this period.)
  1936
  1937
  1938
  1939
  1940
  1941
  1942
  1943
  1944
  1945
  98
  100
  98
  105
  99
  95
  100
  96
  76
  59
  102
  100
  99
  104
  92
  83
  101
  95
  88
  59
  92
  100
  106
  112
  120
  120
  118
  119
  108
  51
  92
  100
  108
  113
  125
  125
  121
  127
  120
  74
  87
  100
  115
  123
  128
  132
  140
  156
  146
  52
  75
  100
  110
  135
  163
  188
  195
  214
  252
  107
  87
  100
  114
  122
  120
  120
  100
  87
  80
  33
  88
  100
  83
  83
  75
  60
  48
  31
  17
  6
  91
  100
  101
  104
  90
  78
  69
  58
  47
  32
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  490 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  attack began, the failure to mobilize adequately became an irretriev-
  able handicap. In any case, once the need for the mass production of
  aircraft and ships became clear, the Japanese government attempted to
  "make the impossible possible." For example, in order to increase
  steel production, the government set up a large number of simple
  twenty-to-one-hundred-ton-capacity small blast furnaces in Korea,
  Manchukuo, and China. Their performance was extremely poor, how-
  ever, and they did not produce the expected results. In order to cope
  with shortages of metal materials, including scrap iron, the govern-
  ment collected city streetcar rails, the handrails of bridges, and even
  the bells in Buddhist temples. The textile industry's spinning machin-
  ery was scrapped and turned into raw materials for shells. In the wake
  of shutdowns and cutbacks, many factories in the consumer goods
  industry were converted into munitions factories. Good results were
  produced in the shipbuilding industry in 1943 by using a "snowball"
  method. Shipbuilding volume was expanded by importing iron ore
  only in the amount needed to build ships, and the ships thus built
  were then used to import more iron ore. In order to cut down on the
  volume of ocean shipping, various kinds of production facilities, in-
  cluding blast furnaces, were transferred to China and Manchuria, and
  the practice of on-the-spot production was adopted, but this effort
  disappointed expectations.
  In the fall of 1943, in order to increase munitions production, espe-
  cially aircraft, a Ministry of Munitions was established by merging the
  Cabinet Planning Board and the relevant departments in the Ministry
  of Commerce and Industry. At the same time a Munitions Companies
  System was inaugurated. Key firms were designated as "munitions
  companies"; those in charge of production were given titles as govern-
  ment officials; employees were treated as impressed labor and not
  allowed to quit their jobs; and the companies were responsible for
  increasing production in accordance with government instructions.58
  But the government also compensated these firms for losses. In each
  industry designated, financial institutions took responsibility for sup-
  plying the necessary capital.
  The labor force presented a difficult problem during the war. Out of
  a population of slightly under 80 million, 2.4 million had been con-
  scripted into military service by the end of 1941. In August 1945 this
  number had swelled to 7.2 million. To compensate for the resulting
  58 Juyo sangyo kyogikai, Gunjukaishaho kaisetsu (Tokyo: Teikoku shuppan, 1944). No coherent
  study of the munitions companies exists.
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  WAR 
  491
  labor shortage, young men in consumer goods or tertiary industries
  were conscripted and mobilized to work in factories and mines. After
  1944, students from the middle-school level up were employed in
  munitions production and forced to suspend studies of any kind al-
  most entirely. In the consumer goods industries, especially textiles,
  and in the tertiary industries, firms either converted to wartime pro-
  duction or went out of business as raw materials and merchandise
  disappeared. Their machinery and equipment were scrapped for muni-
  tions production, and their workers were put to work in factories and
  mines. The government promoted the forced reorganization of busi-
  ness, and it compelled small- and medium-sized enterprises to convert
  to munitions production or go out of business, mainly in order to
  mobilize their workers.59 The 1944 bulge in the secondary industry
  work force and the deterioration of the tertiary industry work force, as
  seen in Table 9.3, were the consequences of such policies.
  The quality of daily life suffered. After 1938 it became impossible to
  obtain cotton and woolen goods. In 1940 necessities such as rice, miso
  (bean paste), and soy sauce were rationed, but these, too, gradually
  ran short, and food shortages for the urban population became severe
  in 1943. The standard daily Japanese caloric intake was 2,200 calories,
  including 70 grams of protein, but the actual daily intake in 1941 was
  2,105 calories and 64.7 grams of protein. By January 1944, rations
  provided a mere 1,405 calories.60 People tried to stave off starvation by
  foraging in the farm villages or buying on the black market outside
  official distribution channels. The government had put limited price
  controls into effect after the start of the China war for fear of inflation.
  In 1940 the government began setting official prices for everything,
  but it was impossible to eradicate illegal transactions. From a 1937
  base-year value of 100, the consumer price index rose to 149 in 1940,
  208 in 1944, and 254 in May 1945. If black market prices are included,
  these indexes must be calculated as 161 for 1940 and 358 for 1944.6l
  The latter figures are most likely closer to the actual situation.
  After 1940 the government officially set wage levels on the basis of
  type of employment, educational background, age, and number of
  years of experience. This was done because it was feared that wage-
  cost increases would cause price increases. Because wage rates were
  calculated on the basis of official prices, they could never catch up
  59 Yui Tsunehiko, Chusho kigyo seisaku no shiteki tenkai (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1964),
  pp. 342ff.
  60 Hosei daigaku Ohara shakai mondai kenkyujo, Taiheiyo sensoka no rodosha jotai (Tokyo: Toyo
  keizai shinposha, 1964), p. 149. 
  61 Cohen, Japan's Economy, p. 356.
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  492 
  DEPRESSION, RECOVERY, AND WAR
  with actual consumer price increases. Real wages sank to almost half
  their prewar level.62
  By the time of defeat in August 1945, Japan had lost approximately
  three million lives (more than half were military personnel) and a
  quarter of its national wealth. The remaining total value of its national
  wealth was virtually the equivalent of what it had been in 1935. The
  war reduced the accumulation of the intervening decade to charred
  and smoldering ruins.63 It is also true, however, that the conditions for
  sustaining postwar economic growth were already sprouting among
  those ruins. The wartime munitions industry provided the prototype
  for the chemical and heavy industrial sector, which was at the heart of
  postwar growth. Machine gun factories began to produce sewing ma-
  chines, and range finder plants began making cameras. Linkages be-
  tween big factories and small business subcontractors that developed
  in the munitions industry also became the basis for the postwar subcon-
  tracting system. So too the designation of specific financial institutions
  to finance munitions companies created close relations in which can be
  found the origins of the postwar "financial groupings" (kinyu keiretsu).
  Administrative guidance by government ministries and the Bank of
  Japan, often pointed to as a special characteristic of postwar Japan,
  was also a legacy of the wartime controls. The seniority wage system
  spread throughout the economy when wage controls were instituted,
  and enterprise unions were the successors of the Patriotic Industrial
  Associations (Sangyo hokoku kai) organized in each firm after the
  labor unions were broken up. During the war the government pur-
  chased rice on a dual-price system, buying cheaply from landlords but
  paying a higher price when buying directly from producers in order to
  accelerate increased rice production. This practice had the effect of
  lowering rental rates, thus clearing the way for the postwar land re-
  form. Even though the recollection of the wartime period is repugnant
  to those Japanese who lived through it, it was a stage preliminary to
  rapid postwar growth.
  CONCLUSION
  Both for the world and for Japan, the period from 1920 to 1945 was an
  unusually stormy and convulsive era. Looking back on the course that
  62 Yamada Junzo, "Senjichu no rodosha" in Gendai Nihon shihomhugi taikei: vol. 4, Rodo, ed.
  Aihara Shigeru (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1958), p. 97.
  63 Keizai antei honbu, Taiheiyo senso niyoru wagakuni no higai sogo hokokusho (Tokyo: Keizai
  antei honbu, 1948).
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  CONCLUSION 
  493
  the Japanese economy pursued during those years, one may point out
  the following special features relevant to the postwar experience.
  First, the trend toward chemical and heavy industrialization that be-
  gan during World War I constantly accelerated. Second, precedents
  for economic policies aimed at economic growth and full employment
  had already achieved success in the 1930s. Third, the prototype of
  postwar Japan's distinctive economic system was molded during the
  war years, although not necessarily intentionally. These circumstances
  also explain why Japan was able to achieve remarkably high growth,
  even by world standards, in the 1920s and 1930s.
  However, even from a strictly economic standpoint, the economy of
  the 1920s and 1930s differed in several respects from that of the post-
  World War II era. First, politics were in absolute ascendancy over the
  economy. Examples of this are the removal of the gold embargo at the
  old parity for reasons of national prestige; the imposition of economic
  controls in conjunction with the military invasion of China and plans
  for war with the Soviet Union; and the plunge into the Pacific War
  without a dispassionate assessment of the nation's economic strength.
  Second, after the breakdown of the classical principle of laissez-faire,
  many policies were experimented with on a trial-and-error basis, but
  no general principle clearly emerged in its place. The failure of Inoue's
  fiscal policies and the success of Takahashi's are conspicuous examples
  of this. Third, the economy's extraordinary experience under wartime
  controls, when all was concentrated on winning the war, reduced the
  lives of the people to ruins.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CHAPTER 10
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY,
  1945-1973
  From 1945 to 1973, t n e Japanese economy maintained an annual
  growth rate of nearly 10 percent. Because the standards for measuring
  national income changed during this period, there is no continuous
  statistical series. However, when the existing data are linked and recal-
  culated, Japan's real GNP shows an annual growth rate of 9.6 percent
  from 1946 to 1973.1
  The first decade of this high economic growth was a period of
  recovery from the economic dislocations brought about by Japan's
  defeat in World War II. During the war, Japan's maritime transport
  was cut off by the Allied powers, and it had been difficult to obtain
  raw materials. In effect, this blockade was continued by postwar re-
  strictions that the American occupying forces imposed on foreign
  trade, and it was exacerbated by social and economic disorder. Real
  GNP per capita in 1946 declined to 55 percent of the 1934-6 level as a
  result, and it did not recover that level until 1953.
  The tempo of Japan's postwar recovery from the wartime destruc-
  tion appears rapid in comparison with that of the countries of Western
  Europe, because the postwar collapse in Japan was so great, but it
  actually took the prewar per capita GNP longer to recover in Japan
  than it did in Europe. In 1951 the per capita national income, based on
  the prevailing exchange rates, was one-twelfth that of the United
  States and two-fifths that of West Germany.2 But once the postwar
  recovery was complete, Japan maintained an extremely high rate of
  growth for more than fifteen years. Indeed, the performance of Ja-
  pan's economy was outstanding compared with that of the other indus-
  trial economies.
  1 Because of the confusion accompanying Japan's defeat in the war, there was no official esti-
  mate of its GNP in 1945. Figures for 1946 to 1955 can be found in Keizai kikakucho, Gendai
  Nihon keizai no lenkai (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho, 1976), p. 578; and for 1955 to 1965 (old
  SNA) and 1965 to 1973 (new SNA), Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo
  keizai shinposha, 1980), p. 99.
  2 Keizai kikakucho chosakyoku, ed., Shiryo: Keizai hakusho 25 nen (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho,
  1972), p. 9 (chart 2), pp. 11-12.
  494
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  POSTWAR ECONOMIC REFORM AND RECOVERY 
  495
  During this period of rapid economic growth (kodo seicho jidat)
  (1955 to 1972), Japan was in the process of introducing technological
  innovations and catching up economically with the West. This period
  can be divided into two subperiods: from 1955 to 1965 when the
  economy experienced three major booms (the "Jimmu boom," the
  "iwato boom," and the "boom that did not feel like one" [kokyokan
  naki keiki]); and from 1966 to 1972 when the economy grew steadily
  until the "oil shock" and the onset of "crazy inflation" (kyoran infure).
  Even after the period of high growth ended in 1973, however, the
  momentum of the economy continued. By 1975, for example, per
  capita GNP had reached 62 percent of the United States' and 65.9
  percent of West Germany's and had outstripped the levels of Great
  Britain and Italy.3 The gap between Japan and the other advanced
  countries continued to narrow. As a result of its rapid growth, Japan
  had risen to become one of the world's economic superpowers (keizai
  taikoku).
  POSTWAR ECONOMIC REFORM AND RECOVERY
  Postwar economic reforms
  The transformation of Japan's postwar economy took place against the
  background of a democratization reform program promoted by the
  American Occupation forces. These reforms, of course, were not
  solely the result of the Americans' initiatives but were also shaped by
  the efforts of Japanese who either cooperated with the Americans or
  fought with them, in pursuit of their own ideals or agendas. Three
  economic reforms of particular importance were land reform, dissolu-
  tion of the zaibatsu, and labor reform.
  Land reform. Before land reform, 45.9 percent of Japan's agricultural
  land was tenanted. Before the war, tenant rent amounted to 5 percent
  of the national income, and tenancy disputes reached a peak of six
  thousand in 1935. It had been the policy of the prewar Ministry of
  Agriculture and Forestry to promote owner-cultivatorship in order to
  solve the tenancy problem. In the fall of 1945, as an extension of that
  policy, the Agricultural Land Adjustment Law was revised, limiting
  landholding to five chobu and requiring that rent be paid in cash.
  3 Based on OECD National Accounts (1986); Keizai kikakucho kokumin shotokuka, Kokumin
  shotoku doko (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho, 1986).
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  496 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  The American Occupation forces, feeling that this legislation did
  not go far enough, sent a memorandum on land reform to the Japanese
  government on December 9, 1945, urging a more extensive change.
  The so-called second land reform was carried out by the promulgation
  of the Law for the Special Establishment of Independent Cultivators
  on October 21, 1946. The law provided for all the land owned by
  absentee landlords to be purchased by the government; for the land of
  noncultivating resident landlords to be limited to less than one chobu;
  for the land of owner-cultivators to be limited to three chobu; and for
  land purchased by the government to be resold to tenant farmers.
  Because the real price of the land dropped drastically as the result of
  inflation, land reform was almost equivalent to confiscation.
  During land reform, 1,916 million hectares, or 37.5 percent of the
  agricultural acreage, changed hands. The land of over 3.7 million
  landlords was purchased by the government.4 As a result of the re-
  form, tenanted land was reduced to only 10 percent of agricultural
  land; the tenants' rent became negotiable; and tenant disputes disap-
  peared. The farmers became more willing to work; the farming vil-
  lages became more politically stable; and agriculture developed with
  the help of government price supports and investment in infrastruc-
  ture. Opportunities for urban employment grew with the rapid growth
  and reduced the fragmentation of landholdings and agricultural under-
  employment created by the outflow of people to the countryside imme-
  diately after the war.
  As a result of land reform, Japanese agriculture after the war became
  the province of independent farmers. On the other hand, even after the
  economy moved into its rapid growth phase, the number of farmers
  with part-time jobs increased, and landholdings remained fragmented.
  This impeded the improvement of agricultural productivity. In order to
  solve this problem, many urged increasing the scale of cultivation and
  encouraging the rental of land. There was a growing demand for a
  change in the policy of making owner-cultivators central to agriculture
  (jisakuno chushin shugi), a policy based on the goals of both the Occupa-
  tion forces and the prewar agrarian reformers in Japan.
  Dissolution of the zaibatsu. From the outset the American Occupation
  intended to dissolve the zaibatsu, which some American officials felt
  had been complicit in waging Japan's war of territorial conquest. In
  4 The basic materials on land reform may be found in Nosei chosakai nochi kaikaku kiroku
  iinkai, ed., Nochi kaikaku tenmatsu gaiyb (Tokyo, 1951). The standard work in English is by R.
  P. Dore, Land Reform injapan (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).
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  POSTWAR ECONOMIC REFORM AND RECOVERY 
  497
  October 1945 the Occupation decided to dissolve the head offices
  (honsha) of the zaibatsu holding companies and in April 1946 estab-
  lished a committee to reorganize the holding companies. By June
  1947, eighty-three companies had been designated as holding compa-
  nies. Of these, twenty-eight were reorganized as family holding compa-
  nies, and the rest were allowed to continue as production enterprises
  after their stockholdings had been transferred. In the meantime, on
  July 3, 1947, the Occupation authorities ordered the dissolution of the
  Mitsui Trading Company and the Mitsubishi Trading Company.'
  In April 1947 the enactment of the Anti-Monopoly Law, based on
  American antitrust laws, established Japan's Fair Trade Commission.
  The following December, the Diet passed the Law for the Elimination
  of Excessive Economic Concentration, which provided for the dissolu-
  tion of any company deemed monopolistic. Under these laws, eighteen
  large firms were dissolved, and their factories were redistributed. The
  Japan Steel Corporation was split into two firms (Yawata Steel and Fuji
  Steel); Mitsui Mining was divided into two firms (Mitsui Mining and
  Kamioka Industries); Mitsubishi Industries was divided into two
  (Mitsubishi Mining and Taihei Mining); Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
  was divided into three firms (Eastern Japan Heavy Industries, Central
  Japan Heavy Industries, and Western Japan Heavy Industries); Tokyo
  Shibaura Electric divested itself of twenty-seven out of forty-three
  plants; and Hitachi Manufacturing divested itself of nineteen out of
  thirty-five plants. As a result of these and other dissolutions, the degree
  of concentration in the iron and steel, shipbuilding, beer-brewing, pa-
  permaking, and other industries was substantially reduced.
  Some large enterprises that had dissolved or divided under the eco-
  nomic deconcentration reemerged after the end of the Occupation.
  The Mitsubishi Trading Company was revived in 1954, the Mitsui
  Trading Company in 1959, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1964, and
  the New Japan Steel Corporation in 1970. The zaibatsu's head offices
  may have disappeared, but the enterprises were reconcentrated into
  "enterprise groups" (keiretsu), centering on banks, through mutual
  stockholding and financing. Critics often referred to this as the "re-
  vival of the zaibatsu."
  The dissolution of the zaibatsu and the abolition of concentration
  permanently affected the economy. The concentration of production,
  which had been reduced by the antizaibatsu legislation, was further
  S The basic material on dissolving the zaibatsu can be found in Tokushu kaisha seiri iinkai, ed.,
  Nihon zaibatsu to tono kaitai (Tokyo, 1951). The standard work in English is by Eleanor M.
  Hadley, Antitrust in Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959).
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  498 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  diluted as a result of high growth. The competition among enterprises
  became livelier. Industrial firms not affiliated with the prewar zaibatsu
  expanded into large enterprises because of opportunities for new entry
  and enlargement of scale. Among the large postwar firms are many,
  such as Toyota, Hitachi, and New Japan Steel, that had no relation-
  ship to the prewar zaibatsu. The emergence of Kawasaki Steel and
  Sumitomo Metals as steel makers, the entry of Honda into the passen-
  ger car industry, and the rapid growth of Sony and Matsushita suggest
  that the Japanese industrial organization, on the whole, continued to
  be competitive. It can be said that this competitive industrial structure
  developed as a result of the postwar dissolution of the zaibatsu and the
  abolition of concentration.
  Labor reform. At the core of labor reform was the enactment of three
  labor laws: the Labor Union Law, modeled on the American Wagner
  Act and promulgated in December 1945, established the right of work-
  ers to organize and bargain collectively, exempted labor union activity
  from civil law, and defined unfair labor practices. The Labor Rela-
  tions Adjustment Law, promulgated in September 1946, defined the
  limits of strike behavior and established procedures for the settlement
  of labor disputes. The Labor Standards Law of April 1947 legislated
  improved working conditions, such as the prohibition of forced labor,
  the establishment of an eight-hour working day, the limitation of
  female and minor employment, and the provision of compensation for
  work-related injuries. These three laws, but especially the Labor
  Union Law, stimulated labor union activity.
  The labor union movement grew rapidly in the immediate postwar
  years. Because of the runaway inflation and the general impoverish-
  ment of the population, labor disputes were frequent. In 1948 the rate
  of unionization of the industrial work force (including workers in
  transport, construction, mining, and manufacturing) was over 50 per-
  cent, and the number of enrollees was 6.677 million. In some of the
  industrial disputes, the labor unions adopted aggressive tactics such as
  "production control," whereby the workers actually took over the
  management and control of production.
  A general strike organized by the public labor unions was planned
  for February 1, 1947, but the Occupation authorities prohibited the
  strike immediately before it was to begin. The confrontation between
  Occupation Policy and the labor movement became more pronounced
  in July 1948 when the government, in response to a letter from Gen-
  eral Douglas MacArthur, promulgated an ordinance that abolished the
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  POSTWAR ECONOMIC REFORM AND RECOVERY 
  499
  right of public employees to strike. For a long period thereafter, a
  struggle for control of the labor union movement ensued between
  those who considered political issues as primary and those who consid-
  ered economic issues as primary. As the union movement consolidated
  on the basis of "enterprise unions" that incorporated all the workers of
  a firm into a single union, "the principles of Japanese-style unionism,"
  stressing the primacy of economic issues, predominated. In 1955 so-
  called spring offensives (shunto) began, thereby routinizing the negotia-
  tions for wage hikes.
  The Occupation and its policies also had an indirect effect on the
  economy. First, the defeat ended Japan's attempts to increase its eco-
  nomic advantage through war and military means. On the contrary,
  under the protection of the American "nuclear umbrella," Japan did
  not need to spend much on defense, and so capital, human resources,
  and human energy could flow into more efficient activities. Second,
  under the American Occupation, the Japanese had sustained contact
  with a foreign country for the first time, and many more Japanese than
  ever before were able to observe firsthand the high American standard
  of living and the efficient organizational methods supporting it. Finally,
  the Occupation brought a change in Japan's elites. New leaders in
  politics, business, and the bureaucracy turned their energies toward the
  restoration of a vigorous economy in the midst of postwar confusion.
  Postwar economic policy
  The postwar leaders were faced with creating a new framework of
  economic policy responsive to the conditions created by defeat. In part
  this meant restoring the economy devastated by war; in part it meant
  bringing postwar inflation under control; and in part it meant estab-
  lishing the policy principles to be followed in promoting further eco-
  nomic development.
  Like all defeated countries in modern times, postwar Japan was
  beset by deep inflation. Prices had begun to rise during the war even
  under wartime price controls, and once the war ended, the inflationary
  pressures grew. Production stagnated but demand, suppressed during
  wartime, was ready to ignite. Public bonds and other kinds of financial
  assets had accumulated during the war, and if converted into cur-
  rency, they could fuel an explosive inflation. To deal with this situa-
  tion, the government in February 1946 adopted an emergency policy
  of restricting bank accounts, levying taxes on property, and control-
  ling prices. But these measures merely arrested inflation temporarily,
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  5OO 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 1 0 . 1
  Price trends (1934-6 average = 1.00)
  1946
  1950
  1955
  1960
  1965
  1970
  1973
  Wholesale
  price index
  16.27
  246.8
  343.0
  352.1
  359.4
  399.9
  463.3
  Annual rate
  of increase (%)
  97.3
  6.8
  0.5
  0.4
  2.2
  5.0
  Consumer
  price index
  50.6
  219.9
  297.4
  328.0
  443.2
  577.9
  719.5
  Annual rate
  of increase (%)
  _
  44.3
  6.2
  1.9
  6.2
  5.5
  7.5
  Source: Keizai kikakucho, Gettdai Nihon keizai no tenkai (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho, 1976), pp.
  616-18.
  and from 1946 to 1947, inflation took off. In 1946, wholesale prices
  were 16.3 times the 1934-6 levels, and by 1950 they were 246.8 times
  as high (see Table 1 o. 1).
  Restoring industrial production was also a major task. The immedi-
  ate postwar economy was in a state of collapse. The resumption of
  production was hindered by the disrupted inflow of raw materials
  from abroad. Until limited private trade was established in August
  1947, foreign trade was controlled by the Occupation authorities, and
  even after that date, the system of public management of trade re-
  mained basically unchanged. On the other hand, there was a positive
  legacy from the wartime economy, that is, capital stock in the heavy
  and chemical industries and an abundant supply of workers with expe-
  rience in modern industrial activity. Because it was not possible to rely
  on imported raw materials, the production bottleneck could be broken
  only by using domestic coal resources.
  Professor Arisawa Hiromi of Tokyo University proposed the so-
  called priority production method to stimulate industrial production.
  His plan envisaged first increasing the production of coal by concen-
  trating materials and capital in the coal-mining industry, then using
  the greater coal output to produce steel, and finally investing the
  increased steel output in the further increase of coal production. This
  method of lifting domestic production by its own bootstraps was the
  government's central policy in 1947-8. In order to implement the
  priority production method, the Yoshida cabinet established the Re-
  construction Finance Bank (Fukko kin'yu ginko), lent a large amount
  of capital to the coal industry, gave substantial price subsidies to the
  iron and steel industry, and set priorities for materials to key indus-
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  POSTWAR ECONOMIC REFORM AND RECOVERY 
  5OI
  tries.6 Consequently, in 1947 the output target for coal, 30 million
  tons, was just barely achieved.
  The priority production method is often regarded as a successful
  example of Japan's interventionist policy in the heavy and chemical
  industries and it is seen as leading later in the direction of "industrial
  policy" (sangyo seisaku). It certainly was an important stimulus to the
  resumption of production. Japan had no other way of bringing about
  the recovery of its economy than using the heavy and chemical indus-
  try base it had acquired by the end of the war. As U.S. Secretary of the
  Army Kenneth Royall noted in January 1948, "It is clear that Japan
  can not support itself as a nation of shopkeepers and craftsmen and
  small artisans any more than it can exist as a purely agricultural na-
  tion."7 But it would be a mistake to overestimate the significance of
  the priority production method. Japan used its existing plant capacity
  in its chemical and heavy industries but did not intend to expand its
  scale. Steel production was just 740,000 tons in 1947, no comparison
  with the 100 million tons produced in the 1970s. The priority produc-
  tion method was in effect a policy of "forced import substitution"
  developed during a period when the economy was closed to the outside
  world and raw material imports were curtailed. When the conditions
  that created it changed, it was abandoned.
  Even this degree of industrial recovery would not have been possi-
  ble if Japan had not been able to retain its chemical and heavy industry
  base. The initial postwar reparations policy recommended in the
  Pauley Report of December 1945 was to remove all equipment from
  Japan's war industry and to reduce drastically its capacity in such
  defense-related industries as steel, machine tool production, and mer-
  chant shipping. As the international situation changed and American
  economic policy toward Japan shifted away from punitive measures
  toward economic rehabilitation, these goals were modified.8 As Secre-
  tary of the Army Royall pointed out in his January 1948 speech, if
  Japan were to achieve political stability and retain its free government,
  it had to have a healthy independent economy; and furthermore, the
  United States could not continue to provide indefinitely hundreds of
  millions of dollars in aid to Japan.
  In response to the need to curtail inflation as well as to promote
  6 Noted in Kosai Yutaka, "Fukkoki," Nikon no sangyo seisaku, ed. Komiya Ryutaro (Tokyo:
  Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1984), pp. 30-4; Kosai Yutaka, Kodo seicho nojidai, ed. Komiya
  Ryutano et al. (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1981), pp. 44-58.
  7 Okurasho, ed., Shmva zaiseishi (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1982), vol. 20. p. 185.
  8 Ibid., p. 440.
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  5O2 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  Japan's economic recovery and self-sufficiency, the United States dis-
  patched Joseph M. Dodge, a Detroit banker who had planned cur-
  rency reforms in occupied Germany, to recommend changes in the
  Japanese government's economic policies. A believer in classic eco-
  nomic liberalism, Dodge recommended a series of policies that he
  regarded as necessary to establish economic stability that would enable
  recovery. The major points of the policy that Dodge set forth in March
  1949 were (1) balancing a consolidated national budget in order to
  reduce inflationary pressures; (2) terminating the activities of the Re-
  construction Finance Bank, whose loans were uneconomical; (3) de-
  creasing the scope of government intervention in the economy, espe-
  cially in the form of subsidies and price controls; (4) establishing an
  exchange rate of ¥360 to $1.00; and (5) returning to international
  trade through private channels instead of through government trading
  agencies. These policies continued in force for the next two and a half
  years, though with decreasing emphasis as the Korean War promoted
  growth. In the long run, the so-called Dodge line established the
  principles of balanced budgets, orthodox finance, stabilized prices,
  and a fixed exchange rate that constituted one side of government
  policy during the period of high growth.
  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
  The period of rapid economic growth was conditioned by macroeco-
  nomic conditions such as labor supply, capital accumulation, price
  trends, income distribution, and the growth of demand. All of these
  were interrelated in complex ways.
  j
  The increase in the labor force
  One of the conditions that enabled Japan's rapid economic growth was
  a smooth and abundant supply of labor. Japan had been overpopu-
  lated before the war, and there was a substantial population increase in
  the immediate postwar years as demobilized soldiers and repatriated
  inhabitants of Japan's overseas possessions returned home. According
  to a special census in 1947, the total population was 78.101 million, a
  marked increase over the 1940 census population (71.933 million) and
  the 1944 estimated population (74.433 million) (see Table 10.2). In
  1947, however, the country was in a state of economic dislocation, and
  employment was difficult to find. The number of employed had in-
  creased by only 846,000 compared with that of 1940, and the total
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 
  503
  TABLE 1 0 . 2
  Changes in population (in thousands)
  Employed in
  Total 
  Employed 
  Employed in 
  Employed in 
  wholesale and
  population 
  population 
  agriculture 
  manufacturing 
  retailing
  1940
  1947
  1950
  1955
  1960
  1965
  1970
  1975
  71,933
  78,101
  83,200
  89,276
  93,419
  98,275
  103,720
  111,940
  32,482
  33,328
  35,625
  39,621
  43,719
  47,633
  52,110
  53,015
  13,557
  16,622
  16,102
  14,890
  13,127
  10,857
  9,333
  6,699
  6,863
  5,439
  5,689
  6,902
  9,544
  11,507
  13,540
  13,158
  4,097
  2,477
  3,963
  5,472
  6,909
  8,563
  10,059
  11,364
  1948
  1950
  1955
  1960
  1965
  1970
  1973
  3,484
  3,616
  4,194
  4,511
  4,787
  5,153
  5,326
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol.
  l.p.29.
  TABLE 1 0 . 3
  Changes in the labor force
  Unemployment
  Worker population 
  Labor force as percentage 
  rate
  (in thousands) 
  of population 
  (%)
  64.6 
  0.7
  65.5 
  1.2
  70.8 
  1.8
  69.2 
  1.1
  65.7 
  0.8
  65.4 
  1.2
  64.7 
  1.3
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol.
  1, p. 58. Statistics are not continuous, and so accurate comparison is difficult.
  employment rate (that is, the number of employed divided by the total
  population) had declined from 45.2 percent to 42.7 percent. The distri-
  bution of employment had also changed radically. Whereas the num-
  ber of workers in manufacturing had declined by 1.400 million and in
  service industries by 600,000, the number of workers in agriculture
  had increased by 3 million. As these figures demonstrate, Japan in the
  immediate postwar period had a surplus of labor and a dearth of
  employment.
  Between 1948 and 1955, however, the working population increased
  at the high annual rate of 2.6 percent (see Table 10.3). There were two
  reasons: first, those born in the first half of the 1930s, when the
  birthrate was high, had reached working age; second, there was an
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  504 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  increase in the labor force as a proportion of the population. Although
  the number of workers had grown substantially, the rate of fully unem-
  ployed had also increased. The fact that there was much discussion of
  a "dual structure" in the labor market (that is, that wage differentials
  were related to the scale of enterprise) suggests that even in this period
  there was latitude in the demand for labor.
  The annual growth rate of the labor force decreased to 1.3 percent
  from the period 1955-1965 to the period 1965-1973. By international
  standards, this was not low. Even though the postwar baby boom
  increased the size of the working age population, the rate slowed down
  because (1) the wartime decrease in the birthrate resulted in a decline
  in the number of new entrants into the labor force between 1955 and
  i960; and (2) from i960 to 1965 many young people continued their
  education instead of entering the work force. The continuing slow-
  down in the expansion of the working population in the late 1960s
  reflected a decline in the birthrate after the end of the baby boom.
  Meanwhile, because the economy's growth rate continued to be high,
  the unemployment rate began to drop in the late 1950s. By the early
  1960s, wage differentials based on scale of enterprise had narrowed,
  and for the first time the number of jobs exceeded the number of new
  graduates. By 1967 the number of job openings exceeded the number
  of job seekers in the general labor market. The Japanese economy had
  reached a state of full employment.
  As the labor market moved from a surplus of labor to a shortage of
  labor, economic growth was sustained by a shift of workers among
  industrial sectors and the substitution of capital inputs for labor in-
  puts. The number of agricultural workers decreased by 1.7 million
  between 1945 and 1955, by 4 million between 1955 and 1965, and by
  4.2 million between 1965 and 1975. By contrast, the number of manu-
  facturing industry workers increased by 4.6 million between 1965 and
  1975 (see Table 10.3).
  The qualitative changes in the labor supply were as important as the
  quantitative changes. In prewar Japan, textile industry workers were
  the heart of the industrial work force, accounting for one-third of the
  industrial workers. Most typical were the female workers in the
  cotton-spinning industry who started working in their late teens after
  graduating from higher elementary school, to augment the family bud-
  get, and who quit their jobs in their twenties, to get married. Their
  working life was short; changes in the work force were frequent; and
  wages were low. The workers who played the leading role in industrial
  development from the wartime expansion of the chemical and heavy
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 
  505
  industries through the period of postwar growth were skilled male
  workers in the iron and steel and machine industries. They were
  lifetime employees; they acquired specific skills through on-the-job
  training; and they contributed positively to small-group production
  units within the enterprise. They expected improvements in wages
  and working conditions through seniority and economic growth. Com-
  pulsory education was extended from six to nine years, and the rate of
  those continuing their education increased so that the intellectual qual-
  ity of the work force also improved.
  Savings and capital accumulation
  The Pacific War inflicted enormous material damage on Japan,
  amounting to one-fourth of the national wealth (see Table 10.4). By
  the end of the war, the national wealth had declined to its 1935 level.
  In effect, the war nullified any capital accumulation between 1935 and
  1945. If we compare productive activities, however, it is clear that
  there was still some leeway in the economy. Real GNP fell to only half
  the prewar level. If we look at industries by sector, we can see that
  although the rate of capacity in the consumer goods industries was
  damaged because many factories had been converted to war produc-
  tion, by contrast, the damage rate was relatively low in the heavy and
  chemical industries. The steel and electric power generation industries
  even emerged from the war with plant capacity above prewar levels
  (see Table 10.5).
  As we have already seen, the first postwar attempt to stimulate
  industrial production-the priority production method-tried to com-
  bine this abundant capital stock with surplus labor. The bottleneck
  was the difficulty of obtaining raw material imports. After Japan was
  allowed access to foreign markets, its economic recovery proceeded
  rapidly. During the recovery period, investment in plant concentrated
  on repair and renewal. The marginal capital coefficient (i.e., the
  amount of investment necessary to increase the GNP by 1 percent)
  remained low.
  By 1955, when the level of economic activity had returned to prewar
  levels, investment in new facilities became necessary, as there had not
  been much investment during the recovery period. Japan's capital
  stock was becoming obsolete, weakening the international competitive-
  ness of Japanese industry. After the Korean War rationalization invest-
  ment began in a number of industries. By the latter half of the 1950s,
  Japanese industry was moving toward investment in modern produc-
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  TABLE 10.4
  Wartime damage to national wealth (¥1 million at time of defeat)
  Buildings
  Industrial machinery
  and equipment
  Shipping
  Electrical and
  gas equipment
  Railroad and
  rolling stock
  Telegraph, telephone,
  and water supply
  Producer goods
  Household
  property goods
  Other
  Total
  Amount of
  damage
  22,220
  7,994
  7,359
  1,618
  1,523
  659
  7,864
  9,558
  5,483
  64,278
  National
  wealth before
  damage
  90,435
  23,346
  9,125
  14,933
  15,415
  4,156
  32,953
  46,427
  16,340
  253,130
  Damage
  rate
  (%)
  24.5
  34.2
  80.6
  10.8
  9.8
  15.8
  23.8
  20.5
  33.5
  25.3
  National wealth
  remaining at
  end of war
  68,215
  15,352
  1,796
  13,313
  13,892
  3,497
  25,089
  36,869
  10,857
  188,852
  National
  wealth
  in 1935
  76,275
  8,501
  3,111
  8,987
  13,364
  3,229
  23,541
  39,354
  10,839
  186,751
  Rate of
  increase
  (%y
  410.6
  80.6
  442.3
  48.1
  4.0
  8.2
  6.6
  46.6
  4.5
  1.1
  "Delta (d) indicates decrease.
  Source: Keizai antei honbu, Taiheiyo senso niyoru viagakuni higai sogo hokukusho (Tokyo, 1949); Nakayama Ichiro, ed., Nikon no kokufu kozo (Tokyo: Toyo
  keizai shinposha, 1959).
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
  507
  TABLE 1 0 . 5
  Productive capacity at time of defeat (¥1 million at time of defeat)
  Rate of
  Peak capacity 
  Capacity as of 
  Percentage 
  Capacity at 
  increase
  before 1944 
  August 15,1945 
  remaining 
  end 1941 
  (%)
  Hydroelectric power
  (1,000s kw)
  Ordinary iron and
  steel materials
  (1,000s tons)
  Aluminum
  (tons per month)
  Machine tools
  (tons)
  Petroleum refining
  (1,000s kl)
  Soap
  (1,000s tons)
  Cotton and staple
  fiber spinning
  (million bolts)
  Cotton textile weaving
  (1,000s looms)
  Bicycles
  (1,000s)
  6,074
  7,998
  11,100
  190
  3,739
  278
  13.8
  393
  3,600
  6,233
  8,040
  8,350
  120
  1,443
  99
  2.8
  123
  720
  102.6
  100.5
  75.2
  63.1
  38.5
  35.9
  20.2
  31.4
  20.0
  5,368
  7,506
  7,240
  no
  2,359
  278
  13.8
  393
  2,880
  116.1
  107.1
  115.3
  109.1
  61.2
  54.5
  20.2
  31.4
  25.0
  Source: Keizai antei honbu, Taiheiyo senso niyoru wagakum higai sdgo hokukusho (Tokyo, 1949);
  Nakayama Ichiro, ed.,Nihon no kokufu kozo (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1959).
  tive facilities. New technologies were introduced, and the face of Japa-
  nese industry changed. This was known as the process whereby "in-
  vestment induced investment" (toshiga toshi oyobu). During the latter
  half of the 1960s, in response to labor shortages, investment in labor-
  saving technology began, and in the 1970s, investment in antipollution
  facilities started.
  The rate of increase in capital stock was 1 percent to 2 percent
  higher than the growth rate of the economy as a whole. The reason was
  that the expansion of plant investment was comparatively low from
  1945 to 1955 but rose rapidly after 1955. This high rate of capital
  formation was financed not from foreign capital but from the increase
  in domestic savings, particularly individual savings.
  The consumption expenditures of the average urban worker house-
  hold in 1946-7 amounted to more than 100 percent of his or her
  income. By 1955 that had dropped to 90.8 percent, a level similar to
  that of the prewar period (the 1934-6 average was 88.3 percent). As
  economic growth advanced, the propensity to consume continued to
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  508 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  decline, and the savings rate increased to twice the prewar rate. After
  1955 the Japanese economy was characterized by high savings and
  high investment.
  There are various hypotheses explaining the high rate of household
  savings. Some argue that because income grew more rapidly than ex-
  pected, consumption did not keep pace, with the result that savings
  increased; others point to the population's relative youth; and still oth-
  ers say that because housing and social welfare facilities lagged behind
  the rest of the economy, people accumulated savings for the future. But
  the period of high growth was also one in which more people considered
  themselves as reaching middle-class status, and the high savings rate
  may be connected to this change in social consciousness.
  Personal savings were not invested directly in business but were
  deposited in bank accounts. In turn, business enterprises financed
  their investment by borrowing from the banks. Under this system of
  "indirect finance," there emerged the low rate of self-capitalization
  among businesses that is so characteristic of the period of rapid
  growth.
  The balance-of-payments ceiling
  The most direct limitation on economic growth between 1945 and
  1973 was the international balance of payments. From the end of the
  war until 1955, it was feared that Japan would not be able even to
  finance basic imports of food and raw materials. Without aid from the
  United States or the special procurements program during the Korean
  War, when the American military bought supplies and repaired equip-
  ment in Japan, it would not have been possible to achieve balance-of-
  payments equilibrium during this period (see Table 10.6).
  After 1955 the balance-of-payments current account approached
  equilibrium. However, Japan had adopted a policy of vigorous domes-
  tic growth without dependence on foreign capital. Its foreign currency
  reserves were kept as low as possible, and any reserves that could be
  spared were used for the growth-oriented expansion of income and
  imports. At the same time the government also pursued a policy of
  maintaining the foreign exchange rate at ¥360 to $1.00, set in 1949.
  As a result, whenever there was a deficit in the balance-of-payments
  current account, the government had no choice but to decrease the
  tempo of economic expansion and to reduce imports in order to bring
  the international balance of payments back into equilibrium. When
  there were balance-of-payments deficits in 1954, 1957, 1961, and
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
  509
  TABLE 1 0 . 6
  International balance of payments (in thousands of$)
  1946-50
  1951-55
  1956-60
  1961-65
  1966-70
  1971-73
  Current
  transactions
  726
  525
  114
  -1,358
  6,201
  12,285
  Trade
  balance
  -958
  -1,964
  466
  1,955
  13,626
  20,466
  Nontrade
  balance
  -340
  2,211*
  -103
  -3,038
  -6,548
  -7,131
  Transfer
  balance
  2,005°
  277
  -248
  -275
  -877
  -1,030
  Long-term
  capital balance
  -79
  -110
  1
  321
  -3,605
  -15,319
  Total
  balance
  726
  464
  139
  -1,037
  4,525
  2,344
  Foreign
  exchange
  reserve
  _
  738
  1,824
  2,107
  4,399
  12,246
  "Including aid. 
  'Including special demand.
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol. 2,
  pp. 652,660.
  1963, the government adopted a tight money policy, helping the bal-
  ance of payments to recover relatively quickly.
  As the international competitiveness of Japanese industries im-
  proved between 1955 and 1965, the balance of the current account
  came into equilibrium. After 1965, a surplus in the current account
  grew gradually, and Japan built up its foreign currency reserves. The
  reason for this was that the price of Japanese export goods remained
  comparatively stable while inflation was spreading from the United
  States, then engaged in the Vietnam War, to other advanced industrial
  nations. This made Japanese products relatively cheap in the world
  market. In 1970, with a surplus in the current account, the Bank of
  Japan adopted a defensive tight money policy, and the result was a
  dramatic increase in Japan's balance-of-payments surplus. In order to
  cope with this surplus, the yen was revalued in 1971, and in 1973 it
  was moved to a floating rate.
  Price trends
  Even after the Dodge stabilization plan had braked the postwar run-
  away rise in prices, Japan continued to have to contend with infla-
  tion. When the Korean War broke out, inflationary trends resumed
  in 1951 and halted only in 1954 with the adoption of a tight money
  policy. The immediate postwar inflation had been led by a rise in
  consumer prices, but the Korean War's inflation was led by an in-
  crease in the price of producer goods. As a result of this inflation, the
  foreign exchange rate, which had been set low in 1949 at the time of
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  5IO 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  the Dodge stabilization, became relatively high. The international
  balance of payments went out of equilibrium, and the international
  competitiveness of Japanese industry weakened. In order to deal with
  these problems within the framework of a fixed exchange rate, Japan
  thought it necessary to curtail costs in its heavy and chemical indus-
  tries, and many industries began to invest in rationalizing and mod-
  ernizing their facilities.
  Between 1955 a nd i960, prices were relatively stable, but after
  i960, a new pattern of inflation appeared-wholesale prices remained
  stable but consumer prices rose. This pattern occurred as the result of
  the following mechanism:* First, under the system of fixed exchange
  rates, the economy was managed in such a way that if there were no
  worldwide inflation, export and wholesale prices would remain stable.
  Second, even though the wage gap between large and small enterprises
  was decreasing, owing to the shift from labor oversupply to labor
  shortage, there was still a gap between them in terms of productivity
  increases. Productivity rose in the large mass-production enterprises,
  but labor costs-and hence production costs-rose in labor-intensive
  small and medium manufacturing and service enterprises. Third, a
  rise in consumer prices was tolerated as long as it had no impact on
  wage increases, and hence on the price of export goods.
  In other words, although prices were stable in a sector in which the
  increase in productivity rate was high, prices and costs rose in those in
  which productivity was low. Increases in consumer prices were usually
  held down by low wages in sectors in which labor productivity was
  low, but when full employment eliminated those workers willing to
  work for low wages, "productivity gap" inflation of the kind described
  emerged.
  In the late 1960s there was a worldwide trend toward inflation. Under
  these circumstances, as long as a fixed exchange rate prevailed and an
  attempt was made to avoid an increase in balance-of-payments sur-
  pluses, the only way to accelerate the expansion of domestic demand
  was through fiscal means. In 1969 a tight money policy was adopted to
  avoid a rise in prices. As we have seen, this only expanded the surplus in
  the international balance of payments. Consequently, in the early 1970s
  the government tried to increase the money supply and to expand fiscal
  expenditures. As a result of these measures, as well as foreign inflation,
  by the fall of 1973 the wholesale price level in Japan had risen 20 percent
  9 The basic work on this subject is by Takasuka Yoshihiro, Gendai Nikon no bukka mondai, rev.
  ed. (Tokyo: Shinhyoron, 1975).
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 
  511
  TABLE 10.7
  Distribution of national income (as a percentage of national income)
  1935
  1946
  1950
  1955
  1960
  1965
  1970
  Employees'
  income
  38.0
  30.7
  41.8
  49.6
  50.2
  56.0
  54.3
  Self-employed
  income
  31.1
  65.4
  45.6
  37.1
  26.5
  23.4
  20.0
  Individual
  property
  income
  (%)
  23.4
  3.6
  3.1
  6.8
  9.8
  11.6
  11.7
  Corporation
  income
  8.7
  1.1
  9.9
  7.9
  14.3
  10.6
  15.8
  Ratio of employer
  income per capita
  to employee income
  per capita
  (%)
  _
  59.4
  57.6
  60.5
  64.8
  68.5
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol.
  1, p. 91. The number of self-employed persons, family employees, and self-employed income per
  person versus employee income per person is based on Keizai kikakucho, Gendai Nihon keizai no
  tenkai (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho, 1976), p. 599.
  higher than it had been a year before. At this point the Organization of
  Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised its prices, plunging Ja-
  pan into a surge of hyperinflation, or "crazy prices" (kyoran bukka). The
  policy of maintaining a fixed exchange rate helped prevent the develop-
  ment of inflation until the middle 1960s, but it had the opposite effect in
  the 1970s when there was worldwide inflation and Japanese industry
  had grown more competitive.
  Income distribution
  In regard to the distribution of national income (see Table 10.7) imme-
  diately after World War II, the income going to individual business
  owners expanded abnormally, but the shares of national income going
  to employee income, property income, and corporation income sub-
  stantially declined. This was because modern industrial production
  was paralyzed, and many people had become farmers or merchants in
  order to survive economically. As the postwar economy recovered, the
  shares of national income going to employee income and corporate
  income were rapidly restored, but the share of income from property
  remained low. The reason that property income stayed low was that
  income from tenant rents had virtually disappeared owing to land
  reform, and interest, land prices, and housing rents were controlled by
  the government to check inflation.
  In the period of rapid economic growth, employee and corporate
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  512 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  income shares steadily increased, and the share of individual business
  owners dropped below even prewar levels. The increase in corporate
  income reflected increases in business profit due to high investment
  and high economic growth. Changes in the occupational structure
  accounted for the greater income share of employees, who were grow-
  ing in number, and the decrease in the share for individual business
  owners, who along with family employees, were declining in number.
  But the per capita income of employees, as compared with the per
  capita income of individual business owners or family employees,
  shows the gap between them as narrowing.
  The distribution of individual income moved toward greater equal-
  ity. The postwar reforms-land reform, zaibatsu dissolution, and la-
  bor reform-all worked toward equality in income distribution. Post-
  war inflation and impoverishment, together with the 1946 levy of
  property tax, promoted an "equality of poverty." As the economic
  recovery progressed, income distribution showed signs of becoming
  less equal, but by about i960, with the reduction of wage differentials
  accompanying full employment, the trend toward equalization of in-
  come resumed, especially with respect to wages. During the period of
  rapid growth, Japan, among all the advanced industrial nations, be-
  came the country with the most equal income distribution.10
  Equality of income distribution was a precondition for the spread of
  middle-class consciousness among the population. By the 1960s nearly
  90 percent of the Japanese people felt that they enjoyed a middle-class
  standard of living (see Table 10.8). This middle-class consciousness
  spurred the rapid diffusion of durable consumer goods, a rising rate of
  children entering universities, a strong desire for home ownership, and
  a high savings rate, all of wh,ich stimulated economic growth. The
  development of mass-production industries supplying materials needed
  to make consumer durables increased the demand for labor, accelerated
  the achievement of full employment, facilitated the movement of the
  labor force, and stimulated the more equal distribution of income. In
  turn, these fostered a Japanese-style mass-consumption market econ-
  omy in which an expanding demand for consumer durables coexisted
  with a high savings rate. This dynamic logic of industrial society sus-
  tained the high growth rate.
  10 M. Sawyer, Income Distribution in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 1976). Tachibanaki
  Yoshiaki, "Shunyu bunpai to shotoku bunpu no fubyodo," Kikan gendai keizai, no. 28
  (1977): 160-75. Using Sawyer's work, Tachibanaki calculated the Gini coefficient for the
  distribution of gross (pretax) income as follows: Japan 0.335, Sweden 0.356, West Germany
  0.396, American 0.404, and OECD average 0.366.
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 
  513
  TABLE 10.8
  Increase in middle-class consciousness
  Upper
  Upper middle
  Middle
  Lower middle
  (Subtotal)
  Lower
  Not clear
  Total
  1958
  0
  3
  37
  32
  (72)
  17
  11
  100
  1964
  1
  1
  50
  31
  (87)
  9
  3
  100
  /967
  1
  8
  51
  28
  (87)
  8
  4
  100
  .Source:Keizai kikakucho, Gendai Nihon keizai no tenkai (Tokyo:
  Keizai kikakucho, 1976), p. 207.
  TABLE 1 0 . 9
  Increases in demand items (annual percentage rate)
  Final private consumption
  Private housing
  Private enterprise
  plant facilities
  Final government
  consumption
  Public capital formation
  Exports
  Imports
  Gross national expenditure
  1946-50
  10.2
  fl.9
  <I
  13.4
  4 9.2
  99.5
  25.1
  9.4
  1950-55
  9.9
  f 10.2
  <
  I
  2.4
  23.3
  13.9
  18.1
  8.9
  1955-60
  7.8
  14.4
  22.2
  2.6
  12.2
  13.0
  16.9
  8.5
  1960-65
  9.0
  17.4
  10.8
  7.1
  16.2
  14.7
  13.2
  10.0
  1965-70
  9.7
  14.0
  22.2
  5.1
  10.8
  15.4
  17.1
  12.3
  1970-75
  6.2
  5.3
  1.1
  5.6
  6.8
  11.8
  6.7
  5.0
  Source: Kokumin shotoku tokei: 1946-55: Keizai kikakucho, Gendai Nihon keizai no tenkai (Tokyo:
  Keizai kikakucho, 1976), pp. 578-9. 1955-65, 1965-75: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokuseisoran
  (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 99-100. Figures based on old SNA.
  The growth of demand
  The postwar Japanese economy maintained a rapid growth within the
  limits imposed by its balance of payments and without relying on
  foreign capital. Substantial savings, an abundant supply of labor, do-
  mestic investment, and consumption demand made this possible. If
  we look at the GNP from 1946 to 1955 as classified by demand items,
  the increase in individual consumption is remarkable. Since 1955 the
  expansion of investment in public facilities has also been striking, and
  until 1970 exports showed a tendency to rise as well (see Table 10.9).
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  514 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 10.10
  Household expenses of urban workers
  1935
  1946
  1950
  1955
  1960
  1965
  1970
  1973
  Engels coefficient
  36.4
  66.4
  57.4
  44.5
  38.8
  36.3
  32.4
  30.4
  Average propensity
  to consume (%)
  88.4
  125.9
  98.1
  90.8
  85.1
  83.2
  80.1
  77.8
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Shawa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai
  shinposha, 1980), vol. 2, p. 358.
  The reason for the expansion of consumer demand in the postwar
  reconstruction was that during the war, Japan's living standards had
  dropped dramatically, almost to subsistence levels. This stimulated
  the pressure toward recovery. Once recovery was accomplished, invest-
  ment in the modernization of plant became more active, and the expan-
  sion of consumption was sustained by the diffusion of consumer dura-
  bles. The process by which mass production developed in Japan was
  also the process by which it became a mass-consumer society.
  In response to industrial development, people changed both their
  jobs and their residences. From 1955 to 1970 the number of employees
  increased 15.22 million, from 18.17 to 33-39 million; the cities' popula-
  tion increased from 50 to 75 million, and their percentage of the total
  population increased from 56.3 to 72.1 percent. The shift toward
  employment (excluding self-employment) and urbanization went hand
  in hand.
  Consumption levels also doubled during this period. If we look at
  the consumption content of an urban worker's household budget, we
  can see that the Engels coefficient dropped from 44.5 percent in 1955
  to 32.4 percent in 1970 (see Table 10.10). By contrast, the amount
  spent on acquiring appliances increased 8.5 times, and cultural and
  entertainment expenses rose 5.1 times.
  In 1957, 7.8 percent of nonagricultural households owned black-
  and-white television sets, but by 1965 the rate had increased to 95
  percent. During the same period, the number of households owning
  electric or gas refrigerators changed from 2.8 to 68.7 percent, and that
  for washing machines from 20.1 to 78.1 percent (see Table 10.11).
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  MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 
  515
  TABLE 1 0 . 1 1
  Diffusion of consumer durable goods (percentage of nonfarming
  households)
  Black-and-white television sets
  Color television sets
  Sewing machines
  Stereo sets
  Tape recorders
  Cameras
  Cars
  Electric or gas refrigerators
  Washing machines
  Vacuum cleaners
  Air conditioners
  1957
  7.8
  _
  61.9
  4.0
  _
  35.7
  _
  2.8
  20.2
  _
  -
  1960
  44.7
  _
  69.5
  _
  -
  45.8
  _
  10.1
  40.6
  7.7
  -
  1965
  95.0
  _
  83.9
  20.1
  20.2
  64.8
  10.5°
  68.7
  78.1
  48.6
  2.6
  1970
  90.1
  30.4
  84.5
  36.6
  35.3
  72.1
  22.6
  92.5
  92.1
  75.4
  8.4
  1975
  49.7
  90.9
  84.8
  55.6
  54.9
  82.4
  37.4
  97.3
  97.7
  93.7
  21.5
  "Including light vans.
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei sdran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1980), vol.
  2, pp. 603-4.
  The ownership of durable consumer goods continued to rise in the
  latter half of the 1960s, though consumer preferences shifted toward
  expensive goods. In 1967, only 2.2 percent of nonagricultural house-
  holds owned color televisions, but by 1975, 90.9 percent did. The
  ownership of automobiles also increased from 11 percent in 1967 to
  37.4 percent in 1975 and that of air conditioners from 2.6 to 21.5
  percent. These durable consumer goods, called by such names as the
  "three household sacred items" or "three C's," were proof of Japan's
  emergence as a mass-consumption society. Because most of the Japa-
  nese people considered themselves as belonging to the middle class, it
  was easy for their life-styles to become homogeneous. This encouraged
  the rapid diffusion of consumer durables, as people tried to keep up
  with their neighbors.
  The major increase in employment that accompanied Japan's indus-
  trial development reduced the number of lower-income employees and
  equalized income distribution. If wages in companies with more than
  500 workers are given an index of 100, wages of enterprises with 30 to
  99 workers were at an index of only 58.8 in 1955, but by 1965 this had
  risen to 71. Within enterprises, wage differentials by job category were
  comparatively low.
  As noted earlier, by 1970, among all the advanced countries, Japan
  enjoyed the most equitable distribution of individual income. Japan's
  rate of home ownership was lower than in the United States but higher
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  516 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  than that in Western Europe. The rate of students continuing their
  education beyond the compulsory level increased from 47.4 percent in
  1955 to 79.4 percent in 1970, and the rate of students entering colleges
  and universities increased from 17.2 to 24.2 percent (these rates in-
  creased by 1975, to 91.9 percent and to 38.4 percent).
  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE
  The most significant development in the Japanese economy from the
  end of the war until 1973 was its emergence as one of the world's most
  advanced industrial powers.
  Industrial rationalization plans
  Beginning in the early 1950s the government coordinated a series of
  rationalization plans in Japan's key industries. Whereas the major goal
  of "priority production" had been to resuscitate the coal and steel
  industries, the main aim of industrial rationalization was to reduce the
  costs in these industries. The Korean War stimulated demand in Ja-
  pan and vitalized Japanese industry, but prices rose sharply, making
  Japanese goods expensive. The increase in coal and steel prices re-
  duced the international competitiveness of machinery and other indus-
  tries. Rationalization plans aimed at modernizing plant facilities were
  undertaken in order to bring down these production costs.
  During the first steel rationalization plan, it was anticipated that ¥63
  billion would be invested between 1951 and 1954. In fact, actual invest-
  ment reached ¥120 billion by 1953. Old-style pull-over plants were
  replaced by strip mills which made the rolling process more efficient.
  The government launched the development of a major industrial park
  in Chiba Prefecture on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay. In 1953 the
  Kawasaki Steel Company, a new entrant into the industry, opened in
  the park the most modern integrated steel facility in the world. Located
  on the waterfront, the production line was a continuous process from
  the delivery of raw materials to the blast furnace to steel production to
  rolling. Other, better-established steel-producing firms soon followed
  suit with the construction of similar facilities. The first rationalization
  plan substantially modernized the Japanese steel industry.
  By contrast, in the coal industry, which realized great profits during
  the Korean War when excess demand produced coal shortages every-
  where, plans to rationalize production through investment in the intro-
  duction of advanced mining technology from West Germany and the
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  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE 
  517
  digging of deep shafts never materialized. Because the quality of Ja-
  pan's coal deposits was poor, it was not possible to achieve the cost
  reductions needed to make the industry competitive internationally.
  In addition, when a lengthy coal strike occurred in the fall of 1952, key
  industries reduced their reliance on coal as an energy source and
  shifted to oil and electric power.
  Apart from attempts at rationalization in the steel and coal indus-
  tries, rationalization through technological innovation took place in
  other industries in the early 1950s. In the electric power industry,
  hydroelectric power was developed on a large scale, and thermal
  model plants were imported; in the shipbuilding industry, new meth-
  ods for the construction of ocean ships were introduced; in the ammo-
  nium sulfate industry, production shifted from electrolysis to the gas
  method; and efforts were made to nurture the synthetic fiber industry.
  Just as the priority production method had attempted to restore
  postwar production by using existing prewar and wartime plants in
  isolation from the world market, the industrial rationalization plans of
  the early 1950s tried to lower costs by renewing and modernizing its
  production facilities and by improving Japan's international competi-
  tiveness under a fixed exchange rate. These plans assumed an open
  world market. Investment in rationalization also helped reduce produc-
  tion costs.
  Whereas priority production had been carried out by means of di-
  rect government controls, industrial rationalization plans were gener-
  ally implemented as independent plans carried out by private business
  enterprises. To be sure, the government intervened in the process,
  making it a kind of joint venture between the government and key
  private enterprises, but the government did not use price controls
  (price subsidies) or commodity controls to achieve its ends. Instead, it
  relied on other methods. In March 1951 the Japan Development Bank
  (Nihon kaihatsu ginko) was established to promote capital accumula-
  tion and rapid economic growth. In March 1952 the Enterprises Ratio-
  nalization Act was passed and the Special Tax Measures Law was
  amended to assist developing industries. The government had an arse-
  nal of new methods to promote the development of industries specially
  targeted for rationalization-special tax treatment, subsidy of interest
  on shipbuilding, loan of government funds through institutions like
  the development bank, the establishment of the Electrical Power
  Source Development Company (Dengen kaihatsu KK), the use of
  import quotas, controls over the import of foreign capital, and "admin-
  istrative guidance." The popular notion in the 1970s that there was a
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  5l8 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  so-called Japan Incorporated, a close alliance between government and
  business, with the government directly guiding the activities of private
  firms, rested largely on impressions of how the Japanese economy
  operated during this period. But it would be a mistake to regard Japan
  as a "planned economy" or the government as an "economic general
  staff even in this period. Government and business did share informa-
  tion with each other and made their views known to each other, but
  the final investment decisions were in the hands of the business firms.
  The development of technical innovation
  Between 1955 and 1965, investment for modernization was in full
  swing. In the steel industry, the second rationalization plan followed
  the success of the first rationalization plan. Most noticeably it pro-
  vided for substantial construction of shoreline mills for pig iron pro-
  duction and the widespread diffusion of strip mills and pure oxygen
  converters. The first rationalization plan, devised when the industry's
  base was weak, attempted to reduce production costs and relied on
  government loans. By contrast, the second plan modernized facilities
  in order to increase capacity in anticipation of increased demand.
  Because the industry also expected high profits, it relied less on govern-
  ment funding. Whereas the first rationalization plan required an in-
  vestment of ¥120 billion, the second plan used an investment of over
  ¥500 billion. When the second rationalization plan ended, Japan's
  iron and steel output exceeded that of France, Germany, and Britain,
  rising to second place behind the United States. In number of hot strip
  mills, Japan was second only to the United States, and it achieved first
  place in the efficiency of its pure oxygen converters and in the ratio of
  coke used to steel ingots produced. In other words, both quantita-
  tively and qualitatively, Japan had become a first-class producer of
  iron and steel.
  Under both priority production and the industrial rationalization
  plans of the early 1950s, coal had ranked in importance with the iron
  and steel industry as a key industry. The coal industry, however, failed
  to overcome its natural disadvantages through rationalization invest-
  ment. Moreover, labor-management relations within the industry dete-
  riorated, and the supply of coal became less stable. For that reason,
  energy demand continued to shift from coal to electric power and oil.
  Japanese industry could develop even faster if it shifted from a high-cost
  domestic resource to a cheaper foreign resource, namely, petroleum. At
  this time, new oil fields were being discovered in the Middle East, and
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  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE 
  519
  the price of crude oil was dropping dramatically. Further savings in
  energy costs were achieved through the use of high-speed supertankers,
  which reduced the cost of transporting oil to Japan.
  The electric power industry was also changing. Before 1955 the indus-
  try had relied primarily on hydroelectric power and only secondarily on
  thermal power, but then the relationship was reversed, with the pri-
  mary reliance shifting to thermal power generation. In 1955 when the
  construction of thermal plants using heavy oil began, hydroelectric
  power plants produced 7.48 million kilowatts, and the thermal plants
  produced only 4.1 million, but by 1961, hydroelectric power and ther-
  mal power accounted for approximately the same amount, 9.444 million
  kilowatts and 9.75 million kilowatts, respectively. The scale of thermal
  plant capacity increased from 58,000 in 1958 to 2.2 million in i960 and
  3.75 million in 1965. The reasons that hydroelectric power declined as
  the principal source of electrical power were, first, that the number of
  sites suitable for the construction of hydroelectric plants decreased and,
  second, that the importation of energy resources was a way of overcom-
  ing the limitation of domestic resources.
  The shift to new sources of energy also affected the chemical indus-
  try. A flourishing carbide industry, relying on hydroelectric power,
  had supplied carbide for the domestic production of vinyl chloride,
  acetate, and other chemical products. But in the late 1950s a new
  petrochemical industry producing polyethylene and polystyrene devel-
  oped, relying on imported naptha and the introduction of new naptha-
  cracking technology.
  Parallel to the technical innovation in producer goods industries,
  there was also a technical innovation in the production of consumer
  durables. Mass-production methods were introduced to meet the do-
  mestic demand for automobiles and home electric appliances such as
  television sets and refrigerators, as well as the export of sewing'ma-
  chines, transistor radios, and cameras."
  Around 1950 there had been debates about whether Japan should
  rely for its supply of automobiles on imports or whether it should try
  to develop a domestic automobile industry under protection. The out-
  come was the goal of developing a protected domestic automobile
  industry, and many automobile companies tried to acquire technology
  through technical tie-ups with foreign automobile manufacturers. In
  1955, Toyota, the top producer of automobiles, had a five-year mod-
  11 The i960 Nenji keizai hokoku analyzed the period as "a period in which the machine tools
  industry led the development of industry." Keizai kikakucho chosakyoku, Shiryo: keizai ha-
  kusho 25 run (Tokyo: Keizai kikakucho, 1972), pp. 214-15.
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  520 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  ernization plan with a monthly production target of only three thou-
  sand vehicles. But the modernization of its production facilities acceler-
  ated, and the scale of production greatly expanded. By around i960,
  when Toyota built a compact car plant at Motomachi and Nissan built
  one at Oppama, each new plant projected a monthly production of ten
  thousand vehicles. New mass-production equipment such as transfer
  machines and automatic braces were also introduced.
  The mass production of motor vehicles had a major impact on
  related industries. First, in the iron and steel industry, thin-plate
  production progressed rapidly. Investment in plant modernization,
  such as the installation of strip mills, supported the mass production
  of automobiles. Second, a specialty steel and machine tool industry,
  whose production volume earlier had been limited by a small market,
  was presented with new opportunities as the mass production of
  automobiles grew. The value of the output of machine tools in 1955
  was ¥5 billion, but by 1962 it had reached ¥100 billion, twenty
  times as much, and its international competitiveness was also strong.
  In 1956 Toyota and related industries began using the now-famous
  kanban method (also known as the "zero inventory method" or "just-
  in-time production"). Subcontracting firms bought secondhand ma-
  chinery from parent companies, enabling them to begin mechaniza-
  tion and rationalization, leading to an expansion of the machine tool
  market.
  In the electrical machine industry, conditions were about the same.
  The improvement in the quality of steel silicon plate provided the
  basis for mass production. Small- to medium-sized enterprises related
  to radio and television production also were rationalized and devel-
  oped into an export industry.
  The modernization of Japanese industry relied on the introduction
  of foreign technology. During the war, Japan had been technologically
  isolated from the rest of the world, and by the war's end a major
  technological gap existed. But this gap was soon closed by the massive
  introduction of technologies from foreign companies. In the early
  1950s, technologies were introduced through technical tie-ups with
  foreign firms in the automobile industry (Nissan and Austin, Isuzu
  and Hillman), television production (NEC and RCA), and nylon
  (Toyo Rayon and DuPont). From the late 1950s and during the 1960s,
  both the number of technologies imported and the payments for them
  increased, further improving Japan's technological standards (see Ta-
  ble 10.12).
  Because Japan did not encourage direct foreign investment after
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE 
  $21
  TABLE 1 0 . 1 2
  Technological imports
  1949-55
  1956-60
  1961-65
  1966-70
  1971-75
  Items imported
  1,141
  1,773
  4,494
  7,589
  10,789
  Price paid
  (U.S. dollars)
  69 million
  281 million
  684 million
  1.536 billion
  3.205 billion
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyo keizai
  shinposha, 1980), vol. 1, p. 662.
  World War II, this introduction of foreign technology was achieved
  through technical cooperation without capital tie-ups. The "commer-
  cialization of technology" was the only possible way to achieve techno-
  logical innovation while avoiding foreign control of Japanese business.
  Many foreign firms were willing to sell their technology because the
  Japanese market was regarded as too small to be worth developing. The
  cost of acquiring foreign technology was often quite expensive for indi-
  vidual Japanese firms, but technical innovations enormously increased
  the productivity of Japanese industry. The Japanese also tried to im-
  prove upon the technology that they imported. Often such improve-
  ments were made as a new technology was applied to the production
  process, thereby enhancing Japan's international competitiveness.
  The government expanded its policies of nurturing new growth indus-
  tries such as petrochemicals and machine tools as well as such estab-
  lished basic industries as steel, coal, and shipbuilding. In 1955 the
  government adopted the Petrochemical Industry Development Policy
  and in 1956 passed the Temporary Measure for the Promotion of the
  Machine Tool Industry. The heart of industrial development policy lay
  in special tax measures and loans from the Japan Development Bank,
  but other measures were used as well, such as foreign currency allot-
  ments, the licensing of foreign capital imports through technical tie-
  ups, and other forms of administrative guidance.12 The role played by
  active competition among enterprises and an energetic entrepreneurial
  spirit in economic growth was large, and so the effect of government
  protection and development policies should not be overestimated. Nev-
  ertheless, the 1956 law promoting the machine tool industry, for exam-
  12 Kosai, "Fukkoki," pp. 38-42.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  522 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  pie, was successful in promoting or rationalizing and modernizing the
  small- and medium-sized machinery producers.
  Liberalization of trade, foreign exchange, and capital
  Until the 1960s, foreign trade, foreign exchange, and capital move-
  ments were under government control, as they had been during war-
  time. Major resources were scarce, and it was felt that a free market
  would not achieve an optimal allocation of resources for economic
  reconstruction. But once the economy had recovered from its postwar
  dislocation and its involvement in the world market had increased,
  there was strong foreign pressure on the Japanese, especially from the
  United States, to liberalize these controls. Foreigners saw import liber-
  alization as a means of increasing their imports, and some Japanese
  argued that import competition would improve the efficiency of Japa-
  nese enterprises.
  In June i960 the government adopted the outline Plan for the Liber-
  alization of Foreign Trade and Foreign Exchange which aimed at
  raising the liberalization rates from 40 percent (as of March i960) to 80
  percent within three years. The plan was subsequently revised, and by
  October 1962 the liberalization rate had reached 88 percent (see Table
  10.13). In l9&3 Japan became an International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  Article 8 country, which meant that it could no longer place restric-
  tions on foreign exchange, and in 1964 it joined the Organization for
  Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international
  consultative body founded in 1961 to promote the liberalization of
  trade and capital movements. By the beginning of the 1970s, in order
  to deal with growing surpluses in the international balance of pay-
  ments, Japan renewed its efforts to liberalize trade.
  Japan's participation in the OECD brought the liberalization of
  capital. In June 1967 the government adopted the Fundamental Plan
  for Capital Liberalization. The first stage of liberalization took place in
  July 1967, permitting a 50 percent liberalization in 33 industries and
  100 percent in 17 others (including shipbuilding and steel). The sec-
  ond liberalization stage took place in February 1969, when 50 percent
  liberalization was permitted in 160 categories and 100 percent in 44.
  The third stage took place in September 1970, and a fourth in August
  1971. In April 1971 capital liberalization was applied to the automo-
  bile industry, and in 1974, 50 percent liberalization was permitted in
  electronic computers and 100 percent in real estate.
  Japan's adoption of liberalization measures was regarded by foreign
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE 
  523
  TABLE 10.13
  Rate of liberalization (percentages)
  1959 (end of Aug.)
  1959 (end of Sept.)
  1960 (end of Apr.)
  1960 (end of July)
  1960 (end of Oct.)
  1961 (end of Apr.)
  1961 (end of July)
  1961 (end of Oct.)
  26
  33
  40
  42
  44
  62
  65
  68
  1961 (end of Dec.)
  1962 (end of Apr.)
  1962 (end of Oct.)
  1963 (end of Apr.)
  1963 (end of Aug.)
  1965 (end of Feb.)
  1966 (end of Oct.)
  1967 (end of Apr.)
  70
  33
  88
  89
  92
  94
  95
  97
  Note: Months are indicated in which there were changes in the liberalization rate.
  Source: Keizai kikakucho, Gendai Nihon keizai no tenkai (Tokyo: keizai kikakucho, 1976), p.
  146.
  critics as being tardy in comparison with liberalization among the
  Western European countries. In Japan many took the view that the
  international competitiveness of Japanese industries and enterprises
  was weak and that liberalization would have an adverse impact on
  them. Controls on imports and capital were needed to protect infant
  industries or noncompetitive industries and also employment in the
  industries affected. When it became clear that liberalization was inevi-
  table, many argued that Japanese industry had to be made more com-
  petitive in order to cope with its effects.
  The announcement of plans to liberalize foreign trade and foreign
  exchange in i960 stimulated investment in new plant facilities, as did
  the announcement of Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato's Income Dou-
  bling Plan, which proposed doubling the national income in the next
  ten years. The result was an acceleration of the modernization invest-
  ment boom of the early 1960s. By contrast, the capital liberalization
  policies of the late 1960s provided one of the main reasons for a rise in
  the number of company mergers and amalgamations. The most impor-
  tant of these were the amalgamation of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in
  1964, the amalgamation of the Nissan and Prince automobile compa-
  nies in 1965, the amalgamation of the Nissho and Iwai trading compa-
  nies in 1968, the merger of the Yawata and Fuji steel companies in
  1970, and the merger of the Daiichi and Nihon Kangyo banks in 1971.
  Although these mergers may not have promoted modernization in the
  same way that plant investment did, they did not necessarily harm
  Japan's international competitive position.
  Liberalization, as it turned out, did not hinder high economic
  growth but, on the contrary, was one of main factors stimulating and
  accelerating it. As a result of liberalization, the Japanese economy also
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  524 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 10.14
  Production and exports, classified by heavy and light
  industries (in ¥1 billion)
  I9S1
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  7955
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  I960
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  7965
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  7970
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  7975
  Heavy industries
  Light industries
  Production
  2,570
  2,293
  4,053
  2,956
  11,786
  4,905
  21,624
  8,757
  55,772
  17,718
  98.S43
  29,372
  Exports
  199
  274
  330
  360
  741
  572
  2,029
  756
  5,180
  1,182
  14,059
  1,549
  Source: Uno Kimio, Input-Output Table in Japan 1951-80, Tsukuba
  University Department of Social Engineering-Multiple Statistic Data
  Bank Report no. 14 R2 (November 1983). Industrial numbers: Heavy
  industry (11 to 22); light industry (4 to 10,23).
  became more closely linked with the world economy. At the same
  time, the elimination of controls on foreign exchange, foreign trade,
  and capital movements reduced the intervention of government in
  domestic industry and promoted the market economy in Japan.
  The expansion of exports
  In the mid-1960s many people thought that the period of high growth
  was coming to an end. The economy was heading toward a recession.
  There was a wave of large-scale bankruptcies, the most dramatic being
  the management crisis of the Yamaichi Securities Company, and the
  Bank of Japan made special loans in order to avoid a financial crisis.
  But despite this, the economy continued to grow even faster than
  before, sustained not only by investment in industrial plant and grow-
  ing consumer demand but also by exports.
  Traditionally, textiles had been Japan's principal export industry,
  whereas its chemical and heavy industries depended on domestic de-
  mand. According to Table 10.14, production in heavy industry (met-
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE CHANGING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE
  525
  TABLE 10.15
  Major export items
  Synthetic textiles
  Organic Pharmaceuticals
  Plastics
  Iron and steel
  Metal products
  Office machines
  Metal-processing machinery
  Textile machinery"
  Television sets'
  Radios'
  Tape recorders
  Automobiles'
  Motorbikes'
  Ships
  Precision instruments
  Watches'*
  1930
  ¥1,000
  _
  _
  8,579
  22,428
  —
  _
  3,852
  _
  _
  -
  _
  _
  5,452
  2,727
  1,463
  1950
  ¥100
  million
  3
  6
  260
  93
  0.4
  5
  68
  0.3
  -
  2
  0.3'
  94
  28
  4
  1960
  ¥100
  million
  116
  45
  115
  1,397
  532
  6
  28
  371
  10
  521
  34
  281
  29
  1,037
  346
  13
  1970
  ¥100
  million
  2,252
  1,436
  1,536
  10,237
  2,569
  1,186
  417
  1,172
  1,382
  2,502
  1,623
  4,815
  1,381
  5,075
  2,261
  466
  1975
  ¥100
  million
  3,863
  3,653
  2,958
  30,165
  5,346
  2,307
  1,342
  2,323
  2,326
  3,933
  1,879
  18,392
  3,430
  17,803
  5,420
  1,360
  "Including sewing machines. 
  'Except parts.
  'Including three-wheel motor vehicles.
  •Table clocks and wall clocks.
  Source: Okurasho, Nihon boeki geppyo (Tokyo: Nihon kanzei kyokai, 1966-76) and Gaikoku
  boeki geppyo (Tokyo: 1928-30). Sorifu tokeikyoku, Nihon tokei nenkan (Tokyo: Mainichi
  shinbunsha 1950-60).
  als, chemicals, machinery, etc.) had overtaken production in light indus-
  try (textiles, etc.) by 1955, but light industry exported not only more of
  its production but also a higher proportion of its production. This
  reflected the traditional pattern. But after i960, even though light indus-
  try still exported a high percentage of its production, heavy industry
  exported even more. By 1965 exports as a percentage of total production
  was the same; by 1965 heavy industry exported a higher proportion of
  its production than did light industry; and by 1975 heavy industry had
  far outdistanced light industry. Although heavy industry's dependence
  on foreign markets increased, light industry withdrew from the export
  market and relied primarily on domestic demand.
  The extraordinary expansion of passenger automobile exports after
  1965 was a typical example of this shift. In 1971, Japan exported 1.78
  million automobiles, or 63.7 percent more than in the previous year.
  The export of television sets, tape recorders, and other electronic
  goods also became more important (see Table 10.15). According to
  business surveys at the time, many firms entered the 1970s intending
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  526
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 10.16
  Major import items
  Meat"
  Seafood
  Wheat
  Corn
  Soy beans
  Sugar
  Wool
  Cotton
  Iron ore
  Copper ore
  Raw rubber
  Timber
  Coal*
  Crude petroleum
  Petroleum products
  Liquefied petroleum gas
  Liquefied natural gas
  Organic Pharmaceuticals
  1930
  ¥1,000
  8,871
  19,023
  41,509
  3,749
  36,664
  25,972
  73,609
  362,046
  18,955
  _
  17,930
  53,078
  34,203
  QQ C£C
  O7,JUJ
  -
  —
  -
  1950
  ¥100
  million
  0.5
  1.6
  530
  5
  86
  166
  214
  989
  51
  0.8
  145
  10
  38
  88
  64
  -
  _
  2.9
  1960
  ¥100
  1970
  ¥100
  million 
  million
  51
  15
  637
  292
  387
  400
  955
  1,553
  769 
  A
  254 
  1
  638
  613 
  5
  508 
  3
  1,674 
  8
  487 
  1
  o nnnn4
  U*vUuv7
  182
  523
  942
  1,146
  ,465
  ,317
  ,022
  ,254
  ,695
  1,350
  ,809
  542
  ,659
  ,636
  ,048
  ,980
  293
  83
  816
  1975
  ¥100
  million
  1,962
  3,554
  3,315
  3,376
  2,795
  4,992
  1,527
  2,512
  6,518
  2,399
  558
  7,768
  10,246
  58,317
  4,017
  2,302
  1,176
  1,437
  'Including whale. 
  'Mostly raw coal.
  Source: Okurasho, Nihon boeki geppyo (Tokyo: Nihon kanzei kyokai, 1966-76) and Gaikoku
  boeki geppyo (Tokyo: 1928-30). Sorifu tokeikyoku: Nihon tokei nenkan (Tokyo: Mainichi
  Shinbunsha 1950-60).
  to increase their dependence on the export market. Behind this ten-
  dency for Japanese industry to increase its exports was the strengthen-
  ing of its industrial competitiveness caused by the inflation in the
  United States created by the expansion of the Vietnam War while the
  exchange rate remained fixed at ¥360 to $1.00. The rapid rise in
  exports, however, caused economic friction between the two coun-
  tries, with the result that Japan placed voluntary restrictions on the
  export of iron and steel in 1968 and textiles in 1971.
  Fuel resources continued to be Japan's major imports. According to
  Table 10.16, the dependence on imported energy sources increased
  after the 1950s. In 1955 domestic energy sources accounted for 76
  percent of the energy supply, and imports accounted for 24 percent; in
  1965 domestic sources accounted for only 33.8 percent, and imports
  made up 66.2 percent; and in 1970 domestic sources had fallen to 16.5
  percent, and imports had risen to 83.5 percent.'* Apart from fuels, the
  other main import items were food products and mineral resources.
  The structure of its foreign trade, then, was one in which Japan
  13 Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei sdran, p. 391.
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  CHARACTERISTICS OF JAPANESE ENTERPRISES 
  527
  exported the products of heavy industry and imported the raw materi-
  als to make up for domestic insufficiency. The increase in Japanese
  exports exceeded that of world trade, and the expansion of imports
  paralleled the growth rate of the domestic economy. In order to main-
  tain this balance, the Japanese economy had to maintain a growth rate
  higher than the world average. However, even though in 1970 infla-
  tion was spreading worldwide, domestic prices remained relatively
  stable. Hence, despite Japan's high growth, its surpluses in current
  account were rising.
  In August 1971 President Richard Nixon sought a revaluation of the
  world's major currencies by ending fixed exchange rates, and by the
  end of the year the yen was revalued to a rate of ¥308 to $1.00. But
  this revalued rate did not last for long. In February 1973 Japan shifted
  to a floating exchange rate, and in the fall of 1973, the Organization of
  Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) increased the price of crude
  oil fourfold. These successive shocks had a major impact on the Japa-
  nese economy, which depended on the export of heavy industry goods
  and the import of energy. These shocks marked the end of Japan's
  period of high growth, but nonetheless, Japanese industry continued
  to be oriented toward exports, with the result that these problems
  persisted into the 1980s.
  CHARACTERISTICS OF JAPANESE ENTERPRISES
  While adjusting to postwar reform, economic rehabilitation, and the
  onset of high growth, the Japanese economy developed certain charac-
  teristics at the microeconomic level that were quite different from
  those of either the prewar Japanese economy or the Western econo-
  mies. To be sure, many of these characteristics originated in the pre-
  war period, but they acquired a more definite shape with the postwar
  reforms and the onset of rapid growth. In regard to management, the
  raising of capital, labor-management practices, or subcontracting,
  Japanese firms emphasized long-term relationships. Market and orga-
  nization influenced each other in complex ways, and a balance was
  maintained between adaptability and stability in business practices.
  Enterprise organization and management
  Most Japanese enterprises were joint stock companies, but large enter-
  prises were usually part of an enterprise group (keiretsu) whose affiliated
  enterprises and financial institutions held one another's stocks, thereby
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  528 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  avoiding the risk of unfriendly takeover bids by other firms. It was
  customary for a firm's managers to be chosen from among its long-time
  employees, who acted in accordance with what they saw as the long-
  term interests of the enterprise, which they viewed as a group of em-
  ployees. Japanese enterprises were therefore likely to aim at long-term
  growth rather than short-term profits, and managers were extremely
  concerned with market share.
  Before the war, the zaibatsu holding companies controlled extensive
  networks of firms by controlling dominant shares of stock. After the
  postwar dissolution of the zaibatsu, many former client or affiliate
  firms and financial institutions organized themselves into enterprise
  groups (keiretsu). Within the keiretsu, firms held one another's stock in
  order to avoid outside takeovers. The amount of stock for sale on the
  stock market was small, and its value rose remarkably. According to
  Miyazaki Giichi, in 1970, 57.1 percent of all limited stock companies
  were controlled by corporations, 20.7 percent by managers, and only
  20.5 percent by stockholders.'4 One of the reasons that Japanese busi-
  ness leaders opposed the introduction of foreign capital and were anx-
  ious about the liberalization of capital in the late 1960s was that they
  wished to retain control of their enterprises.
  Although this pattern of ownership and management was common
  in large firms, there were some exceptions. First, many small- and
  medium-sized enterprises were individually owned. Second, the large
  enterprises were often controlled by their founder and his family.
  This was true of the growth industries' leading firms such as Mat-
  sushita, Sony, Honda, Toyota, Toyo kogyo, Suntory, Kyoto Ceram-
  ics (Kyocera), and Daiei. Third, the stock market played an impor-
  tant role in evaluating the firms, as increases in capital investment
  were influenced by current stock prices. After 1965 in particular, the
  ratio of equity capital to total assets rose. Even though Japanese
  enterprises were heavily dependent on borrowing, they had to in-
  crease their capitalization as they grew in order to secure loans. Thus
  in high-growth industries, the possibility of securing loans was en-
  hanced by increased capitalization.
  The primacy of indirect financing
  During the period of high growth, firms invested more capital than
  they accumulated internally. But the rate of individual savings was
  14 Miyazaki Giichi, Gendai Nihon no kigyo shudan (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1976),
  p. 290.
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  CHARACTERISTICS OF JAPANESE ENTERPRISES 
  529
  TABLE 10.17
  Flow of funds during rapid economic growth - 7965 (in ¥1 trillion)
  Individuals
  Enterprises
  Central government
  Public corporations
  and local governments
  Savings in
  excess of
  investment
  2.6
  1.1
  0.1
  1.1
  Deposits
  2.7
  2.1
  -
  —
  Loans
  1.1
  4.0
  —
  0.5
  Securities
  0.3
  0.5°
  0.2'
  0.8°
  "Issued. 
  'Flotation of long-term national bonds.
  Source: Toyo keizai shinposha, Showa kokusei soran (Tokyo: Toyd keizai shinposha, 1980), vol.
  2, p. 116.
  high, and the major portion of individual savings were concentrated in
  bank deposits. Bank loans to individual enterprises served the func-
  tion of mediating between individual savings and loans to or invest-
  ment in business enterprises. This type of indirect financing is one of
  the principal characteristics of this period. Table 10.17 outlines this
  money flow in 1965.
  Obviously, the banks were important to this system of indirect
  financing. It is sometimes said that the large "city banks" (as commer-
  cial banks are called in Japan) stood at the pinnacle of the enterprise
  groups in the same way that headquarters companies (honsha) stood at
  the pinnacle of the prewar zaibatsu, as they both exercised similar
  economic power. According to Miyazaki Giichi's "one set hypothe-
  sis," because enterprise groups led by banks tried to acquire affiliated
  enterprises in all industries and to cover the whole range of industries
  and financial institutions, there was intense investment competition.
  Others take the view that the banks carried out a profitable "credit
  rationing" to the firms in the heavy and chemical industries while
  cooperating with the government's policy of keeping interest rates
  artificially low.
  But even though the city banks were vital to the transfer of savings
  into investment, that did not mean that they could disregard market
  forces in distributing capital or that they had discretionary powers in
  deciding to whom they would lend. First, because there were many
  city banks, they had to compete to acquire high-quality customers for
  loans. Second, there were many other financial institutions to which
  firms could turn for loans besides city banks, for example, long-term
  credit banks and life insurance companies. Third, as Japan's economic
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  530 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  growth accelerated, high-growth enterprises, in particular, built up
  their own capital reserves through which they could finance them-
  selves. Fourth, after 1965 as the government began to float public
  bonds, the movement of interest rates was liberalized.
  Although the banks cultivated long-term relationships with firms
  under the system of indirect financing, that does not mean that the
  banks distributed capital or set interest rates unilaterally as they
  wished. The mechanisms of a competitive market were still at work,
  and so the image of the city banks as omnipotent in the business world
  is misleading.
  Labor-management practices
  During this period of high growth, labor-management relations were
  characterized by lifetime employment, seniority-based wages, and
  company unions. As a rule, enterprises hired new school graduates
  and gave them on-the-job training. Because enterprises valued per-
  sonnel skills, workers were hired for a very long term (until retire-
  ment age), and wages were based on seniority. Because both labor
  and management tried to achieve stability in employment, both ap-
  proached wage settlements with flexibility. The bonus system also
  helped stabilize employment, by transferring some of the firm's risk
  to the workers.
  The existence of such labor-management practices helped develop
  the workers' skills and improve productivity by increasing their desire
  to participate in the production process, thus making high growth
  possible. This also made labor-management relations relatively stable
  (see Table 10.18).
  Although these labor-management practices prevailed in large en-
  terprises, they were not always followed by medium and small enter-
  prises. Generally, these practices applied to only about 30 percent of
  all employees, but among the rest of the employed population, job
  changes were frequent, and the rate of labor organization was low.
  According to Table 10.19, by about 1965, as the labor market be-
  came tight, medium and small enterprises paid higher wages to youn-
  ger employees. If they had not, they would not have been able to
  obtain as many workers as they needed. This meant that the wages for
  younger workers were determined in a homogeneous external labor
  market. In the case of older workers, the wage differential grew more
  pronounced. The reason was that wages in larger enterprises rose
  because workers had been employed longer and their wages were
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  CHARACTERISTICS OF JAPANESE ENTERPRISES
  531
  Year
  1955
  1956
  1957
  1958
  1959
  1960
  1961
  1962
  1963
  1964
  1965
  1966
  1967
  1968
  1969
  1970
  1971
  1972
  1973
  Number of
  unions"'4
  32,012'
  34,073'
  36,084'
  37,823'
  39,303'
  41,561
  45,096
  47,812
  49,796
  51,457
  52,879
  53,985
  55,321
  56,535
  58,812
  60,954
  62,428
  63,718
  65,448
  TABLE 10.18
  Labor unions and labor disputes
  Number of
  union members
  (thousands)'
  6,166'
  6,350'
  6,606'
  6,882'
  7,078'
  7,652
  8,360
  8,971
  9,357
  9,800
  10,147
  10,404
  10,566
  10,863
  11,249
  11,605
  11,798
  11,889
  12,098
  Estimated
  organization
  rate
  37.2
  34.8
  34.7
  33.9
  31.5
  32.2
  34.5
  34.7
  34.7
  35.0
  34.8
  34.2
  34.1
  34.4
  35.2
  35.4
  34.8
  34.3
  33.1
  1
  Number of
  disputes'^
  1,345
  1,330
  1,680
  1,864
  1,709
  2,222
  2,483
  2,287
  2,016
  2,422
  3,051
  3,687
  3,024
  3,882
  5,283
  4,551
  6,861
  5,808
  9,459
  Number of
  participants
  in disputes
  (thousands)'*
  3,748
  3,372
  8,464
  6,362
  4,682
  6,953
  9,044
  7,129
  9,035
  7,974
  8,975
  10,947
  10,914
  11,758
  14,483
  9,137
  10,829
  9,630
  14,549
  Number of
  workdays lost
  (thousand days)*'*
  3,467
  4,562
  5,652
  6,052
  6,020
  4,912
  6,150
  5,400
  2,770
  3,165
  5,669
  2,742
  1,830
  2,841
  3,634
  3,915
  6,029
  5,147
  4,604
  "As of end of May. 
  'Number of separate labor unions.
  'Number of labor union members in individual unions.
  ''Number of labor union members as a percentage of number of employees.
  'Annual statistics.
  /Including disputes accompanied by strikes.
  •Number of members in organizations involved in disputes.
  *Number of working days against the total number of workers participating in strikes and number of
  workers when plant was closed.
  'Number of members of separate labor unions.
  Source: Rodosho, Rodo lokeiyoran (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsukyoku, 1965-73).
  based on seniority, whereas in small and medium enterprises there was
  a great deal of labor mobility and no seniority-based scale, and so older
  workers were more affected by the labor supply.
  The large enterprises, of course, did not employ only long-term
  workers. Around i960 when the economy grew faster than expected,
  large enterprises hired a large number of temporary workers, whom
  they eventually made regular employees. In the 1970s the number of
  temporary, daily, or part-time employees increased. Subcontractors
  were also used as a source of labor. Although the labor markets were
  becoming more and more internalized in large enterprises, the internal
  and external labor markets still influenced each other.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 1 0 . 1 9
  Wage differentials between large enterprises and small and medium
  enterprises (enterprises with over 1,000 employees = 100.0)
  Age of employees
  (years)
  20 to 24
  25 to 29
  30 to 34
  35 to 39
  40to44 I
  45 to 49 J
  50 to 54 
  \
  55 to 59 
  /
  over 60
  20 to 24
  25 to 29
  30 to 34
  35 to 39
  40 to 44 
  \
  45 to 49 
  /
  50 to 54 \
  55 to 59 / .
  over 60
  1954"
  83.8
  81.1
  76.3
  72.1
  69.5
  66.8
  88.6
  1954'
  77.5
  70.5
  65.8
  59.6
  55.0
  52.4
  72.2
  Enterprises with 100 to 999 employees
  1961
  93.1
  90.4
  81.6
  74.0
  67.4
  65.5
  87.7
  1965
  107.3
  107.4
  101.2
  94.3
  85.9
  78.2
  80.9
  1970
  100.7
  101.7
  98.9
  95.0
  88.7
  79.0
  85.3
  Enterprises with 10 to 99 employees
  1961
  89.7
  80.2
  64.3
  54.7
  45.7
  43.9
  65.9
  1965
  114.1
  109.6
  96.5
  86.2
  74.7
  65.8
  73.2
  1970
  104.9
  103.8
  96.3
  88.5
  78.5
  68.2
  82.2
  1975
  98.2
  98.9
  97.7
  94.6
  / 
  90.2
  \ 
  85.6
  / 
  81.7
  \ 
  76.6
  80.3
  1975
  98.7
  97.4
  92.9
  85.5
  / 
  78.3
  \ 
  73.5
  / 
  67.5
  \ 
  65.1
  72.6
  Note: For 1954 and 1961, the differential between "cash salary amount regularly provided" for
  manufacture workers; after 1965, the differential between "fixed salary amount" for male work-
  ers of all industries investigated. In 1965 and 1970, total number of industries except service
  industries. In 1961 and 1965, wages in April; after 1970, wages in June.
  "Enterprises with 100 to 499 employees. 
  'Enterprises with 30 to 99 employees.
  Source: Rodosho, 1954 nen kojinbelsu chingin chosa; 1961 nen chingin jittai sogo chosa. Chingin kozo
  kihontokei chosa hokoku, 1965,1970, 1975.
  The development of subcontractor enterprises
  Another characteristic of this period was the degree to which large
  enterprises relied on small and medium enterprises as subcontractors.
  According to a survey in 1976, 82.2 percent of the large manufacturing
  enterprises relied on outside suppliers, and 58.1 percent of all small
  and medium manufacturing enterprises had subcontracting relation-
  ships with large firms.
  It is often said that large firms used subcontractors as a way of adjust-
  ing to changes in general business conditions. When business was brisk
  they used the subcontractors, but when business slowed, the large firms
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  ECONOMIC POLICY 
  533
  stopped their orders or offered only below-cost prices. In other words,
  the large firms made their subcontractors completely subservient and
  exploited their cheap labor and production costs for their own profit. If
  this were the case, however, it would be difficult to understand why the
  number of subcontractors increased as the economy grew. According to
  a survey of subcontractors asked why they had gone into the business,
  many gave reasons such as "I can concentrate on production without
  having to worry about making sales efforts" or "The flow of work is
  stable." Among firms using subcontractors, the principal consideration
  in selecting a subcontractor was whether or not it possessed special
  technology or plant facilities. '5
  Subcontracting firms tried to use the technical and managerial skills
  of the owner continuously and over the long term. They stood be-
  tween the market and the internal organization of the contracting
  firm, combining the adaptability of the market with the ability of the
  large firm to make long-term plans. This created a particularly effi-
  cient way of organizing production. In the automobile industry, for
  example, Toyota's "just-in-time" supply system depended heavily on
  subcontractors to improve productivity.
  ECONOMIC POLICY
  Most discussions of government policy focus on "industrial policy" or
  "industrial targeting," and many maintain that Japan's economy is
  tightly managed, but such a monolithic picture is not correct. Eco-
  nomic policy is shaped by the interaction of the government bureau-
  cracy, business interests, pressure groups, and the ruling Liberal
  Democratic Party. It is a mixture of certain basic macroeconomic
  policies and sectoral or microeconomic policies. Moreover, economic
  policy is neither fixed nor unchanging over time but has adjusted to
  changing economic conditions, though not always successfully.
  The assumptions of postwar economic policy
  In 1955, even after Japan had recovered economically from the war, it
  still was small and relatively weak economically. National income was
  low; the international balance of payments was unstable; and over-
  population prevented full employment. The goal of Japan's economic
  policy was to overcome its status as a small economy and to join the
  15 Yutaka Kosai and Yoshitaro Ogino, The Contemporary Japanese Economy (New York: Mac-
  millan, 1984), p. 72.
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  534 
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  ranks of the advanced industrial powers; the limitation on its eco-
  nomic policy was that as a small economy, Japan faced a ceiling on its
  balance of payments. To achieve its goal, Japan had to maximize its
  growth, enhance its international competitiveness, and achieve full
  employment. But because Japan was still a minor economy, it had to
  consider first its balance of payments.
  Given its limitations with respect to its balance of payments, the
  Japanese government sought to avoid changing the existing exchange
  rate and the inflow of foreign capital. A balance in the current account
  under fixed prices thus became an important policy target. With re-
  spect to financial policy, whenever the balance of payments worsened
  (in 1954, 1957, 1961, and 1963), finances were tightened. With re-
  spect to fiscal policy, the 1949 Fiscal Law mandated sound finance,
  and public bonds were not issued to raise government funds. With
  respect to taxation, in i960 a tax investigation commission recom-
  mended that the ratio of tax revenue to national income not exceed 20
  percent.16 "Small government" and a financial policy sensitive to the
  international balance of payments were the characteristic rules of classi-
  cal capitalism. Except for the prohibitions on capital movement, the
  framework of Japan's postwar economic policy was typical of that
  under the gold standard.
  On the other hand, because Japan wanted to catch up with the
  advanced countries, its economic policy had another side. In 1952,
  Japan's foreign currency reserves stood at $900 million, rising to $1.8
  billion in i960, but after that they hardly increased at all, reaching
  only $2 billion in 1967. Meanwhile, Japan's imports had risen three-
  fold, and its money supply had increased by two and a half times.
  The government adopted a policy of increasing the money supply
  and expanding the economy as far as the international balance of
  payments allowed. Because the domestic money supply was not re-
  lated to foreign exchange reserves, this policy differed from that
  under the gold standard. Because Japan's foreign exchange reserves
  were small, it had to pursue a tight money policy in order to manage
  its foreign exchange funds whenever the international balance of pay-
  ments moved into a deficit.
  In fiscal policy, the national budget was balanced, and every effort
  was made to maintain "small government" by using part of the natural
  increase in tax revenues resulting from economic growth to reduce
  16 See the i960 report of the Tax System Investigation Commission (Zaisei chosakai). For a
  comment on this, see Komiya Ryutaro, Gendai Nihon keizai kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
  shuppankai, 1975), PP- 107-8.
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  ECONOMIC POLICY 
  535
  taxes. At the same time, however, special tax measures, direct govern-
  ment financing, and other sorts of government intervention were used
  as tools of industrial policy to promote Japan's international competi-
  tiveness.17 In its macroeconomic policy the government followed the
  principle of balanced budgets, but at the same time in its micro-
  economic or sectoral policy, it followed government interventionist
  principles, by providing special tax measures for and fiscal investment
  in particular industries.
  Japan's economic policy during this period, therefore, used two
  contrasting approaches: a sectoral or microeconomic interventionist
  policy that assumed Japan was a small economy aimed at catching up
  with the advanced industrial countries; and orthodox macroeconomic
  financial and fiscal policies that assumed Japan was a small economy
  heeding the limitations on its international balance of payments.
  Changes in economic policy
  i
  By achieving economic growth through industrial modernization, Ja-
  pan gradually became free of the limitations imposed by its interna-
  tional balance of payments. It was well on the way to changing from a
  minor into a major economic power. As a result, its microeconomic
  interventionist policy (at least the protecting and nurturing of particu-
  lar industries) became more difficult.
  Japan's participation in the OECD in the 1960s required that it
  liberalize its controls over foreign exchange, foreign trade, and capital
  movements. At the same time, there were not only those who argued
  that liberalization would improve economic growth, but there were
  also foreign pressures at work. Liberalization deprived the govern-
  ment of the means to intervene in private enterprise, and interest rates
  also moved freely in the domestic financial market as the government
  continued to float government bond issues.
  The government naturally hesitated to reduce taxes or give financial
  assistance to enterprises that were able to compete in international
  markets. The diversification of the industrial structure, moreover,
  made it difficult to identify the needy industries. Government finance
  turned from industry to the improvement of housing facilities and the
  17 Scholars do not agree on how to evaluate this industrial policy. For example, see the relevant
  chapters of Komiya Ryutaro, Nihon no sangyo seisaku (Tokyo: Todai shuppankai, 1984);
  Komiya Ryutaro, Gendai Nihon keizai kenkyu; Tsuruta Toshimasa, Sengo Nihon no sangyo
  seisaku (Tokyo Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1982); Ueno Hiroya, Nihon no keizai seido (Tokyo:
  Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1978); Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, The
  Growth of Industrial Policy 1925-1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982).
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  536
  THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY
  TABLE 10.20
  Fiscal investment and loan program (¥100 million)
  Housing
  Living environment facilities
  Public welfare facilities
  Educational facilities
  Small and medium enterprises
  Agriculture, forestries, and fisheries
  Subtotal
  Preservation of national land and restoration
  after disasters
  Roads
  Transportation and communications
  Regional development
  Subtotal
  Key industries
  Promotion of exports
  Total
  1955
  415
  230
  64
  136
  244
  266
  1,355
  231
  110
  366
  255
  962
  471
  210
  2,998
  1960
  789
  569
  109
  214
  784
  439
  2,904
  401
  111
  915
  436
  2,024
  838
  485
  6,251
  1965
  2,259
  2,010
  585
  493
  2,045
  1,169
  8,561
  506
  1,284
  2,250
  1,124
  5,164
  1,262
  1,219
  16,206
  1970
  6,896
  4,168
  1,017
  790
  5,523
  1,785
  20,179
  560
  3,078
  4,723
  1,431
  9,792
  2,028
  3,800
  35,799
  1975
  19,966
  15,573
  3,133
  2,752
  14,505
  3,795
  59,724
  1,100
  7,444
  11,849
  3,059
  23,452
  2,764
  7,160
  93,100
  Source: Okurasho, Zaisei tokei (Tokyo: Okurasho insatsukyoku, 1962- )
  environment (see Table 10.20), and government intervention in pri-
  vate enterprise became stronger in environmental pollution and labor
  regulation. In addition, public opinion turned against large mergers or
  amalgamations.
  At the same time, macroeconomic policy, finally freed from the
  balance-of-payments ceiling, became more flexible. Using the 1965
  recession as an opportunity, the government began to raise revenues
  by issuing public bonds, abandoning in practice the principle of bal-
  anced budgets. Under the slogan of "increasing welfare through in-
  creasing the tax burden," the government made plans to increase the
  taxation rate. In 1967 and 1968 efforts were made to return to a
  balanced budget (i.e., limiting the issue of public bonds and increas-
  ing public debt). But the liberation of macroeconomic policy from
  balance-of-payments restraints reached a peak with the announcement
  of Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's Plan to Reconstruct the Japanese
  Archipelago in 1972 and with plans to broaden the coverage of social
  insurance policies in 1973.
  After 1968, as Japanese industry became more competitive and
  world inflation spread, Japan's foreign exchange reserves increased
  rapidly, climbing from $2 billion in 1967 to $18.3 billion in 1972.
  Even though Japan enjoyed a positive balance of payments, the Bank
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  ECONOMIC POLICY 
  537
  of Japan, contrary to previous practice, adopted a tight money policy
  to keep the domestic economy from overheating, but the positive
  balance of payments continued to climb, and foreign exchange re-
  serves accumulated. The Bank of Japan then shifted to a looser policy,
  and between 1970 and 1973 the money supply increased 20 percent a
  year. In other words, the government returned to the policy it fol-
  lowed in the 1960s of easing the money supply when the balance of
  payments was in the black. But in the midst of world inflation, increas-
  ing the domestic money supply while maintaining fixed exchange rates
  was bound to create inflation. With the announcement of the Plan for
  the Reconstruction of the Japanese Archipelago, first land prices and
  then commodity prices rose. Just before the "oil shock" of 1973,
  Japan's wholesale prices had increased by more than 20 percent over
  the previous year, even without an oil price hike.
  Even with the adoption of a policy of financial and fiscal expansion,
  the balance of payments did not stop expanding. Indeed, it was
  strengthened by the revaluation of the yen in 1971 and the shift to a
  floating exchange rate in 1973. Had Japan earlier revalued the yen on
  its own initiative, instead of increasing the money supply, inflation
  might have been eased, if not avoided. But Japan realized too late that
  the significance of the balance of payments had changed and so made
  the wrong policy choice. Instead of revaluing the yen, the government
  tried to maintain its parity. The freedom of action that the government
  had acquired with the end of its balance-of-payment constraints was
  misused, thereby incurring inflation and bringing to an end the period
  of high growth.
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  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  PART IV
  SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL
  CHANGE
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  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  CHAPTER 11
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL
  SOCIETY, 1900-1950
  It is not difficult to find continuities in the Japanese countryside.
  Small-scale family farming on holdings averaging less than three acres
  prevails today as in 1900. Despite almost a century of modern eco-
  nomic growth, the number of farm families has remained fairly con-
  stant, declining only slightly from five and one-half million at the turn
  of the century to five million in the late 1970s. There has been continu-
  ity not only in the number of farm families but also in the families
  themselves: The overwhelming majority of Japanese farmers today are
  the descendants of farmers in the Meiji era (1868-1912). As in the past
  they reside in small hamlets, clusters of an average of fifty to sixty
  farmhouses surrounded by rice paddies and upland fields. Rice re-
  mains their principal field crop, accounting for 59 percent by value of
  total field crop production in 1900 and 53 percent in 1970.
  Yet contrasts with the past abound, and collectively they make the
  countryside vastly different from what it was eighty years ago. Japa-
  nese agriculture is no longer the highly labor-intensive undertaking it
  used to be. At the turn of the century it took roughly one hundred
  days of labor to grow an acre of rice. Today, owing primarily to the
  diffusion of capital-intensive farming methods, thirty to thirty-five
  days will suffice, and output per acre is almost 70 percent higher than
  before. The dependence of farm families on agricultural income has
  also declined markedly. In 1920, the year of Japan's first modern
  census, 70 percent of farm families were classified as full-time farmers
  who derived 90 percent or more of their income from agriculture. In
  1972, only 14 percent of farm families were classified as full-time
  farmers; 86 percent were classified as part-time farm families; and 70
  percent of the latter earned less from agriculture than from nonagricul-
  tural sources.
  Less susceptible to measurement but no less significant is the con-
  trast between rural communities past and present. To be sure, continu-
  ities still exist. Owing to, among other factors, their spatial separation
  from neighboring communities and the exigencies of rice culture (espe-
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  542 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  cially the need to coordinate the flooding and draining of adjacent rice
  paddies), hamlets retain a fairly high degree of social cohesion. Resi-
  dent households are expected, as they were generations ago, to contrib-
  ute to the well-being of the hamlet as a whole by taking part in the
  upkeep of communal property and by voting for a mutually agreed-
  upon candidate to represent local interests in the larger village of
  which their hamlet is a part. A number of formal and informal ceremo-
  nies designed to promote communal solidarity still take place. Yet
  despite the persistence of these and other features of communal life,
  the hamlet today differs in important ways from the hamlet of the
  past. Probably the greatest difference stems from a sharp reduction in
  status distinctions among hamlet residents. Once hierarchically struc-
  tured, with local power securely in the hands of the wealthiest house-
  holds, the hamlet is now essentially a community of equals.
  This latter social transformation is usually portrayed in the West-
  ern literature on Japan as a fairly recent phenomenon, the product
  primarily of the land reform carried out during the post-World War
  II Occupation. In fact, the land reform, though certainly important,
  was the culmination of slow, evolutionary processes that date from
  the late nineteenth century. These processes and the tensions and
  social changes they generated are the subject of this chapter.
  Four policies implemented by the Meiji government in the late
  1870s and 1880s set these processes in motion. The one with the most
  immediate impact was the land tax reform. Designed primarily to
  secure a stable source of government revenue, the tax reform involved
  far more than taxes. The principle of seignorial control of arable land,
  by either the Tokugawa bakufu or the daimyo, was abandoned and
  private property rights established. Title deeds were issued to those
  farmers customarily recognized as landholders, and long-standing pro-
  hibitions on land transfers were eliminated. A new tax system was
  then established on the basis of private property rights. Instead of
  taxes in kind levied on the official output of each rural community,
  taxes in cash, pegged initially at 3 percent of the assessed value of land,
  were levied on each individual landowner. (This reform had no impact
  on rural rents. As in the past, rents were levied in kind, generally in
  rice, at a fixed volume per unit area.)
  In both its implementation and its operation, the new tax system
  contributed to greater economic differentiation among the rural popu-
  lation. At a stroke, the assignment of title deeds replaced with a single,
  standard, full ownership the welter of rights to arable land that had
  proliferated during the Tokugawa period. Many farmers who had
  pawned or mortgaged their land to wealthier neighbors were reduced
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY 
  543
  to the status of landless tenants when title deeds were awarded to
  their creditors. Others who possessed permanent tenancy rights that
  amounted to shared ownership of the land in question were unable to
  press their claims successfully and so became ordinary tenants of the
  newly recognized owners.
  Nor were the recipients of title deeds immune to changes in their
  economic status. According to one estimate, the average landowning
  farmer had to market 30 percent of his produce in the 1870s to meet
  his tax obligations. When agricultural prices fell, as they did during
  the government-induced deflation of 1881-4, the burden of taxation
  increased, and many farmers had to borrow money to make ends
  meet. For some, that marked the first step in the slow and painful loss
  of their land; first one field and then another would be sold to cover
  debts, until none was left. Their misfortunes were gains for others, of
  course. Although its dimensions cannot be measured precisely, land-
  ownership became concentrated in the decades following the tax re-
  form.1 Those landowners who had cash in reserve during the deflation-
  ary years or at other times when their neighbors needed loans were
  able to expand their holdings. When they had acquired as much land
  as they were willing or able to farm themselves, they became land-
  lords, renting their newly acquired fields to the former owners. As a
  result, tenancy, which had accounted for roughly 27 percent of arable
  land at the time of the Meiji Restoration, increased to 45 percent in
  1908.
  While the land tax reform was creating greater inequality among
  farmers, the government's reforms of local administration were creat-
  ing greater distance between the communities in which those farmers
  lived and the Japanese state. During the Tokugawa period, the vil-
  lages had functioned simultaneously as the basic unit of domainal
  administration and as the primary locus of farmers' economic and
  social activity. The same community that paid taxes to the warrior
  elite allocated water, access to communal land, and other essentials of
  farming to its resident households and organized their roof repairs,
  weddings, and funerals. By the 1880s this was no longer the case. A
  massive reorganization of the countryside had occurred in which the
  79,000 villages of the Tokugawa period had been combined into some
  1 Data on landownership were not collected systematically until 1908. Thereafter, statistics were
  compiled and published annually by the Ministry of Agriculture. Even the latter record does
  not permit precise measurement of the concentration of landownership, however, for only the
  total number of owners of specified ranges of land area (e.g., one to three hectares, ten to fifty
  hectares), not the amount of land falling within each range, was reported. For a detailed
  discussion of the shortcomings of these landownership statistics, see Tobata Seiichi, "Jinushi
  no shohanchu," Kokkagakkaizasshi 55 (June 1941): 37-56.
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  544 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  14,000 larger villages. The latter, regarded by government officials as
  fiscally sound and hence capable of sustaining a variety of old and new
  tasks, became the basic units of administration in the local govern-
  ment system established, after years of experimentation, in 1889.
  The old villages did not merge completely into the new, however,
  contrary to the wishes of bureaucrats in the Home Ministry who re-
  garded them as inefficient remnants of feudalism. Relegated to the
  status of hamlets-or, in the official nomenclature, sections (aza)-and
  given no formal role in local government, they continued to function
  as the primary sphere of the farmers' lives and the focus of their
  loyalties.2 To its residents, the community was still a village (mura) as
  in the past, forced by the government into association with adjacent
  communities. The new village to which they nominally belonged was
  regarded as an artificial and threatening institution. Safety lay in con-
  tinued, if not greater, solidarity among the hamlet's residents.
  Two additional policies that the government implemented at this
  time, compulsory elementary education and universal military con-
  scription, also brought change to the countryside, though much more
  slowly. One of the new tasks assigned to Meiji villages was the con-
  struction of primary schools, which local children of both sexes were
  required to attend. The period of schooling, initially set at sixteen
  months, soon was extended to four years and in 1907 was extended
  once more to six years. Another new task was the preliminary medical
  examinations for conscription. After 1873, all young men became eligi-
  ble for three years of active military service, followed by four years in
  the reserves.3
  Education and conscription had far-reaching consequences for rural
  society. On the one hand, both provided farmers with new skills and
  attitudes, which in turn helped generate dissatisfaction with existing
  forms of inequality. On the other hand, both exposed farmers to their
  new nation, inculcating patriotism and creating a new willingness
  among them to see themselves and their communities as part of a
  larger whole. Not until the early 1900s, however, when significant
  numbers of rural schoolchildren reached adulthood and the soldiers in
  Japan's second foreign war returned home did these consequences
  become apparent. What then ensued was a forty-year period of fer-
  2 For a discussion of the Meiji local government system, see Kurt Steiner, Local Government in
  Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), chaps. 2, 3; Tadashi Fukutake,
  Japanese Rural Society, trans. Ronald Dore (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967),
  chaps. 8,10; Shima Yasuhiko et al., Choson gappei to noson no henbo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1958).
  3 The period of active service was reduced to two years in 1905.
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  RURAL SOCIETY 
  545
  ment that left virtually no aspect of rural society untouched and cre-
  ated a basis, in attitudes and aspirations if not always in formal institu-
  tions, for further change in the postwar era.
  RURAL SOCIETY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
  At the turn of the century, despite having been consigned to oblivion
  by the architects of the new local government system, Japan's hamlets
  continued to exist as relatively autonomous communities and to consti-
  tute the basic territorial units of rural society. Although each commu-
  nity was considered unique by its inhabitants, they actually had many
  features in common. Chief among them was their corporate character.
  The hamlet was not a gesellschaft consisting of individuals in volun-
  tary association with one another but a gemeinschaft consisting of
  interdependent households joined in a common purpose. That pur-
  pose was, as it had been for centuries, survival in a world of scarcity.*
  How potently scarcity operated as an underpinning of community
  life depended to an extent on the hamlet's location. Where climatic
  conditions and prevailing agricultural technology permitted double
  cropping-at the turn of the century, roughly that portion of the Japa-
  nese archipelago to the southwest of Tokyo-there was less risk of
  shortfalls in the food supply than there was in the single-crop regions
  to the northeast. Where proximity to cities or transportation routes
  facilitated cash cropping, there was greater opportunity to profit from
  farming than there was in isolated hamlets. But these were relative,
  not absolute, advantages, and each generated new risks while moderat-
  ing old ones: To farmers who depended heavily on the marketplace,
  for example, a sharp decline in prices could be as disastrous as a poor
  harvest could be. Throughout the country, then, farming remained a
  highly vulnerable undertaking. From time to time there might be
  several good years in succession, when crops were bountiful or prices
  high, but more than that was required to erase memories of hardship
  during lean years or to weaken long-established forms of cooperation
  within the hamlet.
  These forms were comprehensive in scope, involving all aspects of
  the hamlet residents' economic, social, and political lives. Indeed, there
  was considerable overlap among these putatively separate spheres of
  4 The following discussion is based primarily on Ushiomi Toshitaka et ah, Nikon no noson
  (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957), pt. 1; Kawashima Takeyoshi, "Noson no mibun kaiso sei," in
  Nikon shihonshugi koza (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1954), vol. 8, pp. 405-33; Fukutake, Japa-
  nese Rural Society, pt. 3.
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  546 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  activity. What distinguished one form of cooperation from another was
  less its character than the level at which it occurred, the hamlet as a
  whole or one of its neighborhood subdivisions.
  Most hamlets at the turn of the century still retained the political
  structure under which they had operated as villages in the past. Each
  had a headman who represented the community in its dealings with
  the outside world (formerly the warrior class, now the administrative
  village and beyond that the Meiji state), supervised the day-to-day
  affairs of the community itself, and presided at hamlet meetings
  (yoriai). The latter were held at least once a year, and the heads of all
  households belonging to the hamlet were expected to be present.
  That did not necessarily mean the heads of all households living in
  the hamlet, for mere residence did not confer membership in the
  collectivity. New arrivals, which might mean people who had resided
  in the hamlet for only ten or fifteen years, had to qualify for member-
  ship by demonstrating their willingness to contribute to the welfare of
  the community as a whole and, in some cases, by paying an "entrance
  fee." Moreover, what had once been granted by the community could
  be taken away. If hamlet members violated established norms of behav-
  ior, they were subject to fines and other punishments; and if their
  behavior was deemed sufficiently flagrant, they were subject to ostra-
  cism (murahachibu).
  What made community membership desirable and ostracism terrify-
  ing was the hamlet's ownership of two essential means of agricultural
  production, water for irrigation and forests for fuel, fodder, and green
  manure. The Meiji government originally had planned to transfer
  control of these communal resources to its newly created administra-
  tive villages, but widespread local opposition had forced a retreat: In
  exchange for allowing themselves to be consolidated into villages, the
  hamlets retained control of much of their property. Formal member-
  ship in the hamlet provided rights of access to it and at the same time
  created obligations to share in its upkeep.
  These rights and obligations constituted one of the main items on
  the agenda of the hamlet's meetings. When each paddy field in the
  community would be flooded, how many days each household could
  collect wood and cut grasses in the communal forest-such were the
  rights that required attention. The obligations consisted of paying
  dues and performing labor services-so many days of work each year
  on hamlet roads, bridges, and forest trails or a fixed amount of money,
  sake, or food as a substitute.
  In some cases, labor services were assigned to individual house-
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  RURAL SOCIETY 
  547
  holds, but more often they were assigned to the hamlet's neighbor-
  hood subdivisions (kumi), which in turn allocated tasks to their mem-
  bers. Descended from the five-family groups of the Tokugawa period,
  kumi generally had expanded in size to ten or twenty adjacent house-
  holds. Their activities were by no means confined to the maintenance
  of hamlet property but extended to every facet of rural life. It was the
  kumi that mobilized labor for rice planting and other farming tasks
  that required cooperation, that sent housewives to help out at wed-
  dings and funerals, and that supplied aid and comfort to the victims of
  a fire or serious illness.
  All these forms of cooperation, even those involving the most one-
  rous tasks, provided opportunities for social contact among commu-
  nity residents. It was customary to drink large quantities of sake after
  hamlet meetings and to celebrate with feasting the completion of ham-
  let work assignments. There were special songs that were sung while
  the rice seedlings were being planted and special feasts prepared for
  when the task was done. The women who came to help at weddings
  and funerals had a chance to exchange gossip in the kitchen. These
  moments of pleasure and relaxation with one's neighbors served not
  only to moderate the drudgery of everyday life but also to reinforce
  feelings of communal solidarity.
  If a hamlet consisted of households of roughly equal economic and
  social status, the maintenance of solidarity, although by no means
  automatic, was relatively simple. Having the same means, the families
  in the hamlet tended to have the same needs and interests. Any dis-
  agreements among them that could not be resolved by informal discus-
  sion or forgotten by getting drunk together at a communal feast could
  be presented to the hamlet yoriai and some sort of compromise worked
  out. But at the turn of the century, such communities were the excep-
  tion, not the rule. In most hamlets, economic and social inequality
  prevailed among the households and so made the maintenance of soli-
  darity considerably more complex.
  At a conceptual level, one can divide the households in these latter
  communities into three separate categories on the basis of differences
  in landownership and lineage, or pedigree (iegara). At the top were the
  wealthy households (gono) who owned more land than they needed to
  cultivate in order to sustain themselves by farming. Typically they
  owned forestlands as well, which gave them direct access to wood and
  grasses. They could trace their ancestry to the community's original
  settlers, perhaps even to warriors who had combined farming with
  fighting during the wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their
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  548 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  TABLE 1 1 . 1
  Farm households by status and scale of cultivation (excluding Hokkaido
  and Okinawa)
  1908 
  1937
  Total number of households 
  5,261,328(100%) 
  5,283,703(100%)
  a. Status
  Owner-cultivators 
  1,729,415(32.9%) 
  1,602,140(30.3%)
  Tenants 
  1,434,224(27.2%) 
  1,399,122(26.5%)
  Owner-tenants 
  2,097,689(39.9%) 
  2,282,451(43.2%)
  b. Scale of cultivation"
  Less than 5 tan 
  2,003,298(38.1%) 
  1,799,886(34.1%)
  5 tan to 1 cho 
  1,754,060 (33.3%) 
  1,867,001 (35.3%)
  \to2cho 
  1,031,122(19.6%) 
  1,236,009(23.4%)
  2 to 3 cho 
  306,421(5.8%) 
  291,581(5.5%)
  3to5cAo 
  124,785(2.4%) 
  78,369(1.5%)
  5 cho or more 
  41,642(0.8%) 
  10,857(0.2%)
  "One cho (10 tan) equals 2.45 acres, or 0.992 hectare. According to the distinctions made in this
  chapter, those households cultivating less than 1 cho can be considered "small farmers"; those
  cultivating 1-3 cho, "middling farmers"; and those cultivating 3 cho or more, "wealthy farmers."
  Source: Data from Chuo bukka tosei kyoryoku kaigi, Nihon ni okeru nogyo keiei narabi ni tochi
  shoyu no hensen ni kansuru sanko shiryo (Tokyo: Chuo bukka tosei kyoryoku kaigi, 1943).
  more immediate ancestors had served as village headmen during the
  Tokugawa period. Next were the households that owned only enough
  land to support themselves by farming. Lacking claims to elite ances-
  try, they nonetheless had deep roots in the community, their families
  having lived there for perhaps a century or more. Both economically
  and socially they constituted a respectable but not imposing stratum of
  middling farmers (churwi). Third were the small, or poor, farmers
  (shdno, hinno) who owned no land of their own and who, as tenants,
  rented all the land they cultivated from their wealthier neighbors.
  Either immigrants from elsewhere or the branch households (bunke) of
  older households, they occupied the bottom rung of a social hierarchy
  in which the venerability of community membership conferred pres-
  tige, just as they occupied the bottom rung of an economic hierarchy
  based on the ownership of land (see Table 11. i).
  In reality, however, the status distinctions among households were
  rarely this clear-cut. Not only was there considerable differentiation
  within each category of households, but the lines between categories
  were blurred as well. In economic terms, wealthy fanners could range
  from the owners of over 2,500 acres of land, of whom there were fewer
  than a dozen nationwide in 1900, to those owning slightly more than
  two and one-half acres, the norm for family farming at the time. Some
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  RURAL SOCIETY 
  549
  TABLE 1 1 . 2
  Landowning households by size of holding (excluding Hokkaido and
  Okinawa)
  1908 
  1937
  Total number of households 
  4,802,891(100%) 
  4,873,429(100%)
  a. Number owning
  Less than 5 MH 
  2,267,093(47.2%) 
  2,463,250(50.5%)
  5 tan to I chd 
  1,277,702(26.6%) 
  1,267,521(26.0%)
  1 to 3 cho 
  899,986(18.7%) 
  864,050(17.7%)
  3to5c/io 
  227,496(4.7%) 
  181,143(3.7%)
  StolOcAo 
  94,049(2.0%) 
  71,390(1.5%)
  10 to 50 cho 
  34,348(0.7%) 
  24,269(0.5%)
  50cAoormore 
  2,217(0.05%) 
  1,806(0.04%)
  b. Estimated number of
  landowning households
  not engaged in farming
  (noncultivating landlords) 
  975,787 
  988,838
  Source: Chuo bukka tosei kyoryoku kaigi, Nihon ni okeru nogyo keiei narabi ni lochi shoyu no hensen
  ni kansuru sanko shiryo (Tokyo: Chuo bukka tosei kyoryoku kaigi, 1943). In the absence of survey
  data on landlords, one can only estimate their number. The standard way of doing so is to
  subtract the number of landowning farmers (that is, owner-cultivators and owner-tenants) from
  the total number of landowners.
  cultivated little or no land themselves, deriving most of their income
  from tenant rents, whereas others farmed most of the land they owned
  and rented out only a few parcels to tenants. Among the latter, those
  with modest holdings for a gono differed only slightly from their pros-
  perous chuno neighbors (see Table 11.2).
  Nor did the chuno households actually constitute a homogeneous
  group. Some might own all the land they could farm, but others com-
  bined owner-farming with tenancy, typically because they had encoun-
  tered hard times and had been forced to sell a portion of their land,
  which they now leased from its new owner.5 Those whose misfortunes
  had multiplied and who tenanted most of the land they once had owned
  differed little in economic terms from the landless tenants. Indeed, a
  landless tenant who cultivated a substantial holding might be better off
  than his declining chuno neighbor and was certainly better off than other
  landless tenants in his community who cultivated smaller holdings or
  than day laborers who possessed no cultivating rights at all.
  5 Not all owner-tenants had previously owned all the land they cultivated. Some were former
  tenants who had been able to purchase land. As Morris D. Morris argued in "The Problem of
  the Peasant Agriculturalist in Meiji Japan," Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (1956): 357-70, increases
  in the number of owner-tenant households after 1908 should not necessarily be construed as
  evidence of the farm households' increasing poverty.
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  550 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  Changes in economic status were not confined to the chuno house-
  holds. Gono could become wealthier, or they could decline to chuno or
  even shono status. Tenants might purchase land and rise into chuno or,
  albeit rarely, into gono ranks. Whether these changes occurred gradu-
  ally over long periods of time or more suddenly, as in the aftermath of
  a particularly good or bad year for farming, they upset the correspon-
  dence between wealth and lineage that had existed in most communi-
  ties in the past: The oldest families were not necessarily the most
  affluent any longer, nor were socially inferior immigrant or branch
  households necessarily poor.
  Hamlets differed markedly from one another in both the extent of
  differentiation among their constituent households and the degree of
  divergence between the economic and social hierarchies those house-
  holds formed. Some hamlets contained only gono and shono house-
  holds. Others, probably the majority, contained all three categories of
  households but in varying combinations: one or several wealthy house-
  holds, a majority or minority of owner-farmers, a greater or smaller
  proportion of landless tenants than of tenants who also owned some
  land. When and by whom the hamlet had been founded, how much
  change there had been in the fortunes of resident households, and how
  recently those changes had occurred and for what reasons were other
  variables that distinguished one hamlet from another and that com-
  bined with peculiarities of topography and soil conditions to sustain
  the impression among hamlet residents that their community had a
  character all its own.
  Status differences among households were manifested not only in
  contrasting standards of living but in numerous other ways as well. In
  communities where status lines were clearly drawn, two Buddhist
  temples might exist, one for upper-status families and one for low-
  status families, and families of differing status might not arrange mar-
  riages or adoptions with each other. More commonly, low-status farm-
  ers were expected to use polite forms of address toward their superiors
  and to step aside and let them pass on roads and footpaths. The seating
  order at hamlet meetings and social gatherings also followed status
  lines.
  Probably the most common manifestation of status distinctions was
  in the realm of politics. Just as the seating order at hamlet meetings
  replicated the community's hierarchy, so too did officeholding and
  decision making. Almost without exception, upper-status households
  continued to supply hamlet headmen, as they had in the past, and the
  only hamlet offices open to low-status farmers were night watchman or
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  RURAL SOCIETY 
  551
  grave digger. Nor did all members of the community participate
  equally in the hamlet yoriai. Those seated at the front of the room in
  recognition of their superior status dominated the proceedings. Those
  in the middle spoke up rarely, and those at the back remained silent
  even when issues of pressing concern to them were discussed. Indeed,
  in many communities, a small group of men from upper-status house-
  holds met before the yoriai to decide all the issues on the agenda. Their
  recommendations were then presented to the entire membership for
  pro forma ratification.
  Hamlet leaders were supposed to think of the well-being of the com-
  munity as a whole in all the decisions they made, but this noble standard
  was not always attained. The headman and his advisers might skim off a
  portion of the proceeds from the sale of timber in the hamlet forest or
  plan improvements in the community's irrigation system that benefited
  their own lands first and foremost. Some of the food and drink served at
  their meetings and charged to hamlet funds might find its way into their
  pantries. To the extent that such abuses were known or suspected, they
  provoked resentment among other residents of the community, but
  given the etiquette and institutions of status inequality, the open expres-
  sion of complaints was virtually impossible.
  Even communities with scrupulously honest leaders-and such
  communities did exist-were not immune to potentially disruptive
  tensions. The very heterogeneity of the hamlet's members created
  conflicting needs and interests that were difficult to reconcile. Tem-
  porarily reducing cutting rights in the hamlet's forest might make
  sense from the standpoint of conservation, for example, but those
  farmers without woodlands of their own would have to purchase
  firewood to make up the difference. Similarly, those with cash on
  hand could pay their way out of hamlet work assignments if they
  found it more convenient than supplying labor, but others had no
  choice. Even if it meant falling behind in chores on their own hold-
  ings or losing the wages they might earn by working for someone
  else, they had to turn out. Because the most affluent residents made
  hamlet policy, their concerns tended to take precedence. The commu-
  nity's poorer members were left to complain in private about their lot
  or to exact a degree of rough justice by stealing a few choice vegeta-
  bles from their wealthy neighbors' fields.
  More than the inertia of tradition or the compensations of petty
  theft were needed to sustain community solidarity in these conditions.
  Occasions such as communal feasts, at which the status quo was cele-
  brated to the accompaniment of plentiful food and drink, played a
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  552 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  part, as did controversies with neighboring hamlets over the water
  supply or some other external threat around which residents could
  close ranks. Equally, if not more, important were the relationships
  among households of differing status, which served to mute the hard-
  ships of subordination and, for the time being at least, to prevent
  conflict within the hamlet over the distribution of wealth and power.
  These relationships were of three types: those between the main and
  branch houses of the same family, those between landlord and tenant,
  and those between patron and client.6 All three relationships might
  exist in a given community, and any two households might be linked
  simultaneously by more than one tie. In general, however, one relation-
  ship predominated within the community and among its households.
  Which one it was depended to a great extent on the community's
  location and the prevailing level of economic development.
  During the seventeenth century, as one means of protecting the
  small peasant proprietors on which its tax revenues were based, the
  warrior class had imposed its own system of primogeniture on the
  countryside. Thereafter, as a general rule, the eldest son of a farm
  family inherited both the family headship and all the family lands.
  Only holdings above a certain minimal area could be divided and a
  portion given to a younger son. When such divisions, which were
  confined by definition to gono families, occurred, the main line Qionke)
  of the family retained the larger share of property. The younger son,
  who now headed a branch family (bunke), received very little land and
  remained economically dependent on the honke. He and his successors
  were expected to continue in perpetuity paying homage to the main
  line, commemorating its ancestors as their own and deferring to the
  leadership of its current head.
  Although found throughout the country at the turn of the century
  (and not unheard of today), honke-bunke ties appear to have been
  particularly important in isolated mountain hamlets and hamlets scat-
  tered throughout northeastern Japan-in short, in regions where com-
  mercial farming remained relatively undeveloped. In some of these
  communities, one main house and its numerous branches, some of
  remote origin and some recently formed, might constitute the entire
  6 A fourth relationship, between skinrui, or relatives (whether by blood or marriage), has been
  omitted from this discussion, owing to the lack of data for the turn of the century. The
  impression one gains from the literature is that in the early 1900s, ties of this type generally
  were structured along main/branch household or patron/client lines. They have gained in
  importance since then and, in particular, since 1945.
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  RURAL SOCIETY 
  553
  population. Elsewhere, several different and competing lineage organi-
  zations (dozoku) existed, the main houses of each one forming a hierar-
  chy based on the number of dependent houses they possessed. 7
  In contrast, landlord-tenant ties prevailed in regions where commer-
  cial agriculture was relatively well developed, in particular, in hamlets
  throughout the Kinki and Chugoku districts of southwestern Japan
  and elsewhere in hamlets located in fertile river valleys or near large
  cities.8 Some landlords headed families with illustrious pedigrees and
  rented their fields to tenants whose forebears had been their forebears'
  household servants. Others had acquired their landholdings more re-
  cently, by means of moneylending and mortgage foreclosures, and had
  as their tenants farmers who had once been owner-cultivators. Still
  others had financed land reclamation projects and had as their tenants
  those who had done the actual labor required. Whether of old or
  recent origin, landlord-tenant ties were in principle less permanent
  than honke-bunke ties. The core of the relationship was business-the
  exchange of land for a portion of its fruits-not blood, and either party
  was free to take his business elsewhere. Given the virtually untram-
  meled property rights granted to landowners by the Meiji civil code
  and the brisk demand for tenancies that existed throughout the coun-
  try at the time, this situation worked to the disadvantage of the tenant
  farmers, who generally sought to minimize the risk of eviction from all
  the land they cultivated by renting small parcels of land from as many
  landlords as possible.
  Patron-client ties occupied a kind of functional and geographical
  swing position between the other two relationships. A form of fictive
  kinship in which one party assumed for his lifetime a "parent role"
  (oyabun) and the other a "child role" (kobun), patron-client ties could
  be used to buttress honke-bunke relationships that had grown weaker
  and more impersonal over the generations or to smooth the "rough
  edges" of landlord-tenant relationships by adding an explicitly affec-
  tive dimension. They could also exist independently, linking individu-
  als and households that had no connection other than residence in the
  same community. Although found throughout the countryside (and
  indeed throughout Japanese society), patron-client ties appear to have
  been particularly numerous and important in the mountainous dis-
  7 For a detailed discussion of dozoku, see Chie Nakane, Kinship and Economic Organization in
  Rural Japan (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1967), pp. 82-123.
  8 More information on landlords may be found in Ann Waswo, Japanese Landlords: The Decline
  of a Rural Elite (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).
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  554 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  tricts of central Japan, where dozoku lineage organizations and large
  landlords were both relatively rare.9
  Despite the differences among them, all three relationships shared
  certain key characteristics. Each was vertically structured, linking a
  superior and inferior household, and each imposed a wide-ranging set
  of obligations on the parties to it. Whether tenant, kobun or bunke, the
  inferior party owed loyal service to the superior. He and the members
  of his household were expected to pay their respects at the master's
  house and perform any necessary chores during the New Year's and
  midsummer Obon celebrations and whenever a wedding, birth, or
  funeral took place. They also helped with the annual cleanup of the
  master's house and storerooms and with the planting and harvesting of
  his crops. Superiors, in turn, were obligated by custom to extend
  benevolent protection to their dependents: to lend them food, money,
  or tools as necessary, to intercede on their behalf whenever they had
  difficulties with other hamlet residents or with the government, and to
  find employment and marriage partners for their children.10
  A final similarity, which stemmed from the other two, was the
  impact of these relationships on the community. By functioning as a
  kind of insurance policy for low-status households, all three relation-
  ships helped make tolerable their poverty and political impotence. At
  the same time, opportunities for contact among low-status households
  were minimized. Dependent households knew and probably cared
  more about their masters' affairs than about those of other households
  like their own; their peers were, at best, competitors for the benefits
  that the elite dispensed. Instead of leading to class consciousness,
  then, potentially disruptive tensions within the hamlet were defused,
  and the gemeinschaft was maintained.
  This was, of course, a net result. Solidarity did not occur spontane-
  ously or endure on its own. It was achieved by human agency and
  needed constantly to be renewed by the same means. That proved
  possible, by and large, in the late nineteenth century. Disputes of one
  sort or another erupted, to be sure, but almost none of them chal-
  lenged the rural social order. Perceived imperfections in the system,
  not the system itself, were at issue. Harmony appears to have been
  regarded as a necessary and therefore desirable state, requiring a de-
  9 See John W. Bennett and Iwao Ishino, Paternalism in the Japanese Economy: Anthropological
  Studies in Oyabun-Kobun Patterns (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), esp.
  chap. 9; also Nakane, Kinship and Economic Organization, pp. 123-32.
  10 For a brief discussion of these reciprocal obligations, as reported by Ariga Kizaemon and
  Tsuchiya Takao in the 1930s, see Bennett and Ishino, Paternalism, pp. 214-21.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  555
  gree of self-restraint and compromise to attain. Nor was inequality
  seriously questioned by rural residents. That some should be rich and
  some poor, some powerful and some powerless was considered natu-
  ral, if indeed it was consciously considered at all. Although the farm-
  ers continued to believe in the desirability of harmony, the assumption
  that inequality was natural did not survive the turn of the century.
  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST
  It will come as no surprise to those who study rural societies elsewhere
  in the world that scholars have disagreed about rural social change in
  early twentieth-century Japan. As is usually the case, it is not the
  events themselves that are at issue but, rather, what caused them and
  what they signified. Because these disagreements continue today and
  because my own views lie more or less squarely in the revisionist
  camp, some attention to the main lines of controversy is in order.
  Scholars generally agree that farmers became increasingly restive
  after the turn of the century and that their restiveness was manifested
  during the Taisho and early Showa eras in two streams of protest. One
  was the tenant farmer movement, which led to the creation of tenant
  unions and a marked increase in tenancy disputes after World War I.
  The other was nohonshugi, literally "agriculture-is-the-base-ism," a
  loosely defined set of ideas extolling farming as a way of life and the
  rural community as a model for the nation as a whole. Institutionally
  more amorphous than the tenant movement, nohonshugi nonetheless
  spawned a variety of organizations, ranging from community-based
  farm cooperatives to a few blood brotherhoods plotting acts of political
  terror.
  Until the early 1960s, scholars treated these two streams of protest
  separately, itself an act of interpretation. The tenant movement repre-
  sented the kindling of revolutionary energy at the rice-roots level of
  Japanese society. Impoverished by high rents in kind, tenant farmers
  spontaneously turned against their landlords and began demanding
  both rent reductions and more secure cultivating rights. Because the
  landlords were the rural elite, their position buttressed by the civil
  code and their interests protected by government officials, tenant pro-
  tests at the local level constituted the beginnings of an assault on the
  Japanese state itself. But proper guidance from the organized left was
  required for that assault to develop. When labor union leaders and
  Marxist intellectuals began providing that guidance in the 1920s, the
  government became alarmed. By means of outright repression and
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  various social and economic policies designed to divert the tenant
  farmers' attention from the true causes of their plight, the government
  succeeded in ending the threat that the tenant movement posed."
  If the tenant movement represented to these scholars what might
  have been, ndhonshugi represented reality: the emergence of emperor-
  centered ultranationalism and Japanese fascism. Using the school sys-
  tem, the military reservist associations, and the organs of local govern-
  ment, the state sought in the early 1900s to shore up the status quo in
  the countryside and to prevent the development of class consciousness
  that had accompanied industrialization in the West. Its efforts met
  with an enthusiastic response from the rural elite. Landlords found
  themselves threatened by the development of capitalism in the nation
  as a whole and by tenant militancy in the countryside. Eagerly they
  championed frugality, hard work, and communal solidarity as a means
  of defending themselves against both developments. The economic
  problems facing farmers as industrialization progressed and the ten-
  sions within rural communities heightened were to be resolved by
  reaffirming the importance of agriculture and the time-honored con-
  ventions of rural life.
  Mobilized initially by the state itself and functioning as agents of state
  policy, these local ndhonshugi advocates began to pursue an independent
  course in the mid-1920s as economic conditions in the countryside
  worsened. From a profarming position they veered steadily toward
  antiurbanism and anticapitalism. By the early 1930s they were provid-
  ing both funding and manpower to the right-wing secret societies whose
  plans for a Showa restoration represented "fascism from below" and
  whose activities provided the Japanese military with the opportunity to
  intervene in politics and establish "fascism from above."12
  Since the early 1960s this portrayal of developments in the Japanese
  countryside has been challenged by a younger generation of scholars.
  Proceeding chronologically in their reappraisal of this view and only
  recently grappling with the 1930s, these scholars have yet to produce a
  comprehensive new paradigm for rural Japanese history from 1900 to
  1945 and have indeed found much to disagree about among them-
  selves. Nonetheless, their research to date has yielded a significantly
  different interpretation of the roots of rural protest movements than
  11 A representative example of this interpretation of the tenant movement is Nomin undoshi
  kenkyukai, ed.,Nihon nomin undoshi (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1961).
  12 For examples of this interpretation, see Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship
  and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modem World (Boston: Beacon Press,
  1967), chap. 5, pp. 291-313; Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behaviour in Modem Japanese
  Politics, expanded ed., ed. Ivan Morris (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), chap. 2.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  557
  that set forth in the older literature and contains the outlines, albeit
  still shadowy at best, of a substantially different view of the relation-
  ship between the countryside and the Japanese government in the
  1930s. "3
  Instead of a clear-cut distinction between the tenant movement and
  nohonshugi, revisionist scholars stress the similarities between the two.
  In their initial phases, both reflected the interests and aspirations of
  the middling stratum of rural society. It was the more affluent among
  the tenant farmers, those who cultivated larger than average holdings
  and/or owned land of their own, who organized rent strikes and unions
  in the 1910s and 1920s. Similarly, it was the owner-cultivators and
  substantial owner-tenants who most enthusiastically supported pro-
  farming nohonshugi during the same period. Both were essentially
  petty-bourgeois movements, and both sought political representation
  as well as economic betterment for their members.
  In addition to relocating the personnel involved in both streams of
  protest at the center rather than at the two extremes of rural society,
  the revisionists have also redefined the role of the state and presented a
  much more complex portrayal of the relationship between the rural
  population and the central government than appears in the earlier
  literature. Although concerned about the development of class con-
  sciousness in Japan, government officials did not see shoring up the
  status quo in the countryside as the solution. Rather than relying
  solely on the rural elite as intermediaries between ordinary farmers
  and the state as in the past, they sought in the early 1900s to establish
  direct influence over all rural residents.'4 At the same time they re-
  newed their assault on the vestiges of hamlet autonomy. These two
  initiatives produced contradictory effects that were to bedevil govern-
  ment policymakers for the next three decades and generate a marked
  degree of rivalry among the government ministries concerned with
  rural affairs.
  On the one hand, efforts to establish direct influence over the rural
  population encouraged centrifugal forces within rural communities.
  New, centrally administered organizations such as the youth groups
  13 Far too diverse in their methods and emphases to be termed a school, these scholars include
  Kano Masanao, Kinbara Samon, Mori Takemaro, Nakamura Masanori, Nishida Yoshiaki,
  Suzuki Masazuki, Yasuda Tsuneo, and Yui Masaomi.
  14 The timing of this shift is one of the points on which revisionist scholars disagree, with some
  arguing for the years immediately after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 and others for the
  1920s or 1930s. Their disagreement arises in large part from the differing criteria they apply:
  Although the former want to elucidate the beginnings of what was actually a gradual process,
  the latter seek its culmination.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  and reservist associations that were established after the Russo-
  Japanese War provided opportunities for local leadership to farmers of
  no more than modest wealth and lineage. Far from opposing the state,
  these newly mobilized farmers identified with its goals, and that identi-
  fication emboldened them to challenge the economic and political
  prerogatives of the local elites.
  On the other hand, and more or less simultaneously, the govern-
  ment's efforts to eliminate the vestiges of hamlet autonomy encour-
  aged centripetal forces in rural communities. Faced with an external
  threat, hamlet residents from all strata rallied in defense of their com-
  munities and sought means to protect themselves from the administra-
  tive villages into which they were being more fully absorbed and
  ultimately from the state that demanded that absorption. These cen-
  tripetal forces did not overwhelm the centrifugal forces producing
  local conflict but coexisted with them in a complicated and highly
  volatile mix. The same farmers who identified with the state when
  seeking internal reform of their communities were suspicious of the
  state when considering their communities in relation to Japanese soci-
  ety as a whole. Nationalism became firmly rooted in the countryside,
  but the desire for communal autonomy persisted.
  What about the 1930s? It is difficult to generalize about an ongoing
  scholarly process, but what seems to concern revisionist scholars most
  is not political terrorism, which they regard as a minor facet of
  nohonshugi, but the impact of the Showa depression on all Japanese
  farmers. Another and related characteristic is these scholars' concern
  with local history. Unlike their predecessors who emphasized the ideas
  and policies of government officials, agricultural experts, and intellec-
  tuals of both the right and left, revisionist scholars focus on ordinary
  farmers and rural communities and seek to define what happened
  from the inside out. In their research, they emphasize how farmers
  perceived their problems and the actual implementation and impact of
  government policies.
  In accounting for the demise of the tenant movement in the early
  Showa period, revisionist scholars, though not ignoring the role of
  government countermeasures, stress the errors of the movement's left-
  ist leaders, in particular their insistence on the need to protest Japa-
  nese imperialism. However crucial such protests may have been to the
  Comintern and the revolutionary cause in Japan, they did not appeal
  to significant numbers of Japanese tenant farmers or seem relevant to
  the economic problems foremost in their lives. In contrast with the
  left, local advocates of nohonshugi won increasing support among farm-
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  559
  ers of all strata precisely because they offered solutions to those eco-
  nomic problems. It was their practical program of cooperatives and
  credit associations, not their ideology, that accounted for their grow-
  ing popularity and local influence.
  That influence, in turn, alarmed the central government which, on
  both military and political grounds, could not tolerate the existence of
  popular movements that it did not control. From the early 1930s
  onward, and especially after the outbreak of war with China in 1937,
  government officials sought with renewed determination to achieve
  command of the countryside. To what extent they succeeded is a
  question on which no consensus has yet emerged-hence my earlier
  reference to the "shadowy outlines" of a new view of the relationship
  between the countryside and the government during these crucial
  years. I suspect, however, that one prominent feature of that view will
  be the extent to which officials had to compromise with popular senti-
  ment in order to achieve a modicum of the spiritual and material
  mobilization they sought. Far from imposing controls as they saw fit,
  they found it necessary to build on aspirations for economic equality
  and hamlet autonomy in designing a new social order for the country-
  side. If the results had anything to do with fascism, a term revisionists
  employ with considerable wariness,1* it was fascism from within, not
  that from above.
  Assuming, as I am inclined to do, that the revisionist model of rural
  social change is the more accurate, what then were the common roots
  of tenant militancy and nohonshugi? What caused restiveness among
  middling farmers in the early 1900s and motivated them to question
  the existing distribution of wealth and power? Two factors appear to
  have been of crucial importance: (1) the acquisition by middling farm-
  ers of skills and experiences that formerly had been monopolized by
  the rural elite and (2) the accumulation among those same farmers of
  new and newly perceived economic grievances to which the rural elite
  seemed reluctant to attend.
  The impact of education and conscription
  Not all gdnd had been literate during the Tokugawa period, but virtu-
  ally all literate farmers had been gdnd. Their ability to read and write,
  which in some cases extended to mastery of the Confucian classics and
  the formal epistolary style favored by the warrior class, had served as
  15 The term almost always appears in quotation marks and often only at the beginning and end
  of their published work.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  one of the bases of their local political power: Only they could compre-
  hend the regulations issued by the domain officials and keep the rec-
  ords that the officials demanded. With the institution of compulsory
  elementary education in the 1870s as part of a projected nationwide
  system of primary, secondary, and university education, what had
  earlier been a perquisite of wealth became a universal obligation. The
  gono monopoly on literacy began to erode.
  One must be careful not to exaggerate the speed with which literacy
  spread among the rural population or, for that matter, the degree of
  literacy that was achieved by products of the new educational system.
  As Koji Taira observed, elementary education was compulsory but not
  free in Meiji Japan. In addition to the indirect burden of local taxes,
  parents who sent their children to school had to bear a direct burden of
  tuition payments and miscellaneous fees for books and other school
  supplies. They also had to do without whatever labor their children
  supplied to the household economy. As a result, access to education
  remained sensitive to prevailing economic conditions.and to levels of
  family income. Although enrollment figures rose from 27 percent of all
  school-age boys and girls in 1873 to 98 percent in 1910, the actual school
  attendance rate did not reach 50 percent until 1900. In 1910 it stood at
  85 percent. That was a national average. The available data indicate that
  adult literacy rates, and hence school attendance rates half a generation
  earlier, were lower in the countryside than in the cities of Japan through-
  out the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the majority
  of both urban and rural Japanese, moreover, completion of the required
  four years of elementary schooling (six years after 1907) marked the end
  of formal education. In that length of time they had mastered kana, the
  phonetic symbols that could be used to "spell" Japanese words, but at
  best they had learned only a few hundred of the thousands of Chinese
  characters used in the written language. Their ability to read and write
  was thus seriously constrained.16
  Despite these caveats, and in some respects because of them, the
  impact of education on rural society cannot be ignored. Merely by
  setting foot in Meiji classrooms, youngsters found themselves in an
  achievement-oriented setting in which performance, not wealth or
  lineage, counted. As Ronald Dore pointed out, "bows and respect
  language did not come too easily to the tenant who had been top of his
  class at the primary school while the landlord occupied only a mid-
  16 Koji Taira, "Education and Literacy in Meiji Japan: An Interpretation," Explorations in
  Economic History 8 (July 1971): 371-94.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  561
  dling place."17 Nor was the level of literacy that could be achieved in
  four years of schooling totally without utility, even though it fell far
  short of that required for full command of the written language. Ow-
  ing to the widespread use during the Meiji period of furigana {kana
  symbols attached to characters to indicate their reading) in newspa-
  pers, magazines, and all but the most esoteric books, mastery of kana
  was a far more useful skill than it is today and provided access to a
  wide range of reading matter.
  The available evidence suggests that ordinary farmers began putting
  that skill to use around the turn of the century. Newspapers, formerly
  confined to cities and towns, penetrated the countryside in increasing
  numbers. In their wake came magazines and journals tailored to the
  interests and abilities of the rural population.18 Farmers also used
  writing more in their daily lives: in keeping accounts, in codifying
  hamlet rules, and in drafting bylaws for local agricultural societies.19
  Of particular significance was the drafting of bylaws for the tenant
  unions that were organized at this time. Only a few examples of these
  bylaws were uncovered in the 1920s when the government began to
  monitor tenant unrest: Whether or not more had been written, we do
  not know. Those extant are impressive documents, containing as
  many as thirty-six articles and specifying detailed rules and proce-
  dures.20 Some of the terminology and general provisions may have
  been borrowed from the bylaws of agricultural societies or the land-
  lord associations that had come into being in the 1880s and 1890s, but
  it was borrowing with a purpose and indicative of the drafters' more-
  than-marginal literacy. The latter, it appears, were relatively prosper-
  ous owner-tenants, that is, individuals from the middling, not the
  poorest, stratum of rural society.
  That middling farmers generally had more years of schooling and
  hence higher levels of literacy than poor farmers did seems a reason-
  able conclusion. Precisely because elementary education imposed a
  direct financial burden on households, the children of middling farm-
  ers had greater access to it than did the children of poor farmers. Data
  from Okayama Prefecture in the early 1920s indicate what in all proba-
  17 Ronald Dore, Land Reform in Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 54.
  18 Suzuki Masayuki, "Taishoki nomin seiji shiso no ichi sokumen-jo," Nihonshi kenkyu, no.
  173 (January 1977): 7.
  19 For the text of a set of hamlet rules drafted in 1897, see Kawamura Nozomu, "Kosaku sogi ki
  ni okeru sonraku taisei," Sonraku shakaikenkyu nenpo, no. 7 (i960): 119-20.
  20 Two examples of tenant union bylaws, one dated 1896 and the other 1902, may be found in
  Shimaneken norinbu, nochi kaitakuka, ed., Shimane ken nochi kaikakushi (Hirata: Shimane
  ken, 1959), pp. 118-20.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  bility was true earlier in the century as well. For 5,583 members of the
  farm households surveyed, exposure to education varied directly with
  economic status: 70 percent of the roughly 950 individuals over the
  age of eight and under the age of forty who had no schooling whatso-
  ever came from landless tenant households; 25 percent of those who
  had no schooling came from tenant households that also owned land;
  and only 5 percent came from owner-cultivator households that also
  leased land.21
  Nor was the education of middling farmers confined to primary
  schools. Although they were much less likely than were their more
  affluent neighbors to prepare for university, they appear to have com-
  posed the majority of enrollees in second-class agricultural schools.
  Unlike first-class agricultural schools, which required five years beyond
  the compulsory level to complete and qualified their graduates for work
  in agricultural experiment stations and prefectural farm bureaus, these
  schools offered a three-year course of study in practical farming meth-
  ods, and most graduates returned to their communities to farm the
  family land. Tuition was beyond the reach of poor farm households, but
  not excessive for substantial owner-tenants or typical owner-culti-
  vators. When the number of such vocational schools increased after the
  Russo-Japanese War, even more sons of middling farm families gained
  access to the training they provided.22 In the course of that training they
  learned how to read agricultural handbooks and technical journals as
  well as how to raise more or better crops.
  Like education, military service provided rural Japanese with new
  skills and experiences. Many conscripts caught their first glimpses of
  city life when they reported to their prefectural capitals for final physi-
  cal examinations. Once enrolled in basic training, they found them-
  selves living in Western-style barracks equipped with such newfangled
  items as heating stoves, indoor plumbing, beds, and, after the turn of
  the century, electricity. They wore trousers, tunics, and sturdy boots
  for the first time in their lives and learned to use and maintain a variety
  of weapons and machinery. In the classroom they learned the rudi-
  ments of battle tactics, surveying, and map reading. Those whose
  ability to read and write was found deficient took supplementary liter-
  acy courses.23
  21 Ota Toshie, "Kosakund kaikyu no keizaiteki shakaiteki jotai," Sangyd kumiai, no. 261
  (1927): pp. 84,102-3. 
  22 Suzuki, "Taisho ki nomin seiji shiso," p. 21.
  23 Nobutaka Ike, "War and Modernization," in Political Development in Modem Japan, ed.
  Robert Ward (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 194-204; Keizo Shibu-
  sawa, comp. and ed., Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era, trans. Charles S. Terry, vol.
  5 of Japanese Culture in the Meiji Era (Tokyo: Obunsha, 1958), pp. 303-9.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
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  Of even more significance in the long run were the ideological train-
  ing that the conscripts received and the opportunities that they discov-
  ered to acquire a status honor different from that prevailing in the
  countryside. Both contributed to the restiveness among ordinary farm-
  ers when they returned to their communities and found themselves
  once again in a milieu demanding subordination and deference to the
  local elite.
  Since the conservative, or Japanist, reaction of the 1880s,2* lessons
  in traditional Japanese ethics had become a fundamental part of the
  curriculum in primary schools. From the 1890s onward a copy of the
  Imperial Rescript on Education was kept as a treasured possession in
  every school and read to the student body each year at a formal assem-
  bly. That these and related efforts to promote loyalty to the emperor
  and to his government had an impact on the hearts and minds of
  young children cannot be denied. But just as the level of literacy that
  youngsters could achieve during their basic schooling was limited, so
  too was the level, and the intensity, of the national consciousness they
  could acquire. The indoctrination that conscripts received in the army
  and navy brought into sharper focus the passive identification with the
  state and the vague conception of themselves as the emperor's subjects
  that they had acquired in school. An imperial rescript they were re-
  quired to memorize told them that their first and foremost duty as
  soldiers and sailors was loyalty to the emperor.25 They must be physi-
  cally strong, morally pure, and willing to sacrifice their lives to fulfill
  that duty. If they were loyal, the army and navy would be strong, and
  the nation would be protected from evil. The reiteration of these and
  other themes in the camp lecture hall and on the parade ground in-
  duced a strong emotional response from the conscripts and instilled in
  them a much more active sense of nationalism than they had possessed
  previously.
  At the same time, military service gave the conscripts opportunities
  for personal advancement. To an even greater extent than students in
  primary school, conscripts in the military were evaluated on the basis
  of their own ability and achievement. Those who excelled at soldiering
  tasks were rewarded with additional training and promotions. Those
  who could not pass muster languished as ordinary privates. Actual
  24 For a brief discussion of the impact of this conservative reaction on educational policy, see
  Herbert Passin, Society and Education in Japan (New York: Columbia University Press,
  1965), chap. 4, esp. pp. 62-91.
  25 An English translation of "The Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors" may be found in Hillis Lory,
  Japan's Military Masters: The Army in Japanese Life (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
  1943). PP- 239-45-
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  warfare added a new dimension to this process, for under the harsh
  and life-threatening conditions of the battlefield, one had the chance
  not only to win a promotion but also to become a hero.
  We know relatively little about the heroes and ordinary soldiers of
  the Sino-Japanese War. Nor do we know much about the reception
  given those from rural backgrounds when they returned home.26 Be-
  cause the conflict was relatively small and victory for Japan was rela-
  tively easy, the impact of the war on rural society probably was fleet-
  ing at most. But that was not the case with the Russo-Japanese War a
  decade later. More than one million men were mobilized for combat,
  and even those in the inactive reserves were called up for some form of
  war service. Casualties totaled eighty thousand dead and roughly
  thirty thousand wounded in some twenty months of fighting. Port
  Arthur, which the Japanese had taken in a single day in 1894, with-
  stood almost six months of full-scale attack.
  Virtually every rural community in the country was affected by the
  war. Land taxes and excise taxes on such daily necessities as sugar and
  soy sauce were raised temporarily to help finance the war effort. Thou-
  sands of horses were requisitioned. Severe labor shortages were cre-
  ated as young and middle-aged men left the fields to report for duty.
  In many hamlets at least one family learned that a father or a son
  would not be coming back. Because of the immediacy of the conflict to
  their own lives, people were anxious for news from the front, and the
  government, anxious to maintain popular acceptance of what was be-
  coming a costly venture, saw to it that news was supplied in as palat-
  able a form as possible.27 For the first time in Japanese history and
  with a wrenching abruptness, rural residents throughout the country
  followed developments abroad with the same intense concern that they
  had always lavished on their crops.
  It was during the Russo-Japanese War that the custom of sending
  off newly conscripted soldiers with a feast and a parade through the
  hamlet first became widespread. Returning soldiers were welcomed
  with joy, relief, and copious amounts of sake. Those who returned
  with decorations for valor were especially well received, for in being
  honored by the emperor, they brought particular honor to their com-
  munities. For example, to have received the Order of the Golden Kite,
  26 For a discussion of the heroes of the Sino-Japanese War, at least one of whom may have been
  fictitious, see Donald Keene, "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects on
  Japan," in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively (Prince-
  ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 143-54.
  27 Shunpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Colum-
  bia University Press, 1970), chap. 5.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
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  in recognition of his exceptional bravery during the assault on Hill
  203, brought immediate fame to a soldier from Saitama Prefecture
  named Yanagishita Iyasaburo. Significantly he came from a family of
  owner-tenants, and his military exploits provided him with a degree of
  prestige within his community that no one of his background had
  possessed before. Suddenly he was a man whose opinions counted. He
  merited a place of honor at hamlet gatherings and respectful treatment
  from one and all.28
  Yanagishita's bravery may have been exceptional, but the hero's wel-
  come he received was not. As a conflict that proved the importance of
  small, mobile infantry units, the Russo-Japanese War made heroes out
  of many ordinary soldiers and noncommissioned officers. Here and
  there throughout the country, farmers from middling and poor families
  returned home as celebrities and with ranks and decorations superior to
  those of their more affluent and powerful neighbors. Owners of less
  than an acre were corporals, whereas owners often acres were privates
  first-class. A day laborer held a seventh-class medal, but his hamlet
  chief, a substantial landowner, had only an eighth-class medal.29
  Once the victory celebrations ended, tensions began to surface. Ex-
  cept at occasional ceremonies and drill exercises for those in the active
  reserves, these war heroes were expected to behave in ways befitting
  their inferior economic status. The available evidence suggests that
  they, and indeed many veterans of more ordinary rank and merit, found
  this difficult. Having developed a sense of their own competence and
  experienced the giving as well as the taking of orders, they did not like
  being told what to do by men whose authority was based on an accident
  of birth. Having seen something of the world beyond the hamlet and
  served the imperial cause in a foreign war, they found many aspects of
  rural life stultifying and much of the labor involved in farming demean-
  ing. Some younger sons who returned from the war surveyed the menial
  jobs that were available to them at home and promptly reenlisted in the
  army. Their older brothers, lacking that option because they had to
  help cultivate the family land, had to deal with their discontent at home.
  Reports of veterans' "rowdy behavior" began to reach officials in coun-
  try and prefectural governments within a few months of the war's end.
  Many veterans were "squandering" their separation bonuses on drink-
  ing parties and "fancy" clothing; a few even physically assaulted local
  officials.30
  28 Suzuki Masayuki, "Nichi-Ro sengo no noson mondai no tenkai," Rekishigaku kenkyu, 1974
  special issue, p. 156. 
  29 Ibid., pp. 155-6. 
  30 Ibid., pp. 152,155-6.
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  The antisocial behavior that regional authorities perceived among
  the war veterans was a major reason that in 1906 and 1907 they began
  urging the village mayors to establish local veterans' clubs (gun'yukai).
  These clubs in turn served as the basis for the military reservist associa-
  tions that were established after 1910, and as we shall shortly see, what
  had begun as efforts under the direction of the local elite to reintegrate
  soldiers into civilian life became, under the auspices of the Imperial
  Japanese Army, a means by which nonelite farmers could acquire local
  status and influence.
  Economic grievances
  Unfortunately we lack a clear and unambiguous picture of macroeco-
  nomic trends in the agricultural sector between 1880 and 1920. Econo-
  mists now agree that Japanese government data for the late nineteenth
  century underreport both acreages under cultivation and crop yields.
  They do not agree on what if anything should be done about that
  underreporting, and so the result is a lively and continuing contro-
  versy about estimates of subsequent growth rates in output, which
  must use as their basis those nineteenth-century data-as they exist or
  are corrected in one of a number of ways. Unless one is a party to this
  controversy, it is impossible to state with conviction whether (1) Japan
  began the Meiji era with high levels of agricultural output and thereaf-
  ter its growth rates averaged only 1 percent annually, barely keeping
  pace with increases in population; (2) output was fairly low in early
  Meiji, increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent between 1880 and
  1905, and then slowed to 2.1 percent, for an average annual increase of
  2.4 percent for the entire period, more than twice the rate of popula-
  tion growth; or (3) output increased at an average annual rate of only 2
  percent for the entire period, with the rate accelerating, not declining,
  after 1905.
  During the 1960s these rather different estimates of agricultural
  growth rates generated two radically different models of overall eco-
  nomic development in Japan in the Meiji and early Taisho eras: the
  prerequisite growth model, derived from the first estimate, in which
  increases in agricultural output preceded industrialization, and the
  concurrent growth model, derived from the second and third esti-
  mates, in which increases in agricultural output at a level sub-
  stantially above increases in population accompanied industrializa-
  tion. More recently, a third model, in which agricultural output
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  567
  expanded both before and during industrialization, has been put
  forward. 3"
  The general mood observable in the Japanese countryside during
  the first three decades of the Meiji period lends support to the second
  and third models, but not to the first. Farmers did not behave as if
  their best years were behind them. On the contrary, they appeared to
  believe that the future held brighter prospects than the past did. There
  was a better circulation of information about seeds and pest control,
  mounting enthusiasm for new crops and improved tools, and a myriad
  of small-scale projects undertaken to improve irrigation and drainage.
  Government officials encouraged all this activity, but it seems unlikely
  that the farmers were merely responding to their exhortations. In
  addition to being skeptical of the government's motives, the farmers
  were intensely pragmatic. They needed tangible evidence that their
  productivity could be increased, and if the scattered examples we have
  of individuals who achieved significantly greater yields on the same
  plots of land are at all indicative of a more widespread phenomenon,
  then that evidence must have been available to them.*2
  To say that there was a mood of vitality rather than stasis in the
  Meiji countryside is not to say that the agricultural sector bore without
  strain its appointed role as a source of capital for industrialization. As
  Harry Oshima noted," the land tax imposed a heavy burden on farm-
  ers, and very little of the revenues generated by the countryside was
  returned to it in the form of public spending. Because the taxes were
  also regressive, only the large landowners were likely to be left with
  resources over and above consumption needs to invest in farm im-
  provements. As a result, agricultural growth was lower than it could
  have been and less uniformly diffused throughout the country than if
  31 For an exposition of the prerequisite growth model, see James I. Nakamura, Agricultural
  Production and the Economic Development of Japan 1873-1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1966). For the concurrent growth model, see Bruce F. Johnston, "The
  Japanese 'Model' of Agricultural Development: Its Relevance to Developing Nations," in
  Agriculture and Economic Growth: Japan's Experience, ed. Kazushi Ohkawa et al. (Tokyo and
  Princeton, N.J.: Tokyo University Press and Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 58-102;
  and Yujiro Hayami and Saburo Yamada, "Agricultural Productivity and the Beginning of
  Industrialization," in Agriculture and Economic Growth, pp. 105—29. For the third model, see
  Minami Rydshin, Nihon no keizai hatten (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1981), pp. 59-63.
  32 For one example, see Nishida Yoshiaki, "Reisai nokosei to jinushiteki tochi shoyu: Niigata
  ken ichi tezukuri jinushi no bunseki," Hitotsubashi ronso 63 (1970): 631-47; also Ronald
  Dore, "Agricultural Improvement in Japan, 1870-1890," Economic Development and Cultural
  Change9 (October i960): 69-91.
  33 Harry T. Oshima, "Meiji Fiscal Policy and Economic Progress," in The State and Economic
  Enterprise in Japan, ed. William W. Lockwood (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
  1965). PP- 353-89-
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  public funds had been more readily available to finance improve-
  ments. Nor were the gains evenly distributed among the farmers.
  Although some prospered, others became enmeshed in poverty, losing
  their land because of tax arrears and, in some cases, selling their
  daughters into prostitution and pawning even their cooking utensils
  and bedding.
  Although there were impoverished victims of change in almost ev-
  ery community, they were not the focal point of restiveness among the
  farmers after the turn of the century or the instigators of early assaults
  on the country's economic and political inequality. In Japan as else-
  where, it was those who had benefited in some measure from change
  and whose expectations of what was possible in life had risen who first
  challenged the status quo.
  Throughout the late nineteenth century, increases in agricultural
  output had been brought about primarily by labor-intensive means.
  When modest investments of capital were required, the local elite
  generally was willing and able to supply the needed funds: noblesse
  oblige, self-interest, and affluence combined to make them champions
  of agricultural improvement.34 Eventually, however, what Gustav
  Ranis termed the "slack" in the agricultural sector was used up, and
  inexpensive measures no longer yielded significant increases in produc-
  tivity. Large-scale land and irrigation projects that transcended indi-
  vidual holdings and the boundaries of individual hamlets were now
  required. 35
  This situation did not develop at the same time everywhere, but in
  regions where incentives had been strong and "slack recovery" pur-
  sued vigorously, an impasse was apparent by the early 1900s. On the
  one hand, both the willingness and the ability of the local elite to
  sponsor agricultural improvements had declined. Only the very few
  "giant" landowners in the country had the wherewithal to fund im-
  provements on the larger scale that now was necessary, and many of
  them, newly aware of the more attractive investment opportunities
  that existed in commerce and manufacturing, were reluctant to do so.
  Typical members of the elite, although wealthier than ordinary farm-
  ers, did not control adequate land or capital on their own; nor did
  34 Waswo, Japanese Landlords, chap. 3; see also Ronald Dore, "The Meiji Landlord: Good or
  Bad?" Journal ofAsian Studies 18 (May 1959): 434-55-
  35 Gustav Ranis, "The Financing of Japanese Economic Development," in Agriculture and
  Economic Growth, pp. 37-57. "Slack" in the Japanese case consisted of excess workers on the
  land and reserves of productivity in the land. The former could be withdrawn and applied
  elsewhere without reducing agricultural output; the latter could be tapped by means of
  improved techniques of farming and small injections of capital.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
  569
  mechanisms exist for planning improvements that involved more than
  a single community or for pooling local resources to finance them.36
  On the other hand, the ordinary farmers' interest in agricultural im-
  provement had intensified. Unable to afford the risks of experimenta-
  tion a few decades earlier, they had watched their more affluent neigh-
  bors try out new techniques and seen them reap impressive gains.
  Having followed suit on their own holdings, they too had achieved
  higher yields and become determined to discover yet other ways of
  increasing output. Soon after their determination crystallized, how-
  ever, gains became more difficult to achieve.
  Even if the concept had existed at the time, "slack" would have
  meant nothing to these farmers. As they diagnosed the situation, the
  key obstacle they faced was in gaining more control over their own
  time and labor. Every day they donated to the community-and as
  many as thirty days a year might be required of every able-bodied male
  and female-was a day during which they had to neglect their own
  livelihoods. If the number of days could have been reduced to the
  minimum or if wages could have been paid for the services performed,
  they would have been better off. Similarly, they began to calculate the
  costs of performing services for their superiors. Were the meals and
  simple gifts they received adequate compensation for the hours they
  spent working at the master's house? Did not the custom of planting
  the master's rice paddies first mean that their own harvests would be
  delayed and subject to greater risk from an early frost?
  No matter how cogent their reasoning, ordinary farmers found it
  exceedingly difficult to change the prevailing customs. As underlings
  they could petition for reforms, but the elite still controlled decision
  making in the community. Ordinary farmers lacked the leverage to
  compel a discussion of, much less action on, the issues that concerned
  them. It was at this point that the central government became more
  concerned about rural affairs. One consequence of that concern and
  the policies that flowed from it was that ordinary farmers began to
  acquire the leverage they needed to press for the changes they desired.
  Government intervention in rural affairs
  After the turn of the century and especially in the years immediately
  following the Russo-Japanese War, government policy toward the
  36 See Waswo, Japanese Landlords, chap. 4, for a discussion of changes in the attitudes and
  behavior of the landed elite around 1900.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  countryside shifted markedly. In place of the laissez-faire that had
  characterized policy since the Restoration, officials in both the civil
  and military bureaucracies now championed an active "social policy"
  and sought to link rural communities and rural residents more closely
  to the state. They did so for various reasons, chief among them being
  their recognition that national unity was imperative if Japan was to
  maintain its newly achieved status as a first-class country and their
  awareness that the economic burdens that that status imposed on the
  population made social and political conflict more likely. Though not
  ignoring Japan's cities, these officials concluded that the countryside
  merited attention first and foremost, for it was there that 80 percent of
  the population was located, inhabiting an environment as yet relatively
  untouched by "the baneful influences of civilization."37 By promoting
  the countryside's material and spiritual health, they believed that a
  bulwark against social disruption could be maintained.
  The new policies emanating from Tokyo at this time can be divided
  into three general categories: those concerned with agricultural im-
  provement, those concerned with strengthening the villages' fiscal and
  administrative capabilities, and those concerned with organizing-or,
  more accurately, reorganizing-rural residents into a series of local
  associations under bureaucratic control.
  Agricultural improvement
  Throughout the early Meiji period, government officials remained
  relatively untroubled by reports of distress sales of arable land or
  increasing tenancy. These were seen as the natural consequences of
  granting private property rights to the people. Good farmers would
  survive, and inspired by the ownership of the land they cultivated,
  they would produce more and better crops.
  But by the late 1890s few officials retained such a sanguine view of
  laissez-faire. Japan was on the verge of becoming a net importer of
  food; urban brokers were complaining vociferously about the deterio-
  rating quality of the rice they handled; and a few groups such as Oi
  Kentaro's Debtors' Party had enjoyed brief successes in organizing the
  rural poor. There was discussion, but nothing more, about the need
  37 Tokonami Takejiro, chief of the Home Ministry's Local Affairs Bureau, quoted in Kenneth
  Pyle, "The Technology of Japanese Nationalism," Journal of Asian Studies 33 (November
  >973): 58- For a discussion of the evolution of an active social policy in Japan, see Kenneth
  Pyle, "Advantages of Followership: German Economics and Japanese Bureaucrats, 1890-
  1925." Journal 0/ Japanese Studies 1 (Autumn 1974): 127-64.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
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  for a law to regulate landlord-tenant relations and to slow the concen-
  tration of land ownership. Instead, officials focused on measures to
  raise the volume and quality of agricultural output.
  The Land Adjustment Law of 1899 provided guidelines and modest
  subsidies for large-scale projects to regularize the contours of paddy
  fields and improve irrigation. The Agricultural Association Law en-
  acted in the same year established a nationwide organization for the
  dissemination of information about farming, and in 1905 all farm
  households were required to join its local branches. The Industrial
  Cooperatives Law of 1900 encouraged the formation of rural credit,
  marketing, and consumer cooperatives.
  A substantial restructuring of the vocational education system in
  agriculture was begun in 1903. In that year some 1,000 agricultural
  continuation schools were established throughout the country, each
  offering to young farmers a few months of practical training. In 1905
  the number of first-class agricultural schools, whose curricula empha-
  sized agricultural economics and law, was cut in half, and some fifty
  second-class agricultural schools with curricula emphasizing farming
  methods were established in their place. By 1912 the number of agri-
  cultural continuation schools had risen to over 5,500, and the number
  of second-class agricultural schools to 164. Finally, by the same year,
  some thirty prefectures had established quality standards and inspec-
  tion programs for locally grown rice.38
  Policy toward the villages
  Although various officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Com-
  merce had recommended tapping the farmers' hamlet-based loyalties
  to help promote agricultural development, their suggestions were ig-
  nored by the more powerful Home Ministry.39 To the latter, the con-
  tinued importance of rural hamlets to their residents hindered eco-
  nomic progress and threatened national unity. One of the primary
  goals of what became known as the Local Improvement Movement
  (Chiho kairyo undo), in which the Home Ministry played a leading
  role, was the destruction of hamlet "parochialism." Administrative
  villages were to be transformed from unruly combinations of hamlets
  38 A detailed discussion of the evolution of agricultural policy may be found in Ogura
  Takekazu, Tochi rippo no shiteki kosatsu (Tokyo: Norinsho nogyo sogo kenkyujo, 1951).
  39 Numerous writers refer to the rivalry between the Home Ministry and the Ministry of
  Agriculture and Commerce (after 1924, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) over both
  jurisdiction and policy, but as yet no thorough study of that rivalry has been published.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  into meaningful centers of local life. At the same time the inward-
  focused spirit of hamlet solidarity was to be replaced by a new ethos of
  "community in service to the nation" (kokka no tame no kyodotat).*0
  Of the steps taken in the early 1900s to achieve these ends, four
  were significant. First, a renewed effort was begun in 1906 to transfer
  the hamlets' communal property to village control. The hamlets
  owned three times the acreage owned by villages and four-fifths of all
  public forestland, which was seen both as a source of fiscal weakness
  in village government, which forced local officials to delegate many of
  their assigned tasks to the hamlets, and as a barrier to the efficient
  exploitation of resources in developing local farming and side employ-
  ment. Second, a campaign was launched to eliminate as many indepen-
  dent hamlet shrines as possible, on the grounds that they embodied
  purely local concerns, and to replace them with one central shrine in
  each village. The latter would not only serve as a symbol of the corpo-
  rate life of the village as a whole but would also represent, by means of
  ceremonial and administrative linkages with national shrines in the
  emerging system of state Shinto, the ideal relationship between local
  communities and the state.
  Third, in conjunction with the decision made in 1907 to increase the
  number of years of compulsory education from four to six, a program
  of local school construction was initiated, which required consolidat-
  ing the elementary schools in some villages into a single commu-
  nitywide school and expanding the existing village schools to accommo-
  date additional students. Fourth, a series of programs were established
  between 1900 and 1911 to acquaint such village-level officials as may-
  ors, vice-mayors, and village assembly members with national goals
  and the critical role of the villages in achieving them.
  Policy toward the rural population
  Equally vital to the Home Ministry's vision of local improvement were
  extending government control over a variety of autonomous local orga-
  nizations and nurturing in them activities that served the national
  interest. With the importance of the home front demonstrated by the
  Russo-Japanese War, the Imperial Army joined in the effort, and the
  result by 1915 was a system of dovetailing rural associations that left
  only infants and old people free from bureaucratic guidance.
  The agricultural associations mentioned earlier were one example.
  40 Hirata Tosuke, then home minister, quoted in Pyle, "Technology," pp. 61-2.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
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  The local fanning societies that had been formed under private aus-
  pices in numerous communities in the 1880s and 1890s were co-
  opted into the Imperial Agricultural Association. Given legal recogni-
  tion by the government and provided with a measure of financial
  support, what had once been voluntary associations became channels
  for the implementation of state economic policy. The Hotoku move-
  ment (Hotokukai), based on the teachings of Ninomiya Sontoku
  (1787-1856) and advocating diligence, thrift, and mutual aid among
  farmers, was another example. Seeing a useful basis for promoting
  rural harmony in the Hotoku societies that were scattered throughout
  the Kanto region, the Home Ministry established the Central Hotoku-
  kai in 1906 and began encouraging the formation of local branches
  throughout the country.
  A third example was the extension of government supervision over
  local youth organizations. According to Kano Masanao, the young
  men's groups (wakantonogumi) that had existed in most rural communi-
  ties during the Tokugawa period began to be revived in the mid-
  1890s. As in the past, their geographical basis was the "natural vil-
  lage," now the hamlet of a larger administrative village, and their
  functions related to everyday life-patrol duty to protect the commu-
  nity from fire or theft, labor services on communal land, and participa-
  tion in festivals at the local shrine. Encouraged by community leaders
  as a means of combating the adolescents' "city fever"-the desire un-
  leashed by the Restoration to rise in the world that proved harder to
  fulfill as time went by-these groups struck the Home Ministry as
  both threatening in their present form and potentially useful. On the
  one hand, they were manifestations of hamlet parochialism and hence
  to be combated. On the other hand, they encouraged the traditional
  virtues of hard work and service and therefore might function as a
  basis for a new nation-centered collective spirit.
  From 1905 onward, the Home Ministry, working in concert with
  the Ministry of Education, sought to tame these organizations and
  mobilize them in the local improvement cause. They were given a
  new, more modern name-the seinendan, or youth corps. Hamlet-
  based groups were combined into villagewide associations, their head-
  quarters in the village school and their adult leadership provided by
  the village mayor and school principal. The focus of their activities
  shifted from service as an end in itself to the study of ethics and
  physical conditioning. Finally an effort was made to eliminate regional
  diversity in the ages of the youth corps members. Until 1915 the
  youths in one village might belong between the ages of fifteen and
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  twenty-five, whereas those in another village were eligible from four-
  teen to thirty. Thereafter membership was to begin when a young man
  finished elementary school and to end when he reached the age of
  twenty.4'
  Significantly, twenty was the age at which young men became eligi-
  ble for conscription. After completing active duty, they were then
  expected to join their local reservist association (zaigo gunjinkai) and
  participate in its activities until they reached the age of forty. In part to
  provide continued military training for former conscripts but more to
  nurture among the people the patriotism and unity deemed essential to
  victory in total war, army leaders organized the Imperial Military
  Reservist Association in 1910, and by incorporating the veterans'
  clubs established after the Russo-Japanese War, they quickly created a
  nationwide network of local branches. The latter soon developed a
  close relationship with local youth groups and schoolchildren, organiz-
  ing calisthenics and basic drill exercises for the one and patriotic cere-
  monies for the other. The disaster relief they provided and other
  services they performed made them increasingly important groups
  within their communities.42
  In evaluating the impact of these government initiatives, one must
  be careful to distinguish between intention and effect. Clearly, the
  bureaucrats sought to mobilize the countryside in ways that served the
  national interest, but their success was neither immediate nor com-
  plete. Some of their policies-the transfer of hamlet property to the
  villages, for example-aroused such intense local opposition that a
  retreat from full implementation became necessary.« Others, such as
  rice inspection, solved one problem while at the same time creating
  another, in this case, discord between landlords and tenants over the
  extent of rent payments in approved grades of rice.44
  Just as the Home Ministry was forced to moderate its campaign
  41 Kano Masanao, "Meiji koki ni okeru kokumin soshikika no katei," Shikan no. 69 (March
  1964): pp. 38-42. By 1913 over 29,000 seinendan had been established, with a total member-
  ship of roughly 3 million.
  42 For discussion of the activities of these local reservist associations, see Richard J. Smethurst,
  A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community (Berkeley
  and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), chaps. 2, 5. Smethurst also describes
  the mobilization of rural women.
  43 For examples of direct and indirect resistance to shrine mergers, see Wilbur M. Fridell,
  Japanese Shrine Mergers 1906-12: State Shinto Moves to the Grassroots (Tokyo: Sophia Univer-
  sity Press, 1973), chap. 4.
  44 For an example of the discord caused by rice inspection, see Ann Was wo, "In Search of
  Equity: Japanese Tenant Unions in the 1920s," in Conflict in Modem Japanese History: The
  Neglected Tradition, ed. Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1982), pp. 381-2.
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  THE ROOTS OF PROTEST 
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  against hamlet property or risk alienating the very people whose alle-
  giance it sought to gain, so too it had to stop short of the full absorp-
  tion of hamlet-based associations into village units. Although all the
  organizations that the ministry encouraged were headquartered locally
  in the administrative village, each was further divided into hamlet
  branches, for only in that way could virtually universal participation
  be ensured. Formal leadership might be provided by the mayor or
  another member of the local elite, but a large share of the organiza-
  tion's day-to-day business was conducted within the hamlets by ham-
  let representatives.
  Logical though it might have been for members of the elite to
  serve as the hamlets' representatives, such was not always the case-
  or so it appears from what is admittedly sketchy evidence. First, the
  elite had already been drawn into village and regional politics and
  had less time for purely local affairs. Second, there were other,
  nonelite residents of the hamlet who might well be better qualified to
  serve in what were, after all, functionally specific posts: graduates of
  agricultural schools who could explain land improvement projects to
  other farmers, for example, or former soldiers who could teach ham-
  let youths the elements of drill. Opportunities existed, in short, for
  ordinary farmers to assume leadership positions, however modest,
  within their communities.
  The policy of the army toward leadership of local reservist associa-
  tions-implemented, one suspects, in defiance of the Home Ministry-
  brought those opportunities even more within the reach of ordinary
  fanners. Until the formation of the Imperial Military Reservist Asso-
  ciation in 1910, the army generally had followed the Home Ministry's
  "line" and recognized local veterans' clubs that were headed by village
  mayors and other elite individuals. After 1910, however, a radically
  new line was pursued. Membership in local reservist associations was
  confined to former soldiers (automatically excluding a number of
  prominent men who had managed to avoid conscription earlier in their
  careers), and leadership became tied to service rank: The senior local
  reservists were to run the organization and be responsible not to vil-
  lage officials but to their regional military commander and beyond him
  to the Army Ministry in Tokyo.
  At a stroke a new, rigorously achievement-based standard for local
  influence was established that, in principle, was independent of the
  Home Ministry's local government system. Sons of the local elite
  might still qualify for leadership posts in the reservist associations, of
  course: With the middle-school educations that their familial wealth
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  permitted them, they could enroll in reserve officers' training pro-
  grams and return home with ranks superior to those of ordinary con-
  scripts. The significant point was that wealth and lineage in them-
  selves no longer guaranteed local power. Here and there throughout
  the country, farmers of inferior socioeconomic status found them-
  selves thrust into leadership positions, acquiring in the process a visi-
  bility and a voice in local affairs that formerly had been denied them/s
  THE TENANT MOVEMENT
  Farmers of middling and lower status became most visible and vocal
  through their participation in the tenant movement that began in the
  late 1910s. Until then their situation was very much as Mori Giichi
  described it in his The Strategy and Tactics of Tenancy Disputes:
  Back when tenant rents were called "tribute rice" and demands for rent
  reductions were called "requests for relief all dealings with landlords were
  carried out on an individual basis. And the "relief that was granted was
  meagre at best. When crops were poor owing to storms or drought or insect
  damage, tenant farmers would meet in secret just before the harvest and
  discuss how much relief to request. On the basis of the amount they agreed
  to, each tenant would then go off separately to negotiate with his landlords.
  To put it more accurately, he would set out to appeal to them.*6
  Mori's detailed but simply written handbook, published in 1928 as
  the fruit of his years of experience as a union organizer in Gifu Prefec-
  ture, appeared too late to be of much practical use-for reasons to be
  discussed later, the tenant movement was already on the wane by
  then- but it serves nonetheless as eloquent testimony to the changes in
  behavior and attitudes among tenant farmers that had occurred during
  the previous decade.
  Until roughly 1917-18, conditions had indeed been as Mori de-
  scribed them. If tenant farmers met with one another at all, they did so
  furtively, late on moonless nights in the hamlet forest or some other
  secluded place. To be seen together was considered illicit, an offense
  against their community as well as against their landlords. With the
  latter they behaved with the utmost deference, appearing alone at the
  side entrances to their houses whenever they had an appeal to make
  and using humble language. Only a dire emergency justified such a
  visit, and tenants counted on their landlords' benevolence to rescue
  them from it. When rebuffed consistently by any one landlord, they
  45 Suzuki, "Nichi-Ro sengo no ndson mondai," pp. 152-4, 156.
  46 Mori Giichi, Kosaku sogi senjutsu (Tokyo: Hakuyosha, 1928), pp. 4-5.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT 
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  were likely to conclude that he lacked "humanity" and so would join
  in such emotionally charged acts of revenge against him as not partici-
  pating in the parade to send his son off to the conscription physical or
  behaving "unpleasantly" at weddings or funerals in his family.^ By
  the mid-1920s, however, both the form and the underlying ideology of
  collective action among tenant farmers had been dramatically trans-
  formed. Tenant farmers met openly as members of formally consti-
  tuted tenant unions. They insisted on collective bargaining with local
  landlords and presented demands, not appeals. Instead of expressive
  acts of revenge, they engaged in a wide range of goal-oriented activities
  designed to improve their lives and livelihoods.
  Mori had much to say about how tenant farmers should pursue their
  interests, and both the illustrations he provided and the evidence
  available from other sources indicate that he was generalizing from
  current practices, not indulging in speculation. Violent behavior of
  any sort was to be avoided, not only because it might provoke interven-
  tion by the police, but also, and more importantly, because it was
  bound to create bitterness among people who had to go on living as
  neighbors. Of far greater utility in both the short and long term were
  an invincible united front among local tenants and well-orchestrated,
  even-tempered pressure on their adversaries.
  The former required clearly defined regulations governing member-
  ship in (and resignation from) the union, a strike fund to enable
  members to survive a protracted dispute, and a variety of activities
  ranging from study groups to parades to bolster morale. The latter
  required knowledge and careful planning. Tenant farmers needed to
  be familiar with the laws affecting landlord-tenant relations and with
  those provisions they could exploit to their own advantage. Among
  them were that landlords had to deal with the bargaining agents to
  whom tenants had given duly executed powers of attorney and that
  once landlords had agreed to formal mediation of a dispute, they could
  not seek an injunction to keep tenants from harvesting standing crops.
  In addition, tenants needed accurate data on yields and farming costs
  to back up the case they would make, and so they had to wait for the
  right moment to present their demands. Immediately after the harvest
  was an ideal time, as tenants then were in possession of the crop and
  could use the leverage that gave them to negotiate with the more
  moderate or financially hard-pressed among local landlords for a
  47 For examples of such behavior, see Nomin undoshi Kenkyu-kai, ed., Nikon nomin unddthi,
  pp. 663,667,818.
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  578 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  precedent-setting agreement. (Or, as a tenant union in Yamanashi
  Prefecture demonstrated, they could sell the crop, deposit the pro-
  ceeds in the bank, and use the interest to finance a protracted dispute.)
  If the harvest were poor, so much the better, for at such a time,
  tenants enjoyed both a customary and a legal right to rent reductions.
  As long as they could prove that yields were significantly below
  normal-hence the need for accurate data-they could delay their rent
  payments with impunity until they won concessions on rent levels or
  some other matter of concern to them. As a newly coined saying put it:
  "In tenancy one profits more in lean years."*8
  That saying was but one manifestation of the new attitudes among
  tenant farmers. Poverty was no longer their fate, but the product of
  circumstances that they had the power to change. Nor was the eco-
  nomics of tenancy their sole concern. Unions pressed for the exten-
  sion of voting and officeholding rights in hamlet governments to all
  hamlet residents regardless of property ownership, for less regressive
  local taxes, for the payment of wages at prevailing rates for commu-
  nal labor, and for greater input by ordinary farmers in local agricul-
  tural associations and cooperatives. To reduce their reliance on the
  local elite, some unions bought their own funeral supplies and ban-
  quet dishes and established their own funds for aid in the event of
  natural disasters. Although they employed some of the old language
  of deference-using, for example, the word petition (tangari) which
  retained connotations of "a plea for mercy"-the unions devised a
  new, affectively neutral vocabulary for describing rents and land-
  lord-tenant relations.49
  The proximate causes of the tenant movement
  Although the impact of such programs as universal education and
  conscription is clearly discernible in the tenant movement-in the
  unions' reliance on the written word, for example, and in the tenants'
  ability to carry out detailed "battle plans"-one still must account for
  the timing of the movement's appearance. Why did tenant militancy
  materialize precisely when it did? In that connection, where tenant
  militancy materialized provides some useful clues.
  Like peasant movements elsewhere in the world, the tenant move-
  48 "Kosaku ni wa fusaku no ho ga toku datta," quoted in Takahashi Iichiro and Shirakawa
  Kiyoshi, eds., Nochi kaikaku wjinushi sei (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1955), p. 97.
  49 Mori Giichi, Kosaku sdgi, esp. chaps. 2, 3; Waswo, "In Search of Equity," pp. 368-406
  passim.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT 
  579
  ment in Japan had a definite regional character. According to the most
  widely accepted statistics, 173 tenant unions had existed in 1917.5° By
  1923 their number had increased to 1,530 and membership totaled
  163,931. In that year 64 percent of all unions and 55 percent of all union
  members were to be found in the sixteen prefectures of the Kinki and
  Chubu regions of Honshu, which contained only 35 percent of the
  nation's tenant farmers. Four years later in 1927 when the number of
  unions had increased to 4,582 and membership had reached a peak of
  365,322, a similar degree of regional concentration remained: 55 per-
  cent of all unions and 50 percent of all union members were to be found
  in the Kinki and Chubu. What was true of the unions was true of the
  disputes as well. Of the 24,988 disputes recorded between 1917 and
  1931,14,494, or 58 percent of the total number, took place in the Kinki
  and Chubu.5"
  The crucial distinction between these two regions and the rest of the
  country was economic. It was in the Kinki and Chubu that "slack
  recovery" had been most vigorously pursued during the Meiji era.
  High yields per acre (for rice, roughly 40 percent greater than in
  northeastern Japan) had been achieved by 1907, and thereafter addi-
  tional increases were slight. It was not simply that a relatively stable
  "pie" induced conflict among those claiming portions of it, however.
  50 One might expect that a phenomenon occurring a few decades ago in a "first-rate" country
  whose leaders were sensitive to social conflict would be enumerated, but that is not the case.
  One encounters not a paucity of quantitative data but a profusion of mutually incompatible
  and apparently irreconcilable tallies, each prepared by a different government agency. By
  rough count there are four sets of statistics regarding tenant unions and tenancy disputes for
  every part of the country: (1) those compiled by the Home Ministry, whose police and social
  affairs bureaus were responsible for reporting to the government on rural unrest only until
  1924 but who continued to do so on their own thereafter; (2) those compiled by the Agricul-
  tural Affairs Bureau of the newly reorganized Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, formerly
  the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, which became the statistics of record after 1924
  and which consistently reported more unions and more disputes than did the Home Ministry;
  (3) those issued retrospectively by the Labor Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Public
  Welfare, newly established in 1936, which differed somewhat less from the Home Ministry's
  tabulations than from those of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; and (4) those
  compiled by various officials in each of the country's forty-seven prefectures, which con-
  cerned developments within their jurisdictions alone and which, on the basis of the scattered
  examples that have been uncovered to date, were almost always greater than those figures
  reported to and/or accepted by the central government bureaus to which they reported. (Gifu
  police reported to the Home Ministry in 1922 that 22 tenancy disputes had occurred in the
  prefecture the previous year; in 1932, the same agency acknowledged that 475 disputes had
  occurred in 1921. Similarly, prefectural records show that 120 disputes occurred in Saitama
  Prefecture in 1922, although the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry statistics list only 57.)
  In this discussion I use the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry data.
  51 The Kinki region consists of Osaka, Kyoto, Shiga, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, and Mie
  prefectures. The Chubu region consists of Niigata, Ishikawa, Fukui, Nagano, Yamanashi,
  Shizuoka, Gifu, and Aichi prefectures. For a more detailed discussion of the regional char-
  acter of tenant unrest, see Waswo, Japanese Landlords, chap. 5.
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  58O 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  Of greater importance was the commercialization of all aspects of
  farming that accompanied the increased output. By the Taisho era,
  farmers throughout the Kinki and Chubu led the nation in their use of
  fertilizer (roughly half of it purchased, not "home grown") and of
  draft animals for plowing and other farming tasks. Although landlords
  had supplied most of the rice sold commercially during earlier decades
  and continued to do so elsewhere in the country, by 1920 farm opera-
  tors in the Kinki and Chubu were heavily involved in the rice market,
  delivering roughly 50 percent by value of all the rice traded. *2
  Tenant farmers in the two regions were not excluded from these
  developments or from the risks they entailed. Because rents generally
  did not keep pace with increases in yields, they found themselves with
  more of the crop at their disposal. For some, especially those with
  small holdings, the increment was not substantial. If they sold any rice
  at all, it was out of an urgent need for cash at year's end when prices
  generally were lowest; the little they had sold of necessity they then
  usually had to buy back the next summer, when prices were higher,
  for their own food supply. For a significant minority of tenant farm-
  ers, however, involvement in commercial production was both quanti-
  tatively and qualitatively different. Those whose holdings had been (or
  gradually became) larger than average might well possess a substantial
  marketable surplus-in some cases on the order of sixty to seventy
  bales of rice-after deducting rents and basic food supply from their
  harvest. Unlike small-scale tenants whose involvement in the market-
  place was marginal at best, these tenants deliberately and systemati-
  cally engaged in commercial farming. They grew rice and other crops
  with the intention of selling as much of their output as possible,
  regarded outlays for fertilizer as investments in future profits, and
  timed their deliveries to market to take advantage of seasonal price
  increases. 53
  By mid-Taisho and to a degree not evident elsewhere in the country,
  there was a marked polarization of the tenant farming population in the
  Kinki and Chubu areas. At one extreme was a shrinking but still large
  group of tenants who cultivated no more than an acre of land and
  struggled to wrest a hand-to-mouth existence from farming. At the
  52 Nishida Yoshiaki, "Nomin undo no hatten to jinushi sei." in Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi
  (Tokyo: Iwanami shocen, 1975), vol. 18, p. 163.
  53 The best account of these two classes of tenant farmers is found in Nishida Yoshiaki, "Shono
  keiei no hatten to kosaku sogi," Tochi seido shigaku, no. 38 (1968): pp. 24-41. For a detailed
  account of the difficulties that even substantial landlords faced in maximizing profits from
  rice sales, see Matsumoto Hiroshi, "Meiji Taisho ki ni okeru jinushi no beikoku hanbai ni
  tsuite," Hitolsubashi ronso 60 (November 1968): 547-65.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT 
  581
  other was a small but expanding group of tenants and owner-tenants
  who cultivated at least two acres of land and viewed farming as a profit-
  making enterprise. The tenant movement was the joint product of these
  two disparate groups, each supplying an essential ingredient. The initia-
  tive to establish local unions and the leadership of those unions came
  almost without exception from the ranks of upwardly mobile, profit-
  oriented tenants. But the sheer numbers that made the unions effective
  were supplied by small, economically distressed tenants.
  The question then is, what brought together these two groups of
  tenants in the years after 1917? The Russian Revolution figures prom-
  inently in some of the literature on the subject, as does the Allied
  victory in World War I, the proclamation of the right of fanners to
  organize by the newly established International Labor Organization,
  and the rise of the Labour Party in Britain, but in my opinion one
  need hardly look so far afield. Of much greater immediacy and rele-
  vance were three successive economic "shocks" occurring in the Tai-
  sho era that created a shared, although differently motivated, desire
  for changes in rent policy among both groups of tenants. A contribut-
  ing factor, which was related at least vaguely to contemporary events
  abroad, was the encouragement of the tenants by disaffected urban
  intellectuals.
  The first economic shock was rice inspection. Because the central
  government had contented itself in the late Meiji with promoting rice
  inspection but had not specified what the approach to it should be,
  prefectures came up with a variety of programs, each shaped by the
  economic conditions and political forces prevailing within that prefec-
  ture. In general the earliest programs had focused on "export" rice,
  that is, on rice destined for sale outside the region of its production. In
  their formal operation, these programs had made local rice dealers
  who wished to participate in the export trade responsible for meeting
  quality standards and precisely for that reason had generated consider-
  able protest from their ranks. At the same time these dealers were able
  to transfer some of this responsibility to their local clients. If, as was
  often the case, those clients were landlords, they in turn were able to
  transfer some of their responsibility to their tenants, principally by
  requiring them to supply rent rice in the smaller, sturdier bales that
  the major urban rice merchants preferred. This requirement in turn
  led to a relatively small number of disputes in the early 1900s in which
  the tenants demanded, usually but not always successfully, that they
  receive some sort of compensation for the additional labor and cost of
  meeting the new baling standards.
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  582 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  In the years following the Russo-Japanese War, however, a new
  form of rice inspection emerged that generated even more protest from
  tenant farmers. Some prefectures that had formerly operated export
  programs began to switch to programs in which all locally produced
  rice was subject to inspection. Others that had operated no inspection
  programs to date imposed similarly comprehensive "output" pro-
  grams from the start. By 1915, sixteen prefectures in central and
  southwestern Honshu, most of them in the Kinki and Chubu, had
  established output inspection, compared with only nine prefectures in
  the northeast.
  Wherever output inspection was established, it was accompanied by
  efforts by local landlords to impose quality standards on rent rice. A
  minimally acceptable grade (e.g., third-class rice) would be specified
  for rents, with penalty payments demanded for rents that did not
  measure up. This posed problems for both small-scale and larger-scale
  tenants. For the former, the key difficulty was in producing an ade-
  quate volume of acceptable rice. Rice quality varied directly with the
  inherent quality of the paddy in which it was grown-to cite one
  obvious factor, a mostly sunny paddy yielded better rice than did a
  mostly shady paddy-and with the amount of green manure and fertil-
  izer that the cultivator added to enrich the soil and encourage the
  healthy growth of seedlings. On both scores small-scale tenants were
  at a disadvantage, as they tended to farm inferior land and were able to
  afford few if any investments other than labor in improving it or their
  crops. As a result a high percentage of their yield in any given year was
  likely to be of inferior, low-grade rice.
  For the larger-scale tenants, the key difficulty was quite different.
  They farmed better land as a rule, produced more than enough good-
  quality rice to pay their rents, but wanted to sell that rice themselves,
  as they knew it was worth more in the marketplace. Despite the
  differences in perceived difficulty, both groups could and did agree
  that they should resist the landlord's demands. In some communities,
  tenants objected to the very imposition of quality standards for rent
  rice. Elsewhere they demanded that the minimally acceptable grade be
  set lower than the landlords had proposed or that bonuses in either
  cash or kind be paid when the quality standards were met. Whatever
  the response, tenants with divergent interests had discovered a com-
  mon ground for action.54
  The second shock was delivered by the dramatic increase in rice
  54 Nishida, "Nomin undo," pp. 143-67 passim.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT 
  583
  prices during the economic boom induced by World War I. This
  increase, which had led to the predominantly urban rice riots of 1918
  and the fall of the Terauchi government, had also impinged on both
  groups of tenant farmers and created yet another basis for concerted
  action. For the majority of small-scale tenants who had to purchase
  rice for their own consumption during the year, the surge in prices
  threatened their survival: They could no longer afford to buy even
  small quantities of rice. For large-scale tenants, the surge in rice prices
  meant deprivation of another sort. Although they could and did reap
  greater profits from their own rice sales, they were prevented by the
  necessity of paying rents in kind from reaping all the profits that they
  might. They resented that. Accustomed to calculating as rent the cash
  value of the rice they delivered, they were acutely aware that their
  landlords, who had contributed little or nothing in the way of "in-
  puts," were about to enjoy a windfall. Both groups of tenants could
  agree that rent reductions were essential, in the one case to make rice
  purchases less necessary and in the other to make greater rice sales
  possible. 55
  The third and final shock was delivered by the sudden end in 1920
  to the wartime boom. Crop prices fell sharply and tended to fluctuate
  unpredictably at lower levels for the next several years. Because the
  prices of such essential items as salt and soy sauce declined less se-
  verely and local tax burdens continued to increase, small-scale tenants
  experienced little relief. Larger-scale tenants saw their hard-won pros-
  perity threatened. Because raising output to compensate for lower
  prices was becoming increasingly difficult, their attention focused
  even more on reducing costs. Both groups could still agree that if rents
  were lower, their respective problems would be eased.
  Of course, agreement between these two groups of tenants had to be
  hammered out and a strategy for achieving collective goals devised.
  What is striking about the forging of the tenant movement in Japan is
  the degree to. which the necessary leadership-the engineering of a
  consensus among people with differing interests-came from within
  the tenant population. Individuals like Yanagishita Iyasaburo, the
  hero of Hill 203, had the time and the talent to devote to union
  leadership as well as the status within his community to be heard by
  tenants and landlords alike. Yamasaki Toyosada, another owner-
  tenant who as a youth had memorized much of the legal code, started
  55 Nishida, "Shono keiei," pp. 32-4. The wholesale price of rice in Tokyo increased from ¥ 13
  per koku (150 kg) in 1915 to roughly ¥ 40 per koku in 1917-18.
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  584 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  out by organizing tenants in his own hamlet and eventually established
  a regional tenant federation in his native Shimane Prefecture. Other
  dissatisfied tenants observed what was happening in neighboring com-
  munities or read about union activities in the newspapers and were
  inspired to organize unions on their own.'6 It remains true, however,
  that valuable aid was provided by outsiders.
  Some of this aid was relatively casual. A factory worker who had lost
  his job in the post-World War I depression might return to his native
  village and talk about his experiences in a labor union or in strikes. Or
  a lawyer in a nearby city might offer his services to a newly organized
  tenant union.57 Other forms of aid were more systematic. From early
  1919, inspired by "the trend of the times" abroad and the evidence of
  popular unrest at home, groups of urban intellectuals and political
  activists began touring the countryside giving lectures about the need
  for universal manhood suffrage, the industrial labor movement, and
  the defects of the tenancy system. In 1922 a number of these reformers
  met in Kobe to establish the Japan Farmers' Union (Nihon nomin
  kumiai, abbreviated Nichino). By 1925, 957 local tenant unions had
  affiliated with Nichino, and the organization claimed a total member-
  ship of 72,794 (see Table 11.3). Beset thereafter by disagreements over
  policy among its urban leaders and a series of schisms and tenuous
  reunifications, Nichino never came to direct the course of tenant pro-
  test in Japan, as its founders had hoped it would. On a day-to-day
  basis, however, its field agents gave practical advice to many tenant
  farmers on managing union affairs and helped them develop effective
  protest methods. Even nonaffiliated unions used the sample rent agree-
  ments and petitions that Nichino distributed and from time to time
  requested legal aid from its various regional offices, s8
  The waning of the tenant movement
  Tenant militancy did not vanish in Japan, but from the late 1920s
  onward it began to subside. Some unions disbanded, and those that
  56 According to a survey of 215 tenant union leaders in the eaily 1920s, 196 were local farmers.
  For more information on Yamasaki Toyosada, see Waswo, "In Search of Equity," pp. 379-
  406.
  57 The lawyer referred to was Tamai Junjiro, second son of one of the largest landlords in
  Niigata Prefecture. When he offered his services to a tenant union, its leader advised him to
  "try being a farmer for a while first." Tamai saw the point of that, and for the next three years
  he farmed some family land in Fukushima. He later missed his father's funeral to help union
  members fend off efforts to evict them from their land, which made him a revered figure
  among local farmers. Nomin undoshi kenkyukai, ed., Nihon nomin undoshi, pp. 1162-3.
  58 More information about Nichino may be found in George Oakley Totten, III, The Social
  Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966),
  chap. 13.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT
  585
  TABLE 11.3
  Tenant unions and tenancy disputes, 1920-1941
  Year
  1920
  1921
  1922
  1923
  1924
  1925
  1926
  1927
  1928
  1929
  1930
  1931
  1932
  1933
  1934
  1935
  1936
  1937
  1938
  1939
  1940
  1941
  ISO, OI
  tenant
  unions
  681
  1,114
  1,530
  2,337
  3,496
  3,926
  4,582
  4,353
  4,156
  4,208
  4,414
  4,650
  4,810
  4,390
  4,011
  3,915
  3,879
  3,643
  3,509
  1,029
  294
  Total no.
  of members
  _
  _
  _
  163,931
  232,125
  307,106
  346,693
  365,332
  330,406
  315,771
  301,436
  306,301
  296,839
  302,736
  276,246
  242,422
  229,209
  226,919
  217,883
  210,208
  75,930
  23,595
  tenancy
  disputes
  408
  1,680
  1,578
  1,917
  1,532
  2,206
  2,751
  2,052
  1,866
  2,434
  2,478
  3,419
  3,414
  4,000
  5,828
  6,824
  6,804
  6,170
  4,615
  3,578
  3,165
  3,308
  Tenants
  Total no.
  34,605
  145,898
  125,750
  134,503
  110,920
  134,646
  151,061
  91,336
  75,136
  81,998
  58,565
  81,135
  61,499
  48,073
  121,031
  113,164
  77,187
  63,246
  52,817
  25,904
  38,614
  32,289
  No. per
  dispute
  84.8
  86.8
  79.7
  70.2
  72.4
  61.0
  54.9
  44.5
  40.3
  33.7
  23.6
  23.7
  18.0
  12.0
  20.8
  16.6
  11.3
  10.3
  11.4
  7.2
  12.2
  9.8
  Landlords
  Total no.
  5,236
  33,985
  29,077
  31,712
  27,223
  33,001
  39,705
  24,136
  19,474
  23,505
  14,159
  23,768
  16,706
  14,312
  34,035
  28,574
  23,293
  20,230
  15,422
  9,065
  11,082
  11,037
  No. per
  dispute
  12.8
  20.2
  18.4
  16.5
  17.8
  15.0
  14.4
  11.8
  10.4
  9.7
  5.7
  6.9
  4.9
  3.6
  5.8
  4.2
  3.4
  3.3
  3.3
  2.5
  3.5
  3.3
  Source: Data from Nomin undoshi kenkyukai, ed., Nihon nomin undoshi (Tokyo: Toyo keizai
  shinposha, 1961), pp. 123, 127.
  survived lost members fairly steadily. Few new unions were formed.59
  In theory this might have been because the tenants' demands had been
  fully satisfied, but in actuality that was not the case. Nor had the
  movement simply been repressed from above. What transpired can
  best be described as arrested development.
  59 Although the number of unions did increase somewhat in the early 1930s (as shown in Table
  11.3), in many cases this was the result of the existing county- or villagewide unions being
  combined into smaller units. In the same years, tenants steadily lost the initiative in disputes.
  During the 1920s they had usually been able to choose the demands they would make and the
  moment they would make them. Thereafter, they found themselves increasingly on the
  defensive. Although disputes increased in number, to a reported total of 47,704 for 1932 to
  1941, they declined markedly in scale: from an average of 50 tenants, 13 landlords, and 34 cho
  of land per dispute in the 1920s to an average of 13 tenants, 4 landlords, and 9 cho of land in
  the 1930s. Most disputes in the 1930s were triggered by landlords who sought to evict tenants
  from their holdings or to obtain payment of rent arrears. This trend was pronounced in the
  Tohoku and other outlying regions of the country, where the greatest increases in disputes
  were reported. Nationwide, the tenants' principal demand in disputes shifted from tempo-
  rary or permanent rent reductions, the hallmark of disputes launched by tenant unions, to the
  continuation of tenancy rights or some form of compensation if tenancy were terminated. See
  Waswo, Japanese Landlords, chap. 5. The Tohoku region consists of Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi,
  Akita, Yamagata, and Fukushima prefectures.
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  586 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  I do not share the view held by many scholars that the tenant
  movement had been flawed from its inception by the petty bourgeois
  character of its local leadership or by its stress on rent reductions.
  Both strike me as normal attributes for a movement emerging where
  and when it did. It has generally been the better-off sectors of the
  peasantry that have provided most of the leaders and activists in peas-
  ant movements: the Peasants' Revolt in late fourteenth-century En-
  gland was no exception, and neither was the tenant movement in
  Japan. Unlike the former, however, the latter occurred in a moderniz-
  ing nation-state in which there had been a considerable degree of
  institutional differentiation and specialization. Had landlords dis-
  pensed justice as well as land, or had the government dispensed land
  as well as justice, tenant concerns might well have been broader-
  perhaps even revolutionary-from the start. But such was not the case.
  Like the demands made by the early labor unions, those made by the
  early tenant unions reflected the specificity of economic and political
  relationships within the country.60
  The problem as I see it was that unions did not subsequently de-
  velop a rationale for their existence that could survive cyclical changes
  in economic conditions and sustain broad participation over time.
  They did not primarily because of the ambivalence of all tenant farm-
  ers toward conflict; the inability of the movement's urban allies to
  comprehend, much less counteract, that ambivalence; and the ability
  of the government to avoid radicalizing tenant farmers while dealing
  with rural unrest.
  As noted previously, unions were not concerned exclusively with
  the economics of tenancy, although that was indeed a major focus of
  their activities. Nor should the unions' demands, whether for rent
  reductions or local tax reform or voting rights within the hamlet, be
  construed merely as ad hoc reactions to the status quo. Tenants were
  clearly and in many cases consciously in revolt against the institutions
  and etiquette of status inequality. They had not, however, rejected
  communal harmony as an ideal. To justify their disruption of that
  harmony-to themselves as much as to others-they sought to portray
  landlords as the "traitors" to the community and themselves as its
  loyal defenders. As one union activist expressed it, "[W]e have or-
  ganised unions . . . out of duty and love toward our villages and to-
  ward our ancestors who settled those villages originally and brought
  60 For criticisms of the petty bourgeois character of the tenant movement, see Kawamura,
  "Kosaku sogi ki," p. i32;Takahashiand Shirakawa, Nochikaikaku, pp. 102-3.
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  THE TENANT MOVEMENT 
  587
  the land under cultivation." Confrontation and conflict were, at most,
  necessary evils, required to bring landlords to their senses and per-
  suade them "to vow to strive for the benefit and happiness of the entire
  community."61
  The very familiarity of the premise on which this justification was
  based was itself reassuring and helped in the short run overcome many
  tenants' reluctance to join an organization as alien to the community as
  a union. Yet recourse to that premise hindered the development of
  tenant militancy in at least two ways: first, by making it difficult to
  establish unions that transcended communal boundaries and, second,
  by leaving union members vulnerable to the equally familiar argument
  that when the community was threatened from without, as appeared
  to be the case during the Showa depression, everyone must close ranks
  and work together to protect it.62
  Some of the local tenant leaders sensed these difficulties and worked
  to instill a broader sense of class identity among the union members.
  At first they were aided, indeed inspired, by Nichino, whose founding
  proclamation stressed the important role of tenant farmers in feeding
  the nation, the shared problems that all tenant farmers faced, and the
  need for gradual but determined efforts to reform the tenancy system.
  As early as 1923, however, some Nichino officials were stressing the
  similarities between tenant farmers and factory workers and urging a
  political alliance between the two. Within a short time, reflecting the
  rapidity with which Marxist-Leninist ideas spread among the Japanese
  intelligentsia, tenant farmers were being portrayed as manual laborers
  whose interests and aspirations were, or should be, identical to those
  of the industrial proletariat. Just as workers should be engaged in class
  struggle, so too should peasants. Conflict was not a necessary evil but a
  historical necessity.
  To tenant farmers who were still cautiously exploring cooperation
  with their counterparts in adjacent hamlets, the idea that they had
  anything in common with urban factory workers appeared strange in-
  deed. The idea of prolonged and deadly conflict to the finish, which is
  what the term "class struggle" meant to them, was frightening. Rather
  than moderating their rhetoric and embarking on a lower-key educa-
  tional strategy-admittedly difficult for committed leftists anywhere in
  the world in the 1920s-Nichino radicals became even more doctri-
  61 The quotation is from an editorial in Kosakunin, a newspaper published by a regional tenant
  union in Shimane Prefecture. See Waswo, "In Search of Equity," pp. 379-406.
  62 Throughout the 1920s most of the unions were organized at the hamlet level. Creating viable
  villagewide unions, much less supravillage unions, proved difficult.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  naire. But they seemed not to notice that the poorest tenant farmers-
  especially those who owned no land of their own and, in that respect,
  most closely resembled a proletariat-were the most alarmed by their
  statements and among the first to withdraw from local unions.6*
  Harsh repression, which has inflamed popular passions and invigo-
  rated other protest movements, was also lacking in the Japanese case.
  It is true that a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle steps were taken to
  impede union activities. Landlords in some communities offered addi-
  tional land on favorable terms to tenants who quit the local union.
  Some textile factories refused to hire young girls from districts where
  tenancy disputes were numerous, depriving their families of an accus-
  tomed and much-needed source of income. Prefectural officials dis-
  patched auditors to the countryside to look for misuses of union dues
  and plainclothes police to gain advance knowledge of union plans. In
  some prefectures, newspapers were forbidden to publish items about
  unions and disputes-presumably to keep quiescent tenants from get-
  ting ideas-and new public peace regulations were issued making it
  illegal to boycott funerals or other communal events.6t But in general
  both the volume and the intensity of repressive measures directed
  against tenant farmers appear to have been rather low.
  Instead, after a brief period of near panic at signs that the Russian
  Revolution might be spreading to Japan, the government imple-
  mented a series of countermeasures designed to defuse tenant mili-
  tancy on the one hand and eliminate leftist influence in the country-
  side on the other. Truly harsh measures were reserved for the leftists,
  who were arrested in mass roundups of "dangerous elements" in 1928,
  1929, and 1931, thereby "sanitizing" the countryside. The tenant farm-
  ers themselves had various alternatives to overt protest, some of which
  tacitly recognized the legitimacy of their grievances. Among the key
  measures they implemented were (1) the Tenancy Conciliation Law of
  1924, which established formal machinery for mediating disputes, (2)
  the Regulations for the Establishment of Owner-Cultivators, enacted
  in 1926, which provided low-interest loans to qualified tenant farmers
  to buy land, and (3) the revision of the Industrial Cooperatives Law of
  1900 to encourage communities to cooperate in activities of the sort
  many unions had advocated.65
  63 Nomin undoshi kenkyukai, ed., Nihon nomin undoshi, p. 109.
  64 For examples from Gifu Prefecture, see ibid., pp. 679-70, 689, 692-3; see also Waswo, "In
  Search of Equity," pp. 407-9.
  65 A detailed case study of the ways in which the Regulations for the Establishment of Owner-
  Cultivators were used to defuse tenant militancy may be found in Nishida Yoshiaki, "Kosaku
  sogi no tenkai to jisakuno sosetsu iji seisaku," Huoisubashironso60(November 1968): 524-46.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  589
  Less tangibly but no less significantly, government officials spoke
  out whenever possible on the virtues of harmony and on the unique
  qualities of the Japanese polity that made class conflict inconceivable.
  In addition, they quietly urged landlords to grant rent reductions
  voluntarily before tenants formed unions and began demanding them
  and encouraged the organization of landlord-tenant conciliation asso-
  ciations to promote mutual understanding and goodwill.66 Skillful con-
  flict management curtailed the tenant movement.
  NOHONSHUGI
  Basic to the older paradigm of rural social change was the notion of
  virtually total discontinuity between the "progressive" 1920s and the
  "fascist" 1930s. Tenant militancy, like the universal manhood suffrage
  movement and leftist politics, belonged to and helped define the first
  decade. Nohonshugi belonged to and helped define the second. Its
  earlier history received relatively little attention. What counted was its
  role during the 1930s as a direct and indirect instrument of fascist
  transformation.
  In contrast, revisionist scholars assume that "Taisho democracy" and
  "Showa fascism" were related; in their emerging paradigm, the 1920s
  and 1930s form a continuum that must be considered historically. By
  starting in early Taisho and working forward, these scholars have
  shown that at least two distinct varieties of nohonshugi developed among
  the rural population, one stressing the spiritual revitalization of the
  countryside and the other stressing both spiritual and economic regen-
  eration. The former, referred to in the literature as traditional nohon-
  shugi, was advanced primarily by large landlords and prevailed in north-
  eastern Japan where those landlords were concentrated. The latter,
  referred to as petty bourgeois nohonshugi, was advanced by middling
  farmers elsewhere in the country-that is, by owner-cultivators, some
  of whom leased out a portion of their land, and substantial owner-
  tenants. Like the militant tenants, these middling farmers sought to
  improve their economic, political, and social status.67 Although less
  66 In 1921, there were 85 landlord-tenant conciliation associations; by 1929 they had increased
  to 1,986, with a total membership (including both landlords and tenants) of 244,943.
  67 See, for example, Nakamura Masanori, "Keizai kosei undo to noson togo," in Fuashizumu ki
  no kokka to shakai, vol. 1: Showa kyoko, ed. Tokyo daigaku shakai kagaku kenkyujo (Tokyo:
  Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1978), pp. 197-263. A slightly different version of this essay
  appears in Nakamura Masanori, Kindai Nihon jinushi sei shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
  shuppankai, 1979), pp. 321-83. Other recent studies include Nishida Yoshiaki, ed., Showa
  kyoko ka no noson shakai undo (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1978); and Yasuda Tsuneo, Nihon
  fuashizumu to minshu undo (Tokyo: Renga shobo shinsha, 1979).
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  59° 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  alarming to the government than the tenant movement, petty bourgeois
  nohonshugi nonetheless did require "management" before its challenge
  to the Japanese state was successfully defused.
  The evolution of popular agrarianism
  The roots of petty bourgeois nohonshugi, which for convenience I shall
  call popular agrarianism, can be traced to the frustrated ambitions of
  the sons of middling farm families in the years following the Russo-
  Japanese War. Having learned in elementary school about the achieve-
  ments of the new Japan, they felt themselves trapped in the old.
  Civilization and enlightenment belonged to the cities; fame was re-
  served for statesmen, generals, and captains of industry. A generation
  earlier-or so it seemed in retrospect-it had been easy for rural youths
  to go off to the cities and make a career for themselves. Ambition and
  ability were all that they required. Now the obstacles were great. Only
  the sons of wealthy farmers could continue as full-time students after
  completing elementary school and qualifying for university, the new
  gateway to careers in government and business. The city jobs available
  to those with only a basic education were menial and poorly paid. One
  might save enough money to cover tuition at night school, but after
  working all day delivering newspapers or milk, it was hard to concen-
  trate on studies, and one's health was likely to falter long before one
  advanced. Yet to stay in the countryside-or to return to it after an
  unsuccessful attempt at city life-was to consign oneself to an occupa-
  tion without a future and a life without purpose.
  The solution seized by many of these youths was to dedicate them-
  selves to raising the economic and cultural level of the rural communi-
  ties in which they lived: Unable to escape to the new Japan, they
  would recreate it at home. This was, to be sure, precisely the kind of
  dedication officials had hoped to mobilize in the local improvement
  movement, and for a time, government initiatives and youthful aspira-
  tions meshed. Youths from middling farm families attended agricul-
  tural continuation schools to learn new farming techniques that would
  help them solve the economic problems of agriculture. Participation in
  local youth groups heightened their sense of purpose and gave them an
  organizational base from which to act while satisfying their desire for
  cultural enrichment.
  Imbued with missionary zeal, these youths were now highly critical
  of anyone in their age group who was still afflicted with "city fever."
  Rather than stemming from a negative evaluation of cities, however,
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  591
  their criticisms stemmed from a positive evaluation of agriculture.
  Once scorned as an occupation without a future, farming was por-
  trayed by youths in early Taisho as "the great foundation of the coun-
  try" and farmers, as the "mainstays of the people." The countryside
  did have serious problems, but they were considered to be of local
  origin: Too much talent had been lost to the cities in the past; the
  older generation did not understand modern approaches to farming;
  and most adults were too troubled by the difficulties of earning a living
  to devote sufficient attention to community affairs. Precisely because
  they had time, energy, and knowledge, rural youths considered them-
  selves qualified to solve the rural crisis.68
  By the mid-1920s a new phase in the evolution of popular agrarian-
  ism was apparent. Youthful reformers no longer held the countryside
  at fault for its problems. On the contrary, Japan's cities and industrial-
  ists were now blamed for the rural crisis. To solve it, more than rural
  improvement (kairyo) was required; rural reconstruction (kaizo) was
  essential, and that was something farmers had to accomplish for them-
  selves, by their own efforts. Little help could be expected from the
  government.
  A key factor in bringing about this shift in attitudes was the post-
  World War I depression. It was not simply that general agricultural
  conditions worsened after 1920. What mattered most was the impact
  of the depression on the middling farmers who had become more
  involved in commercial production in recent years and who now, as
  agricultural prices fell, faced hardship if not ruin. It seemed to them
  (and to their sons) that they were bearing a greater share of the burden
  imposed by the depression than were the middlemen with whom they
  dealt and the merchants who ultimately sold their rice or silk to con-
  sumers. Whether this was actually the case is not important. What
  counted was that farmers believed it. As one indignant youth wrote in
  1923:
  We're told that the reason commodity prices are up and foreign trade is slack
  is that wages are too high, and that's because rice still costs too much. What
  nerve they have, shifting the blame onto poor workers and farmers while they
  sit back and rake in all those profits. . . . While farmers struggle to get by,
  city capitalists live in luxury. . . . There's a lot of talk these days about the
  dangers of socialism, but no one seems to recognize that capitalism is danger-
  ous too. . . . We must overcome [its] tyranny, which is disrupting the peace
  of society. *»
  68 Suzuki, "Taisho ki nomin seiji shiso," pp. 3-6; see also Nakamura, "Keizai kosei undo," pp.
  202-19. 
  69 Quoted in Suzuki, "Taisho ki nomin seiji shiso," p. 12.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  The government's response to the depression was also found wanting
  by the middling farmers. When Hara Takashi became prime minister
  in 1918, he did not do anything to maintain rice prices or to aid rural
  communities, despite heading a political party, the Seiyukai, that was
  widely regarded as a "farmers' party." Instead, his policies appeared
  to favor industry and commerce. Similarly, the forty-sixth session of
  the Diet, in 1922-3, although heralded as "the session on rural prob-
  lems," merely collected petitions from farmers but took no action on
  the issues-the need for reductions in the land tax, tenancy legislation,
  aid to small farmers-that those petitions raised.
  The belief that Hara and the Diet had "played political games" with
  farmers' problems brought to the surface the resentment toward the
  central government that had been brewing for some time among rural
  youths. In planning the local improvement movement, government
  officials spoke of the importance of reciprocity in developing national
  unity and promoting prosperity. Not only did the people need to learn
  more about their country, but officials also needed to learn more about
  the people; they had to rely on popular initiatives, not merely on laws
  and regulations, to bring about the desired change. Quite soon, how-
  ever, laws and regulations came to dominate the movement, and re-
  gional diversity became something to eliminate rather than exploit.
  From the outset, some preexisting youth groups simply ignored offi-
  cial efforts to recast them in a more uniform mold. Elsewhere, youths
  who took part in official seinendan activities also formed their own
  clubs to pursue their particular "civilian" interests, whether compos-
  ing haiku or discussing politics. What had been a ripple in the 1910s
  became a torrent in the early 1920s, as youths came to believe that no
  one else really cared about the countryside. Autonomy became their
  watchword, and the number of independent youth groups and inde-
  pendently organized youth activities multiplied.70
  A powerful focus for the resentments triggered by the depression
  and an impulse toward a new vision of the needs of rural society was
  provided by the Kan to earthquake of 1923. Tokyo-the country's
  political, economic, and cultural capital, the very embodiment of the
  new Japan-was devastated by violent tremors and raging fires. It was,
  a young farmer from Ibaraki Prefecture observed, a fate the city and
  its wealthy residents deserved:
  Of late the vainglorious striving of [those] city people had reached extremes
  that caused poor, simple farmers no end of anxiety. With their elegant clothes
  70 Ibid., pp. 11—15.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  593
  and their gold teeth, gold rings and gold watch chains, they flitted from one
  lavish social affair to another. They would go off on trips to the seashore or
  the mountains to escape the heat . . . and tour the famous sites. But now all
  that has vanished as if in a dream, consumed by fire, and suddenly they find
  themselves reduced to misery. It seems that Heaven found it necessary to
  chastise them with a natural disaster in order to protect the nation.71
  It also seemed that there was a lesson in the earthquake for the rural
  youth. As a young man from Nagano Prefecture wrote in November
  1923, all the features of modern civilization that youths had long ad-
  mired flourished in the cities, but what had that civilization wrought
  but fleeting wealth and power? Did it not depend on the exploitation of
  others, especially farmers? It made no sense to import urban civilization
  to the countryside or to yearn for what was basically "deformed and
  unsound." Farmers needed instead their own "sturdy, popular, re-
  gional culture. "?2
  That idea seems to have aroused considerable interest, but for the
  remainder of the 1920s no consensus emerged as to what a proper
  farmers' culture would be. Some advocated nature as a guiding princi-
  ple; others toyed with Buddhism; and still others stressed such tradi-
  tional values as sincerity and frugality. At the same time, despite their
  bold assertions about the decadence of city life, most youths remained
  intrigued by urban phenomena. They played baseball with enthusiasm
  and pooled their resources (or allocated youth group funds) to sub-
  scribe to such urban journals as Child koron and Gendai. The very
  concept of kaizo, which served to distinguish their new, autonomous
  efforts at rural reform from those directed by the government, appears
  to have been inspired by a popular urban journal of that name and to
  have resonated with one of the main currents of contemporary urban
  liberalism. 73
  By the early 1930s the culminating phase in the evolution of popular
  agrarianism had been reached. What had begun as the special concern
  of rural youth was now advanced by middling farmers of riper years.
  Typically the veterans of earlier efforts to solve the rural crisis, they
  still blamed urban capitalism for the problems afflicting the country-
  side, and they still expected little help from the government. As in the
  71 Quoted in ibid., p. 13.
  72 Idainaru kokuminuki chihoteki bunka"; quoted in Nakamura, "Keizai kosei undo," pp.
  211-12.
  73 For a discussion of the popular dimensions of Taisho democracy, see Kano Masanao, Taisho
  demokurashii no teityu (Tokyo: Nihon hoso shuppan kyokai, 1973). The early history of
  baseball in Japan is discussed in Donald Roden, "Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity
  inMeiji Japan," American Historical Review 8$ (June 1980): 511-34.
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  594 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  past they stressed the importance of local efforts by the farmers them-
  selves. But in contrast with the past, they now had a clear idea of the
  farmers' culture they sought to promote. It would be based on mutual
  aid, on the revitalization of communal solidarity. That revitalization
  was the prerequisite of rural economic recovery, the first step in what
  was now termed rural regeneration (kosei).
  As Masanori Nakamura demonstrated in his case study of one such
  advocate of popular agrarianism, Miyashita Itaru, it was not simple
  nostalgia for the past or desperate groping for a panacea to rural crisis
  that led to the focus on communal solidarity. On the contrary, some
  rather shrewd and practical reasoning was involved.
  Reiterating an opinion he had held since the early 1920s, Miyashita
  declared in 1931 that "the suffering of farmers today arises primarily
  from the expropriation of their [rightful] profits for the benefit of
  businessmen and industrialists." This occurred directly, when farmers
  sold their produce to middlemen at prices over which they exercised
  no control, and indirectly when the tax payments or the postal savings
  deposits they made were used for urban development. Although a
  return to total rural self-sufficiency was out of the question, the farm-
  ers desperately needed to combat the existing "economic structure of
  capitalism" and find ways of guaranteeing that the wealth they pro-
  duced would benefit the countryside.i*
  To think that this could be accomplished by individual action was
  ridiculous in Miyashita's opinion. A farmer on his own was too vul-
  nerable to bargain successfully with the commercial interests with
  whom he dealt and impotent to circumvent them. Indeed, the farm-
  ers had come to believe in such individualism, which was evidence of
  the capitalist system's hold over the countryside; it was part of the
  problem, not part of the solution. Nor was further tinkering by the
  government with the industrial cooperatives law or the further devel-
  opment of regional marketing facilities the answer, although improve-
  ments in both spheres were certainly in order. The essential need was
  for farmers to organize thoroughly and systematically among them-
  selves to assert their own collective interests in production, credit,
  and marketing.
  The basic unit of that organization, Miyashita asserted, must be the
  hamlet, the embodiment of the "beautiful rural custom of mutual
  aid." No other newly created and therefore alien basis would do as
  well. With the households in each hamlet forming farming associa-
  74 Nakamura, "Keizai kosei undo," pp. 233-4.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  595
  tions (nojijikko kumiai) and all those hamlet associations participating
  in the village cooperative, the benefits of collective action would be
  secured. Those benefits, Miyoshita observed on other occasions, were
  not confined to economic recovery. Not only would farmers be freed
  from domination by urban capitalists, they also would be freed from
  the urban idea of the dichotomy of work and pleasure. They would
  rediscover a truly communal life based on "love and service" in which
  work provided opportunities for recreation and in which "securing a
  livelihood was itself a source of contentment. "y5
  Like other advocates of popular agrarianism, Miyashita was con-
  cerned about an additional urban heresy, the idea of class conflict.
  While warning against unrealistic expectations that government aid
  would solve the rural crisis, he also took note of the "fantasy of social
  revolution." Rural distress had nothing to do with a confrontation
  between capital and labor, as some misguided people claimed. Rather,
  it stemmed from the confrontation between capitalists and farmers,
  "the opposition of city and countryside." To assert the existence of
  class conflict and encourage revolutionary struggle was "to ignore
  human nature . . . and rural ways." It was shortsighted and un-
  realistic to encourage internal squabbling when only harmony and
  cooperation could "protect the community from capitalism and [free
  it] from individualism." In national affairs, change had to be effected
  by political means, but in the villages it could be achieved only by
  unity.76
  Like the tenant movement, popular agrarianism had allies and
  would-be allies outside the countryside. Since early Taisho, for exam-
  ple, journalists who reported on agricultural affairs for urban newspa-
  pers and magazines had been urging farmers to pay greater attention to
  national politics, especially to electing Diet members who were knowl-
  edgeable about farming and willing to defend rural interests'. In 1922 a
  group of these journalists organized the Greater Japan Agricultural
  Policy Association, whose aim was "to study all aspects of agricultural
  policy in order to promote rural autonomy, the stability of agriculture
  and the creation of an agrarian culture." In 1923 the association began
  publishing a monthly journal, Studies in Agricultural Policy, and by 1924
  it had fifteen thousand members throughout the country, a significant
  portion of whom, it appears, were middling farmers. One of the associa-
  tion's chief, but ultimately unsuccessful, goals was to establish a nation-
  wide farmers' political party that would represent the country's five and
  75 Ibid., pp. 235-7. 
  76 Ibid., pp. 238-9.
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  596 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  one-half million farm households when universal manhood suffrage
  went into effect.~n
  There were, in addition, individual champions of ndhonshugi who
  published books and tracts throughout the 1920s and early 1930s,
  upholding the superiority of rural values and criticizing the politics,
  economy, and culture of the urban-centered Japanese state. The best
  known of these advocates of "renovationist agrarianism" were Gondo
  Seikyo, whose writings supposedly provided the ideological inspira-
  tion for the Ketsumeidan incidents of February and March 1932 in
  which Inoue Junnosuke and Dan Takuma were assassinated, and
  Tachibana Kosaburo, who ran an "academy of local patriotism" in
  Ibaraki Prefecture and who joined with junior officers in the army and
  navy in the attempted coup d'etat of May 15,1932.7s
  The writings of these groups and individuals certainly helped shape
  the thought and arguments of the popular agrarianists. It is also likely
  that acts of right-wing terrorism gave disgruntled farmers the same
  kind of satisfaction as had the Kanto earthquake earlier.79 But the fact
  remains that the taproot of popular agrarianism lay deep in rural soil.
  Support among farmers for programs of rural regeneration increased
  in the early 1930s, owing far more to the impact of the Showa depres-
  sion than to external guidance or exhortation.
  Popular agrarianism and government policy in the 1930s
  The world depression hit Japan early in 1930, a few months after the
  stock market crash in New York City, and it hit the countryside
  hardest. The price of silk cocoons, which had been declining since the
  mid-1920s, dropped by 47 percent between September 1929 and Sep-
  tember 1930, leaving in distress the roughly two million farm house-
  holds who engaged in sericulture. Owing to both a drop in domestic
  demand and a bumper harvest, rice prices fell sharply in 1930, in some
  regions to a level below production costs. In 1931, a year of punishing
  crop failure in northern Honshu and Hokkaido, rice prices were still
  only slightly higher than they had been in 1916. The prices that farm-
  ers received for fruits and vegetables fell precipitously as well. Overall,
  rural cash incomes fell from an index of 100 in 1926 to 33 in 1931; they
  77 Suzuki, "Taisho ki nomin seiji shiso," pp. 15-18.
  78 For a detailed discussion of the thought of Gondo and Tachibana, see Thomas R. H. Havens,
  Farm and Nation in Modemjapan: Agrarian Nationalism, 1870-1940 (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
  ton University Press, 1974), chaps. 7-11.
  79 For an interesting account of the politicization of reservist and youth groups in late Taisho
  and early Showa, see Yui Masaomi, "Gunbu to kokumin logo," in Showa kyoko, pp. 149-95.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  597
  had recovered only to 44 by 1934. The indebtedness of farm house-
  holds increased markedly. Making matters worse, thousands of unem-
  ployed workers returned to the countryside, their train fare paid by
  the government in many cases, to wait out the depression with their
  already hard-pressed relatives.
  One consequence of the depression was a surge in the number of
  tenancy disputes, especially in the Tohoku region where relatively few
  disputes had occurred earlier. Not only had the locus of disputes
  changed, however; so too had their nature. Rather than being the prod-
  uct of a united front among local tenants and aimed at improving the
  terms of tenancy, most disputes now were triggered by small, cultivat-
  ing landlords who sought to increase their incomes by evicting a few of
  their tenants and expanding the acreage they themselves farmed. On the
  defensive and in most cases lacking allies, tenants resisted as best they
  could, demanding that their cultivating rights be maintained or that
  they be compensated in some way for surrendering them.80
  It was to defuse this conflict and the threat it posed to the communal
  solidarity on which their influence was based that the large landlords
  in the Tohoku called for the spiritual revitalization of the countryside,
  by which they meant the reemphasis on hard work, frugality, and
  selfless dedication to duty and the renewal of bonds of interdepen-
  dence among households of differing status. At the same time, they
  and landlords elsewhere in the country sent petitions to the Diet call-
  ing for price supports for rice, a reduction in the land tax, protection
  for creditors against defaulted loans, and other measures that reflected
  their interests as property owners and rentiers.
  Another consequence of the depression was a surge in the middling
  farmers' support of popular agrarianism. During the early months of
  1932, in a campaign organized by Gondo Seikyo and Tachibana
  Kosaburo, 32,000 farmers in sixteen prefectures signed petitions to
  the Diet calling for a three-year moratorium on the repayment of
  farmers' debts, a one-yen-per-tan subsidy for the purchase of fertil-
  izer, and substantial appropriations to promote emigration to Man-
  churia and Mongolia. In a number of communities, farmers turned for
  local leadership to men like Miyashita Itaru, who was elected mayor of
  his village at the unusually young age of thirty-five. Anticipating little
  meaningful assistance from the state and convinced that bold measures
  were required to solve their problems, the farmers began organizing
  their own relief efforts.
  80 Waswo, Japanese Landlords, pp. 127-34.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  According to the older paradigm of rural social change, the Japanese
  government's response to these developments was essentially regres-
  sive. What the countryside needed, the literature asserts, was a basic
  reform of the semifeudal system of land ownership; what it got instead
  was a series of measures designed to buttress the position of landlords
  and wealthy farmers and to promote adherence to traditional values
  among the rural population as a whole. Popular attention was diverted
  from the injustices of the status quo by an aggressive foreign policy
  and, ultimately, by war.
  A radically different and in many ways more persuasive interpreta-
  tion of the government's response was offered by Mori Takemaro in
  a brief essay published in 1971.81 Though acknowledging that some
  of the legislation enacted by the Diet in 1932 and 1933-in particular,
  laws relating to public works projects and compensation for defaulted
  loans-did indeed favor the rural elite, Mori sees this as a relatively
  minor element in what took place during the depression years. In his
  analysis, the driving force in shaping policy was not the Diet but a
  group of "new," or "renovationist," bureaucrats who came to domi-
  nate the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in 1932, following the
  May 15 incident and the demise of party cabinets. Seizing the ini-
  tiative from the Home Ministry, they strove not only to stabilize
  the countryside but also to promote economic rationality in agricul-
  ture. One result of the measures they implemented as part of the
  rural economic rehabilitation program that the ministry launched in
  1932 was the restructuring and strengthening of government controls
  over the rural population. Another was the enhancement of the status
  and local influence of middling farmers at the expense of the rural
  elite.
  The first step in restructuring and strengthening controls over the
  rural population was absorbing into the village agricultural coopera-
  tives the mutual aid societies, study groups, and other voluntary asso-
  ciations of farm households that existed at the hamlet or subhamlet
  level. In what amounted to the abandonment of the Home Ministry's
  long-standing, albeit unsuccessful, campaign against hamlet "parochi-
  alism," the Industrial Cooperatives Law was amended in 1932 to per-
  mit these local organizations to reconstitute themselves as legal entities
  (to be known as agricultural practice associations) and become formal
  members of cooperatives. In 1933 a five-year campaign was launched
  81 Mori Takemaro, "Nihon fuashizumu no keisei to noson keizai kosei undo," Rekishigaku
  kenkyu, 1971 special supplement, pp. 135-52-
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  599
  to encourage the formation of cooperatives in villages where none yet
  existed; expand the cooperatives' activities to include not only credit
  and marketing, the focus of most existing cooperatives, but also the
  purchase of essential producer and consumer goods and the joint use
  of tools, machinery, and livestock; and promote the membership of all
  farm households in village cooperatives and the membership of all
  village cooperatives into higher-level federations to form a comprehen-
  sive, nationwide system. To encourage compliance, villages that estab-
  lished cooperatives or expanded the scope of existing cooperatives
  became eligible for designation as "economic rehabilitation villages"
  and the receipt of government financial aid.82
  From its inception, the rural economic rehabilitation program had
  also aimed at nurturing "mainstay elements" (ndson chuken jinbutsu) in
  the rural population. Rather vaguely defined at first as those endowed
  with "energetic and enterprising spirits," these mainstay elements sub-
  sequently were described as individuals who earned their livelihoods
  from farming and whose lives and values were rooted in the communi-
  ties in which they lived. Beginning in 1934, each designated economic
  rehabilitation village was directed to select twenty or thirty such main-
  stay farmers as "leaders in the improvement of farm management."
  Those selected were then sent at government expense to a two-day
  training course run by the prefectural agricultural association. In addi-
  tion to instruction in bookkeeping methods, each trainee was required
  to draft his own personal farm management improvement plan. After
  returning to their villages, the trainees formed a local society to study
  farm management, and they were expected to work to disseminate
  among other farmers in the community what they had learned about
  modern accounting methods and systematic planning.
  Using Haga Village in Gumma Prefecture as a case study, Mori was
  able to demonstrate that these and related measures led to the creation
  of a new local power structure based on middle-status farmers. This
  happened not because the village landlords were weak. On the con-
  trary, there were five landlords who each owned more than 10 cho,
  including two owning more than 50 cho each; collectively, they and
  numerous small landlords owned some 48 percent of the village land.
  The larger landlords dominated the village politics and, either directly
  or indirectly, controlled all but one or two of the eight hamlets of
  which the village was composed. They had played a leading role in the
  decision reached in 1936 to draft a rehabilitation plan and to apply for
  82 By 1940, 81 percent of Japanese villages had been so designated. Ibid., p. 140.
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  600 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  designation as an economic rehabilitation village, and they had ex-
  pected to control the efforts that resulted. Indeed, when Kobayashi
  Jiro, the second largest landlord in the village, became managing direc-
  tor of the village cooperative established a short time later, it seemed
  that their expectations were justified. What they had not realized,
  however, was that the bureaucrats heading the Ministry of Agriculture
  and Forestry had inserted a new guiding principle into its agricultural
  policy: Farm operators, not landowners, were the key to rural recov-
  ery. And because that principle was applied over the next few years,
  landlords found themselves shunted aside.
  Although most of the landlords in the village, including the largest
  among them, farmed a small portion of their land, they did not qualify
  for nurturing as mainstay elements. Instead, most of those so nurtured
  in 1937-the year after Haga achieved designated village status-who
  subsequently formed its society for the study of farm management,
  were middling farmers, each cultivating an average of 1.37 cho of land.
  Most numerous, constituting 65 percent of the total, were the owner-
  tenants, whose ranks included two men who had previously been
  active in the local tenant movement. They were followed by owner-
  cultivators, who constituted 27 percent of the total.8*
  Having nurtured these elements, the bureaucrats were not content
  to let them languish as members of a study group, nor were the
  farmers themselves content to do so. Instead, they and others of simi-
  lar status organized agricultural practice associations throughout the
  village. As Mori demonstrated, considerably more than the reconstitu-
  tion of existing voluntary associations into legally recognized corporate
  bodies resulted: The revision of the Industrial Cooperatives Law,
  which provided that reconstitution, also created an opening for the
  restructuring of collective activity that middling farmers were able to
  exploit to their advantage.
  At the onset of the depression, most of the existing voluntary associa-
  tions in Haga were dominated by landlords, and despite nominal con-
  cern with the promotion of agricultural improvements, they functioned
  primarily as mechanisms for regulating tenant rents and resolving
  landlord-tenant conflicts. Organized by hamletwide units, they repli-
  cated the political structure of the village, which landlords also domi-
  nated. By 1939 these hamletwide associations had been broken down
  into nineteen agricultural practice associations whose primary concern
  83 The use of rural economic rehabilitation programs to defuse tenant militancy is an issue
  meriting further exploration.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  6OI
  was production and whose leadership came mostly from the ranks of
  owner-cultivators and owner-tenants.84 As formal members of the vil-
  lage cooperative, these associations pressed for and secured the resigna-
  tion of Kobayashi Jiro as its managing director and the appointment of
  an individual-as it turned out, a small cultivating landlord-more re-
  sponsive to the farm operators' needs and interests.
  Nor did the restructuring of collective activity, and its concomitant
  displacement of landlords, consist only in the establishment of agri-
  cultural practice associations. Early in 1937, at the behest of the
  Home Ministry, Haga established new hamlet associations (buraku-
  kai) throughout the village. As envisioned by the Home Ministry,
  which since 1935 had been seeking to regain the initiative it had lost
  to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry at the onset of the depres-
  sion, these associations were to form the lowest link in a revitalized
  local government system and enable it to strengthen its own controls
  over the rural population. In addition to tax collection and other
  administrative tasks, hamlet associations were to concern themselves
  with local economic development, improvements in sanitation and
  health, encouragement of frugality, and promotion of patriotism,
  filial piety, and the spirit of mutual aid among hamlet residents.
  In this undertaking, too, an opening existed that the middling farm-
  ers were able to use to their advantage. The committee charged with
  establishing hamlet associations first redrew Haga's administrative
  map, carving out a total of twenty-nine hamlets in place of the previ-
  ous eight hamlets. In a few cases, old hamlet boundaries were crossed,
  for the committee felt no obligation to preserve the village's estab-
  lished administrative divisions. On the contrary, as its report to the
  prefectural governor observed, the committee's aim had been to delin-
  eate communities whose constituent households could cooperate in
  agricultural production. As was true of agricultural practice associa-
  tions, the leaders of these new associations generally came from the
  ranks of owner-cultivators and owner-tenants.8'
  As Mori noted, there was a marked absence of coordination in this
  period between the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture
  and Forestry. The result of their competing initiatives in Haga-and,
  one assumes, in other villages as well-was a dual structure of hamlet
  associations on the one hand and agricultural practice associations on
  84 According to Mori, 60 percent of the leaders of these agricultural practice associations in 1940
  were owner-cultivators, and 30 percent were owner-tenants. Ibid., pp. 146-7.
  85 According to Mori, 54 percent were owner-cultivators, and 23 percent were owner-tenants.
  Ibid., p. 148.
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  602 
  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  the other, only some of which coincided. (In Haga only twelve of the
  twenty-nine hamlet associations and nineteen agricultural practice as-
  sociations had the same territorial base.) At the same time, a dual set
  of linkages to the state was created, one leading through the village
  assemblies under the jurisdiction of the Home Ministry and the other
  through the agricultural cooperatives under the jurisdiction of the
  Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Although we need to know
  more about why this competition existed and what its consequences
  were in later years at both the local and national levels, we cannot
  ignore the significance of what occurred, however untidy and ineffi-
  cient it may have been. The old order in the countryside was not being
  shored up; it was being dismantled, and a new order based on mid-
  dling farmers and smaller-scale collectivities was being created in its
  place.
  For Mori, writing in 1971, it was this dismantling of the old order
  and the economic rationality on which the new was based that made
  rural economic rehabilitation part of "the formation of Japanese fas-
  cism." Criticizing earlier scholars for their portrayal of fascism as an
  expression of the unrelievedly "premodern," "feudal," and "irratio-
  nal" character of Japanese society, he asserted that in Japan, as else-
  where, fascism was the product of modern development and embodied
  the principles and power of monopoly capitalism.
  He also made it clear that he regarded the middling farmers as
  relatively minor actors in the fascist transformation, as he defined it.
  The government was both the architect and the engineer of what
  transpired. Despite sectional squabbling among key ministries, the
  government was united in its determination to prepare the nation for
  the total war that monopoly capitalism required. That meant, in re-
  gard to the countryside, achieving direct control over agricultural pro-
  ducers. Reeling from the blows delivered by the Showa depression,
  the middling farmers were seduced by the new emphasis on farm
  operation, as opposed to land ownership, in state agricultural policy.
  It occurred to them that by relying on the state and demonstrating
  their loyalty to it, they could expand their own farming operations and
  elevate themselves within their communities. In the new, smaller col-
  lectivities that came into being during the 1930s, which bypassed the
  older, landlord-dominated collectivities of the Meiji local government
  system, they rose to the status of petty bosses. In this way they were
  caught in the net of bureaucratic control.86
  86 Ibid., p. 151.
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  NOHONSHUGI 
  603
  Mori's formulation of the broader historical meaning of the rural
  economic rehabilitation movement persuaded other scholars to reexam-
  ine the politics of and the relationship between state and society dur-
  ing the early Showa period that continues to this day. Thus far, several
  lines of inquiry have been pursued: studies of Germany, Italy, France,
  Britain, and the United States during the 1930s that seek, either explic-
  itly or implicitly, to place developments in Japan in comparative per-
  spective; studies of policymaking within the Japanense government,
  which seek to identify those designing the solutions to the nation's
  problems at home and abroad; and studies of specific popular move-
  ments and local communities.87
  At this writing, one can only speculate about what the outcome of
  these diverse-and, to date, cautious-studies will be. Substantial
  modifications of Mori's generalizations about the dynamics of Japan's
  fascist transformation seem to be in the offing. Although subsequent
  research has confirmed his basic finding that rural regeneration bene-
  fited the middling farmers, not the local elite, it has also shown that
  the trade-off he noted between the interests of those farmers and the
  government was not as sudden or as lopsided as he construed it.
  Efforts by the bureaucracy to control the countryside antedated the
  depression by some two decades, as did the desire among middling
  farmers for improvement in their economic, political, and social sta-
  tus. Nor do government bureaucrats appear any longer to have been
  the instigators of attempts at rural regeneration. On the contrary,
  both the idea and the specific policies to achieve it developed among
  the middling farmers themselves. What bureaucrats did during the
  depression years was to ratify, not form, popular aspirations for
  change.
  They did so, I suspect, out of recognition of the challenge of those
  aspirations to the state, if left to mature on their own. By the early
  1930s, popular agrarianism was becoming a secessionist movement
  that denied not only the legitimacy of urbanism and industrialism but
  also the utility of relying on the government for help. To bring the
  middling farmers back to the fold, bureaucrats had to offer them more
  than petty political roles within their communities. They had to per-
  mit the middling farmers to define those communities as they them-
  selves saw fit, that is, to grant them a degree of the autonomy they
  sought.
  87 See, for example, Tokyo daigaku shakaikagaku kenkyujo, eds., Fuashizumu ki no kokka to
  shakai, 8 vols., esp. vol. 3, Nachisu keizai to nyuu deiiru; vol. 4, Senji Nihon no hotaisei; and
  vol. 5, Yoroppa no hotaisei.
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  THE TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY
  EPILOGUE
  The wartime measures to control inflation, to allocate diminished sup-
  plies of fertilizer, and to maximize food production eroded even more
  rapidly the position of the rural elite than the depression years had
  done. The Rent Control Order of 1939 froze tenant rents at their
  current levels and empowered local officials to order rent reductions if
  necessary. The Staple Food Management Law of 1942 required that
  all rice be delivered to government warehouses, where it would be
  purchased at officially determined prices and distributed by govern-
  ment agencies. In addition, bonuses were paid to the actual producers
  of the rice delivered, to encourage greater output and maximum deliv-
  eries to the official market. At first, these bonuses were relatively
  modest, but they subsequently were raised at a rate far exceeding the
  increases in official rice prices. In 1945, noncultivating landlords re-
  ceived only ¥ 55 per koku for the rice they sold, whereas their tenants,
  as its producers, received ¥ 245; owner-cultivators received both the
  official price and the bonus, or ¥ 300 per koku. In short, the principle
  of direct attention to farm operators, including tenant farmers, was
  now applied openly and comprehensively throughout the nation. Al-
  though conscription, and death or injury in Japan's increasingly des-
  perate military campaigns abroad, imposed a heavy burden on the
  rural population, in purely economic terms and in terms of local politi-
  cal influence, ordinary farmers made significant gains.88
  Those gains were elaborated and institutionalized by the land re-
  form carried out during the postwar occupation of Japan. Intended
  primarily as a social and political measure to promote "the revival and
  strengthening of democratic tendencies, establish respect for the dig-
  nity of man, and destroy the economic bondage which has enslaved
  the Japanese farmer to centuries of feudal oppression,"89 the land
  reform imposed greater equity in land ownership on the rural popula-
  tion and greatly reduced income differences among farmers. By 1950
  one-third of the total area of arable land in Japan had been transferred
  from the landlords to the actual cultivators. Absentee landlords, de-
  fined as those who lived outside the villages in which their fields were
  located, lost all their land. Resident landlords were permitted to retain
  no more than an average of one cho of tenanted land (four cho in
  88 Ogura, Tochi rippo, pp. 720-32; Waswo, Japanese Landlords, pp. 135-6.
  89 As stated in a memorandum dated December 9, 194s, from General Headquarters, Supreme
  Commander for the Allied Powers. The best account of the land reform in English remains
  Dore, Land Reform in Japan.
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  EPILOGUE 
  605
  Hokkaido), and owner-cultivators were allowed an average upper limit
  of three cho (twelve chd in Hokkaido). The latter, who had constituted
  31 percent of farm households in 1945, constituted 65 percent in 1950.
  Tenant farmers who owned no land themselves declined from 28 per-
  cent to 5 percent of all farm households. Rent in kind was prohibited;
  written tenancy contracts were required; and both cash rents and land
  transfers were rigorously controlled.
  Although the land reform did not solve the problems of Japanese
  agriculture, and indeed may have exacerbated such problems as the
  diseconomies of small-scale farming, it completed the transformation of
  rural society that had begun in earnest some five decades earlier. This is
  not to say that rural social change ceased-far from it-but the changes
  since 1950 have been fundamentally different.90 The long struggle of
  ordinary farmers against the unequal distribution of wealth and power
  was now over, and the hamlets in which they lived had become, in
  comparison with the past, communities of economic, social, and politi-
  cal equals. And that these communities remained important to their
  residents was now a matter more of choice than of necessity.
  90 These changes are discussed in Ronald Dore, Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village
  (London: Lane, 1978); Gail Lee Bernstein, "Women in Rural Japan," in Women in Changing
  Japan, ed. Joyce Lebra et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976), pp. 25-49; Robert J.
  Smith, Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a Japanese Village, 1951-1975 (Folkestone, Kent:
  Dawson and Sons, 1978).
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  CHAPTER 12
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, LABOR
  MARKETS, AND INDUSTRIAL
  RELATIONS IN JAPAN, 1905-1955
  INTRODUCTION
  Japan's "first industrial revolution," led by the textile industries (cot-
  ton spinning, silk reeling, and fabrics), had lost momentum by about
  1910. The outbreak of World War I, however, thrust Japan into the
  position of supplying the warring nations of Europe with war materiel
  and supplying the markets of Asia with consumer manufactures. As a
  result, the Japanese economy began to move toward a "second indus-
  trial revolution" with the sudden growth in heavy industries such as
  metal working, machines and equipment, and shipbuilding. But the
  economy could not absorb the output of this sector once the overseas
  demand decreased. When peace was restored and production resumed
  in Europe, the Japanese economy was forced into a period of retrench-
  ment and reorganization. During a series of adjustments in the 1920s,
  the economy slowed down its development toward an advanced indus-
  trial structure. When this second industrial revolution finally arrived
  in the 1930s, the leading industries were those heavy industries geared
  to the requirements of war and imperial expansion overseas.1 With
  Japan's defeat in World War II, it was forced back to its prewar
  economic level, from which it recovered by about 1952 to the "nor-
  mal" level of the 1930s. By 1955, economic forces and institutional
  arrangements were well in place to launch a new era in Japanese
  economic history.
  During this half-century of steady but uneven growth, manufactur-
  ing plants employing a large number of workers played a central role.
  1 In modern Japanese economic history, war appears to have been a conscious endogenous
  variable in Japan's efforts for modernization. Although it is somewhat disagreeable to think
  of war in this light, the unprecedented peace for more than thirty years after World War II
  disposes scholars to be more objective about the role of war in Japan's prewar history. War
  then can be treated as "an investment" and worked into the economic system on an equal
  footing in other types of investment. See, for example, Kenneth E. Boulding and Alan H.
  Gleason, "War As an Investment: The Strange Case of Japan," in Economic Imperialism, ed.
  Kenneth E. Boulding and Tapan Mukerjee (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
  1972), PP- 240-61.
  606
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  607
  Employment management in these large enterprises evolved in many
  directions different from those of other advanced modern capitalist
  economies. Observers often refer to a "Japanese employment system"
  characterized by lifetime employment security coupled with pay scales
  based on length of service and jealously guarded by a labor union that
  limits its membership to the firm's regular employees. The origin,
  rationale, and mechanism of the Japanese employment system have
  created considerable controversy, because the management practices
  in large firms are not followed in other parts of the labor market in
  which workers are not guaranteed lifetime employment, in which
  wages and benefits are not determined strictly by seniority, in which
  labor is highly mobile, and in which because of the work force's
  mobility and small scale, unions are difficult to organize. The Japa-
  nese employment system thus refers only to practices in large firms;
  that is, the Japanese labor market is dualistic, with different labor
  relations styles prevailing in firms of different sizes.
  This complex pattern of labor practices is derived from a process of
  economic differentiation affecting the whole economic system. First
  came the differentiation between the modern (or capitalist) and pre-
  modern (or traditionalist) sectors, and then came differentiation be-
  tween large and small firms in the modern sector. But this pattern of
  employment management was also the result of noneconomic factors
  such as the rise of an indigenous labor movement, the outbreak of
  industrial conflict, and the intervention of the state in relations be-
  tween employers and employees. The development of the Japanese
  employment system, moreover, was neither smooth nor continuous
  but, rather, was shaped by the ebb and flow of economic growth as
  well as by the noneconomic accidents of political change, war, expan-
  sion, and military defeat in World War II.
  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET
  One of the few generally accepted empirical laws of economics is that
  the agricultural share of the labor force systematically declines in a
  developing economy and that an increasing proportion of the labor
  force is allocated to paid employment through a labor market.2 At the
  outset of Japan's economic development, much of its labor force was
  engaged in small-scale agriculture. But by the time the economy had
  advanced, much of the labor force was employed for pay in occupa-
  2 Colin Clark, The Condition of Economic Progress, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1951).
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  608 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  tions other than agriculture. But it is clear that in this transition, there
  is a rich history of quantitative growth, intersectoral reallocation, and
  occupational differentiation.
  In Japan the small farms persisted. Despite changes in the distribu-
  tion of landownership, as indicated by the rise of cultivated land under
  tenancy relative to total arable land, the number of farm households
  remained roughly constant from the 1870s through the 1930s. Because
  farm households followed the practice of primogeniture, their first
  priority was either to produce a son or to find an heir. 3 With the farm's
  future thus secured, the other (younger) sons were free to find occupa-
  tions other than agriculture. It was this migration from agriculture
  that caused the decline in the proportion of Japan's labor force en-
  gaged in agriculture.
  One way of assessing how extensively Japan's labor market devel-
  oped is to look at the proportion of the labor force engaged in paid
  work. In 1872, paid employment is estimated to have been 1.7 percent
  in the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, and forestry), 33.7 percent
  in the secondary sector (mining, manufacturing, and construction),
  and 36.8 percent in the tertiary sector (all other activities). For the
  economy as a whole, the proportion of the labor force in paid employ-
  ment was only 8.6 percent, reflecting the preponderance of self-
  employed farmers.* Industrialization had barely begun, and so most
  nonagricultural employers were owner-operators of small household
  enterprises employing only a few paid workers. The principal excep-
  tions were government-owned factories and shipyards employing hun-
  dreds of workers. In 1872, most wage earners (one-third of the
  secondary-sector labor force) were not yet part of the modern indus-
  trial enterprise represented by/the factory system. Rather, they were
  "premodern" wage labor.
  During most of the Meiji period, the nonagricultural labor markets
  were composed of small unstable businesses, owner-operated busi-
  3 The priority of farm households' claims on their own labor force was emphasized by Namiki
  Masayoshi in a number of controversial articles during the 1950s. One of the earliest of these
  articles is Namiki Masayoshi, "Noka jinko no ido keitai to shugyo kozo," in Nogyd ni okeru
  senzai shitsugyo, ed. Tobata Seiichi (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha, 1956). Also see Namiki
  Masayoshi, "Chingin kozo to noka rodoryoku," in Nihongaia chingin kozo no kenkyu, ed.
  Shinohara Miyohei and Funahashi Naomichi (Tokyo: Rodo hogaku kenkyujo, 1961). Best
  known among Namiki's critics are Ono Akira and Minami Ryoshin. For a review of the
  controversy between Namiki and Ono and Minami, see Hatai Yoshitaka, "Noka jinko ido to
  keiki hendo," originally published in 1963 and translated as "Business Cycles and the Outflow
  of Labor from the Agricultural Sector" in The Labor Market in Japan, ed. Shunsaku
  Nishikawa and trans. Ross Mouer (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1980), pp. 5-18.
  4 Ishizaki Tadao, "Sangyo kozo to shugyo kozo," in Wagakuni kanzen koyo no igi to latsaku, ed.
  Showa dojinkai (Tokyo: Showa dojinkai, 1957).
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  609
  nesses, and mobile, low-wage enterprises. Such markets were tran-
  sient, and the main participants were unspecialized but versatile all-
  purpose workers. These workers frequently moved in and out of
  many jobs, working either for themselves or for others. Earlier Japa-
  nese writers referred to this social stratum as "lower-class society"
  (kaso shakai) J Lower-class workers were not necessarily unskilled,
  however; a better way of describing them is to say that they were
  multiskilled.6 In the language of current development economics, the
  Meiji labor market was like the "informal sector" of a less developed
  economy.7
  It was only after considerable industrialization that sectoral or occupa-
  tional differences in labor types and management styles became notice-
  able. The first major attempt at understanding Japan's occupational
  structure came in 1920 with the first population census. The implemen-
  tation of the Factory Law of 1911 required the government to know
  which firms were large enough to be covered by the law and which were
  small enough to be exempted. The firms covered by the Factory Law
  had to conform to government standards by which privileges were
  granted and penalties were imposed. These industries became part of a
  "formal sector." Because the government was intervening in the labor
  market in order to protect the workers against employer abuses, occupa-
  tional hazards, unemployment, and other detriments, this formal sector
  became a "protected sector." Once this formal, protected sector was
  established, many new labor market developments differentiated it
  from the informal, unprotected remainder of the urban labor market.
  Qualitative changes in worker types can be discussed from aggrega-
  tive and semiaggregative labor force data. Table 12.1 shows employ-
  ment by sector, industry, and status. By 1920, agriculture's share in
  Japan's total employment had dropped to 54 percent from more than
  70 percent during the early Meiji years. In the nonagriculture sector,
  which had grown to claim 46 percent of total employment, 73 percent
  of the workers were paid employees, up from about 35 percent in
  5 Yokoyama Gen'nosuke, Nihon no kaso shakai (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1899). For an analytical
  use of Kaso shakai, much like today's informal sector in historical studies of Japanese labor
  markets, see Sumiya Mikio, Nihon chinrodo shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1955)
  and Social Impact of Industrialization in Japan (Tokyo: UNESCO Japan, 1963).
  6 The versatility and mobility of the working poor continue to this day and present a fascinating
  contrast with the lifetime commitment of the regular workers to their employers under the
  "Japanese employment system." The implication is that the poor are "un-Japanese." See Masa-
  yoshi Chubachi and Koji Taira, "Poverty in Modern Japan: Perceptions and Realities," in
  Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Consequences, ed. Hugh Patrick with the assistance of
  Larry Meissner (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976).
  7 Subbiah Kannappan, ed., Studies of Urban Labour Market Behaviour in Developing Areas
  (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, 1977).
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  6io
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  TABLE 12.1
  Employment by sector, industry, and status, for selected years (in
  thousands and percentages)
  Gainfully employed (in thousands}1
  All sectors
  Primary sector*
  Agriculture and forestry
  Secondary sector*
  Manufacturing
  Public utilities
  Tertiary sector*
  Trade
  Services
  Employees as percentage of gainfully employed'
  All sectors
  Primary sector
  Agriculture
  Secondary sector
  Manufacturing
  Public utilities
  Tertiary sector
  Trade
  Finance
  Services
  Ohkawa-Takamatsu estimates
  for "services"/
  Modem-sector employees as percentage
  of gainfully employed
  Factory employment as percentage
  of manufacturing employment'
  Modern-sector employment as percentage
  of total employment in finance*
  Same adjusted for unpaid
  family workers*
  1920
  27,260
  14,717
  14,181
  6,990
  4,604
  1,170
  5,555
  3,380
  2,174
  29.5
  4.5
  2.9
  67.4
  62.7
  70.3
  44.6
  24.0
  76.1
  67.8
  16.9
  39.6
  38.8-
  25.5
  1930
  29,6/9
  14,700
  14,131
  7,559
  4,754
  1,294
  7,S60
  4,930
  2,630
  32.3
  4.9
  3.2
  64.S
  60.4
  83.6
  40.4
  31.2
  89.6
  75.1
  17.1
  39.9
  46.0<
  31.7
  1940
  34,177
  14,384
  13,841
  10,066
  6,955
  1,523
  9,727
  4,898
  4,818
  41.9
  4.9
  2.5
  80.9
  78.7
  91.9
  56.0
  36.4
  95.2
  79.1
  38.7
  65.5
  n.a.
  n.a.
  1950
  36,160
  18,100
  17,410
  9,630
  6,230
  1,710
  8,430
  3,740
  4,050
  39.6
  6.2
  3.5
  79.8
  78.2
  94.4
  60.3
  36.0
  93.6
  65.1
  n.a.
  59.8
  n.a.
  n.a.
  "Mataji Umemura's estimates in Patterns of Japanese Economic Development: A Quantitative
  Appraisal, ed. Kazushi Ohkawa and Miyohei Shinohara (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
  Press, 1979), pp. 392-5.
  'Includes agriculture, forestry, and fishing.
  'Includes mining, construction, manufacturing, and "support and utilities" (transportation, com-
  munication, electricity, gas, and water).
  ''AH sectors less primary less secondary.
  Tadao Ishizaki, "Sangyo kozo to shugyo kdzo," in Wagakuni kanzen koyo no igi to taisaku, ed.
  Showa dojinkai (Tokyo: Showa dojinkai 1957), pp. 665,690-1.
  'Estimates of Long-Term Economic Statistics of Japan Since 1868 [LTES], vol. 1, ed. Kazushi
  Ohkawa, Nobukiyo Takamatsu, and Yuzo Yamamoto (Tokyo: Toyo keizai shinposha, 1974), p.
  131. This LTES series ends in 1940 and has no figure applicable to 1950; hence, "n. a." for 1950.
  "Services" here includes trade, finance, and personal services.
  'Based on Table 12.2
  'Ohkawa and Shinohara, eds., Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, p. 124. "Modern"
  finance refers to banking and insurance. "Traditional" finance refers to mujin (mutual loan
  association), money lending, and real estate lending.
  '1915. 
  '1926.
  'Employment in finance appearing in the preceding row does not include "unpaid family work-
  ers" which should have been an important factor in "traditional" finance. But data on this
  category of workers are not available for finance. Adjustment is therefore made using the ratio of
  unpaid family workers to total employment for all "services" obtained from LTES, vol. 1.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  6ll
  earlier years. Not all of these nonagricultural wage and salary earners
  were employed in the formal sector (mines, factories, utilities, incorpo-
  rated businesses, and government). Because an economy's degree of
  modernization is often determined from the proportion of employ-
  ment in the formal (or modern) sector, it is useful to estimate the
  proportion of employment in that sector at different historical stages
  of the Japanese economy. According to Table 12.i, in 1920, paid
  workers represented 63 percent of Japan's total manufacturing employ-
  ment. But factory employees, defined as those in manufacturing estab-
  lishments with five or more workers were only 40 percent of this total.
  The other 60 percent were self-employed proprietors, working family
  members, and wage earners in workshops with fewer than five employ-
  ees. If the formal sector is considered as modern, it is clear that more
  than fifty years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japanese manufac-
  turing in 1920 was not yet even half-modern.8 And even this must be
  discounted further owing to a nonmodern bias in the sex composition
  of factory employment.
  If the manufacturing industry was 40 percent formal and 60 percent
  informal, how representative was this proportion for all nonagricul-
  tural employment? In construction, wholesale and retail trade, and
  services, the proportion of the formal sector must have been much
  lower than in manufacturing. On the other hand, utilities and govern-
  ment must have been almost entirely formal, although they employed
  only a small proportion of the industrial labor force. There were also
  many casual workers with no industrial attachment. Thus the facto-
  ries' share of manufacturing employment may well have marked the
  upper limit of nonagriculture's relative importance in the formal sec-
  tor. Thus, as in manufacturing, Japan's entire nonagricultural work
  force was also less than 40 percent "modern" in 1920. By this calcula-
  tion, the "modern wage and salary earners" would have been less than
  15 percent of Japan's total employment (40 percent of paid workers in
  nonagriculture divided by all employed persons on the basis of the
  1920 figures in Table 12.1).
  The relative size of modern-sector employment hardly changed for a
  decade after 1920, but during the 1930s there was a substantial expan-
  sion of heavy industries, thereby drawing labor into the factories on an
  unprecedented scale. Factory employment increased nearly two and a
  8 There has been much controversy over the nature and quality of Japan's industrial technology
  and organization. The issues concern the relative importance of factories, manufactures (or
  manufactories), and cottage industry within the manufacturing sector. For comments on the
  issues and abstracts of major Japanese works in this area, see Mikio Sumiya and Koji Taira,
  eds., An Outline of Japanese Economic History, 1603-1940 (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press,
  1979), chaps. 7, 15.
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  6l2 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  half times between 1930 and 1940. According to Table 12.1, in 1940,
  factory employment stood at 66 percent of manufacturing employment,
  indicating that manufacturing had finally become predominantly mod-
  ern. Because the proportion of factory employment in manufacturing
  indicates the relative size of the modern sector in the entire nonagricul-
  tural sector, we can say that on the eve of World War II, Japan's nonagri-
  cultural employment had become predominantly modern.
  Wartime destruction and disruption of the economy brought enor-
  mous setbacks in production, productivity, and employment struc-
  ture, perhaps starting in the last two years of the war (1944 and 1945)
  and lasting well into the 1950s. The level of national output did not
  return to the prewar "normal" level of 1934-6 until 1952, and the
  employment structure reflected the impact of these setbacks. Com-
  pared with 1940, manufacturing employment in its major aspects was
  lower in 1950, and factory employment had shrunk by more than 30
  percent. When the Allied Occupation ended in 1952, the Japanese
  economy had to begin where it was in the mid-1930s.9 .
  The role of labor in modern-sector development
  In 1920, roughly half of the economy was agricultural, and less than 40
  percent of the other half was modern. A small island of modern-sector
  employment was surrounded by the much larger sea of traditional
  employment, an image reminiscent of W. Arthur Lewis's celebrated
  model of "economic development with unlimited supplies of labor."10
  This model assumes that surplus labor outside the "capitalist" or mod-
  ern sector drives down the compensation for labor to a minimum
  subsistence level and that until surplus labor is fully absorbed into
  capitalist-sector employment, wages will stay at the subsistence level
  of the traditional sector. The Lewis model does not distinguish be-
  tween agriculture and the nonagricultural informal sector but lumps
  both together as traditional. Development economists have suggested
  an independent role for the nonagricultural informal sector and have
  postulated three basic sectors in a developing economy: the modern
  sector, the informal sector, and agriculture." Informal-sector employ-
  9 For a scrutiny and analysis of wartime and postwar data, see Umemura Mataji, Sengo Nihon
  no rodoyoku (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1964), esp. chap. 2, sec. 2.
  10 W. Arthur Lewis, "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour," Manchester
  School ofEconomic and Social Studies 22 (May I954):i34-9i.
  11 Lloyd G. Reynolds and Peter Gregory, Wages, Productivity and Industrialization in Puerto
  Rico (Homewood, 111.: Irwin, 1965); John R. Harris and Michael P. Todaro, "Migration,
  Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review 60
  (March 1970): 126-42.
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  613
  ment serves as a labor reserve waiting to be absorbed into the modern
  sector as job opportunities expand there. If we assume that the cost or
  inconvenience of mobility is less when moving from the informal to
  the modern sector than from agriculture, it seems reasonable that
  workers should first move from agriculture to the informal sector and
  then wait for job openings in the modern sector. In effect, part of
  informal-sector employment becomes disguised unemployment.
  Many economists have argued that the Lewis model only partially
  explains Japan's development. Gustav Ranis and John C. H. Fei sug-
  gested that the Lewis model, appropriately refined in their hands, fits
  Japan up to World War I." Minami Ryoshin believes that conditions
  similar to "unlimited supplies of labor" lasted until about i96o.J3 At
  the same time, there have been "long swings" in Japanese develop-
  ment, each lasting twenty to thirty years from trough to trough in the
  time series of several key economic variables, including wages and
  employment.14 If there were such long swings, it is difficult to under-
  stand how unlimited supplies of labor could be sustained for periods
  extending beyond the slack phase of long swings when labor redun-
  dancy increased. During the upswing phase, though with some lag in
  response, labor supplies tended to become scarce enough to drive up
  the labor costs at the expense of profits, thereby setting the stage for
  the next economic downturn. '5
  Employment is said to be elastic with respect to wages-in short,
  wage elastic-if it greatly increases in response to a small increase or no
  increase in wages. Conversely, employment is said to be wage inelastic
  if it increases very little or not at all in response to a large increase in
  wages. Figure 12.1 relates the index of factory employment to the
  index of real wages (both calculated from data in the prewar Factory
  Statistics and the postwar Census of Manufactures), suggesting that in
  Japan the elasticity of employment varied over time. There were four
  phases after 1909: (1) elastic employment, 1909 to 1920; (2) inelastic
  employment, 1920 to 1933; (3) elastic employment, 1933 to 1940; and
  (4) inelastic employment, 1940 to 1956. The crucial question is to
  what extent or in what ways these changing wage elasticities of factory
  employment can be related to changes in labor supply or demand.
  12 John C. H. Fei and Gustav Ranis, Development of the Labor-Surplus Economy (Homewood,
  111.: Irwin, 1964).
  13 Ryoshin Minami, The Turning Point in Economic Development (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1973).
  14 Miyohei Shinohara, Growth and Cycles in the Japanese Economy (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1962);
  Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
  ford University Press, 1973); Kazushi Ohkawa and Miyohei Shinohara, eds., with Larry
  Meissner, Patterns of Japanese Economic Development (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
  Press, 1979).
  15 Ohkawa and Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth, pp. 200-4.
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  614 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  100 
  200 
  300 
  400 
  500 
  600 700
  Index of employment
  Figure 12.1. The relationship between real wages and employment
  in Japanese factories, 1909-1956 (1909 = 100); data for 1943-5 a r e
  not included. (From Showa dojinkai, ed., Wagakuni chingin kozo no
  shiteki kosatsu (Tokyo: Shiseido, i960), pp. 463-4.
  On the whole, the wage-employment relationship between 1909
  and 1919 suggests a fairly high wage elasticity of labor supply: Factory
  employment increased by 102 percent and real wages by 64 percent.
  During the boom years of World War I, the pressure of expanding
  market demand encouraged Japanese employers to increase their work
  forces as fast as possible. It is an indication of an elastic labor supply
  that when there is a rapidly increasing demand for labor, employment
  will expand faster than will the increase in real wages.
  Then after 1919 there was a surprising turnaround in the wage
  elasticity of factory employment. Between 1920 and the early 1930s,
  factory employment hardly increased, but real wages rose by more
  than 70 percent. The questions here are whether the substantial in-
  creases in real wages during the 1920s were due to the relative scarcity
  of labor, and if so, why the elastic labor supply of the preceding
  decade changed so suddenly into an inelastic supply. One answer is
  that the continued absorption of a large number of workers in modern-
  sector employment year after year during the 1910s eventually ex-
  hausted the labor supply for this sector and that a lagging response to
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  615
  the developing labor scarcity brought about sudden upward adjust-
  ment of real wages during the early 1920s. But this does not account
  for the continued rise in real wages for several more years, even
  though there was no corresponding increase in employment. One sus-
  pects that the sustained rise in real wages during the 1920s may have
  been caused by new, nonmarket factors influencing the demand side
  of the labor market. Indeed, Japanese employers were changing then-
  employment strategy under the pressure of new forces such as official
  regulation of industrial working conditions, labor unions, industrial
  conflict, public criticism of business behavior, and a new democratic
  social climate.
  At the same time, the Japanese labor force was increasing more
  rapidly during the 1920s than in previous decades. A greater propor-
  tion of the rapidly increasing labor force was also better educated and
  more skilled. During the 1920s there was an accumulation of highly
  skilled workers outside the modern sector. In other words, the labor
  supply for the modern sector became more elastic every year during
  the 1920s. When Japan's "second industrial revolution" arrived dur-
  ing the 1930s, this accumulated labor reserve was drawn into modern-
  sector employment without the inducement of further increases in real
  wages. Thus there was another turnaround in the wage elasticity of
  factory employment in the 1930s.
  As the result of employment expansion and the conscription of males
  for military service, labor became scarce in the late 1930s and even more
  so during World War II. Another round of low wage elasticity of factory
  employment therefore began and continued into the 1950s. This conti-
  nuity is remarkable, as the postwar economy differed in many respects
  from the wartime economy, especially in the labor supply's sharp shift
  from wartime scarcity to the sudden and increasing surplus after the
  war.16 Yet the wage-employment relationship has characteristics com-
  mon to both periods. Data on wages and employment are not available
  for 1943 through 1945. But we could suppose that real wages and fac-
  tory employment decreased during these years. Both wages and employ-
  ment reached a new low point in 1946, the first full year after the war.
  When both bounced back, they tended to follow the upward path
  marked by the wage-employment relationship of 1939 to 1942. Thus,
  an awkward question arises: Despite underlying changes in the labor
  supply from wartime scarcity to postwar surplus, the actual wage-
  16 Especially relevant here are the data presented in Umemura, Sengo Nihon no rodoryoku, chap.
  2, sec. 2.
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  6l6 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  employment relationship in Japanese factories was apparently subject
  to the same elasticity during the whole period. How can the wage
  elasticity of employment be the same under labor surplus as under labor
  scarcity? One explanation is that real wages, which determined the
  standard of living, were probably under greater pressure to recover
  their prewar level than the level of employment was. The role of
  nonmarket factors was also considerably greater in postwar than in
  prewar Japan. After 1945, trade unions and collective bargaining were
  legalized and encouraged for the first time in Japanese history. Legal
  labor standards were upgraded and expanded. Fluctuations in the wage
  elasticity of employment and in the role of institutional factors reduce
  the Lewis model's applicability to the Japanese experience. At best, the
  model fits the experience of the 1930s, when modern-sector employ-
  ment was extremely elastic with respect to wages.
  Agriculture as a source of labor for the modern sector
  The Japanese labor force after 1920 was composed of three segments:
  the modern sector, the urban informal sector, and agriculture. Accord-
  ing to Mataji Umemura's latest estimates, prewar Japan's "outflow of
  agricultural working force" reached an all-time high during the decade
  of 1910-20.17 During this period, this outflow from agriculture ac-
  counted for more than 80 percent of the increase in nonagricultural
  employment, also an all-time high. The labor force outflow from agri-
  culture sank to less than a half as much between 1920 and 1930 and
  then rose again between 1930 and 1940. This labor force outflow from
  agriculture is almost perfectly correlated with the changes in factory
  employment, as illustrated in Figure 12.1.
  No systematic data or estimates are available to show how much of
  the labor force migration from agriculture was to the modern sector
  and how much was to the urban informal sector. A study by the
  Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce of the previous occupations of
  factory workers indicates that as of October 1917, new factories estab-
  lished after the outbreak of World War I employed a total of 253,598
  workers. About 90,000 moved to new factories from older, established
  ones, but the remaining 160,000 were new recruits. Of these, 103,430
  or about 65 percent, had previously been agricultural workers.18 Thus
  17 Mataji Umemura, "Population and Labor Force," in Patterns of Japanese Economic Develop-
  ment: A Quantitative Appraisal, ed. Kazushi Ohkawa and Miyohei Shinohara with Larry
  Meissner (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 246.
  18 Rodo undo shiryo iinkai, ed., Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Rodo undo shiryo iinkai,
  1968), pp. 51-4.
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  617
  during World War I, about two-thirds of the net increase in factory
  employment (or modern-sector employment in general) seems to have
  come from agriculture and one-third from the urban informal sector.
  The informal sector in turn was filled by an inflow of labor from
  agriculture as well as by an increase in the population. Probably over
  80 percent of the net increase in this sector came from agriculture.
  By the late 1930s this pattern had changed. Several partial surveys
  in 1938 concluded that 43 percent of the net increase in manufacturing
  employment was accounted for by recent school graduates (about one-
  half of them would have originated in farm households) and that from
  37 to 45 percent of the remainder was accounted for by those coming
  from agriculture.19 From these data, it appears that in 1938, manufac-
  turing depended on agriculture for 42 to 47 percent of the net increase
  in its work force, considerably lower than the two-thirds of twenty
  years earlier. After several decades of modernization, Japan's modern-
  sector labor force was finally losing its traditional peasant background.
  It is clear that the transfer of labor from agriculture to the nonagri-
  cultural sectors did not result simply from the expanding modern
  sector's absorption of the traditional sector's surplus labor. The exis-
  tence of an independent urban informal sector complicated the labor
  migration out of agriculture. It is assumed that the modern-sector
  workers came from agriculture and returned to it whenever the mod-
  ern sector contracted. But clearly this is an oversimplification.
  Why did people move from agricultural to nonagricultural employ-
  ment? Whenever workers leave their jobs and familiar environment
  for employment elsewhere, they probably are looking for higher
  wages.
  A comparison of Minami's and Ono's estimates of agricultural
  wages and of manufacturing wages contains one major and one minor
  surprise.20 The major surprise is that between 1880 and 1940, wages
  for women were generally higher in agriculture than in manufactur-
  ing. The wage differential for female workers was larger in the earlier
  years, when agricultural wages rose more than 50 percent above manu-
  facturing wages, a situation that lasted until World War I. Under these
  circumstances, those women who moved from agriculture to industry
  were probably those who would not have earned the average agricul-
  tural wages. And these were the girls, often only ten or eleven years
  old, hired by textile factories. Their wages statistically lowered the
  19 Nichi-Man nosei kenkyukai, Saikin ni okerujinko ido no seikaku to nogyo (Tokyo: Nichi-Man
  nosei kenkyukai, 1940), pp. 54-8.
  20 Minami and Ono, "Wages," in Patterns of Japanese Economic Development, chap. 13.
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  6l8 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  average female wages in manufacturing. However, their earnings in
  the textile factories were probably higher than whatever they could
  earn at home, and even though their wages were low, these children
  were at least earning their keep and relieving their parents of extra
  mouths to feed (kuchi berashi).
  The minor surprise is the rough parity of wages for agriculture and
  manufacturing until World War I. Those men who left agriculture
  were not heirs or firstborn sons, and so if they stayed home, they
  would become wage-earning hired hands for their brothers, neigh-
  bors, relatives, or strangers. Unless they could acquire their own
  farms - and this opportunity was uncommon - they would be second-
  class members of their local communities. They were, in a sense,
  "disinherited" because of the institution of primogeniture. These
  nonheirs, not tied to the land, were able to compare the advantages of
  farm and nonfarm employment and to decide where they should work.
  However, the modern industries needing a large number of male work-
  ers were not developing fast enough to absorb these disinherited rural
  males. Table 12. i shows that the proportion of the nonfactory labor
  force to the total manufacturing labor force was 60 percent even in
  1920 or that many of the male migrants from agriculture went to the
  urban informal sector.
  Furthermore, before the 1920s, the modern factories' management
  techniques were not yet sophisticated enough to make factory employ-
  ment competitive. The factories hired the workers from the streets
  when job openings arose and sent them back to the streets when there
  was no more need for them. Thus, the workers shuttled steadily be-
  tween the modern and informal sectors, producing a parity of male
  wages in all sectors of the economy. There was essentially one set of
  labor markets that allocated labor to the three sectors with a minimum
  of friction among them. This was probably the best approximation of
  the theoretical, competitive labor market that the real market's labor
  allocation could have created anywhere.
  During the 1920s, however, the gap between manufacturing and
  agricultural wages widened. Labor transfers from agriculture to nonag-
  riculture decreased concurrently, and the modern sector expanded at
  the same rate as or more slowly than the informal sector did. This was
  extraordinary in the light of the intersectoral labor market relationships
  that had prevailed before 1920. What was new about the Japanese
  economy of the 1920s was the segmentation of the labor market. The
  inordinate increases in modern-sector wages were caused by the rise of
  powerful noneconomic forces on the demand side of the labor market.
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  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WAGE LABOR MARKET 
  619
  The high labor costs in turn limited this sector's capacity to absorb labor
  and deprived the urban informal sector and agriculture of their labor
  supply. Thus, wages in both agriculture and the urban informal sector
  fell relative to modern-sector wages. When the intersectoral wage differ-
  ential was widest in the mid-i93os, agricultural wages stood at about 50
  percent of manufacturing wages.21 At about the same time, urban
  informal-sector wages, insofar as these can be inferred from the wages of
  the smallest firms of the modern sector available for 1932-3, would
  have been no more than 60 percent of the average modern-sector
  wages.22 However, the expansion of the modern-sector employment
  during the rest of the 1930s and World War II, together with the
  withdrawal from the labor force of millions of able-bodied males who
  were sent to the front, depleted the Japanese labor force to the point that
  all wage differentials disappeared by the end of the war.
  The role of women in Japanese wage labor markets
  In Japanese manufacturing up to the 1930s, the factory hands were
  predominantly female, whereas the workers in nonfactory manufactur-
  ing were predominantly male. Table 12.2 shows employment by sex
  and occupation between 1920 and 1950.
  Women accounted for 35 to 50 percent of Japan's total employment
  in all industries. The male-female ratio was higher in manufacturing
  than in total employment. In 1940, men accounted for more than 70
  percent of manufacturing employment and women for less than 30
  percent. But factory employment, a subset of manufacturing employ-
  ment, was different. Between 1920 and 1930, more than half of all
  factory workers were women. Between 1930 and 1940, however, this
  male-female ratio was reversed, making the image of the factory more
  congruous with that of modernization. If we consider the factory sys-
  tem a crucial component of economic modernization and recall that
  women rarely played a pioneering modernizing role before men did in
  any society, it is surprising that the Japanese factory system, suppos-
  edly the vanguard of modernization, was "manned by women" during
  a substantial period of Japan's modernization. For a long time, Japan's
  economic and technological advances were supported by the backward-
  ness of the industrial labor force numerically dominated by women
  and girls.
  21 Ibid., p. 234.
  22 Yasuba, "The Evolution of Dualistic Wage Structure," in Japanese Industrialization and Its
  Social Consequences, p. 256.
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  620
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  TABLE 12.2
  Japanese employment by sex and occupational status, for selected years,
  1920-1950 (thousands of persons)
  1920
  1930
  1940
  1950
  All industries, total
  Male
  Female
  Manufacturing, total
  Male
  Female
  Paid employment
  Self-employment, including
  family labor
  Factory employment
  Operatives, total
  Male
  Female
  Nonfactory manufacturing, total"
  Nonoperative manufacturing, total*
  Male
  Female
  29,966
  16,820
  10,146
  4,438
  2,892
  1,547
  2,781
  1,702
  1,758
  1,555
  730
  824
  2,680
  2,883
  2,162
  723
  "Equals manufacturing total less factory employment.
  'Equals manufacturing total less operatives.
  29,341
  18,888
  10,463
  4,702
  3,276
  1,425
  2,842
  1,860
  1,875
  1,684
  796
  887
  2,827
  3,018
  2,480
  538
  32,231
  19,599
  12,632
  6,845
  4,959
  1,887
  5,385
  1,460
  4,486
  3,843
  2,545
  1,298
  2,359
  3,002
  2,314
  589
  35,575
  21,811
  13,763
  6,460
  4,510
  1,950
  4,413
  1,243
  3,861
  3,117
  2,034
  1,083
  2,599
  3,343
  2,476
  867
  Source: Ishizaki Tadao, "Sangyo kozo to shugyo kozo," in Wagakuni Kanzen koyo no igi to
  taisaku, ed. Showa dojinkai (Tokyo: Showa dojinkai, 1957), revised and supplemented where
  appropriate by data from Rodo undo shinyo iinkai, ed., Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 10 (Tokyo:
  Rodo undo shiryo iinkai, 1968), and Nihon rodo nenkan, no. 27 (Tokyo: Ohara Institute for Social
  Research, Hosei University).
  Table 12.2 also contrasts factory workers and nonfactory manufactur-
  ing workers by sex. In all the years shown in the table, female factory
  workers outnumbered female nonfactory manufacturing workers, and
  except in 1940, male workers were largely nonfactory workers. Espe-
  cially in 1920 and 1930, male nonfactory manufacturing workers out-
  numbered male factory workers by a ratio of two and a half to one.
  These male nonfactory workers were mostly self-employed owner-
  operators, working members of their families, or wage-earners that they
  employed. But their workshops were too small to be considered facto-
  ries, and their production methods were not sophisticated enough to be
  considered modern. These were the "cottage industries."
  In today's less developed countries, factory workers, a minority in
  manufacturing employment, are a relatively privileged group com-
  pared with nonfactory workers. Likewise, in the 1930s, Japanese fac-
  tory workers also were relatively privileged. This suggests that the
  prestige of factory employment was tied to the sex composition of the
  work force. Full modernization probably involves several simulta-
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  THE EMERGENCE OF DUALISM 
  621
  neous requirements: An economy cannot be modern without produc-
  tive manufacturing; manufacturing cannot be modern without heavy
  industries and a factory system; and a factory system cannot be mod-
  ern without being run by men. In Japan these requirements were
  fulfilled for the first time only in the late 1930s.
  It is ironic that a male-dominated traditional society like Japan's was
  industrialized by drawing women and girls into industrial labor. But
  these female industrial workers did not enjoy any special advantages
  by participating in industrialization. Indeed, the abuses (like long
  hours of work without rest, few holidays, low wages, and accidents
  and health hazards) suffered by female industrial workers during Ja-
  pan's industrial revolution, 1890 to 1910, led to the Factory Law of
  1911. This law stipulated the minimum standards for employment,
  covering manufacturing establishments with fifteen or more workers.
  It prohibited firms from employing workers under the age of twelve
  and minors and women from working more than twelve hours a day or
  between 10 P.M. and 4 A.M. The law required at least two rest days per
  month for minors and women, at least four rest days per month for
  night-shift workers, and at least a thirty minute rest period per day
  when a day's work exceeded ten hours. The law also prevented firms
  from hiring minors for certain dangerous or disagreeable jobs and
  required firms to support disabled workers and their families.
  Implementation of the Factory Law in and after 1916 offered some
  protection to female workers and minors against the worst abuses. But
  by the time Japanese employers had learned to live with the law,
  Japanese industrialization was moving to a new stage in which male
  labor was in greater demand than was female labor. Consequently, in
  the 1920s and 1930s, male wages increased faster than did female
  wages. Also during this period new employment practices were insti-
  tuted, which foreshadowed the "Japanese employment system" and
  which stabilized employment relationships with male workers. The
  women and girls thus retreated into the shadows during Japan's sec-
  ond industrial revolution in the 1930s.23
  THE EMERGENCE OF DUALISM IN THE LABOR MARKET
  As the links between the labor markets for industry and agriculture
  loosened between the two world wars, the nonagricultural labor mar-
  ket became more segmented; that is, some firms paid much higher
  23 Hosoi Wakizo, Joko aishi (Tokyo: Kaizosha, 1925). See also Okochi Kazuo, Reimeiki no
  Nihon rodo undo (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1952).
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  622 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  wages than those prevailing in the labor market. When the firms
  behaving in this fashion constitute a significant sector in terms of
  output, resources, employment, and market power, labor market seg-
  mentation becomes significant with respect to the entire economic
  system's equity.
  The statistical evidence for the emergence of a dualistic labor mar-
  ket in prewar Japan is somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, re-
  search by Odaka Konosuke suggests that certain large firms were
  beginning to pay much higher wages than their workers would have
  received if the market forces had been freer. In comparing the wages
  of twelve major firms with the wages paid in their regional labor
  markets, Odaka found that without exception, the firms' wages in the
  1920s and 1930s increased relative to those of the markets.2*
  In research on the wartime and postwar periods, Odaka found that
  wage differentials may have disappeared during and immediately after
  the war, only to reappear in the 1950s. Data from plants owned by
  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries during this period indicate that the wages
  paid to workers in these plants were almost equal to market wages for
  equivalent trades (within a range of 1.0 to 1.2) between 1939 and 1950,
  but that they subsequently rose as high as 1.8 in 1958.2*
  The fact that some large firms pay higher wages than those prevail-
  ing in the labor market does not mean that most firms do. Such a
  generalization requires data on the wages and sizes of all firms in the
  economy. Unfortunately, there are no such data for Japan's prewar
  period. More plentiful postwar data like the annual census of manufac-
  turing clearly show that during the 1950s, there were large wage differ-
  entials by size of plant. Thus, in the postwar period, large firms
  usually paid much higher wages than smaller firms did. But such
  generalizations about the prewar period are less certain.
  Yasuba Yasukuchi's work on prewar wage differentials used data
  from 1909,1914, and 1932-3. The 1909 and 1914 data, compiled from
  Factory Statistics, show that when wage payments are averaged over all
  workers, regardless of sex and age, there are no wage differentials by
  size of factory. But when wages are calculated separately for male and
  female workers, there are differentials of 20 to 30 percent between the
  smallest factories employing five to nine workers and the largest employ-
  ing one thousand or more. With the average male wages at factories
  24 Konosuke Odaka, "Historical Development in the Wage-Differential Structure," paper pre-
  sented at the Japan Economic Seminar, New York City, April 14, 1973.
  25 Odaka Konosuke, "Dainiji taisen zengo no kyu-Mitsubishi Juko rodo tokei ni tsuite,"
  Hitolsubashi ronso 74 (1975): I-l6.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF DUALISM 
  623
  employing one thousand or more workers set at ioo, for example, the
  average male wages at factories of five to nine were 80 in 1909 and 72 in
  1914. Similar indices for female wages at the smallest factories were 76
  in 1909 and 72 in 1914. Yasuba further refined the calculation of aver-
  age wages by standardizing intersize differences in the work force's sex,
  age, working days, and white-collar-blue-collar mix.26 This resulted in
  the smallest size-class wages amounting to 80.7 percent in 1909 and
  71.3 percent in 1914 of the largest size-class wages.
  The 1909 and 1914 data can be interpreted in various ways. Com-
  pared with random interfirm wage differentials in 1885, the 1909 and
  1914 data suggest some consistency in the relation between wages and
  factory size. The data of 1932-3, although not directly comparable to
  the earlier data, after some adjustment show that the wages at the
  smallest factories were 82.3 percent of the wages at the largest factories
  in 1909, 78.5 percent in 1914, and 61.2 percent in 1932-3. Thus the
  wage differentials by size of factory were much greater in 1932-3 than
  in 1909 or I9I4.2?
  On the basis of Odaka's and Yasuba's findings, it seems reasonable
  to conclude that significant wage differentials by size of firm or estab-
  lishment first appeared in the 1920s. At this time some of the larger
  firms began to hire different kinds of workers or to establish different
  kinds of relationships with their employees. This can be described as
  the rise of "labor market dualism," a phenomenon intriguing to econo-
  mists accustomed to rationalistic theories of efficient labor markets.
  Labor market dualism does not arise simply because some firms are
  large and some are small. As Odaka's research shows, the enterprises
  he examined had been operating in a competitive labor market for a
  long time before 1920, and the workers did not consider them espe-
  cially desirable employers. There thus was considerable interfirm la-
  bor mobility, regardless of the firms' sizes. Then why did the dualistic
  wage structure arise? Why did major enterprises begin to treat their
  workers more generously than smaller firms did? Why did workers
  find the large firms more attractive as employers than the smaller
  firms during the 1920s?
  26 Yasuba, "The Evolution of Dualistic Wage Structure," in Japanese Industrialization and Its
  Social Consequences, p. 259.
  27 Ibid., pp. 258-9. This is not the same as saying that wage differentials by size of factory
  increased between 1914 and 1932-3. These differentials increased between 1909 and 1914
  according to the available data. But they may have decreased during the World War I boom,
  as may be inferred from other data. This therefore may not be a consistently rising trend in
  these differentials from the data for 1909, 1914, and 1932-3. For a review of related data on
  wage differentials, see Koji Taira, Economic Development and the Labor Market in Japan (New
  York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pt. 1.
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  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  Yasuba's explanation attributes the rise of a dualistic labor market
  to the emergence of corporate paternalism in a few large firms. In
  contrast with the small firm or plant, where the employer knows his
  employees personally and takes care of all aspects of their work and
  life, the large organization is impersonal and remote. Therefore, in
  order to attract workers and to offset this impersonality, large firms
  must provide benefits that small firms cannot. They must provide a
  kind of institutionalized paternalism in the form of higher wages based
  on seniority, as well as better fringe benefits. Much of the differential
  between the large and small firms' wages, then, is the monetary equiva-
  lent of the personal attention and care that the small employer can give
  to his employees. In other words, higher wages compensate for the
  lack of personal paternalism.28 Thus, according to Yasuba, wage differ-
  entials have a cultural cause; that is, employers in large organizations
  are forced to model themselves on traditional small enterprises in
  order to attract and hold workers. Though difficult to understand in
  terms of economic rationality, this corporate paternalism makes sense
  in terms of historical and cultural tradition.
  But it seems equally compelling to argue that wage differentials
  might be determined by rational economic calculations and market
  efficiency. The reasons that large employers offer higher wages, peri-
  odic pay raises, and fringe benefits-especially severance pay, retire-
  ment allowances, and paid leave-all have one common denominator,
  that they are designed to encourage workers to stay in their employ-
  ment as long as possible. In short, wages and benefits are based on the
  length of service that a firm wants from its employees. Why is length
  of service such an important variable, for which the firm is willing to
  pay an increasing amount of money? More generally, is more money
  the only means of achieving this objective? Are there no nonmonetary
  means? Penalties, including physical violence, have also been used in
  many countries, including Japan, as a means of discouraging workers
  from leaving jobs. Indeed, monetary inducements for longer service
  often were instituted after the negative sanctions failed.
  Based on recent developments in labor market theory, we may now
  hypothesize that one of the most important institutional aspects of
  economic dualism is the large firms' need for "internal labor markets."
  Internal labor markets refer to job changes within a firm involving
  formal and informal training, assignment and reassignment, transfer,
  promotion, and the like. Internal job changes take place because the
  28 Taira, Economic Development, pp. 285-6.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF DUALISM 
  625
  firm's technology changes, and employees learn new skills and ac-
  quire experience over time. These phenomena look much like job
  mobility in the labor market. But because they are confined to one
  firm, they are said to occur in the internal labor market. Internal
  labor markets generally exist in heavy industries (metals, metal prod-
  ucts, machinery, equipment, appliances, precision instruments, and
  the like) in which firm-specific skills are most efficiently learned and
  maintained through continuous on-the-job training or experience. In
  interwar Japan, some major firms attempted to institute and improve
  the internal labor markets and retain workers as long as possible by a
  variety of inducements, penalties, and guarantees. A major publica-
  tion of the Harmonization Society (Kyochokai) of 1929 contains an
  extensive review of conditions in the major industries, especially em-
  ployment contracts and conditions.29 Different firms used different
  instruments to increase worker retention rates. Among these are care-
  ful recruitment, company schools, periodic pay increases, occasional
  bonuses, allowances recognizing longer service, posting of bonds,
  oaths of loyalty and long service countersigned by workers' guaran-
  tors, and the setting of retirement and dismissal allowances based on
  length of service.
  Two examples contrast employers' efforts to acquire a committed
  work force. One is the success of the principal paper producers, and
  the other is the failure of the major ceramics firms. Both groups of
  firms adopted elaborate recruitment policies, but the ceramics firms
  appeared less skilled in their use of economic incentives (wages and
  benefits tied to length of service). The paper firms made it a rule not to
  hire anyone with experience in another paper firm. In considering a
  worker for employment, the paper firms required physical and "men-
  tal" examinations, investigations of the worker's home life, and affida-
  vits of two guarantors. When the worker appeared to offer a reason-
  able chance for long service as a result of these checks and guarantees,
  he was hired on probation for one to three months. When proven
  satisfactory, the worker then was given an employment contract for
  three to five years, which could be renewed if the worker so desired.
  The firms also made it known that they would not dismiss workers or
  deny contract renewals except under extreme circumstances. In addi-
  tion, periodic pay increases, regardless of economic conditions, encour-
  aged longer service. Severance benefits and bonuses were also tied to
  29 Nakamura Hideo, ed., Saikin no shakai undo (Tokyo: Kyochokai, 1929), esp. chap. 2. See
  also S. B. Levine and H. Kawada, Human Resources in Japanese Industrial Development
  (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).
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  626 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  length of service. The Kyochokai's judgment was that the paper firms
  achieved a high degree of employment stability.30
  The ceramics firms were equally careful in their recruitment but did
  not object to hiring experienced workers. After investigating the
  worker's education, ideological background, and physical fitness, the
  firm would then admit the worker on probation. During the next ten
  to fourteen days, the worker was required to submit his household
  registers, other instruments of identity, personal history, an oath of
  loyalty, and a pledge of long service jointly signed by guarantors.
  When the dossier was completed and proved satisfactory, the worker
  was considered a regular employee. The ceramics firms also adopted
  severance allowances tied to length of service. But they also exten-
  sively used piecework and offered no periodic pay increases, no or
  little bonuses, and no other inducements for long service. Not surpris-
  ingly, when Japan's general economic condition improved, workers
  left in droves for employment in smaller, more flexible firms in which
  overtime work was made available when the workers wanted it and in
  which there were fewer requirements for personal documents.31 Be-
  sides differing in wage determination and administration, the paper
  firms emphasized internal training, whereas the ceramics firms relied
  on the workers' independently acquired skills and experience. The
  rejection by paper firms of experience acquired in other firms was the
  key to their success in building up and retaining their work forces.
  This discrimination against experienced workers became widespread
  in postwar Japan.
  A closed internal market (open only at the entry level, with all
  higher levels staffed by internally trained and promoted personnel) is
  difficult to install quickly. First, it requires an efficient management
  that understands, measures, and organizes numerous jobs required for
  the operation of a major firm. Nothing short of a thorough job evalua-
  tion and work study can provide a technologically rational structure of
  jobs and positions. In addition, the firm also has to be sociologically
  rational by looking after individual workers from recruitment to retire-
  ment and following fair rules in recruiting, training, rewarding, and
  promoting employees. A simultaneous solution of the technological
  and sociological equations is theoretically possible, but its implementa-
  tion runs into the constraints of time and resources. A new firm may
  have a blueprint of an ideal internal labor market, but it cannot wait
  30 Levine and Kawada, Human Resources, pp. 75-7. For a detailed study of management
  history in the paper industry, see Hazama Hiroshi, Nihon romu kanrishi kenkyu (Tokyo:
  Diamondosha, 1964), chap. 2. 
  31 Nakamura, Saikin no shakai undo, pp. 83-6.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF DUALISM 
  627
  until its whole work force is staffed by workers internally trained and
  promoted. Instead, the firm must begin by recruiting workers with
  many levels of skills and experience, while simultaneously training at
  the entry level for future promotions. Different dropout rates at vari-
  ous levels further delay the synchronization of vacancies, promotions,
  and training.
  From this point of view, the Japanese firms' practical solutions for
  the internalization of labor markets before the war were questionable.
  These included arbitrary discrimination against certain workers, the
  abuse of workers' dignity by excessive probing into personal and fam-
  ily backgrounds, and the manipulation of a firm's market power to
  shift costs and problems to weaker, smaller firms. Some of these
  discriminatory practices, however, were acceptable in terms of custom-
  ary values and principles surviving from premodern days. The use of
  female workers in "women's jobs" was one such practice, and the
  enormous gap in status between manual and nonmanual workers was
  another. Manual workers were paid by the hour, day, or results, and
  they were generally considered interchangeable with factory hands.
  People with only a primary school education could not hope for any-
  thing higher than manual work unless they succeeded on their own.
  People with a middle-school education staffed lower- and middle-rank
  office jobs. People with a higher education moved directly into the
  managerial ranks.32
  If management, conditioned by this nonegalitarian social climate,
  noticed the effects of the workers' different personal qualities on the
  firm's productivity and profitability, it is unlikely that it adopted a
  policy that produced the internal labor market out of concern for the
  workers' welfare. Although Japanese labor history has dubbed as pater-
  nalistic any individual attention that management paid to its workers,
  the essence of prewar Japanese paternalism was clearly a variant of
  Taylorism. And there is evidence that the Japanese studied Frederick
  Taylor's scientific management.33 Instead of letting the worker decide
  what skills to learn and what career to pursue, Japanese management
  wanted to design the skills and career for him. As Taylor would have
  32 Sakamoto Fijiyoshi, Nihon koyoshi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Chuo keizaisha, 1977), esp. chap. 4.
  33 Robert E. Cole, Work, Mobility and Participation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
  California, 1979), pp. 108-10. Cole draws heavily on Kenji Okuda, "Managerial Evolution in
  Japan," a series of three articles in Management Japan, vol. 5, nos. 3,4 (1971-2), vol. 6, no. 1
  (1972). Another significant contribution is by Toshikazu Nakase, "The Introduction of
  Scientific Management in Japan and Its Characteristics-Case Studies of Companies in the
  Sumitomo Zaibatsu," in Labor and Management: Proceedings of the Fourth Fuji Conference, ed.
  Keiichiro Nakagawa (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1979), pp. 171-202.
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  628 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  put it, the worker did not have to do the thinking for himself; manage-
  ment did all the thinking. This dovetailed well with Japanese concepts
  of authority and obedience in an organization. However, what made
  Japanese management practices different from American Taylorism
  was that instead of "task" management, Japanese managers directed
  their attention to "work force" management. American management
  at best captured the worker's thinking about a job, but Japanese man-
  agement captured the worker's thinking about how to live-potentially
  a far more complete domination of the worker by management than
  Taylor probably imagined. Japanese scholars often characterize fac-
  tory workers in large firms as "captive children reared into workers"
  (kogaki shokko).w Because a full internal labor market was difficult to
  produce at short notice, Japanese management started with a manage-
  able core of permanent workers, supplemented by temporary workers
  hired and fired at will and by contract workers brought in by subcon-
  tractors of certain production processes.
  All these workers-causal, temporary, or contract-were physically
  inside the firm, so that a full internal labor market would have in-
  cluded them with the permanent workers. But they were not part of
  this market. Attempts to build an internal labor market thus involved
  a status differentiation and stratification of the work force. We might
  call this an "internal labor market dualism" and note that this internal
  dualism developed along with the external (interfirm) labor market
  dualism discussed earlier. In addition, the firm's production processes
  tended to be limited to the manufacture of finished goods, whereas
  parts and components were produced by numerous subcontractors
  under the major firm's financial and monopsonistic control. The un-
  derprivileged temporary workers, exploited subcontractors, and, in
  turn, their doubly disadvantaged workers were by-products of the
  privileges of permanent workers in the major firms' internal labor
  markets.
  Building an internal labor market was a series of trial and error. One
  complicating factor was the cyclical fluctuation of general economic
  conditions that necessitated a similar expansion and contraction of the
  firm's work force. If too large relative to the level of production at the
  trough of a cycle, the size of a permanent work force would betray the
  workers' expectations of employment security. Japanese managers
  were competent strategists, however. They tended to choose de-
  pressed periods to structure their work forces, after having laid off
  34 Okochi Kazuo, Kurai tanima no rodo undo (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), pp. 163-71.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  629
  surplus workers during the preceding booms. The expansion during
  World War I was no time to institute permanent employment. The
  workers first were discharged en masse when the boom ended shortly
  after the end of the war. Then the "rationalization" of the work force
  structure began. Another opportunity arose toward the end of the
  1920s with the Great Depression when the major factories cut back
  their forces, as may be seen from Figure 12.2.35 This contraction was
  in a sense a cleansing process, enabling the firms to eliminate workers
  with characteristics that they considered unsuitable for the firms' inter-
  ests. Foremost among such characteristics was trade union member-
  ship or sympathy, which was antithetical to the concept of "captive
  children." The cutback in employment during the depression drove
  the unions out of the major firms, and when economic expansion
  began after the depression in the 1930s, these firms started with lean,
  but select work forces of permanent workers. During the employment
  expansion in the 1930s, the firms acquired more experience in operat-
  ing stratified work forces of permanent, temporary, and contract work-
  ers as well as commanding conglomerates of subsidiaries and affiliates.
  In the mid-1930s, many firms alarmed the public with their discrimina-
  tory employment practices and caused the government to investigate
  the problems of temporary employment. Official investigation re-
  vealed an extensive use of temporary workers.36 Employment kept
  increasing, creating labor shortage and reactivating labor mobility.
  Labor turnover increased and helped reduce some of the permanent
  work force. But the times were no longer "business as usual," as the
  war required different ways of managing the work forces together with
  different social relations among the industries' different strata.
  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS,
  I92O-I945
  The labor market in the interwar period was also affected by the
  workers' organized and spontaneous challenges to their employers'
  authority and competence, particularly in the formal urban sector.
  Indeed, these challenges may have helped accelerate the improvement
  of wages and subsidiary benefits in large enterprises and forced em-
  35 Because of the relatively sharper decline in large-factory employment, the weight of large
  factories in Japan's manufacturing can be said to have decreased. Some even jumped to a
  hypothesis that the monopolistic power of big business declined during this period.
  36 For a review and critique of views of this kind, see Kazuo Sato, Interwar Japan: Economic
  Changes and Consequences (forthcoming), especially the chapter "Changes in Employment
  Concentration in Interwar Japanese Manufacturing."
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  630
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  100,000
  80,000
  60,000
  40,000
  30,000 -
  20,000 -
  Persons
  1,000,000
  800,000
  600,000
  400,000
  300,000
  - 200,000
  1905 
  10
  15
  35
  40
  Figure 12.2. The number of operatives and the number of factories
  by size of factory. (A) Employment of operatives in factories em-
  ploying one thousand or more operatives; (B) employment of opera-
  tives in factories employing five to ten operatives; (C) total number
  of factories; (D) number of factories employing five to ten opera-
  tives; and (E) number of factories employing one thousand or more
  operatives.
  ployers to find new ways to manage their work forces. They also drew
  the government and state apparatus into the relationship between em-
  ployer and employee and led to the development of mechanisms for
  outside parties to resolve labor conflicts.
  In prewar Japan, employer-employee relations were generally au-
  thoritarian. Communication was poor and empathy shallow. Given the
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  63I
  status difference and the social distance between them, the employee
  approached the employer with trepidation, which resulted in an incom-
  plete articulation of issues or events. In most cases, the avoidance of
  direct communication was the least embarrassing kind of relationship
  in the workplace. The employer assumed that the relevant customs
  and traditions governing the employer-employee relationship were
  clear and that the unstated customary rules of behavior enabled the
  employee to understand and deliver what the employer wanted. In-
  deed, work-related communication was consciously minimized in pre-
  war employment relations. Both sides depended on what they ob-
  served about each other and assumed that such observations would
  generate a mutual understanding of each other's roles and needs with-
  out explaining them in so many words. This type of relationship gave
  all of the authority and initiative to the employer, leaving the em-
  ployee with nothing but obedience and performance. Thus, work re-
  quired only a one-way communication, the employer giving orders
  with a minimum of instructions as to how they should be carried out
  and the employee silently fulfilling them to the best of his understand-
  ing. The determination of rules, techniques, procedures, rewards, and
  other conditions of employment was an unquestioned prerogative of
  the employer.
  The great social distance between employers and workers was per-
  ceived by progressive workers and their leaders as one of the basic
  problems of Japanese industry. The Yuaikai (the Friendly Society,
  organized in 1912), which later became the most durable labor organi-
  zation of prewar Japan, was an outspoken proponent of the need for
  workers and employers to develop mutual respect for each other. The
  monthly, later twice-monthly, organ of this society, Yuai shinpo, fre-
  quently pleaded for this. The tone and imagery of the Yuaikai's pleas,
  however, illustrate how powerful and arrogant the employers were
  and, in contrast, how powerless and pitiful the workers were. In its
  earlier years, the most that the Yuaikai thought it could get from
  employers was oyagokoro (hearts of parents), a far cry from anything
  that even remotely resembled social democracy. The Yuai shinpo of
  May 15,1914, had this to say:
  At the risk of discourtesy, we note that among you employers there are people
  who limit the relationship between factory and worker to a purely economic
  one. They say, "We are doing you a favor by paying you wages for your work;
  so don't fuss, get going, work! . . . Can anyone consider such employers
  endowed with human feelings [}dgi]7 . . . We workers are powerless souls
  born and raised under pitiful circumstances. We crave powerful protectors
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  632 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  with warm human feelings. We beg you to show hearts of parents. If you do,
  we too will show you hearts of children by working hard for you.&
  The workers were not entirely helpless, however. Even in imperial
  Japan, they enjoyed a variety of freedoms, including the freedom to
  choose their employer. When the employment relationship became
  unsatisfactory, they had the right to quit and go elsewhere. The em-
  ployers' authoritarianism was real, but its jurisdiction covered only the
  workplace. From the interplay of the unequal relationship in the
  workplace and the equal opportunity in the labor market emerged
  various worker strategies (though hampered by the employers' coun-
  terstrategies) for better jobs and higher wages.
  Even though bargaining with employees on an equal footing was
  repugnant to authoritarian employers, they could not avoid adjusting
  to the consequences of an employee's decision to exercise his freedom
  to leave. An employee's resignation resulted in an economic loss to the
  employer, as work was interrupted until a replacement was found and
  trained enough to attain his predecessor's efficiency. But by raising
  wages and improving working conditions, employers could respond to
  excessive labor turnover with no loss of their customary authority vis-
  a-vis their employees. They did not yield to direct pressure; they were
  only adapting to the constraints of the labor market. Prewar Japanese
  employers seemed intent on preserving their authority, prerogatives,
  and superiority vis-a-vis their employees, while making unilateral con-
  cessions to their employees as required by the changing labor market
  conditions. But this type of employer behavior became indistinguish-
  able from employer paternalism, in that both types of behavior re-
  sulted in changes favorable to employees. If being paternalistic is
  commendable, employers were likely to rationalize their offer of better
  conditions of employment as based on their regard for their employ-
  ees' well-being, even though the truth may well have been that they
  had no other choice under the prevailing labor market conditions and
  the imperative of profit maximization.
  The freedom to quit also affected the workers in an unexpected
  way; they acquired power over their employers because of their willing-
  ness to use it.^s Once a worker made up his mind to quit, he could
  break out of the spell of his employer's authority. He could make a
  nuisance of himself to the employer with no fear of retaliation. The
  37 Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 137-8.
  38 The discussion here is to some extent inspired by Hirschman's analysis of the choice between
  exit and voice. See Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
  vard University Press, 1970).
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  633
  worst that could happen was that he would be fired, a course of action
  that he had already planned for himself. The power implicit in the
  decision to quit could also be used strategically even if the worker did
  not intend to leave.
  When many workers shared this notion of a "quit weapon," they
  could forge a collective weapon-the "strike weapon." When several
  workers cooperated for common gains, they acquired a capability for
  collective action. When these common gains were perceived to be
  improved conditions of employment, the workers were ready for col-
  lective bargaining.
  Workers in prewar Japan had no legally guaranteed rights to orga-
  nize, to bargain with employers, or to act collectively. The imperial
  constitution permitted "freedom of association" within the limits of
  the law. The Public Peace Police Law, enacted in 1900, ruled it crimi-
  nal for anyone to persuade others to join him in a labor union. The law
  was probably inspired by the apparent success of a modern labor
  movement that began after the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5). The first
  trade union in Japanese labor history, Tekko kumiai (Metalworkers'
  Union), was organized in 1897 and quickly grew to a membership of
  more than five thousand in more than forty locals. After the passage of
  the Public Peace Police Law of 1900, the union disintegrated. Al-
  though the law did not ban unions as such nor outlaw strikes and other
  forms of collective action, it sought to prevent certain acts that a
  person might commit while persuading others to organize a union.
  The law's most crucial antiunion stipulation was Article 17 which
  prohibited coercion, violence, blackmail, slander, and instigation by
  an individual urging fellow workers to join a collective action or asking
  an employer to do things that he would otherwise not do. However,
  the police had unchallenged power to enforce the law at their discre-
  tion, which was usually weighted by the suspicion of any collective
  action as a criminal violation of Article 17. Despite generally strict
  enforcement, however, the law did not completely stamp out labor
  unions or labor disputes. Especially during World War I and the early
  1920s, the scale and frequency of labor disputes increased consider-
  ably and undermined the police's effectiveness.
  Figure 12.3 presents statistical data on work stoppages (strikes and
  lockouts, though predominantly strikes) between 1914 and 1945. The
  whole series and two subseries are shown, the latter pertaining to work
  stoppages due to workers' demands for higher wages and to workers'
  resistance to employers' attempts to reduce their wages. Accompany-
  ing the work-stoppage series in Figure 12.3 is an index of real daily
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
  Index of real wages
  100
  80
  60
  40
  20 -
  Number of
  work stoppages
  1,000
  800
  600
  400
  - 200
  1910
  1920
  1930
  1940 
  1945
  Figure 12.3. Index of real wages and number of work stoppages,
  1910-1945. (1) The index of average daily wage earnings (1934-6 =
  100) deflated by the consumer price index, all items (likewise). Esti-
  mates of Long-Term Economic Statistics of Japan Since 1868, vol. 8:
  Prices, p. 247 for wages, and pp. 135-6 for prices. Scale on the left.
  (2) The number of strikes and lockouts. Scale on the right. Rodo
  undo shiryo iinkai, ed., Nihon rodo undo shiryd, vol. 10 (Tokyo: Rodo
  undo shiryo iinkai, 1968), pp. 468-9. (3) Work stoppages due to
  demand for higher wages. Rodo undo shoiyo iinkai, ed., Nihon undo
  shiryd, vol. 10, pp. 468-9. (4)^Work stoppages due to protest against
  wage reductions. Rodo undo shiryo iinkai, ed., Nihon undo shiryd,
  vol. 10, pp. 468-9.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  635
  wage earnings (1934 to 1936 = 100). The index shows a remarkable
  correlation between real wages and patterns of labor disputes (with
  wages lagging behind labor disputes by two or three years). The flare-
  up of disputes between 1917 and 1919 was due mainly to workers'
  demands for higher wages in view of the rapid inflation accompanying
  the economic boom during World War I. When strikes for higher
  wages ran their course, strikes against wage cuts occurred in reaction
  to a sharp postwar recession between 1920 and 1922. The surge of
  industrial unrest during World War I was unprecedented in both
  quantity and quality, as seen in worker militancy, police brutality, and
  the general shock to society at large. Work stoppages peaked in 1931
  and subsequently receded.
  Surprisingly, Figure 12.3 shows a high level of work stoppages
  during the war years of 1941 to 1944. The wartime ethos emphasizing
  total dedication to national unity and harmony made squabbles over
  wages and working conditions at workplaces seem either petty or
  unpatriotic. Yet the record shows that such squabbles persisted in
  defiance of public imperatives for winning the war. This suggests the
  pluralism of values, the strength of the spirit of protest, and the diver-
  sity of interests despite the wartime thought controls. Some labor
  scholars interpret these wartime labor disputes as evidence of the
  Japanese worker's aspirations to individual autonomy, dignity, and
  respectability.
  On the whole, prewar Japanese labor disputes were spontaneous
  and independent of the labor unions. The percentage of disputes in-
  volving unions rose in the latter part of the 1920s, but even at its peak
  in 1931, it was only a bit over 70 percent. Before 1925 or after 1932,
  unions were involved in less than 50 percent of labor disputes. In most
  strikes, a union was one of several external factors that the strikers
  used to strengthen their cause or improve their strategy. Often strikers
  hurriedly organized themselves into a union, and so some unions saw
  in strikes opportunities for extending their organization. Many strikes
  fell prey to such opportunistic union maneuvers. But some prudent
  unions refused to use strikes lightly or to allow themselves to be easily
  drawn into disputes outside their jurisdictions.
  In the antiunion climate of prewar Japan, unions interested in their
  own organizational continuity had every reason to be cautious and
  proper in dealing with employers. Unions were hard to organize or
  expand. At the peak of unionization in 1931, only about 8 percent of
  nonagricultural wage and salary earners belonged to unions. Sodomei
  (Japanese Federation of Labor), reorganized from the Yuaikai in
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  636 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  1919, was the largest and hardiest national trade union and avowedly
  followed the philosophy of the American Federation of Labor. During
  the 1920s, Sodomei continually lost its radical union constituents. In
  1925, some of these left-wing unions formed their own national center,
  the Nihon rodo kumiai hyogikai (Japanese Council of Trade Unions).
  Hyogikai was strike happy, calling for work stoppages regardless of
  the consequences. In 1928 the Japanese government dissolved it as a
  Communist-dominated antistate organization. The Hyogikai's leaders
  went underground and for a few more years continued to direct the
  organizational drive and industrial disputes. The aforementioned sta-
  tistical increase in the rate of union involvement in industrial disputes
  between 1925 and 1931 coincided with the period of Hyogikai activity.
  During the 1930s, left-wing unions merged and split, were born and
  died, and reorganized. Under the pressure of the war emergency, all
  unions, including Sodomei, disbanded in the summer of 1940.
  Methods of resolving conflicts
  Through strikes and unionization, workers demonstrated the new so-
  cial reality requiring legitimization by legislation. However, the politi-
  cal elite failed to respond constructively. In 1925 the Diet outlawed
  revolutionary (antistate or antiprivate property) ideologies by the noto-
  rious Chian ijiho (Public Peace Maintenance Law) and in 1926 legal-
  ized procedures for resolving industrial disputes, through the Rodo
  sogi choteiho (Labor Dispute Conciliation Law).» But the Diet did
  not legalize trade unions, even though the need for a union law was
  widely recognized after World War I. A number of proposals were
  made by government officials, political parties such as the Kenseikai,
  and labor unions. In 1925, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced a
  draft bill, which was strongly opposed by employer organizations such
  as the Japan Industrial Club. After revisions, the bill was formally
  presented to the Diet in 1926 but died on the Lower House floor
  owing to lack of time. Efforts to enact a trade union law continued
  without success until the law was officially abandoned in 1930.
  39 The title of this law is usually translated as indicated in the parentheses. But the crucial term,
  chotei, which is translated as "conciliation" here, is translated as "mediation" in the English-
  language discussions of the postwar Labor Relations Adjustment Law enacted in September
  1946. "Conciliation" is used for assen in the framework of the new law. The 1926 law uses
  only one term, chotei, for all types of third-party interventions in labor disputes. The 1946
  law, however, stipulates three kinds of such interventions: assen, chotei, and chusai, which
  are, respectively, "conciliation," "mediation," and "arbitration." In this law, "conciliation"
  is by an individual conciliator, and "mediation" is by a committee.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  637
  The Labor Dispute Conciliation Law enacted in 1926 in exchange
  for the elimination of Article 17 from the Public Peace Police Law at
  first looked like a step in the right direction. But it proved deceptive in
  the end. Neither unionization nor collective bargaining was legalized,
  but one kind of collective action, that is, a collective demand by a
  group of workers for improved employment conditions, received pref-
  erential legislative attention. It appears, however, that the law's intent
  was prejudicial from the beginning, for workers' collective action
  came into the purview of law only as the source of a potential labor
  dispute.
  In prewar Japan, a strike was usually an outburst of accumulated
  frustrations and disappointments over the employer's failure to meet
  the employees' expectations regarding wages and working conditions.
  Despite the strikes' spontaneous nature, the striking workers dis-
  played considerable discipline as a collectivity under an elected com-
  mittee of leaders. (Long before they won the right to vote at national
  elections, workers were practicing democracy in everyday life.) They
  also showed an understanding of basic bargaining strategy by present-
  ing their grievances and demands to the employer before striking.
  Many strikes had ominous beginnings, in which employers responded
  with anger, contempt, abusive language, refusal to see workers or
  acknowledge their petition, or threats to call in the police. Many
  accounts of strikes indicate that an outstanding feature of the relation-
  ship between employers and workers during a strike was the enormous
  difficulty for both parties to have a constructive dialogue to resolve
  their differences.40
  But Japan is known for its skillful intermediation in many social and
  interpersonal relationships, and a strike stalemate is another opportu-
  nity for this talent to demonstrate its strength. The intermediary could
  40 Obviously there is no such thing as a typical strike. It is only for efficiency that we resort here
  to a general description of how strikes occurred and how they were settled. However, one
  strike was analyzed for its general implications by George O. Totten, "Japanese Industrial
  Relations at the Crossroads: The Great Noda Strike of 1927-1928," in Japan in Crisis: Essays
  on Taisho Democracy, ed. Bernard Silberman and H. D. Harootunian (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1974). More can be learned about the patterns of labor disputes
  through descriptions and analyses of individual cases in the following sources: Aoki Koji,
  Nihon rodo undoshi nenpyo, vol. I (Tokyo: Shinseisha, 1968); Naito Norikuni, "Rikugan no
  roso hinin to danketsuken yogo undo," in Rodo Keizai to rodo undo (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1966),
  pp. 209-33; Nakamura Hideo, ed., Saikin no shakai undo (Tokyo: Kyochokai, 1929); Nihon
  rodo undo shiryo, vols. 6, 9; Okochi Kazuo, Kurai lanima no rodo undo (Tokyo: Iwanami
  shoten, 1970); Omae Sakiro and Ikeda Shin, Nihon rodo undo shiron (Tokyo: Nihon
  hyoronsha, 1966); Shiota Shobei, Sutoraiki no rekishi (Tokyo: Shin Nihon shuppansha, 1966);
  Sumiya Mikio, ed., Nihon roshi kankei shiron (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1977);
  Tanaka Sogoro, ed., Shiryo Taisho shakai undoshi (Tokyo: San-ichi shobo, 1970); Yatsugi
  Kazuo, Rodo sogi hiroku (Tokyo: Nihon kogyo shinbunsha, 1979).
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  638 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  be anyone with good reputation that would favorably impress the
  parties to a dispute. In prewar Japan, when no one dared disregard
  their authority, police officers were effective mediators in many labor
  disputes. Well-known labor leaders were also good mediators whose
  services were sought after by workers and employers alike. There
  were also unwelcome mediators-gangsters who blackmailed the em-
  ployer with a promise to subdue his striking workers and accom-
  plished the objective by threatening or even carrying out physical
  assaults on the workers. Politicians and officials at all levels-mayors,
  governors, legislators, and ministers of state-volunteered to medi-
  ate, depending on their own calculations of political advantage. Genu-
  ine as well as dubious intermediaries all flourished in prewar strikes
  in proportion to the primary parties' inability to handle their own
  relations and negotiations.
  Statistics on the resolution of labor disputes indicate a larger role by
  the primary parties. Between 1897 and 1909, about 30 percent of
  strikes were settled by the primary parties themselves. About 13 per-
  cent were brought to an end because of dismissals of leaders or of some
  or all the strikers. More than half the strikes were called off when
  workers accepted terms of arbitration or yielded to pressures from
  public officials. Between 1922 and 1925, an average of only 16 percent
  of labor disputes were settled by conciliation with the help of third-
  party interventions.*l Most disputes were settled by the primary par-
  ties themselves. But there was a reversal in the relative importance of
  primary and third parties after 1926 under the new Labor Dispute
  Conciliation Law.
  At the time of legislation, the Labor Dispute Conciliation Law
  appeared to liberalize labor-management relations because it recog-
  nized labor disputes as an unavoidable social reality. The Labor
  Dispute Conciliation Law provided for a nationwide bureaucracy
  operating from the Home Ministry to handle matters related to the
  procedure of conciliation stipulated in the law. According to this
  stipulation, conciliation was to be effected only by an ad hoc tripartite
  committee organized for each dispute and composed of three repre-
  sentatives each for the primary parties (employer and employees) and
  a neutral party.
  This otherwise splendid idea of a tripartite conciliation committee
  turned out to be too unwieldy to be practical. Throughout the pre-
  war period, there were only six cases of conciliation that used this
  41 Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 10 (1959), pp. 518-19. Also see Nakamura, Saikin no shaken
  undo, p. 812.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  639
  method.42 The bureaucratic machinery deployed throughout the na-
  tion to service tripartite conciliation committees (expected to be
  formed in large numbers) found itself underutilized. Able bureaucrats
  lost no time in creating work for themselves, however, becoming unof-
  ficial conciliators for labor disputes. In other words, the officials
  adopted the traditional concept of intermediation. But because they
  were officials appointed by the national government, their conciliation
  carried greater authority than did that of private citizens. There also
  were the ubiquitous police eager to continue and expand their usual
  involvement in labor disputes. In addition, there were prefectural and
  local officials waiting in the wings for their share of service. One
  benefit of these officials' concerns was to crowd out the dubious pri-
  vate intermediaries previously mentioned.43
  Conciliations accounted for less than 30 percent of all labor disputes
  during the first five or six years that the Labor Dispute Conciliation
  Law was in force. The percentage rose to nearly 50 percent by the end
  of the 1930s.44 But this should not be interpreted as a decline in the
  employers' and employees' ability to manage their disputes by them-
  selves. Most conciliated disputes were mediated by officials (national,
  police, prefectural, local, and other), rising from 62 percent in 1927 to
  87 percent in 1937. Conciliations not based on applications from either
  or both of the primary parties accounted for 67 percent of total in
  1929, which increased to 82 percent in 1937. Thus, in effect, the
  Labor Dispute Conciliation Law was just another form of governmen-
  tal control over labor disputes.
  "Conciliation" (chotei) became less and less adequate as a descrip-
  tion of what was really happening. The role of the police eventually
  bared the law's true nature. In 1927, the national conciliation officials
  handled 40 percent of the conciliations, and the police 13 percent. The
  national officials' share subsequently declined, and the police's in-
  42 Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 10 (1959), p. 519. For the identities of these six cases, see
  Kazahaya Yasoji, Nihon shaken seisakushi (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1937; republished in
  two volumes by Aoki shoten, 1951), vol. 2, p. 496.
  43 Nakamura, Saikin no shaken undo, p. 813. This source (published in 1929 when the Labor
  Dispute Conciliation Law had been in effect for three years) considers the officials' concilia-
  tions rather fair. It suggests that because of the officials' fairness, workers often began disputes
  in order to take them to conciliation. Based on short period data, from the latter half of 1926
  through March 1929, and showing the number of conciliated disputes by origin of application,
  Nakamura points out that the number of workers' applications was larger than that of the
  employers'. But this does not seem to support the hypothesized rise of this new strategy among
  workers. The tendency of workers' applications to outnumber employers' persisted through-
  out the 1930s, according to Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 10 (1959), P- 519. But their proportion
  to total conciliations was smaller during the 1930s. The proportion of official interventions rose
  and labor disputes decreased during the same period, as will be discussed presently.
  44 Nihon rodo undo shiryo, vol. 10 (1959), pp. 518-19.
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  640 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  creased. In 1937, 64 percent of conciliations were by the police and 16
  percent by the national officials. After the outbreak of the Sino-
  Japanese War in the summer of 1937, the country increasingly moved
  onto a war footing. The police once again became preeminent in con-
  trolling labor disputes, forcing most to police conciliations, or "concil-
  iations by saber" (sdberu chotei), as they were called. The official sub-
  version of conciliation during the 1930s was associated with a decrease
  in labor disputes, as earlier observed, as well as a deterioration of
  wages and working conditions. In 1937, Yasoji Kazahaya made the
  following observations about the system of "compulsory conciliation":
  [I]n giant armament factories, not only is there a de facto ban on labor
  disputes, but direct contacts and negotiations between management and
  worker representatives are prohibited. The government always enters be-
  tween them as a compulsory conciliator. The resolution of a conflict is
  worked out between management and police and handed down by police to
  worker representatives. There is no bilateral economic transaction between
  management and labor on an equal footing. A third party, higher and more
  powerful than the primary parties, resolves the conflict by offering non-
  negotiable terms.«
  From works councils to Sanpo
  Other methods of resolving conflicts were also attempted with varying
  success and unexpected results. In the wake of the unprecedented
  surge of labor disputes during and immediately after Word War I,
  employers flirted with the notion of works councils.46 The type of
  council they favored most was a purely consultative type limited to
  agreeing with the employer on whatever he saw fit to consult the
  workers on. Of course, the machinery of the works councils provided
  a wide latitude for the distribution of power between employer and
  employee. Militant and organizationally experienced workers could
  turn a works council into the cell of a revolutionary movement, and a
  dominant employer could reduce it to complete obedience. Between
  1919 and 1922, many private firms attempted to set up works councils
  and organized seventy-four. In 1927 there were ninety-six works coun-
  cils set up in private firms. But the survival rate of these councils was
  rather low; only fifty-nine out of the ninety-six were still in operation
  in 1927, of which forty-four were begun between 1919 and 1922.47
  Obviously, playing with the works council idea was only a tactical
  45 Kazahaya, Nihon shakai seisakushi, vol. 2, p. 495.
  46 George O. Totten, "Collective Bargaining and Works Councils As Innovations in Industrial
  Relations in Japan during the 1920s," in Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan, ed. R. P.
  Dore (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 203-43. The case of the
  maritime industry is analyzed on pp. 233-39. 
  47 Nakamura, ed., Saikin no shakai undo.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  64I
  retreat for the employers under the impact of unprecedented worker
  militancy. When the employers were no longer frightened of labor
  disputes, they scrapped the idea entirely. Naturally, when the workers
  demanded works councils, the employers refused to go along. Any bid
  from the workers thought to be a permanent dent in the employers'
  authority was resisted at any cost. Employers were increasingly willing
  to make financial settlements through temporary payments as if pay-
  ing ransom, but they were never reconciled to the idea of a dialogue
  with the workers on an equal footing.
  The employers always wanted to destroy the labor unions in their
  enterprises or prevent them from being organized. They discriminated
  against or harassed workers suspected of leaning toward union activity,
  let alone becoming members. The best that the workers could expect
  (that is, the worst that the employers could be forced to accept) was
  tolerance of the idea that joining a union could be a matter of individual
  choice, without any implication that the employers should recognize
  the union that some of their employees actually joined. The great Noda
  strike discussed by George Totten was almost a "holy war" waged by
  the employer to purge his work force of any trace of union influence
  after several years of making humiliating concessions to the union.
  Once the objective of destroying unions or keeping them out was
  attained, however, most employers could even affect a degree of be-
  nevolence. Thus, in the Noda case, after victory was assured, the
  employer exhibited his concern over the hardships of 435 dismissed
  workers by granting them severance pay, cost-of-living assistance, and
  lump-sum payments, which are said to have averaged ¥200 per
  worker, surely more than one hundred days of wages. Similar settle-
  ments were made in many other cases. But all this amounts only to a
  rise in the cost of maintaining the employers' authority. The price of
  authority to the employers rose even further when the workers learned
  the rules of the game; that is, workers already dissatisfied enough to
  quit could extract larger ransoms by creating disturbances before they
  left. One should not underestimate Japanese workers' practical ability
  to simultaneously submit to and manipulate their circumstances.
  The turnover of trade unions (some unions newly formed and some
  older ones dismantled) was high, indicating the unions' basic insecu-
  rity in the antiunion climate of the interwar period. But high turnover
  also meant that many workers were involved in the labor movement
  and learned the art and problems of unionization. The prewar labor
  movement was characterized by ideological shifts, jurisdictional rival-
  ries, pragmatic adjustments, tactical advances and retreats, militancy
  alternating with docility, and many other kinds of intractable maneu-
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  642 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  vers. A sequence of plant-level organizational dynamics often was as
  follows: first, a national union like Sodomei would secretly organize a
  small fraction of the work force of a plant that in due course would
  grow large enough to ask for recognition and negotiation; second, the
  initial test of power by a strike would result in the union's defeat and
  demise; third, some workers would form a second union or an em-
  ployee association stressing moderation to placate the employer; and
  fourth, some time later, this second union would surprise the em-
  ployer and the public by professing a true class-oriented unionism,
  starting the employer-union struggles all over again. The organiza-
  tional history of prewar unionism is full of such drifts and shifts,
  births and rebirths of unions.*8
  Under these circumstances, collective bargaining between employer
  and employees as a means to adjust mutual claims and expectations
  was difficult to institutionalize. There was one exception, however.
  The Shipowners' Association and the Seamen's Union succeeded in
  instituting and maintaining a collective bargaining relationship. This
  relationship did not ensure perfect industrial peace, but it appears to
  have prevented occasional disagreements from bogging down in pro-
  longed, irreconcilable disputes. Its conflict-minimizing function was
  demonstrated in 1928 when the Seamen's Union demanded a uniform
  minimum wage scale. To this demand, the Shipowners' Association
  responded by suggesting a labor-management committee of six mem-
  bers (three from each side) to study the issue and recommend a solu-
  tion. The committee was formed but failed to produce a solution
  owing to its failure to manage its own internal dissensions. The sea-
  men then sporadically resorted to work stoppages at various ports of
  Japan. In search for a way out of the impasse, the seamen and the
  shipowners agreed on a committee of seven arbitrators, promising
  each other that the results of the arbitration would be honored. The
  arbitration committee speedily (within four days) recommended a
  scale of minimum wages by rank of worker and ship size, which both
  sides accepted.
  The first obstacle in the interwar pattern of employer-employee
  relations was the employer's inability to recognize as legitimate an
  employee's request to discuss matters related to wages and working
  conditions. The difference between this pattern and industrial rela-
  tions in the shipping industry, in which both sides were organized and
  48 For the organizational history of unionism in Japan from this perspective, see Nishioka
  Takao, Nikon no rodo kumiai soshiki (Tokyo: Japan Institute of Labor, i960); and Komatsu
  Ryuji, Kigyobetsu kumiai no seisei (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1971).
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  643
  dealt with each other through representatives, was surely too vast to
  measure. And yet the maritime industrial relations of the interwar
  period were by no means extraordinary by standards of modern collec-
  tive bargaining. If anything, they were immature, inexperienced, and
  fraught with the danger that good sense and discipline on either side
  might break down in ways typical of the primitive prewar pattern of
  employment relationships. In fact, localized work stoppages were fre-
  quent in the Japanese maritime industry and the Seamen's Union had
  trouble disciplining many of its local groups. Even so, the centralized
  collective bargaining machinery survived and functioned until the Sea-
  men's Union disbanded in 1940, when the war economy demanded a
  reorganization of industrial relations under different principles.
  In the 1920s and 1930s, the Seamen's Union survived in great part
  because of its right-wing nationalist ideology. When unionization was
  a movement often inspired by socialist or communist ideologies and
  regarded with suspicion and distrust by the public, employers, and the
  authorities, the preferred commitment of the Seaman's Union to the
  national interest ensured its safety and credibility in Japanese society.
  Although like other right-wing unions, it eventually failed to produce
  a viable reconciliation of unionism and nationalism when the role of
  unions was questioned during wartime, at least until then the Sea-
  man's Union proved that nationalism and partiotism could offer ideo-
  logical protection to the essentially insecure labor movement. This
  lesson did not pass unnoticed by other workers. Thus in the 1930s
  there was an unusual twist in the workers' strategy. Workers and
  unions brandishing their commitment to the national interest became
  increasingly right wing and, under the impact of deteriorating interna-
  tional circumstances, pushed capitalist employers into an awkward
  corner where they were made to appear selfish and unpatriotic.
  Because of such strategy shifts, many labor unions were able to
  establish good relations with the police and especially the Special Supe-
  rior Police (Tokko keisatsu). Unions and workers learned to get along
  well with these once-feared agents of the state and often obtained their
  approval of industrial action before undertaking it. Indeed, even some
  regular police and special police officers were critical of some private
  firms' labor practices and working conditions. Although strategic con-
  cessions to the state later undermined the raison d'etre of trade union-
  ism, in the meantime unions used the police acquiescence to advance
  the standing of workers vis-a-vis their employers. Out of this twist in
  the triangular relationships of labor, management, and the state came
  a renewed interest in works councils. It was now the workers who,
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  644 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  with the acquiescence and even the support of the police, promoted
  works councils or similar kinds of consultative machinery in which
  worker representatives and employers served on an equal footing and
  which ensured industrial peace or uninterrupted production for the
  good of society at large.
  The case of Aichi Clock Company (Aichi tokei), a manufacturer of
  clocks and watches, which six thousand employees struck twice in
  1937, illustrates how workers took advantage of the changing times.
  The conciliation by the police produced a settlement highly advanta-
  geous to the workers. Among other things, the settlement included an
  agreement to set up a labor-management consultative council. This
  experience at Aichi Clock and similar experiences at other firms in the
  same region prompted the Aichi Prefectural Police Department to
  devise machinery and procedures to promote industrial peace. The so-
  called Arakawa Plan, published in February 1938, is generally consid-
  ered the genesis of the nationwide Sanpo movement. The Arakawa
  Plan envisaged a plant council (kojo kondankai) made up of several
  representatives from the employers' and the employees' sides. The
  council's primary objective was preventing labor disputes. As soon as
  signs of conflict appeared, the council was to take charge of the prob-
  lem and prevent it from developing into a dispute. If the council failed
  to resolve the conflict, a workshop committee for its resolution was to
  be organized with the participation of public authorities. If the objec-
  tive was not attained at this "second level," the conflict was referred to
  a "third level," which was another, more authoritative, special commit-
  tee. In this way, Japanese employers and employees began to move
  into a stage of industrial relations that reduced the employers' author-
  ity and raised the employees' status so that both could sit down to-
  gether to discuss and agree or disagree on matters related to produc-
  tion, technology, and employment as well as roles and rewards for the
  members of the enterprise. Managerial authoritarianism, too, came to
  an end. Though incomplete when compared with fascist labor unions
  in Europe, enterprise corporatism in a corporatist state was born in
  Japan under the aegis of the Sanpo movement, 1938 to 1945.49
  49 A serialized article by Hagiwara Susumu on wartime wage controls contains illuminating
  historical observations on the relationships between the Aichi Tokei incident and the
  Arakawa Plan on the one hand and the Sanpo system on the other. Hagiwara Susumu, "Senji
  chingin tosei no isan," Chingin Foramu, nos. 11-20 (1977), esp. nos. 17,18. For the wartime
  labor economy, see j . B. Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis:
  University of Minnesota Press, 1949), chap. 5; Takenaka Emiko, "Kyoko to sensoka ni okeru
  rodo shijo no henbo," Koza Nihon shihonshugi hattatsu shiron: vol. 3: Kyoko kara senso e, ed.
  Kawai Ichiro et al. (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1968), chap. 5.
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  LABOR CONFLICT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
  645
  Sanpo is the abbreviation of Sangyo hokokukai (Society for Service
  to the State through Industry). As illustrated by the pioneer example
  of Aichi Clock Company, it emphasized the importance of harmony in
  capital-labor relations and promoted a new strategy for preventing
  labor disputes. In 1938 the Kyochokai (Harmonization Society), co-
  opting the aforementioned Arakawa Plan, organized the Sangyo ho-
  koku renmei (League for Service to the State through Industry). The
  idea was to organize a Sangyo hokokukai (Sanpo) unit in each plant.
  The Kyochokai activity was given official approval by the ministries of
  Welfare and Home Affairs. Soon an overseeing organization, Dai Nip-
  pon sangyo hokokukai (Greater Japan Association for Service to the
  State through Industry), was formed with the help of official subsidies
  to provide a national center for all the plant-level Sanpo units. Under
  the slogan of jigyo ikka (enterprise as a family), the Sanpo unit was
  conceptually likened to a "family" (ie). The Sanpo ideologues hoped to
  do away with the capitalist concept of enterprise and to transform the
  adversary relations between capital and labor into harmonious rela-
  tions such as existed ideally between the family head and family mem-
  bers. According to Jerome B. Cohen, by 1940, Sanpo membership in
  manufacturing was 2.9 million persons, or about 41 percent of all
  gainfully employed persons in manufacturing, as shown in Table 12.1.
  The total Sanpo membership in all industries in 1940 stood at 3.5
  million, and the total in 1945 was estimated to be about 6.4 million.5°
  Under the Sanpo system, a peculiar type of social democracy
  emerged in each firm. The Sanpo organization destroyed the tradi-
  tional social distances and status differences between managers and
  workers, office employees and factory hands, more educated and less
  educated, males and females, and young and old. Despite their differ-
  ences in function, position, and ability, all persons had equal dignity
  and importance as "members of the enterprise" working for the collec-
  tive objective-maximal output for the country. Private life and family
  needs became subordinate to the enterprise's requirements, and the
  Sanpo enterprise was an organ of the state. Functionally, the firm's
  work force was structured like a military unit, and many elements of
  military-style organizational behavior were introduced. For example,
  every morning, workers would assemble to form squads, companies,
  and divisions in the factory's front yard and march to their respective
  jobs in the factory under the command of their unit leaders, who were
  50 Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction, p. 285.
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  646 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  in turn commanded by the next layer of leaders. The military-style
  organization brought everyone face to face, or at least within sight in
  appropriate positions. The personal visibility of everyone and the ap-
  plication of the same basic rules of conduct to everyone created a sense
  of belonging and a shared understanding of the nature and problems
  of the entire enterprise. The regularization of the rhythm of work and
  life improved discipline and performance on the job.
  The Sanpo enterprise unit became a comprehensive community
  concerned with all aspects of work and life. The enterprise organized
  recreational and educational activities. The workers were drilled in
  firefighting techniques in anticipation of air raids. They frequently
  participated in inspirational meetings studying books exalting the vir-
  tues of the emperor and the glory of the Japanese state., Sanpo made
  the enterprise a basic unit of national community, thus "nationalizing"
  not only production but also the souls and beliefs of the workers.
  Sanpo obviously promoted a greater homogenization of the Japanese
  throughout Japan. In a sense it brought about a remarkable social
  revolution. Because Japan surrendered before the homeland was in-
  vaded, Japanese workers made their transition to the postwar period
  maintaining a high degree of organization and morale in their work-
  places. This meant that the enterprise as a community remained
  roughly intact at the beginning of the postwar period. This legacy of
  Sanpo helps explain why the most effective way to organize a union in
  the postwar period was by a mass conversion of the entire work force
  to the new principle of work-related organization, or unionism. Orga-
  nized and orderly mass meetings within the enterprise were common-
  place during the war. When circumstances changed, the social democ-
  racy that had grown up under Sanpo produced a sort of "town hall
  democracy" for collective action within the enterprise.51
  POSTWAR LABOR RELATIONS, 1 9 4 5 - 1 9 5 5
  With the end of the war in 1945, the history of Japanese employment
  relations entered a new phase. A major aspect of this phase was the
  51 Okochi Kazuo calls the enterprise labor union "Sanpo turned inside out" (uragaeshini shua
  Sanpo). Just as the state organized the Sanpo unit from above, the postwar labor union,
  which included all the former members of the Sanpo unit, was encouraged by the Occupation
  authorities from above. But the Occupation's encouragement worked upward and out from
  the rank and file (turned inside out). See Okochi Kazuo, Rodo kumiai undo no saishuppatsu
  (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronshinsha, 1956), esp. pp. 72-4. For the effects of Sanpo on postwar
  union organization, see also Magota Ryohei, "Kigyobetsu kumiai no keisei," Journal of
  Humanities and Social Sciences (Waseda University), no. 12, May 1975, PP- 21-38.
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  POSTWAR LABOR RELATIONS 
  647
  legitimation and development of the labor union as a permanent fea-
  ture of the Japanese employment system.'2 Japan's postwar labor
  movement rose at a curious time.53 No unions were organized in Au-
  gust 1945. There were only two labor unions at the end of September,
  a month and a half after the surrender, and only seven unions at the
  end of October. This timid beginning is puzzling because the disas-
  trous end of a prolonged war might well have prompted large-scale
  uprisings against the regime by angry people. But nothing of the sort
  took place in Japan. The workers were quiet, and the wartime regime
  remained intact until the Allied Occupation began to dismantle it in
  October. The duration and effectiveness of wartime law and order for
  nearly two months after the surrender are surprising. Even during a
  period potentially ideal for successful internal rebellions, that is, be-
  tween the surrender on August 15 and the arrival of an advance party
  of the Occupation forces on August 30, no one stirred to demand a
  rectification of past wrongs or a radical change in the ways to govern
  the nation. Japan showed no signs of revolutionary upheavals.
  But once Japanese workers awoke to the opportunities for the labor
  movement created by American plans to democratize Japan, their
  efforts were intense and far-reaching. In early October 1945, General
  Douglas MacArthur issued a directive to remove prewar and wartime
  restrictions on civil, political, and religious liberties. In December
  1945, the Trade Union Law was enacted, modeled on the United
  States' Wagner Act. For the first time in Japanese history, a law
  guaranteed the workers' right to organize and to bargain collectively, a
  right that was later enshrined in the 1947 constitution. In September
  1946, the Labor Relations Adjustment Law was passed, superseding
  the prewar Labor Dispute Conciliation Law and related statutes. In
  September 1947, the Labor Standards Law came into being, supplant-
  ing the prewar Factory Law and other similar laws. It is significant
  that in the legislative program concerning labor, the Trade Union Law
  was the first to be enacted, establishing the primacy of collective
  bargaining as a means of determining wages and working conditions
  and resolving conflict between employers and workers. This meant
  that the market forces were no longer unbridled but had to yield to the
  52 For an introduction to postwar Japanese industrial relations, see Suehiro Izutaro, Nihon rodo
  kumiai undoshi (Tokyo: Chud koronsha, 1954). See also Solomon B. Levine, Industrial Rela-
  tions in Postwar Japan (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958). An interesting recent
  work is Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-
  I9S5 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
  53 Yamamoto Kyoshi, "Sengo rodo kumiai no shuppatsuten," in Nihon roshi kankei shiron, ed.
  Sumiya Mikio (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1977), chap. 5.
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  648 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  pressures of organized forces on wages, working conditions, and con-
  flict resolution.
  Trade union membership rose from about five thousand workers in
  October 1945 to nearly seven million on the eve of the Dodge Plan in
  early 1949. The increase during 1946 alone accounted for nearly five
  million. Like the calm that preceded it, this explosive growth of trade
  unionism also challenges our comprehension of Japanese social phe-
  nomena. After the situation was stabilized, the enterprise union, a new
  and durable feature of postwar industrial relations, became visible.
  "Enterprise unionism" was a type of unionism under which, as a rule,
  all regular nonsupervisory workers of an enterprise were organized
  into one independent union. An enterprise union would not expand
  beyond the work force of a single enterprise or that of a single plant of
  a multiplant enterprise, although federations at the enterprise, indus-
  try, or national levels were possible and were often formed by enter-
  prise unions.
  The emergence of a trade union instantly absorbing a firm's entire
  work force is an extraordinary feat in the creation of solidarity and
  unanimity. That all the workers in a firm readily agreed to form and
  stay in one union was an extension of the organizational behavior and
  habits that Sanpo had cultivated. But Sanpo's organizational unit was
  not a bargaining unit. Nor was there any concept of bargaining in the
  Sanpo ideology. Thus, although the Sanpo form of enterprise offered
  an organizational basis for enterprise unionism, the question remains
  as to why Japanese workers after the war chose to remold their organi-
  zation as a trade union. Did they know what a union was and how it
  differed from the Sanpo unit in which they worked? Who among them
  knew anything about trade unionism? Unfortunately, these simple
  questions have no simple answers. In fact, research into the roots of
  the postwar unionism has begun only recently.
  It can be assumed that during the Sanpo years, especially between
  1940 and 1945, there was little chance for workers to learn anything
  about the principles of trade unionism. Therefore when the war was
  over, a working knowledge of trade unionism was limited to those who
  were exposed to trade unionism before 1940. Then the crucial ques-
  tion is how many postwar workers had prewar trade union experience
  and were willing to become active again in the labor movement. A
  prevailing view suggests that postwar trade unions somehow spontane-
  ously mushroomed among workers who learned about trade unionism
  for the first time in their lives and, with the encouragement of the
  Occupation authorities, were eager to put their newly acquired knowl-
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  POSTWAR LABOR RELATIONS 
  649
  edge into practice. Most research on Japanese industrial relations em-
  phasizes a break in the personal identities of trade union leaders be-
  tween the prewar and postwar years. No one has claimed that all the
  prewar trade unionists were dead and buried before the rise of the
  postwar labor movement. But curiously, the orthodox view implies
  that the surviving prewar trade unionists contributed little or nothing
  to the rise of the postwar labor movement. Yamamoto Kiyoshi chal-
  lenged this orthodoxy and, after examining the relevant data, con-
  cluded that the prewar trade unionists' involvement in the postwar
  trade union leadership was considerable.54 Indeed, one of the earliest
  unions to rise again after the war was the large prewar Seamen's
  Union, reconstructed on October 5,1945.
  However, the prewar labor movement was diverse in ideological
  orientation, organizational strategies, and professed objectives. It was
  unable to form a united national center. Therefore, if the prewar trade
  unionists played a significant role in the postwar labor movement, this
  implied that the prewar type of internal division would surface again.
  Indeed, ideological wrangling, opportunism, and adventurism were at
  a new high in the Japanese labor movement after the war.
  In regard to basic human rights and civil liberties, the postwar social
  climate was entirely new in Japanese history, and there was a tendency
  to identify the enjoyment of rights and liberties with radical shifts
  toward the left in outlook, attitude, and action in all aspects of life and
  work. Under these circumstances, it was natural that communists and
  socialists should enjoy an unprecedented degree of popularity among
  the Japanese at the enterprise level. Radical or militant trade unionism
  proved more attractive to workers than did a more moderate variety.
  Moreover, ideological biases also affected the organizing strategies of
  union leaders and made them respond to the Sanpo legacy in varying
  ways. For example, organizers from Sodomei (Japanese Federation of
  Labor, revived in the fall of 1945) used the traditional method of
  recruiting trade union members: They would go to factory gates and
  urge workers to join their unions ("leafleting at the plant gate"). While
  Sodomei organizers pursued this tactic, the unions were forming in-
  side the enterprises, and many of them later affiliated with the leftist
  Sanbetsu kaigi (Japanese Congress of Industrial Unions).
  After failing at first, Sodomei changed its organizing strategy and
  adopted new techniques. As a first step, it recruited potential leaders
  from among workers in an enterprise and helped them organize the
  54 Ibid., pp. 267-73.
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  650 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  entire work force into a union, which was then taken into an appropriate
  industrial or geographical federation under the umbrella of Sodomei.
  But the setbacks in tactical adjustment and its own moderate ideological
  preferences cost Sodomei its rightful place as the preeminent national
  trade union center. It was outorganized by Sanbetsu. The two labor
  centers together claimed about a half of Japan's entire labor movement.
  The other half stayed in a variety of independent or neutral arrange-
  ments, mostly pure enterprise unions. Sodomei and Sanbetsu waged
  fierce "jurisdictional struggles" to capture these independents. Occa-
  sional gestures for truce and unity were made from both sides, and a few
  short-lived liaison councils were formed. However, Sanbetsu's strength
  suddenly began to crumble in the fall of 1947, and its subsequent
  disintegration was as spectacular as its prior rise.
  During the most volatile postwar years, 1945 to 1948, workers were
  brutalized by inflation, lagging wages, unemployment, a scarcity of
  life's necessities, and production bottlenecks. With or without unions,
  industrial disputes broke out everywhere. Unions often came into
  being as by-products of spontaneous strikes. One memorable response
  to an employer's inadequate response to the workers' demands was the
  workers' seizure of the enterprise. In these cases, the workers man-
  aged the enterprise on their own after expelling the employer and
  continued production to ensure uninterrupted, often enlarged, earn-
  ings. Whether this was a movement of any ideological importance
  pointing toward a noncapitalist economic system composed of worker-
  directed firms or whether it was only an expedient like any other
  dispute tactics that workers have devised from time to time in the
  capitalist system has since been a subject of controversy among stu-
  dents of Japanese industrial relations. One thing is clear, however:
  Circumstances permitting, even the Japanese workers, who are gener-
  ally not susceptible to ideological excesses, can launch an industrial
  action that, whether ideological or not, attacks the most "sacred"
  foundation of the capitalist economic system-private property in the
  means of production. In the historical context of early postwar Japan,
  the possibility of a socialist revolution was real in the minds of many
  Japanese. Every new instance of production control was hailed by
  radicals or feared by conservatives as another step toward revolution.
  The first example of production control took place at the Yomiuri
  newspaper in October 1945.55 Incidents of production control peaked
  in the spring and summer of 1946.
  55 Yamamoto Kiyoshi, Sengo rodb undo shiron, vol. I (Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1977).
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  POSTWAR LABOR RELATIONS 
  65I
  The Japanese government responded swiftly. On February 1, 1946,
  the four ministers of Home Affairs, Justice, Commerce and Industry,
  and Welfare jointly declared as unlawful any infringements on prop-
  erty rights. Although "production control" as such was not mentioned
  specifically, the intent of the announcement was clear.'6 But this did
  not deter the workers. Although the government finally cracked down
  on offending workers, it also conceded the merit of their argument
  that the demoralized employers in postwar confusion lacked the will to
  expand production and that some of them were even engaged in a
  speculative sabotage of production so as to profit from the rising prices
  of inventories under rapid postwar inflation. The workers also learned
  a few lessons about the difficulty of running a business. Society at
  large was on the whole negative toward production control, making it
  difficult for workers engaged in it to secure supplies or sell products.
  Nevertheless, production control demonstrated how far worker mili-
  tancy could go, even at the risk of breaking the law, toward modifying
  the distribution of decision-making power between management and
  labor in the operation of the firm. After production control, power
  relations between management and labor could never be the same
  again. The takeover of a firm by workers, legal or not, remains to this
  day a standing warning against employer incompetence. The threat of
  this possibility was no idle talk during the heyday of production con-
  trol. It was clear that major concessions to the labor movement were in
  order.
  Indeed, even the conservative Yoshida cabinet (May 1946 to May
  1947) was compelled to heed the lesson by taking two major "socialist"
  steps. One was the adoption in December 1946 of an industrial prior-
  ity plan formulated by a well-known Marixst economist, Arizawa
  Hiromi. The plan proposed concentrating on scarce resources in the
  expansion of coal, electricity, and steel production. These priorities
  reflected the Marxists and socialists' "heavy industry bias." The sec-
  ond major step was the inauguration in February 1947 of the Eco-
  nomic Reconstruction Conference, in which representatives of orga-
  nized labor were given a major role. The national conference stood at
  the apex of industry-level and enterprise-level labor-management
  councils. Unfortunately, ideological differences among the labor lead-
  ers severely reduced the conference's effectiveness as a policymaking
  56 The four ministers apparently failed to clear the declaration with the Occupation authorities
  in advance, which undermined its effects. See the comments on the event by Theodore
  Cohen, then head of the Labor Division of the General Headquarters, in The Occupation of
  Japan, ed. Lawrence H. Redford (Norfolk, Va.: MacArthur Memorial, 1980), pp. 197-8.
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  652 
  ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
  body, and it was dissolved in July 1948 after having done little more
  than provide educational and informational services. Signs of decline
  in the labor movement's power and influence surfaced during the life
  of this conference. In 1948 the rapid rise of Japanese labor from the
  shadow of Sanpo to partnership in governing Japan was suddenly
  reversed. Labor's fall was due in part to the "reverse course" of the
  Occupation policy.
  Labor's militancy first tested the limits of the Occupation's toler-
  ance in January 1947, when the public-sector unions planned a nation-
  wide general strike." On January 31, on the eve of the planned strike
  of February 1, General MacArthur ruled against it, although he made
  it clear at the same time that the ban of this particular strike implied
  no general restriction on workers' rights to collective industrial action.
  Nevertheless, this was the first major official action to tighten the
  perimeter of the labor movement. Fourteen months later, in March
  1948, the Occupation authorities banned regional strikes by the postal
  workers. Then in July 1948, General MacArthur directed the Japanese
  government to deprive civil servants and other public-sector workers
  of their right to strike. In December 1948, an injunction was issued
  against a coal miners' strike. In 1949, the prolabor Trade Union Law,
  promulgated in December 1945, was revised, and the qualifications
  for legal strikes in the private sector were tightened. While the perime-
  ter of the labor movement was tightened year after year in this way,
  the machinery and procedure of collective bargaining within the frame-
  work of capitalist industrial relations was encouraged at the same time,
  often with government guidance and supervision. Labor disputes di-
  minished as a consequence.
  In addition to the greater discipline imposed on the labor movement
  from above, there came a demand for greater union democracy from
  below among the rank and file of the trade unions. One of their
  objectives was to eliminate the influence of the Communist Party.
  Anti-Communist movements arose even within Sanbetsu, as well as
  the traditionally anti-Communist Sodomei. The first showdown oc-
  curred in October 1947 when independents and Sodomei-affiliated
  miners' unions pulled out of the National Council of Miners' Unions.
  The rift between pro-Communist and anti-Communist forces wid-
  ened, and in January 1948 Sodomei openly proclaimed its determina-
  tion to fight to oust the Communists from the labor movement. The
  57 The importance of the abortive general strike planned for February I, 1947, in the Occupa-
  tion's labor history is emphasized by Theodore Cohen, "Labor Democratization in Japan:
  The First Years," in The Occupation of Japan, pp. 162-73.
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  POSTWAR LABOR RELATIONS 
  653
  forces in favor of union democratization within Sanbetsu organized an
  action league, Mindo (Alliance for Democratization), and after many
  inhouse quarrels with the Communists, left the parent body. In July
  1950, Mindo and Sodomei organized a new national center, Sohyo
  (General Council of Trade Unions). A few years later, a leftward swing
  of the Sohyo leadership alienated Sodomei, which after its departure
  from Sohyo, evolved into today's Domei, the second largest national
  labor center after Sohyo. There also developed a much smaller labor
  center called Churitsu roren (Federation of Independent Unions). By
  1955, the postwar period was definitely over for Japan's labor move-
  ment. A new era dawned about this time: the age of the shunto (spring
  labor offensive). The structure of compromises and accommodations
  that had taken shape by 1955 continues to this day.
  In the industrial relations system that emerged from the social selec-
  tion during the Occupation period, the basic unit of the labor move-
  ment was the enterprise-based and enterprise-confined labor union,
  with collective bargaining as a main instrument of influence over man-
  agement. Although temporary workers and women were still excluded
  from full entitlements to the benefits of the Japanese employment sys-
  tem, a high degree of social democracy prevailed between regular em-
  ployees and managers of an enterprise. They all were equal "enterprise
  citizens" and equally enjoyed a long-term tenure often dubbed "lifetime
  commitment." The pricing of labor, that is, wage determination, re-
  quired frequent bargaining, whereas other aspects of employment were
  locked in more durable collective agreements-work rules and related
  provisions. Management prerogatives were generally respected by
  workers but were exercised prudently and subject to intensive commu-
  nications throughout the firm. Joint labor-management consultative
  committees were also active, ensuring that no decisions affecting work-
  ers were made or enforced unilaterally by management. Within the
  union, a high degree of union democracy and a scrupulous observance
  of democratic rules of decision making were firmly planted. Although
  industrial disputes were frequent and widespread in Japanese industry,
  they were resolved quickly, making long-term impasses or stalemates
  rare. Japan's capitalist economy, middle-class society, and conservative
  polity seem to be in a long-run equilibrium. Obviously it was during the
  Occupation period that this equilibrium solution was worked out, by
  reconciling a number of seemingly intractable equations of conflicting
  claims and counterclaims. With social problems in the workplace set
  aside by this solution, Japan after 1955 concentrated on economic activi-
  ties leading to the economic "miracle" of the 1960s.
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  CHAPTER 13
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND
  MARXISM, 1901-1931
  In the 1890s many observers at home and abroad discovered that
  Japan had finally entered the mainstream of world history and had
  indeed become a principal actor in that history. As Okuma Shigenobu
  remarked at the end of the Sino-Japanese War, "Japan is no longer a
  Japan for Japan, but a Japan for the world." Although some Japanese
  viewed the end of their cultural and political isolation as cause for
  unrestrained self-congratulation, others were ambivalent about its im-
  plication for the future. If Japan became more like other modern
  nations, its material and political development might continue, but
  only at the expense of social harmony or cultural integrity. As the
  country moved into a new century, there was uncertainty over the
  shape of Japan's future.
  One vision of the future saw Japan as eternally unique, able to
  maintain its traditional culture and values even in the midst of rapid
  economic and political change. This point of view, which we might
  call the particularist or exceptionalist perspective, found champions in
  the Seikyosha writers of the early 1890s, who urged that the nation's
  cultural essence (kokusui) be preserved in the march toward moder-
  nity.1 Given the polychromatic character of Japan's cultural past, how-
  ever, it was difficult to identify this cultural essence. Unlike China,
  which boasted of an easily identifiable great tradition, Japan had none.
  Where, then, were the Seikyosha writers to find the kokusui-in the
  myths and legends of the Shinto tradition, in the sensibilities of Heian
  culture, in the harsh ethos of the warrior class, in the boisterous arts of
  the Tokugawa townsmen, or in the austere puritanism of Tokugawa
  Confucianism?
  Although the Seikyosha writers were conspicuously vague about
  what made Japan unique, neotraditionalist scholars like Hozumi Yat-
  suka and Inoue Tetsujiro found it in a blend of Confucian morality
  1 On the Seikyosha writers, see Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Getieraiion in Meiji Japan: Problems
  of Cultural Identity, 1885-1895 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969).
  654
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM 
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  and nativist myth that they shaped into a civil religion for the state.
  They converted the familiar idea of the kokutai, long employed in the
  Edo period to sanctify a hierarchical sociopolitical order with the em-
  peror at its apex, into an explanation for the durability, uniqueness,
  and superiority of Japanese social and political mores. Simultaneously
  sacralizing the emperor as the descendant of Amaterasu and seculariz-
  ing him as the source of worldly political values, they likened his role
  to that of the benevolent father, concerned for his subject/children but
  requiring their undivided allegiance. The family-state (kazoku kokka)
  concept, an ingenious ideological construct influenced by an organic
  conception of the state imported from the West, was powerful and
  pervasive: It informed the drafting of textbooks, the education of
  schoolteachers, and the training of lesser functionaries in the police,
  the military, and the judicial service. Although never formally adopted
  as a state creed, it became the basis of a highly particularistic national-
  ism that displaced critical political thought in the minds of its true
  believers.2
  Even though the particularist/exceptionalist perspective on Japa-
  nese society enjoyed official respectability, many intellectuals found it
  difficult to accept. Products of a system of higher education whose
  curriculum depended on the "new knowledge" (shinchishiki) from the
  West, they were more inclined to a cosmopolitan conception of Ja-
  pan's future, one that placed Japan fully in the mainstream of world
  history, subject to the same developmental laws and heading for the
  same future as were the more advanced nations of the West. Intellec-
  tuals of the late Meiji and Taisho periods frequently referred to the
  jisei (trends of the times) or sekai no taisei (trends in the world) to
  validate their proposals for political or social change. These words,
  which seem almost empty of meaning to the outsider, implied that
  there were discernible regularities or patterns of change in society,
  often unilinear in character. When linked with the concepts of social
  progress (shakai shinpo) or social evolution {shakai shinka), they con-
  veyed the idea that the new was better than the old and that society
  improved over time. If the exceptionalist perspective chose to focus on
  timeless essences, cosmopolitan intellectuals looked at patterns of flux
  and often found in them historical inevitability.
  Like the theorists of the family state, these intellectuals drew much
  of their vocabulary, conceptual and semantic, from Western thought.
  2 For an excellent study of the origins of state ideology, see Carol Gluck, Japan's Modem Myths:
  Ideology in the Making in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
  1985).
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  The notion that there were fixed norms governing all societies was a
  familiar one, embodied in the Confucian concept of "principle" (n),
  but it could not account for the dynamics of history, except in cyclical
  patterns of decline and restoration. The discovery that society could
  move to ever-higher levels of prosperity, rationality, or efficiency was
  perhaps the central intellectual revolution of the Meiji period. The
  notion of progress was to be found in nearly every tome and tract on
  social thought translated into Japanese, whether it came from a radical
  Rousseau or a conservative Bluntschli. To some degree, the concept of
  progress was complicated by the less optimistic social Darwinist ideas
  so influential in the 1880s, yet more often than not, social Darwinism,
  when applied to domestic rather than external developments, was
  construed in a positive sense, with the stress on the fittest who sur-
  vived rather than on their struggle for existence.
  The idea that there were regular patterns of social progress implied
  the basic commonality of humankind and the existence of a universal
  human psychology transcending the peculiarities of social, geographi-
  cal, and historical context. Whereas the exceptionalist perspective ex-
  tolled a unique "Japanese spirit" that was inaccessible to the alien mind,
  the cosmopolitan perspective often saw identical impulses at work in all
  persons and in all societies. This led to a simplified, even conventional-
  ized, description of human behavior, but it also suggested that Japan
  was not a psychological lost continent inhabited by a separate species.
  The idea of social progress was also easy to associate with programs of
  social and political reform: If the future were always better than the
  past, then it could be used to rebuke the present as well.
  In the early 1890s the cosmopolitan viewpoint found its most undi-
  luted expression in the writing of Tokutomi Soho and his circle.* In
  Shorai no Nihon, Tokutomi described Japan as being in a transitional
  stage of development, moving like the advanced Western societies from
  a militaristic-aristocratic to an industrial-democratic society. Drawing
  on the writings of mid-Victorian liberalism, from John Stuart Mill to
  Herbert Spencer, Tokutomi argued that the tendency of human history
  was toward freedom, equality, prosperity, and peace. At times Toku-
  tomi hovered on the edge of a rigid historical determinism, giving scant
  heed to the vagaries of historical accident or the impact of human will on
  history. But by the mid-1890s he had somewhat modified his concep-
  tion of the future from a simplistic model of a laissez-faire society to one
  3 On the development of Tokutomi's thought, see Kenneth B. Pyle, New Generation, and John
  D. Pierson, Tokutomo Soho, 1863-1957: A Journalist for Modem Japan (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1980).
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  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM 
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  in which individualism was tempered by collectivism or state interven-
  tionism, even though he remained committed to a unilinear concept of
  historical development.
  Even those most closely attached to a theory of universal human
  development, like Tokutomi, had only to look around to realize that
  social laws did not work in a vacuum but in a concrete time and place.
  When applied to Japan, laws of universal development often had to be
  bent to fit. For example, Tokutomi described the Meiji Restoration as
  an incomplete or unfulfilled revolution. Although he saw it as the
  culmination of long-term trends toward liberty that had brought down
  the old order, paradoxically and perhaps illogically, he saw these
  trends thwarted, stymied, or aborted in the post-Restoration era. La-
  ter, Marxist debates on the character of the Restoration and the devel-
  opment of capitalism in Japan wrestled with the same problem.
  "Trends of the times" often seemed to have a different velocity and
  follow a different trajectory in Japan. Though traveling toward the
  same destination as were the advanced nations of the West, Japan
  appeared to move on a bypath rather than the main highway.
  Then, too, the model of the future presented by the advanced soci-
  eties of the West was itself in a continuous process of transformation.
  Japan might have the "advantage of followership," but it had to follow
  a constantly moving target. Cosmopolitan perspectives on the future
  in the early twentieth century therefore kept shifting, and so this
  chapter will discuss several of its varied exponents-the late Meiji
  socialists, the democratic liberals of Taisho, and the Marxists and
  other left radicals of the 1920s. Often in contention with one another,
  they still shared a common discourse that made Japanese history part
  of universal history, and they agreed in rejecting the idea that Japan
  was unique in its structure and development.
  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM
  If Tokutomi Soho was one of the first Japanese intellectuals to apply a
  scheme of universal historical change to the history of Japan, he was
  also one of the first to discern lines of fracture in Japanese society. In
  contrasting the "commoners" {heimin) and the "aristocrats" (kizoku),
  however, Tokutomi was referring not so much to structural as to
  historical and generational divisions. The aristocrats were representa-
  tives of the "Old Japan," the parvenu Meiji leaders and a handful of
  holdovers from the ancien regime, who wished to turn the clock back
  to an era of privilege and caste. The commoners were everyone else,
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  658 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  the ordinary workers and peasants as well as the well-to-do landed
  farmers, whose interests were tied to the present and future "New
  Japan." It was they who would benefit from the expansion of market
  freedom, equality of opportunity, and political enfranchisement prom-
  ised by the laws of social development. Tokutomi saw the commoners
  and the privileged few as being at odds, but he did not suggest that one
  segment of society should be set against another or that there were
  exploiters and exploited in Japanese society. In short, he did not
  suggest the possibility of class conflict.
  By the late 1890s, however, a number of observers feared that as the
  process of industrialization quickened, the gap between rich and poor
  would widen, and social harmony would weaken. In 1898 a group of
  law professors at Tokyo Imperial University led by Kuwada Kumazo
  (1869-1932) and Kanai En (1865-1933) organized the Social Policy
  Association (Shakai seisaku gakkai) to discuss the social problems
  associated with industrialization. Influenced by the successful social
  reforms of Bismarck and the ideas of conservative social reformers
  such as Lujo Brentano, Gustav Schmoller, and Adolf Wagner, mem-
  bers of the association argued that the pursuit of profit and unbridled
  competition that accompanied industrial growth under a laissez-faire
  policy would erode social stability and encourage social conflict. Basi-
  cally precapitalist in their views, they attacked neither private prop-
  erty nor the market mechanism per se. Rather, they contended that
  the harshness of a laissez-faire system should be tempered by the
  introduction of factory legislation, workers' insurance programs, relief
  for poor people, and other measures of social policy. Socialism, how-
  ever, was anathema to them, as it would impede national progress,
  pulling society back to a more primitive collectivist stage. In any case,
  these politically conservative professors saw no reason to think that
  socialism would be necessary in Japan. "The fact that the Japanese
  people established a constitutional system without shedding a drop of
  blood is a matter of great distinction in modern history," observed
  Kuwada in 1896. "In the coming economic revolution, too, why
  should it be impossible to solve this great problem peacefully?"*
  If these conservative scholars hoped to save capitalism from its worst
  instincts by allaying class conflict through a timely adoption of social
  policy, the socialist movement, which emerged at about the same time,
  had no qualms about attacking capitalism itself from a radical perspec-
  4 Kenneth B. Pyle, "Advantages of Followership: German Economics and Japanese Bureau-
  crats, 1890-1925," Journal of Japanese Studies I (Autumn 1974): 147.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM 
  659
  tive. The manifesto of the Social Democratic Party published on May
  20, 1901, proclaimed, "Our party, in response to the general trend at
  work within the world, and understanding the tendency of the econ-
  omy, wishes to abolish the gap between rich and poor and secure a
  victory for pacificism in the world by means of genuine socialism and
  democracy." To achieve these ends, the socialists offered the standard
  fare of the Second International: public ownership of land and capital,
  nationalization of the means of communication and transportation, uni-
  versal brotherhood, disarmament, and international peace. They also
  called for the abolition of the House of Peers and a reduction in the
  Japanese army and navy, sources of political and social inequity specific
  to Japan. Unlike the members of the Social Policy Association, the
  socialists were clearly at odds with their society.5
  The socialist movement had its origins in a group that began meet-
  ing in 1898 at the Unitarian Society in Tokyo to study the writings of
  European socialist pioneers such as Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Fourier,
  and Marx, as well as American social reformers such as Henry George,
  William Bliss, and Richard Ely. Forty members of this group formed
  the Socialist Society in 1900, and it was from their ranks that the
  Social Democratic Party was organized in 1901. The party's founding
  members represented a social profile of the study group. All but one
  (Kotoku Shusui) were Christians; two had participated in the jiyiimin-
  ken (popular rights) movement and later became journalists (Kotoku
  Shusui and Kinoshita Naoe); one was a university professor (Abe
  Isoo); and two were professional labor organizers or political activists
  (Katayama Sen and Nishikawa Kojiro).6
  During their first decade as a self-conscious movement, the Meiji
  socialists passionately indicted the moral failings and cultural deca-
  dence of their society. Whether materialists or Christians, the social-
  ists depicted late Meiji Japan as corrupt and degenerate, dominated by
  special interests. In 1899, on the eve of declaring his calling as a
  socialist, the journalist Kotoku Shusui (1871-1911) lamented that
  since the Restoration, "national virtues had been supplanted by a
  vicious struggle for monetary gain." Seven years later, the editors of
  Shin kigen (New era), a Christian socialist journal, inveighed against a
  Japan "owned by the nobility and the rich classes who are degenerate
  and marked by corruption." And Katayama Sen, writing in the labor
  5 Hyman Kublin, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1964), pp. 129-56.
  6 Yamaji Aizan, "Genji no shakai mondai oyobi shakaishugisha," in Shakaishugi shiron, ed.
  Kishimoto Eitaro (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1955), pp. 95-115; Kublin, Asian Revolutionary, pp.
  129-56.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  newspaper Rodo sekai (Labor World), deplored the selfishness of na-
  tional politicians and described the Meiji government as incompetent
  and irresponsible. In short, socialists of all stripes saw the political and
  economic leadership of Japan as morally bankrupt.7
  The late Meiji socialists did not distinguish moral criticism from
  social analysis, nor did they feel the need to do so. The Christian
  socialists, perceiving themselves as servants of the social gospel of
  Jesus, believed that socialism was the secular instrumentality to bring
  social and economic justice to Japan. Non-Christian leaders of the
  movement, often political journalists disillusioned with the Jiyuto
  (Liberal Party) and the other political parties because of their accom-
  modation with the Meiji government, identified themselves with the
  bakumatsu revolutionaries who had assailed the bakufu for its corrup-
  tion. Christian or non-Christian, these men conceived of socialism as a
  means of social and moral regeneration, and they argued that govern-
  ment activity and economic organization had to be judged by their
  ethical effect on society. Their writings deliberately. blended value
  judgment with factual statement. Even while following Marx's analy-
  sis of capitalism, they could not accept his moral agnosticism. If Marx
  had deliberately limited himself to an analysis of the structural and
  historical causes of capitalist development, or claimed to do so, the
  Japanese socialists elaborated on its injustices and amorality.8
  To be sure, the socialists generally followed the conventions of
  Western Marxist analysis. Consider the criticism of capitalism in
  Kotoku's Shakaishugi shinzui (The quintessence of socialism) and
  Katayama's "Waga shakaishugi" (My socialism), believed by most
  scholars to be the two finest pieces of Marxist writing in Meiji Japan.9
  Like Marx they praised the contributions of capitalism to the progress
  of modern society, and they marveled at its material production.
  Kotoku and Katayama also concerned themselves with the paradoxes
  of capitalist development. With grotesque inconsistency, the greater
  part of humanity grew progressively poorer and more miserable under
  7 Sharon Lee Sievers, "Kotoku Shusui, The Essence of Socialism: A Translation and Biographi-
  cal Essay," Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1969, pp. 129-31; Shin kigen (Tokyo: Shinki-
  gensha, September 10, 1906), no. 11; Kishimoto Eitaro and Koyama Hirotake, Nihon kindai
  shakai shisoshi (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1959), pp. 81-5.
  8 Kotoku Shusui, Teikokushugi: Nijuseiki no kaibutsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1954), conclu-
  sion; see Sievers's translation in "Kotoku Shusui," of Kotoku's Shakaishugi shinzui, chap. 6;
  Katayama Sen, "Waga shakaishugi," in Katayama Sen, Tazoe Tetsuji shu, ed. Kishimoto
  Eitaro (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1955), pp. 112-16.
  9 However much or little they read of Marx-a question often debated in recent studies-much
  of Kotoku's and Katayama's terminology was Marxist, and with some exceptions it was
  accurately used. See Kotoku, Shakaishugi, preface.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM 
  66l
  capitalism even as production grew by leaps and bounds. "Concurrent
  with the displacement of more and more workers by improved machin-
  ery," wrote Kotoku, "there is a daily increase in the labor supply."
  Following Engels he argued that capitalism created an "industrial re-
  serve army," an extraordinary surplus of workers who fought with one
  another over a decreasing number of jobs. Even the fully employed
  suffered. Under capitalism, workers lost all control of the "means of
  production." As Katayama observed, the wealth produced by workers
  was expropriated by the capitalists, and the workers became a depen-
  dent class, losing their freedom. In part, both men asserted, this was a
  consequence of the anarchy spawned by free competition and its ideol-
  ogy of the "survival of the fittest, the strong devouring the weak." In
  their view, class conflict was inevitable, a systematic consequence of the
  sharp divide between "a class called capitalists who monopolize the
  productive machinery and possess its products and a class of workers
  who possess nothing but their own labor."10
  Kotoku and Katayama touched on all the basic precepts of Marx-
  ism: the "labor theory of value," the theory of "surplus value," the
  "industrial reserve army," and the contradictions that inevitably "exist
  between socialized production and capitalist ownership." But both
  men parted from Marxist theory on a crucial point. Marx and his
  European followers insisted that theory had to be embedded in a
  historical perspective. Change, class, and class conflict each must be
  understood historically. "For the time being," Marx wrote, "class
  antagonisms are the motor of historical (social) development. Progress
  depends upon them." The internal contradictions of bourgeois soci-
  ety, Marx argued, were in fact both its propellant and essential to its
  functioning. For the Marxist, as George Lichtheim wrote, contradic-
  tions "cannot be legislated out of existence though they can be over-
  come 'at a higher level,' i.e., after history has reached the stage of the
  classless society." To the Meiji socialists, however, contradictions
  were seen not as the motor of history but as paradoxes to be deplored
  as the source of social injustice. Influenced by the ideas of social
  Darwinism as well as Marxism, they conceived of history as driven by
  ineluctable and impersonal evolutionary forces and often suggested
  that large historical changes were somehow inevitable. Yet they did
  not analyze the causes of historical dynamics or offer any systematic
  explanation of historical inevitability. There was almost an element of
  io See Katayama, "Waga," pp. 23-4, 32, 34, 36, 39-41, 49-5°, 56, 6o, 80-2, 91-3, 98-9;
  Kotoku,Shakaishugi, pp. 142-5, 164, 178.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  fatalism in this view of history. As Kotoku wrote, "Revolution de-
  pends on Heaven, not on the strength of man.""
  The Meiji socialists also conceived of the bourgeoisie differently
  than Marx did. For Marx the bourgeoisie had once been a "national
  class," a progressive class representing the interest of the whole society
  against its retrograde members, but as the pauperization of the masses
  accelerated, the class had lost its progressive role. In the Communist
  Manifesto, translated by Kotoku and Sakai Toshihiko in 1904, Marx
  and Engels described the demise of the bourgeoisie as "unfit any
  longer to be the ruling class in society." The Meiji socialists, on the
  other hand, were curiously ambivalent about the historical role of the
  European bourgeoisie, whom they often referred to as "the middle
  class." The Japanese socialists understood the bourgeoisie norma-
  tively, abstractly rather than historically, and never structurally. Noth-
  ing better expressed their view than Kotoku's statement: "The pur-
  pose of socialism is simply to create a middle class out of all society."12
  In contrast with Marx, the Meiji socialists continued to stress the still
  progressive role of the bourgeoisie. In the West, said Kotoku, it was the
  middle class that embodied the revolutionary spirit and became a force
  for action. In searching for a middle class in Japan's immediate past,
  both Kotoku and Sakai found their analogue in the shishi jinjin, the
  "righteous patriots" who created the Meiji Restoration. They character-
  ized the bourgeoisie, like the shishi, as moral exemplars, men who had
  "ideals" (mo), and men who (borrowing a Western concept) had "char-
  acter" (jinkaku). Like the samurai class, the European bourgeoisie was
  neither indolent like the aristocracy nor economically deprived like the
  lower classes. By identifying the Meiji Restoration with the bourgeois
  revolutions of Europe, Kotoku was suggesting that only a similar moral
  elite free of the constraints of status and economic deprivation could
  lead a socialist revolution. In fact, as we shall see, the socialists directly
  identified with both shishi and bourgeoisie by describing themselves as
  heirs of the Meiji Restoration.13
  11 Katayama, "Waga," pp. 32-3, 41-2, 69-70, 86-7; Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 153-8, 182,
  200; George Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (London: Routledge & Ke-
  gan Paul, 1961), pp. 46, 382-5; Hayashi Shigeru, ed., Heimin shinbun ronsetsushu (Tokyo:
  Iwanami shoten, 1961), pp. 188-97; Kotoku Shusui, Hydron to zuiso (Tokyo: Jiyuhyoronsha,
  1950), p. 27.
  12 Lichtheim, Marxism, pp. 86-8, 142-54, 387-90; Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 183-4; Matsu-
  zawa Hiroaki, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," in Nihon no shakaishugi, ed. Nihon seiji gakkai
  (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), pp. 26-7.
  13 Sievers, "Kotoku Shusui," pp. 34-7, 94; Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 183-4; Matsuzawa,
  "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," p. 45; John Crump, The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan
  (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), p. 133; Saigusa Hiroto, Nihon no yuibutsuronsha
  (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1956), p. 17; Nakamura Katsunori, Meiji shakaishugi kenkyu (Tokyo:
  Sekaishoin, 1966), p. 60.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM 
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  Like the European Marxists, the Meiji socialists began with a cri-
  tique of capitalist society, but it was the moral insensitivity of capital-
  ism and its cruel social consequences that drew their most severe
  criticism. Both Kotoku and Katayama called the inequity of economic
  distribution under capitalism a great crime. Under capitalism, Kotoku
  wrote, not only did the workers face eleven hours of unremittingly
  harsh labor every day, but through expropriation, the product of their
  labor was "enjoyed by the indolent and the pleasure-seekers." Above
  all, what enraged both Kotoku and Katayama, as well as their fellow
  socialists, was the corrupting effect of capitalism on civilization. Capi-
  talism was a "curse on humanity," said Katayama; free competition
  created "an amoral and animalistic outlook on life." There was "noth-
  ing in life so cruel as the persistence of unemployment, endemic to the
  capitalistic world," wrote Kotoku, because it turned men to thievery,
  women to prostitution, and plunged the "great majority of the world's
  humanity . . . into oblivion." "What," he added, "was to become of
  truth, justice and humanity?"1'*
  Like socialists everywhere, Katayama, Kotoku, Abe, and their fel-
  low activists argued that reform and protest were only stopgap mea-
  sures, not capable of correcting the basic evils that permeated the
  social organization of Japan. Also like many socialists, they had no
  quarrel with the material progress that industrial development had
  brought, and indeed they often praised it. What horrified the social-
  ists, provoked their criticism of Meiji society, and animated their
  advocacy of socialism was the ascendancy of economic values and the
  disappearance of a moral center. They deplored the acquisitive ethic of
  the uncontrolled marketplace, the greed and the competitiveness that
  eroded moral relationships among the members of society. Although
  industrialization brought the benefits of prosperity, the cash nexus
  eroded the moral bonds of society.'5
  The socialists aspired to combine material progress with a social
  order suffused by compassion and impelled by morality. As Kotoku
  wrote in 1901, the function of socialism was to bring harmony to
  society by removing the economic cause of strife; social harmony was
  its objective, and it was to be achieved not by laws or government
  discipline but by giving morals primacy over economics. Katayama
  once described socialism as "the civilized society of our grandparents but
  14 Katayama, "Waga," pp. 33-5, 84-6, 104, 112-16; Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 78, 136-7;
  Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 25-6.
  15 Shin kigen, no. 5, March 10, 1906; Kotoku, Teikokushugi, foreword, chap. 1; Kotoku,
  Shakaishugi, pp. 145, 181-3; Katayama, Waga, pp. 24-5,41-9, 59-62; 100-2.
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  664 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  with production carried out by steam, electricity and compressed air [his
  emphasis], that is, a society where a working man can obtain the
  greatest power and pleasure." Kotoku spoke of the eradication of the
  "base desires" impelled by the atmosphere of free competition and
  called for their replacement by "competition for ideals, justice and the
  like . . . competition among good men." Sakai Toshihiko argued that
  if it were possible to achieve a unity of private and public interest, "the
  hateful thing called economic relationships [his emphasis] in society
  disappears and a relationship of love, warm and pure, spreads its
  wings freely." Abe more specifically asserted that "if the present social
  organization is reformed and each man is relieved of money worries,
  then we may look for a great change in morality." Sex crimes, crime
  itself, and in fact all problems arising from social relationships would
  disappear.16
  For the socialists, social conflict, political venality, and a return to
  outmoded behavior were merely symptoms of the gross structural
  inequities in their society. Current evils, according to a writer in the
  Yorozu choho, a newspaper employing a number of socialist reporters,
  "may be ascribed not so much to the fault of those who are corrupt and
  degraded but to the system and organization of present society that
  caused them to fall into such a condition." At the same time, these
  evils demonstrated the Meiji government's responsibility for the spiri-
  tual and intellectual corruption of the individual and of society. "Our
  politicians," Kotoku wrote, "have forgotten the original purpose of
  the revolution [the Meiji Restoration] and its original spirit [which
  was] based on freedom, equality and fraternity." As a result, further
  progress had been brought to a standstill. As Kotoku wrote in yet
  another essay, the once-radical party movement had lost its spirit of
  opposition, and its leaders had become no more than government
  sycophants. By 1904 Sakai, as well as Kinoshita and Kotoku, had
  given up hope that an independent and morally upright middle class
  would make its appearance in Japan; instead there was only a cor-
  rupted bourgeoisie, a hedonistic "gentlemen's gang" (shinshibatsu),
  besotted by extravagant indulgence in geishas and other luxuries.17
  16 Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 164-201; Katayama, "Waga," pp. 104-5, i'6, I26; Kotoku,
  Hydron to zuiso, pp. 25-6; Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 22, 36-7.
  17 Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 24, 38-9; Kotoku, Teikokushugi, passim;
  Hayashi, Heimin shinbun ronsetsushu, pp. 153-4; 161-5, W, Nakamura, Meiji shakaishugi
  kenkyu, pp. 59-60; Mitani Taichiro, "Taisho shakaishugi no 'seiji' kan-'seiji no hitei' kara
  'seijiteki taiko' e," in Nihon no shakai shugi, ed. Nihon seiji gakkai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
  1968), p. 69; Skin kigen, no. 1, November 10,1905.
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  THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIALISM 
  665
  Increasingly, socialism became a moral creed to which its adher-
  ents bore witness. The socialists conceived of themselves as a moral
  elite, true heirs to the spirit of the Meiji Restoration. Kotoku de-
  scribed himself and his colleagues as "righteous patriots" (shishi jin-
  jin) who would carry out a "great cleansing of society." All social-
  ists, whether Christian or materialist, described socialism as an
  "ideal" or a "way," whose achievement, so it seems, was to be
  accomplished by religious acolytes. Acceptance of socialism and its
  goals was for its followers an act of self-abnegation and self-transcen-
  dence. In his prison letters, Kotoku later wrote disparagingly of his
  past pride; he spoke of the need to rid himself of "what was un-
  clean and ugly wherein I sought profit and name." He added,
  "Those who sacrifice their natural instincts most are truly those
  most advanced in morality."18
  Socialists also took as their goal the creation of "men of character"
  (jinkakusha). Overcoming false individualism was a significant part of
  the socialists' task, argued Abe Isoo, and their ultimate objective was
  the creation of "cosmopolitan men" with universalistic ideals and
  goals.19
  Yamaji Aizan (1864-1917), a contemporary social commentator
  and popular historian, observed that the socialists attracted young
  supporters because of their "seemingly religious devotion" to moral
  goals and reform in the face of government persecution. University
  students, like the socialists, thought of themselves as potential politi-
  cal and social leaders. But as Taoka Reiun (1870-1912), another
  social commentator and socialist sympathizer, wrote, these young
  men were "uncompromising, rough-mannered people with spirit"
  who either found government positions "inaccessible" or lost out to
  "clever sycophants." Socialism therefore was attractive not only be-
  cause it attempted to solve social problems but also because it offered
  moral sustenance to those who felt themselves wrongly barred from
  office. Socialism gained their attention, as Kotoku contended, be-
  cause it took as its objective "the cooperation of all the people of
  society." It spoke to the frustrations of these restless (and as some
  argued) morally uprooted young people, by promising a society "com-
  pletely based on the human feeling of brotherly love and humanity."
  It attracted their sympathy by suggesting that "men of character"
  18 Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 41, 57; Saguisa, Nihon noyuibuisuronsha, p.
  17; Sievers, "Kotoku Shusui," p. 37; Chokugen, April 16,1905.
  19 Chokugen, April 16, 1905; Rikugo zasshi, no. 177, September 1895.
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  666 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  must ultimately triumph in a society in which leaders and led had
  lost their moral focus.20
  THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
  The Meiji government feared that the appearance of socialist doctrine
  in Japan portended social upheaval. The movement questioned the
  legitimacy of class divisions, propagated the idea of class warfare, and
  criticized fundamental institutions such as the military forces of a
  strong administrative state. In 1900 the Yamagata government promul-
  gated the Public Peace Police Law intended to check the activities of
  labor and socialist organizations. Under the provisions of these regula-
  tions, in 1901 the Social Democratic Party was disbanded within
  twelve hours of the publication of its manifesto, and editions of news-
  papers that had published its manifesto were confiscated. According
  to Abe Isoo, the authorities offered not to close down the organization
  if the socialists agreed to strike from their manifesto two items: the
  abolition of the House of Peers and the reduction of arms expendi-
  tures. And although the authorities objected to the manifesto's refer-
  ences to destruction of the class system, interestingly they offered no
  objections to socialist principles such as the public ownership of land
  and capital or to political reforms such as universal manhood suffrage
  or the secret ballot. This clearly reflected an implicit official recogni-
  tion that most of the manifesto presented no clear and present danger
  to the Meiji state and that its authors were not revolutionaries.21
  The socialists objected to the state as an instrument of political
  oppression and to the corruption of officials, but none of them (with
  the possible exception of Kinoshita) objected to the state per se before
  the Russo-Japanese War. As Abe Isoo argued, the state could in fact
  be an instrument for the establishment of a socialist economy: "There
  are two sides to the nature of the state these days, namely, the state as
  a political entity and the state as an industrial entity. . . . The path to
  socialist politics is the gradual decline of the authoritative [his empha-
  sis] agencies in politics and the development of economic agencies." In
  short, the state was acceptable as an agent of material progress but not
  as an agent of social or political control. It was even possible, Kata-
  20 Yamaji, "Genji no shakai mondai oyobi shakaishugisha"; Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no
  shiso," pp. 9, 36.
  21 Gluck, Japan's Modem Myths, pp. 174-7; F. G. Notehelfer, Kotoku Shusui: Portrait of a
  Japanese Radical (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 66-8; Abe
  Isoo, "Meiji sanju nen no Shakai Minshuto," Nihon shakai undoshi (special issue) Shakai
  kagaku 4 (Tokyo: Kaizosha, 1928), p. 77.
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  THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT 
  667
  yama wrote, to contemplate the realization of socialism under the
  Meiji constitution. In fact, with the exception of Kinoshita, who
  openly called for rejection of the kokutai myth, Meiji socialists criti-
  cized neither the Meiji constitution nor the role of the emperor.22
  Central to the socialist program was the idea of public ownership of
  the means of production-variously referred to as seisan kikan, shakai-
  teki kyoyu, and kokuyu. But for the most part, the Meiji socialists
  focused narrowly on the social welfare and managerial aspects of the
  socialization of the means of production. In their discussion of public
  ownership, they disregarded any analysis of the state as the political
  instrument of the ruling class and ignored the revolutionary role of the
  working class. More socialist than democratic, they took immediate
  aim only at the creation of a social-welfare state or some sort of state
  socialism. They conceived of the state as basically administrative and
  tried to depoliticize it by emphasizing its managerial functions. (Abe
  in fact thought of the ideal socialist state as being "one big insurance
  company.") By making the state managerial rather than political, they
  hoped to reduce political corruption, with the aim of achieving dis-
  tributive justice. 23
  The socialists were less concerned with the revolutionary takeover
  of government than with ensuring that the material and economic
  needs of the people were fulfilled. Unless poverty and deprivation
  were ended, it would not be possible to bring about the moral regenera-
  tion of society. As Kotoku said in 1899, "According to Confucius, the
  people should be made rich before teaching them." This view was
  shared by Sakai Toshihiko, who wrote, "If we desire to advance the
  general population beyond the desires of food, clothing, and shelter,
  we must carry out a fundamental reform of society; we must form a
  22 It is interesting to note that Kotoku wrote in 1902 that historically emperors in Japan had
  sought the well-being of the people and hence "were in complete accord with the principles of
  socialism" (Crump, Origins of Socialist Thought, pp. 126-7). Similar sorts of arguments were
  advanced by Abe as well, clearly in an attempt to establish the compatibility of socialism and
  the emperor system. For quotation from Abe, see Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso,"
  p. 58; and for details, see Abe Isoo's articles in Shin kigen, nos. 1-8, 11, 12; Kotoku,
  Shakaishugi, p. 68; Kotoku, Hydron, pp. 11-17; Hayashi, Heimin shinbun ronsetsushu, pp.
  162-5; f°r quotation from Katayama, see Kishimoto Eitaro and Koyama Hirotake, Nikon no
  hikyosanlo marukusushugisha (Tokyo: San'ichi shobo, 1962), p. 10; for quotation from
  Kinoshita, see Nakamura, Meiji shakashugi kenkyu, pp. 38-42; and Yanagida Izumi,
  Kinoshita Naoe (Tokyo: Rironsha, 1955), p. 126.
  23 Meiji socialists read both Richard Ely, who praised the social welfare state, and Albert
  Schaeffle, who set forth state socialism as the ultimate form of socialism. For a bibliography
  of readings, see Kotoku, Shakaishugi, introduction; and Yamaji, "Genji no shakai mondai
  oyobi shakai-shugisha." For a discussion of terms used by socialists, see Matsuzawa, "Meiji
  shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 31-2. For a discussion of the state, see Kotoku, Shakaishugi,
  conclusion; and Abe Isoo, Shakaishugiron (Tokyo: Wabei kyokai, 1907), pp. 14-20.
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  668 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  society that guarantees the general population food, clothing, and
  shelter. In other words, we must make socialism a reality."24
  For most of the decade after 1901, all socialists agreed on the effi-
  cacy of a parliamentary policy. The electoral success of the German
  Social Democratic Party, which they regarded as a mentor and model,
  gave them heart. Although Abe Isoo knew that socialist victory in
  Japan lay decades in the future, he confidently predicted in 1903 that
  "the final victory will be ours." Commitment to parliamentarism as-
  sumed that the achievement of socialism would not require political
  violence. As the editors of the Heimin shinbun, the principal socialist
  newspaper, argued in 1904, "The only way to achieve socialism is to
  seize power, and to seize power the majority of the Diet seats must be
  taken. To seize the majority in the Diet, public opinion in favor of
  socialism must be created." The socialists therefore not only commit-
  ted themselves, as we have seen, to agitating, spreading propaganda,
  and publicizing their position, they also allied themselves with Diet
  politicians who called for the establishment of universal manhood
  suffrage.2*
  The socialists had no doubt that Japan would some day become a
  socialist state. Even before the founding of the Social Democratic
  Party, Kotoku wrote, "Socialism is manifestly the great ideology and
  idealism of the twentieth century. . . . Socialism is the great principle
  that is to save the world; it is not a fantasy; it is a realistic proposition."
  But even though they looked forward to revolutionary change, the
  socialists did not think that it had to be achieved through violence or
  direct action. The function of the socialist movement, as Kotoku saw
  it, was to act as the "midwife" of revolutionary change. "Revolution is
  destined; it is not brought about by human efforts. It must be led, but
  it cannot be manufactured. It is not something one can bring on, nor is
  it something one can escape." The role of the "revolutionist" therefore
  was to "judge what the conditions of society are and to guide the
  general trend of its progress so that we may hope to create a peaceful
  revolution." As a means to this end, Kotoku supported universal
  manhood suffrage which he saw leading to socialist control over the
  Diet and local government. But he did not expect the people to seize
  control by themselves. He saw them instead as the beneficiaries of the
  moral elite who would be brought to power by their votes. His assump-
  24 Quotations are from Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 39-40.
  25 Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 198-200; Kotoku, Hydron, pp. 20-3; Hayashi, Heimin shinbun
  ronseisushu, pp. 156-61; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanw, pp. 90-1; Matsu-
  zawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 32-3, 40; Abe Isoo's article in Rodo sekai, August
  1, 1898.
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  THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT 
  669
  tion, like that of the other socialists, was that "men of character" like
  themselves would guide the country peacefully toward its socialist
  transformation. In fact, the socialist movement drew on the burgeon-
  ing educated elite rather than on mass organizations or the masses.26
  It was not until February 1906, after the establishment of the first
  Saionji cabinet, that the socialists were permitted to organize a legally
  recognized party able to run candidates for office, openly solicit mem-
  bers, and hold conventions. Though the names of several ironworkers,
  a few printers, a jinrikisha puller or two, and some miners from the
  Ashio copper mine appeared on its membership list, the Japanese
  Socialist Party (Nihon shakaito) founded in February 1906 was essen-
  tially composed of middle-class intellectuals; its leaders were writers,
  reporters, and scholars, many of whom had been socialist activists
  early on. Legal restrictions, particularly the Public Peace Police Law,
  inhibited recruitment. No schoolteacher, Shinto or Buddhist priest,
  woman, nonadult male, or student could join a party. The latter exclu-
  sion particularly hurt the Socialist Party, as it was the students more
  than any other part of the population who read the socialists' publica-
  tions and flocked to their meetings. Neither was there a labor move-
  ment to offer its support, as the Public Peace Police Law made unions
  practically impossible; and socialist organizers never really did try to
  rally workers to their ranks. As a result, the Japanese Socialist Party,
  as Arahata Kanson put it, had "plenty of commanding generals with-
  out troops to move."2?
  In any case, the Japanese Socialist Party survived only a year,
  largely because its members were accused of engaging in subversive
  political disturbances. During the spring and summer of 1906, the
  Japanese Socialist Party, along with the National Socialist Party
  (Kokka shakaito) led by Yamaji Aizan, led a popular protest against a
  proposed increase in Tokyo's city tram fares. The campaign achieved
  its purpose, and the proposed fare increase was canceled. Katayama
  26 Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," pp. 32, 59-63; Kotoku, Shakaishugi, pp. 195—
  200; Sievers, "Kotoku Shusui," p. 59; Yamaji, "Genji no shakai mondai oyobi shakaishu-
  gisha," passim. In 1907 the Metropolitan Police Bureau in Tokyo announced that there were a
  total of 25,000 socialists in the country, with 14,000 of them residing in Tokyo. The police
  acknowledged that this was a "rough figure" and did not explain the criteria by which they
  determined who was a socialist, but the report confidently categorized with exceptional (if
  suspect) precision the social status of many socialists: 3,200 workers, 7,500 students, 50
  politicians, 180 soldiers, 60 priests or ministers, 10 judicial officials, 45 doctors, and 200
  "unknown." A less optimistic tally by the Japanese Socialist Party itself that included the
  name of every person who appeared on the party rolls during its years of existence indicates a
  membership of only 200. Nakamura Katsunori, "Nihon Shakaito no soshiki to undo,"
  Hogaku kenkyo 33 (October i960): 28-31.
  27 Nakamura, "Nihon Shakaito no soshiki to undo," pp. 29-34; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon
  no hikyosanw, pp. 37-62.
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  670 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  Sen declared it "the first victory of the red flag in Japan," but it
  proved to be a Pyrrhic one. The police arrested and jailed ten socialists
  active in the campaign, including Nishikawa and Osugi Sakae (1885—
  1923), and the cabinet agreed to keep a close eye on the Socialist
  Party, waiting for an opportunity to crack down on it.28
  The opportunity came the following February when Sakai Toshi-
  hiko opened the party convention with a strong protest against the
  government's use of army troops to suppress a riot of some 3,600
  miners and other workers who had bombed, burned, and virtually
  destroyed the facilities at the Ashio copper mine in Tochigi Prefec-
  ture. Government officials had quickly blamed the riot on the social-
  ists, especially on their party journal, Heimin shinbun, even though
  there was little proof of their involvement. At the party convention
  Sakai called the government's use of military forces against the rioters
  "a grave blunder." Most of the resolution he proposed on behalf of the
  party's executive committee was more programmatic, a reiteration of
  the ideas and demands made by socialists throughout the decade. It
  proclaimed that the party sought "fundamentally to reorganize the
  existing social structure" so that the means of production would be
  owned in common by society, and it stated that the party should
  "arouse the workers' class consciousness," seeking to develop their
  "solidarity and discipline." The executive committee also expressed its
  "deep sympathy with all types of revolutionary movements struggling
  throughout the world." Five days after the convention opened, the
  government disbanded the party because of the subversive content of
  speeches and debates carried on at the convention.
  The 1907 convention was also marked by a tactical rupture in the
  ranks of the socialist movement. Missing from the executive commit-
  tee's resolution, conspicuously so as it had been an integral part of the
  socialist credo since 1901, was a declaration of the party's commitment
  to legal or constitutional tactics. A year earlier the party had promised
  "to advocate socialism within the limits of the law of the land," and for
  years the socialists had worked to broaden the electoral franchise. But
  now the executive committee avoided any discussion of the party's
  parliamentary role and merely suggested that party members were free
  to follow their own inclinations about involvement in the universal
  manhood suffrage movement. Neither Sakai nor the executive com-
  mittee sought to repudiate parliamentary or legal tactics but merely
  28 Nakamura, "Nihon Shakaitono soshiki to undo," pp. 38-45; Kishimoco and Koyama, Nihon
  no hikyosanld.
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  THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT 
  67I
  wanted to mend the growing rift within the party. Kotoku Shusui had
  demanded that the party adopt the tactics of "direct action" and as-
  serted that the general strike was the "means for future revolution."
  Tazoe Tetsuji (1875-1908), on the other hand, had demanded that the
  party reassert its commitment to the universal suffrage movement and
  the primacy of parliamentary tactics. The executive committee sought
  to find a compromise middle ground.29
  During 1906 Kotoku had discerned a shift in the "tide of the world
  revolutionary movement" away from parliamentary tactics toward
  more radical tactics of anarchosyndicalism. His discovery came in part
  as the result of his reading of Peter Kropotkin's anarchist tracts while
  in prison and in part as a result of his association with the International
  Workers of the World in California in 1905-6. Moreover, he was
  impressed by the successful tactics of the Russian revolutionary upris-
  ing during and after the Russo-Japanese war. If the Russian revolution-
  aries could act with such boldness and determination in a society that
  appeared much more backward than Japan's, how much more appro-
  priate for Japanese revolutionaries to do so. Kotoku had come to think
  that parliamentary action, instead of advancing the cause of socialism,
  seemed instead to be emasculating it. The European socialist parties
  stood in danger of becoming nothing more than "alternative bourgeois
  [shinshi] parties" incapable of functioning as revolutionary parties of
  the working class. In an appeal to Japanese youth Kotoku wrote, "The
  revolution [his emphasis] to come is not the revolution of politics, not
  the revolution of the electoral law, nor that of parliament. . . . [T]he
  revolution of the future, it goes without saying, is the socialist, the
  anarchist revolution."3°
  For Kotoku the meaning of revolution had changed, and so had the
  role of the socialist activist. He now advocated the use of "direct
  action" specifically a general strike, to paralyze society. "[I]f the [up-
  per classes] had their food and clothing cut off, they would truly know
  the power of the workers. . . . [I]f the police know the truth of the
  socialist system can they really shoot their brothers and parents?" A
  general strike would not only make the ruling class aware of the work-
  ers' collective power but would raise the consciousness of the workers
  as well. "To achieve our objectives, which is a fundamental revolution
  29 Nakamura, "Nihon Shakaito no soshiki to undo," p. 28; Crump, Origins of Socialist Thought,
  pp. 250-2; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto.
  30 Hayashi, Heimin shinbun ronsetsushu, pp. 135-44. F°r a B°°d translation of Kotoku's "The
  Change in My Thought," see Crump, Origins of Socialist Thought, pp. 341-51; Mitani
  Taichiro, Taisho demokurashiiron (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1974), pp. 71-3; Nakamura,
  Meiji, p. 73; Matsuzawa, "Meiji shakaishugi no shiso," p. 34.
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  672 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  in the economic system, and the abolition of the wage system, it is
  more urgent to awaken the consciousness of ten workers than to get a
  thousand signatures on a petition for universal suffrage."31
  In opposition to Kotoku, Tazoe argued for the parliamentary tactics
  on the grounds that strikes and other extraparliamentary tactics would
  not ultimately improve the economic position of the workers. The
  locus of the capitalists' power was in the Diet, and if the workers were
  to challenge that power, they had to resort to parliamentary methods.
  He criticized the faddishness of Kotoku, who urged that the Japanese
  radical movement keep pace with the latest shift in trends abroad; he
  himself thought that the socialist movement had to develop doctrines
  appropriate to the social and political situation in Japan. Within the
  party, only Katayama supported Tazoe, whereas Kotoku's view ap-
  pealed to younger members of the movement such as Osugi Sakae and
  Yamakawa Hitoshi.32
  The debate between Kotoku and Tazoe reflected a deepening aware-
  ness of the need for an appropriate way to raise the consciousness of the
  working class in order to accomplish the overthrow of capitalist society.
  The issue at stake between them was not the moral corruption of their
  society, on which they were agreed, but the way in which that corrup-
  tion should be rooted out. Kotoku wanted to raise the consciousness of
  the workers through the drama of "direct action," Tazoe through reli-
  ance on organization and votes. Kotoku thought Tazoe's method was
  self-defeating, as any compromise with the political institutions of capi-
  talism was corrupting. He feared that a parliamentary socialist party
  would ultimately come to terms with the ruling class, as the Jiyuto had.
  If as Yamakawa suggested, Kotoku "denied politics," then Tazoe af-
  firmed it. This divergence in views over whether to work within the
  given political structure or to overthrow it from without foreshadowed
  the tactical dilemma later to be debated in the 1920s by intellectuals and
  activists with a firmer grasp of Marxism. Both Kotoku and Tazoe,
  though aware of the need to raise the workers' consciousness, still
  regarded the workers as tools or instruments for change rather than as
  men aware of their own needs and interests, and both still saw them-
  selves as members of an enlightened moral minority."
  The socialist movement suffered an enormous setback in 1911 when
  the government hanged Kotoku Shusui and eleven others, including his
  31 Sievers, "Kotoku Shusui," p. 108; Nakamura, Meiji, pp. 74-5; Kishimoto and Koyama,
  Nihon kindaishaken, pp. 10x3-3.
  32 Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon kindai shakai; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanw.
  33 Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto; Mitani, Taisho demokurashiiron, p. 75.
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  MINPONSHUGI 
  673
  lover Kanno Sugako, for the crime of conspiring to assassinate the
  emperor. The "Great Treason incident" (daigyakujiken) was the culmi-
  nation of a prolonged campaign to suppress the socialist movement.
  Although the socialists and their publications had been subjected to
  official harassment before 1907, the powerful elder statesman Yama-
  gata Aritomo had increased his pressure on the first Saionji and second
  Katsura cabinets to suppress all social movements. Frightened by the
  Ashio incident, the first large-scale strike in Japan, as well as by other
  incidents of social protest, Yamagata felt that a period of "social destruc-
  tionism" (shakaihakaishugi) had begun. Police agents stepped up their
  harassment of socialist newspapers: banned individual issues, arrested
  editors, and interfered with their distribution. Even the journals pub-
  lished by Katayama's parliamentary faction, which clearly asserted
  their belief that socialism could be achieved by legal means, were dealt
  with as harshly as were those associated with the anarchists.34
  The arrest and execution of Kotoku, leader of the anarchist wing,
  was intended to damn the entire socialist movement as subversive and
  a threat to the emperor and nation. But in fact, the government prose-
  cutors were never able to prove that Kotoku had more than an early
  and temporary interest in the conspiracy to assassinate the emperor.
  At the trial they focused on his "intent," not on any overt acts he
  committed. In any case, the trial ushered in what has been called the
  "winter years" (fuyu nojidai) of socialism. Nothing, or nearly nothing,
  could be published, and obviously no one dared to organize a political
  party or any other kind of political group. In his autobiography,
  Arahata even recalls that the government banned an entomological
  work entitled Konchu shakai (Insect society) because it contained the
  dreaded word shakai (society).35
  MINPONSHUGI
  Although the "winter years" were bleak for the socialist movement,
  they were years of thaw for more moderate and cautious intellectuals-
  most of them contemporaries of younger socialists like Yamakawa
  Hitoshi, Osugi Sakae, and Sakai Toshihiko-who advocated greater
  democratization of the political process. Like the Meiji socialists,
  these young democratic liberals lamented the ethical poverty of poli-
  34 Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, pp. 170-6,188,219,227; Crump, Origins of Socialist Thought,
  p. 304; Oka Yoshitake, "Generational Conflict After the Russo-Japanese War," in Conflict in
  Modem Japanese History, ed. Tetsuo Najita and Victor Koschmann (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
  ton University Press, 1982), p. 217. 
  35 Notehelfer, Kotoku Shusui, pp. 185-6.
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  674 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  tics and the meaningless struggles for power among the country's self-
  serving leaders, but they were more optimistic that the political system
  would soon change from within as the result of long-term evolutionary
  processes. The transition to a new imperial reign, from Meiji to
  Taisho, symbolized for them the passing of the old and a coming of the
  new, a break in political time. "The trend of the times demands a new
  politics, and they demand new men," wrote Maruyama Kanji in 1914.
  "To resist is like trying to make water run up hill. By new politics, I
  mean a politics that does not exclude Japan from the rest of the world;
  by new men I mean those who will move with the currents in the
  world. The road the Taisho era must travel cannot veer from the trend
  toward democracy."36 Japan, like the rest of the world, was being
  swept along in a great democratic tide, and the "era of the populariza-
  tion of politics" lay ahead. Visible everywhere were signs of an "awak-
  ening of the people" (jinmin nojikaku) or an "awakening of the nation"
  (kokumin nojikaku).
  What initially gave the democratic liberals grounds for optimism
  was the steady escalation of popular demonstrations and street move-
  ments during the years following the Russo-Japanese War. Beginning
  with the anti-Portsmouth Treaty movement of 1905, these popular
  outbursts had culminated in the first "movement to protect constitu-
  tional government" (kenseiyogo undo) of 1912-13 and the protests over
  the Siemens affair in 1914. Their political meaning, however, was
  ambiguous. Although public demonstrations were solid evidence of
  the new "trend of the times" about which Maruyama spoke, they were
  also symptomatic of the failure of the constitutional process. "The
  reason we see these mob explosions today," observed Ukita Kazutami,
  "is that there is no public opinion adequate to check the government's
  use of its authority."37 Denied other legal and constitutional means of
  making their views known, crowds had taken to the streets, rallying in
  public to denounce the nation's leaders, their policies, their selfish
  hold on power. Often demonstrators fell prey to the agitation of
  rabble-rousers and turned violent. The upsurge of popular political
  unruliness marked a breakdown in the national consensus and social
  harmony, a growing rift between the goals of the government and the
  goals of the people.
  The liberal democratic intellectuals had no doubts about where to
  place the blame for this breakdown in national consensus. The fault
  36 Maruyama Kanji, "Minshuteki keiko to seitd," Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, January 1913.
  37 Peter Duus, "Liberal Intellectuals and Social Conflict in Taisho Japan," in Conflict in Modem
  Japanese History, p. 46.
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  MINPONSHUGI 
  675
  lay not in capitalism or capitalist morality but in the backwardness of
  Japanese political development. The persistence of "bureaucratic gov-
  ernment" (kantyd seiji) or "clique government" (hanbatsu seiji) perpetu-
  ated authoritarian politics and obsolete national priorities. In 1912-
  13, protestors had called for the "overthrow of clique government"
  and the "protection of constitutional government." Control over the
  government lay in the hands of a "privileged class" {tokken kaikyu)
  which selfishly arrogated to itself the right to decide the nation's des-
  tiny. With the same vehemence that the Meiji socialists had attacked
  the "gentlemen's gang," and for many of the same reasons, the Taisho
  democrats assailed the "aristocratic cliques" (monbatsu), "bureaucratic
  cliques" (hanbatsu), and "militarist cliques" (gunbatsu) who dominated
  politics. Unlike the socialists, however, they did not attack "capital-
  ists," nor did they express any interest in restructuring the political
  economy along the lines suggested by the Second International.
  The democratic liberals' overriding concern was with the political
  process. Reform of that process was the key to ending political conflict
  and strengthening the nation. Unlike the socialists, the liberals did not
  debate whether to pursue "parliamentary action" or "direct action."
  Their model was the liberal bourgeois representative democracies of
  the West, and commitment to the parliamentary process basically
  defined their political position. The democratic liberals had no quarrel
  with the state, or the idea of loyalty to the state, but only with the way
  that "bureaucratic government" commanded that loyalty-by docile
  obedience. They envisaged a political society made up of involved
  citizens, not passive subjects. Only if the parliamentary process were
  democratized, only if it were made more responsive to public opinion,
  and only if the people assumed greater control over the government,
  they argued, could the nation be held together.
  Given their focus on the political process, the Taisho liberals did not
  concern themselves much with the "locus of sovereignty," an issue that
  had bedeviled constitutional theorists since the 1880s. In 1912 the jour-
  nalistic debates between Uesugi Shinkichi, the heir of Hozumi Yat-
  suka, and Minobe Tatsukichi, author of the "organ theory" (tenno kikan
  setsu), had again brought that issue to public attention. Uesugi argued
  that sovereignty lay in the emperor, whereas Minobe argued that it lay
  in the state, of which the emperor was merely an "organ" or "mecha-
  nism" (kikan). For the democratic liberals this question seemed unre-
  lated to the realities of politics. Yoshino Sakuzo, while a law student at
  Tokyo Imperial University, had come under the influence of Onozuka
  Kiheiji, who encouraged his students to investigate governmental pol-
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  676 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  icy and political practice. Onozuka contended that "political science"
  {seijigaku), that is, the study of political systems as they functioned
  historically, was as important as "juridical science" (kokkagaku), that is,
  the abstract analysis of the state as a legal concept. What counted for
  Yoshino, as well the other democratic liberals, was not where sover-
  eignty lay but how it was to be exercised.
  The publication of Yoshino Sakuzo's lengthy essay on constitutional
  government in 1916 (Kensei no hongi 0 toite sonoyushu no bi 0 nasu michi o
  ronzu) brought the democratic liberals' position into sharp focus.*8 The
  purpose of his essay was to describe the essential features of a demo-
  cratic constitutional structure-the protection of individual rights, the
  separation of powers, the role of a representative assembly, and respon-
  sible cabinets-and to suggest why this model was appropriate for Ja-
  pan. Like other liberals Yoshino deliberately avoided issues of juridical
  theory, that is, how to interpret the letter of the constitution, and
  concentrated instead on its "spirit," the values that gave it life. (As
  Oyama Ikuo later observed, it was not possible to "interpret a system of
  law apart from the national spirit [Volksgeist].")&
  The "spirit of constitutional government," Yoshino implicitly ar-
  gued, could be discovered only if one searched for its historical roots.
  Like most advocates of democratic reform, Yoshino read modern his-
  tory as the history of expanding liberty, the collapse of authoritarian-
  ism in the face of rising popular power. This "whig interpretation" of
  history, a legacy from the Meiji era, had first surfaced in the 1880s and
  1890s among the advocates of constitutional government and a na-
  tional assembly .4° It tacitly assumed that yearning for freedom was a
  universal instinct and that the spread of constitutional government
  was its product.*1 Hence, Yoshino asserted, although constitutions
  might differ from country to country in their particulars, all constitu-
  tions were the "inevitable product of modern civilization," and all
  shared a "common spiritual root."
  38 The essay appeared in the January 1916 issue of Chuo koron and has been reprinted in Ota
  Masao, ed., Taisho demokurashii ronshu (Tokyo: Shinsuisha, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 244-312. For
  an interesting treatment of Yoshino's thought, see Tetsuo Najita, "Some Reflections on the
  Political Thought of Yoshino Sakuzo," in Japan in Crisis: Essay on Taisho Democracy, ed.
  Bernard S. Silberman and H. D. Harootunian (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
  1974). Also useful is Peter Duus, "Yoshino Sakuzo: The Christian As Political Critic,"
  Journal of Japanese Studies 4 (Spring 1978): 301-26. 
  39 Ota, Taisho, vol. 1, p. 412.
  40 Cf. Peter Duus, "Whig History, Japanese Style: The Min'yusha Historians and the Meiji
  Restoration," Journal of Asian Studies 33 (May 1974): 415-36.
  41 Cf. the following statement by Nagai Ryutaro: "There is a law that the trend of civilization
  moves from autocracy to freedom. That human beings crave freedom and require equality is a
  natural desire, just as feathered creatures crave flight in the sky, and beasts of the field seek
  water from mountain streams when they thirst. . . ." Shin Nihon, March 1915, pp. 73-4.
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  MINPONSHUGI 
  677
  It should not surprise us that Yoshino found the "common spiritual
  root" of all constitutions to be tninponshugi, a term that became central
  to the political lexicon of the 1910s. Minponshugi was Yoshino's transla-
  tion of the word democracy, but as his essay pointed out, the Western
  term conflated two seperate meanings: the idea that "legally, state
  sovereignty lay in the people" and the idea that "politically, the funda-
  mental goal of the exercise of state sovereignty lay in the people."
  Democracy in the first sense, popular sovereignty, was better called
  minshushugi. It was clearly not applicable to Japan, whose constitution
  unambiguously lodged sovereignty in the emperor. Rather, it was
  democracy in the second sense that Yoshino meant by minponshugi.
  The concept was political, not legal or juridical. On the one hand, it
  meant that "the exercise of political power, that is, the 'purpose of
  government,' is in the welfare [rifuku] of the general populace [ippan
  minshu]"; on the other hand it also meant that "the determination of
  the goals of the exercise of political power, that is, 'policymaking,'
  depends on the will [ikd] of the general populace."t2
  Interestingly and ironically, Yoshino had borrowed the word min-
  ponshugi from Uesugi Shinkichi, his conservative colleague in the law
  faculty of Tokyo Imperial University, who argued that Japan had
  always been a country with a "monarchical sovereign [kunshu]" but
  never been a "monarch-centered [kunpon] polity" like the France of
  Louis XIV. Rather, it had been a "people-centered [minpon] polity"
  responsive to the needs and welfare of all the people, and the basic
  moral imperative of the imperial family had always been minponshugi
  ("the principle of people centeredness"). Uesugi was clearly stating
  that the Japanese monarchy was benevolent and that imperial sover-
  eignty was compatible with popular welfare. But Yoshino used minpon-
  shugi not to defend the imperial institution or the kokutai but, rather,
  to show that "democracy" (= minponshugi) posed no threat to the
  imperial institution or the kokutai. He wanted to refute the view that
  democracy was a form of "dangerous thought." Danger lay not in
  minponshugi, said Yoshino, but in minshushugi- popular sovereignty-
  an idea that could lead to sedition in the hands of a radical like Kotoku
  Shusui. One of the reasons that Yoshino's essay had such an impact
  was that it brilliantly reconciled the democratic political process with
  the peculiarities of the Japanese constitutional structure, demonstrat-
  ing that it was possible for Japan to participate in the "world trend"
  toward democracy without sacrificing its national essence.
  42 Ota, Taisho, vol. I, p. 266.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  In practical terms, Yoshino, like the other democratic liberals, as-
  serted that minponshugi meant following the practices of modern repre-
  sentative parliamentary democracy. Even though representative insti-
  tutions were a less-than-perfect embodiment of minponshugi, they did
  rest on the principle that the "people" (jinmin) should select their own
  leaders, and they did guarantee that policy would reflect the will of the
  people. Like other democratic liberals such as Minobe Tatsukichi or
  Nagai Ryutaro, Yoshino also argued that a commitment to representa-
  tive government, and hence to minponshugi, had been national policy
  since the Charter Oath of 1868 had called for the convening of assem-
  blies and broad public discussion. Representative government was
  compatible not only with the ancient tradition of imperial sovereignty
  but also with the goals of the Restoration.«
  Yoshino's essay immediately provoked debate. "Minponshugi! Min-
  ponshugi!" remarked one ironic observer. "These days night does not
  fall nor the sun rise without minponshugi. Anyone who does not talk
  about minponshugi is regarded as an eccentric badly out of touch with
  things."44 Despite Yoshino's attempt to reconcile democracy with the
  kokutai, conservatives like Uesugi attacked the idea of representative
  democracy as incompatible with the Japanese monarchical order.
  Some liberals criticized Yoshino for making vague and simplistic
  distinctions or presenting a model of representative government al-
  ready out of date, and still others offered their own pet neologisms-
  minshushugi, minseishugi, minjushugi, and minjishugi-as alternatives to
  minponshugi. But nearly all the leading liberal intellectuals-Kimura
  Kyuichi, Minobe Tatsukichi, Sasaki Soichi, Oyama Ikuo, and Kawa-
  kami Hajime- immediately accepted Yoshino's dichotomy between
  minshushugi and minponshugi (if not always his terms) as well as his
  implication that democracy was compatible with the kokutai. There
  was also a solid consensus behind his programmatic proposals: an end
  to "bureaucratic government," the establishment of responsible cabi-
  nets, the subordination of the upper house to the lower house in the
  Diet, and, most important of all, the broadening of suffrage. "The
  expansion of the suffrage, together with strict enforcement of [elec-
  tion] control laws, is the most urgent task facing our nation," Yoshino
  wrote in 1916.45
  The advocates of minponshugi were no more populist than were the
  Meiji socialists, however, and they too expected the representative
  process to produce a moral elite (or a meritocratic elite) not unlike
  43 Ota, Taisho, vol. i,p.275. 
  44 bu,Taisho, vol. 2,p. 101. 
  45 Ota,Taisho, vol. I,p.298.
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  MINPONSHUGI 
  679
  themselves. Before 1918 when Yoshino, Oyama Ikuo, Nagai Ryutard,
  and other democratic liberals called for an expanded suffrage, it was
  the enfranchisement of all educated middle-class males that they had
  in mind. They wanted to substitute educational qualifications (or
  other tokens of social responsibility such as completion of military
  service or assumption of household headship) for the tax-paying quali-
  fications on the right to vote. The lower orders - "those below the
  middle class"-were not yet ready for full political participation, nor
  were women. To be sure, the democratic liberals saw no intrinsic
  reason that the general populace should not be enfranchised in the
  long run, but they felt that the constitutional system was only a genera-
  tion old and that it was difficult for the people to absorb the idea of
  self-rule or political representation after centuries under autocratic
  regimes. At the beginning of his minponshugi essay, Yoshino had la-
  mented that even many members of the educated classes, who should
  be the "leaders of a nation's culture," did not fully understand the
  working and spirit of constitutional government; how much more
  difficult it would be then for the lower classes. The democratic liberals
  covered their ambivalence toward the masses, however, by contending
  that the people had to be prepared for full political enfranchisement
  through "political education" and a "transformation of their knowl-
  edge and morality." Raising their political consciousness was the first
  step in bringing them into the political process.
  The democratic liberals also seem to have assumed that suffrage
  reform would take care of the problem of leadership. If the suffrage
  were broadened to include the educated middle classes, vote buying,
  bribery, and other forms of electoral corruption would decline, and
  "men of character" (jinkakusha) would stand for election. There was
  less agreement on just how the elected should represent those who
  elected them. On the one hand, it was obvious that representatives
  should reflect the will of the people, or at least public opinion. But the
  people did not always know what was best for them. As Yoshino often
  put it, the relations between the people and their representatives was
  like that between patients and physicians: The patients know that they
  are ill, but the doctors know how to cure them. "True minponshugi
  politicians make public opinion and lead it, but afterwards carry on
  government in accordance with public opinion," suggested Kawakami
  Hajime.46 Like the Meiji socialists, the democratic liberals yearned for
  the emergence of knowledgeable and moral leaders, and they often
  46 Kawakami Hajime, "Minponshugi to wa nanizoya," Tohdjiron, October 1917.
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  680 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  pointed out that democratic countries in the West produced men like
  Wilson, Poincare, and Lloyd George-eloquent, literate, and even
  scholarly intellectual aristocrats who were nonetheless able to respond
  to the popular will.
  As we have already suggested, it was the growing rift between the
  government and the people that concerned the democratic liberals.
  The ultimate practical justification of their program was that democra-
  tization of the political process created national harmony and consen-
  sus. Representative government, the democratic liberals believed,
  would intensify commitment to the nation. The flaw of despotic or
  authoritarian government-such as the domination of government by
  "privileged classes" in Japan-was that it did not encourage voluntary
  commitment to national goals. Yoshino, Oyama, Kawakami, and oth-
  ers used terms like kanmin dokyo (cooperation of people and officials),
  kunmin dochi (joint rule by sovereign and people), kunmin dosei (joint
  government by people and sovereign), or banmin dochi (joint rule of all
  the people) to describe the essence of constitutional government.
  These faintly traditionalistic terms were intended to suggest that demo-
  cratic politics was an integrative process, creating solidarity within
  society by creating a sense of jointness or commonality.
  Oyama Ikuo developed these ideas into a theory of democratic na-
  tionalism. Drawing on the sociological theories of politics he had stud-
  ied in the United States, he argued that the state rested on both the
  individual's instinct toward community ("associative consciousness"
  [dorui ishiki]) and a "sense of common interest" (kyddd rigai kanneri). If
  the state suppressed the demands of the individual, then the whole
  society would be weakened. But if "associative consciousness" were
  strengthened and a "sense of common interest" were clarified, then
  the individual would spontaneously contribute to the welfare of the
  whole society. "We believe that true national unity [kyokoku itchi]
  springs from an intense consciousness of the people's common inter-
  ests [kokumin kyddd no rigai]," wrote Oyama Ikuo in 1917, "and this
  intense consciousness of common interest will come once the people
  have assumed joint responsibility for the management of the state as a
  result of the spread of the right to vote."47 Democracy, in other words,
  was the "end point" {shuteri) of nationalism. "Nationalism," he wrote,
  "must ultimately end in democracy." This argument rested on the
  assumption, which Oyama shared with the other democratic liberals,
  47 Oyama Ikuo, "Kokka seikatsu to kyodo rigai kannen," Shin skoseisu, February 1917.
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  TOWARD RADICALISM 
  68l
  that the state was not only legitimate but neutral, standing above
  partisan, sectional, or class interests.
  It was in their nationalism that the tninponshugi liberals set them-
  selves farthest from the Meiji socialists. Whereas the socialists had
  been strongly opposed to the Russo-Japanese War and had proclaimed
  the international solidarity of the working class when Katayama shook
  hands with Georgy Plekhanov at the Second International meeting in
  1904, the democratic liberals took pains to point out that minponshugi
  was compatible not only with imperialism but also with militarism.
  Only anarchists believed in cosmopolitan liberty, observed Oyama,
  whereas imperialism was expressive of the national spirit. In the midst
  of World War I it was difficult for the minponshugi liberals to be
  pacifist when the forces of democracy were pitted against the forces of
  autocracy, and militarism in the narrow sense of using military force
  was seen as compatible with democracy. At the end of the war many
  liberals began to speak of internationalism as well, but they construed
  that to mean not a supranational cosmopolitanism transcending na-
  tional boundaries but an attempt to create harmonious relationships
  among nation-states by peaceful diplomatic means.
  TOWARD RADICALISM
  The outbreak of the rice riots in 1918 confirmed the democratic liber-
  als' claim that dire consequences would result if government were not
  more responsive to popular needs. As the Tqyd keizai shinpo editorial-
  ized shortly after the disturbances, "Unfortunately the political pro-
  cess in our country works effectively only for the property-owning
  minority, whereas the classes without property are hardly given any
  security at all. In one sense it is possible to say that those without
  property have no government at all. Herein lies the true cause of the
  riots."*8 Such disturbances occurred, said Yoshino, because govern-
  ments do not bend an ear to the demands of the people. Nagai Ryutaro
  pointed out that the riots revealed not only that the bureaucratic au-
  thorities were out of touch with the people but also that the Diet
  "neither possessed the will to understand the economic hardships of
  the people nor made efforts to eliminate them."49
  To the liberals the rice riots indicated that the "awakening of the
  people" seen dimly on the horizon in 1914 had arrived and that events in
  Japan echoed the broader "trend of the times." The triumph of the
  48 Quoted in Inoue Kiyoshi and Watanabe Tom, eds., Kome todo no kenkyu (Tokyo: Yuhikaku,
  1962), vol. 5, p. 240. 
  49 Nagai Ryutaro, Kaizo no riso (Tokyo, 1920), pp. 9-10.
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  682 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  democratic powers in World War I, the collapse of autocratic regimes in
  Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the explosion of popular demo-
  cratic and nationalist movements in central Europe confirmed the
  "world trend" toward democracy. On the other hand, the triumph of
  the "extremist" (that is, Bolshevik) government in Russia gave practical
  significance to the idea that democratization was essential to preserving
  social solidarity. The new Bolshevik government, wrote Oyama Ikuo,
  was a "decadent form of democracy. "5° If a similar sort of upheaval were
  to be avoided in Japan, it was essential to forestall the growth of class
  consciousness and class conflict foreshadowed by the rice riots, and that
  could best be done by the passage of a universal manhood suffrage law.
  In the wake of the rice riots, many leading minponshugi intellectuals
  moved toward greater political activism, but because many were aca-
  demics or journalists, they saw their task as raising political conscious-
  ness rather than seizing political power. At the end of 1918, Yoshino
  brought together a group of his students to begin a systematic study of
  universal suffrage and electoral reform, and he joined with Fukuda
  Tokuzo, Oyama Ikuo, and other liberal academics to found the
  Reimeikai, a society aimed at "enlightening" the Japanese public by
  discussing new political ideas. Other small organizations of young
  intellectuals, journalists, and politicians such as the Kaizo domeikai
  came together to discuss democratic reforms.5' With the support of
  liberal professors like Yoshino and Oyama, reform-minded students at
  the major national and private universities began to organize political
  societies of their own, such as the Shinjinkai at Tokyo Imperial Univer-
  sity and the Minjin domei at Waseda University. To the extent that
  most of these groups or their members engaged in overt political
  activities, it was through support of, or participation in, the universal
  suffrage movement of 1919-20.52
  But if the rice riots confirmed the position of the minponshugi liber-
  als, it also revealed the limitations of their position. The advocates of
  democratic reform, although they repeatedly stressed the importance
  of "social policy" as a part of minponshugi, had been less attentive to
  the distribution of wealth within Japanese society than to the distribu-
  50 Oyama Ikuo, "Rokoku kagekiha no jisseiryoku ni taisuru kashohi to sono seiji shiso no kachi
  ni taisuru kaidaishi," Chub kdron 33 (May 1917).
  51 For an informative discussion of several of these organizations, see ltd Takashi, Taishoki
  "kakushin" ha no seirilsu (Tokyo: Hanawa shoten, 1978).
  52 On the universal suffrage movement, see Matsuo Takayoshi, Taishd demokurashii no kenkyu
  (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1966); Matsuo Takayoshi, "Dai-ichi taisengo no fusen undo," in
  Taishoki no seiji to shakai, ed. Inone Kiyoshi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1969). The best
  Western-language treatment of the student movement in the 1920s is by Henry D. Smith II,
  Japan's First Student Radicals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).
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  TOWARD RADICALISM 
  683
  tion of power. The rice riots-as well as the wave of strikes and other
  labor disputes that broke out at the end of World War I-made clear
  that most of the population lacked economic security as well as politi-
  cal rights. Oyama Ikuo characterized the riots as a kind of "retaliatory
  confiscation," and Fukuda Tokuzo said the riots had occurred because
  the people had been pushed to a "point of extreme need" at which
  their right to survive overrode property rights. Still others pointed out
  that the basic cause of the riots was popular resentment at the great
  gap between rich and poor. Unlike the Hibiya riots and other post-
  1905 popular demonstrations, the rice riots had little to do with ques-
  tions of governmental control or foreign policy. At stake, rather, were
  issues such as the existence of social division, unequal distribution of
  wealth, pervasive economic hardship, and the unresponsiveness of the
  propertied class to any of these problems. 53
  What made the resolution of these issues particularly urgent was the
  spread of labor unrest. Before World War I the police, invoking Arti-
  cle 17 of the Public Peace Police Law, had been able to contain the
  growth of working-class organizations, but wartime economic disloca-
  tions had provoked labor-management friction. In many factories,
  disgruntled workers began to organize strikes and unions. In 1914
  there had been only 49 labor unions in Japan, but by 1919 there were
  187, with a total membership of 100,000. The most important of
  these, the Yuaikai, founded by Suzuki Bunji as a "friendly society" in
  1914, commanded a following of 30,000. The issues of social and
  economic justice raised by the rice riots were not a passing phenome-
  non but a cause for continuing concern.54
  By the end of 1918, neologisms like minponshugi were gradually
  abandoned in favor of more straightforward terms like minshushugi or
  simply demokurashii. More important, the idea of democracy was con-
  strued more broadly to embrace not only the political process and
  political institutions but also the social structure itself. It came to
  imply the elimination of social privilege, the guarantee of economic
  equality of opportunity, and a fairer distribution of wealth. "True
  democracy," wrote Hasegawa Nyozekan in 1919, meant increasing the
  equality of opportunity not only politically but socially and economi-
  cally as well; and Oyama Ikuo argued that the purpose of "true democ-
  racy" was to construct a society in which all members could "live like
  53 A collection of comments on the rice riots by important political and intellectual figures can
  be found in Inoue and Watanabe, eds., Kome sodo no kenkyu, vol. 5.
  54 The standard treatment of the Yuaikai in English is by Stephen S. Large, The Rise of Labor in
  Japan: The Yuaikai, 1912-1919 (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1972).
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  684 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  human beings" and in which there was an "increase in opportunities
  for each individual to act in a positive way politically, socially, and
  economically." Now everything was game for democratization, even
  education and the arts.«
  It was clear as the supporters of minponshugi began to debate the
  meaning of "true democracy" that lines of fracture were appearing in
  their ranks. In 1919 Fukuda Tokuzo, who joined with Yoshino
  Sakuzo to found the Reimeikai, distinguished between "capitalist po-
  litical democracy" (shihonteki seiji minshushugi) and "social democracy"
  {shakai minshushugi), by which he really meant "socialist democracy."
  Neither, he said, represented "true democracy," as they favored the
  interests of one segment of society over another. The holistic concep-
  tion of democracy central to the minponshugi argument was denied by a
  class-based definition of democracy.*6 Yoshino Sakuzo agreed with
  Fukuda that he opposed "social democracy" if that meant siding solely
  with the position of the workers' interests. The notion of a society
  divided against itself was repellent to democratic liberals of his stripe,
  and so was the political violence associated with socialist revolution. A
  true democrat could never become an "extremist," said Yoshino, be-
  cause he saw the democratic political process not as a means to an end
  but as valuable in itself. One wing of the democratic movement was
  therefore turning its face firmly against any theory of class conflict or
  social conflict.
  Curiously, however, Yoshino did not object to a socialist program of
  reform so long as it could be achieved through the constitutional
  process. Socialism stood for social policy. "A democrat [minpon-
  shugisha] does not necessarily have to be a socialist," he wrote in 1919,
  "but there is nothing to prevent him from being a socialist."s? While
  continuing to advocate political reform-universal manhood suffrage,
  an end to the political autonomy of the military, abolition of the Privy
  Council, reform of the House of Peers, and so forth-Yoshino sup-
  ported the legalization of labor union activities and social welfare pol-
  icy after 1918. In short, Yoshino and other moderates like Fukuda,
  Abe Isoo, and Nagai Ryutaro adopted a nondoctrinaire, non-Marxist
  kind of social democracy or social meliorism that linked democratic
  political reform to social welfare policy. Significantly, many of them
  were eventually involved in the organization of the moderate right
  wing of the "proletarian party movement" in the mid-i92os.
  55 Ota, Taisho, vol. 2, pp. 347-50, 475-82. 
  56 Ota, Taisho, vol. 2, pp. 460-75.
  57 Yoshino Sakuzo, "Minponshugi, shakaishugi, kagekishugi," Chuokoron, June 1919.
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  TOWARD RADICALISM 
  685
  But there were other advocates of minponshugi who wanted to move
  beyond political democratization to more sweeping and radical schemes
  of social reorganization. "Reconstruction" (kaizo) or "liberation" (kai-
  ho) became their new catchwords. In 1919 a spate of new journals
  appeared, focusing on labor problems, social problems, social re-
  form, and socialism, many of them started by former advocates of
  minponshugi. In January Kawakami Hajime began publication of Sha-
  kai mondai kenkyu (Studies in social problems); Hasegawa Nyozekan
  and Oyama Ikuo founded Warera (We ourselves); in April Kaizo
  (Reconstruction), a new general interest magazine appeared, and in
  June so did Kaiho (Liberation). Some former liberals, most notably
  Kawakami Hajime, declared themselves Marxists, but others, like
  Oyama Ikuo, were moving toward a vaguer (and perhaps romantic)
  identification with the working classes. And still others, like Hase-
  gawa Nyozekan, were drawn to new models of social and political
  organization emerging in the West. Articles began to appear on alter-
  native forms of political representation, including guild socialism or
  the Soviet system, in which economic interests rather than territorial
  interests were represented. The era when parliamentarism could be
  equated with democracy was at an end, and the issue had become not
  whether the "people" were represented in the political process but
  whether the emerging "fourth estate" (daiyon kaikyu) (that is, the
  working-class proletariat) was.58
  The shift toward a more radical political position sprang from grow-
  ing doubt about whether political democratization could guarantee so-
  cial harmony and national unity, or indeed whether it was anything
  more than a political sham. The issue had been raised by Yamakawa
  Hitoshi, one of the younger members of the Meiji socialist movement,
  who wrote a series of penetrating critiques of both Yoshino and Oyama.
  He dismissed Yoshino's distinction between minshushugi and minpon-
  shugi as a sophistry equivalent to saying that pork consisted of "two
  unrelated concepts-meat and fat."59 (Perhaps, he added, Yoshino
  thought that fat was not suited to weak Japanese stomachs and so denied
  that it was pork.) But more to the point, in attacking Oyama, Yama-
  kawa denied the possibility that the state or the representative process
  could create social unity. Far from being neutral, states, governments,
  and parliaments were the instruments by which one class dominated
  others to its own material advantage. What dominated men was not
  their "associative consciousness" but their material interests. The usual
  58 Ota, Taisho, vol. 2, passim. 
  59 Ota, Taisho, vol. 2, pp. 20-8.
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  686 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  state of all societies was not unity but conflict and the collision of
  material class interests. Only in primitive societies, in which people
  shared their goods and made decisions in common, was conflict absent -
  and only in primitive societies could one find democracy. Viewed
  through Yamakawa's Marxist perspective, history was not the history
  of liberty, nor did it find its culmination in the rise of parliamentary
  democracy. Rather, it was the history of the rise and fall of classes
  struggling for domination.
  The impact of this conflictual view of history and social dynamics
  can perhaps best be seen in the defection of Oyama Ikuo from his
  earlier defense of minponshugi. After he and Hasegawa Nyozekan
  founded their journal Warera, he spoke less and less of "class har-
  mony," a national "sense of common interest," or "national unity."
  As the struggle between labor and capital seemed to intensify in
  1920-1, Oyama began to doubt that the intellectual could be a neu-
  tral or disinterested observer of the conflict, and eventually he con-
  cluded that the intelligentsia had to stand with the workers against
  their exploiters. Gradually he shed his commitment to a theory of
  democratic nationalism as well; he denied the possibility of reconcilia-
  tion between labor and capital; he branded constitutional govern-
  ment in Japan as "crippled"; he attacked the social organization as
  flawed and unfair, giving all the advantages to the capitalists and
  none to the workers; and he expressed doubts about how representa-
  tive the Diet was and whether the existing system of representation
  was effective at all.
  With the publication in 1923 of his major theoretical work Seiji no
  shakaiteki kiso (The social foundation of politics), the transition was
  complete.60 Oyama now looked at political phenomena as the expres-
  sion of a power struggle among social groups. He argued that human
  social life was dominated by interest relationships, especially economic
  interests, and that "the motor of social evolution" and the "origin of
  political and social inequality" lay in the struggle among social groups
  (including classes) which regarded all other social groups as enemies
  and ruthlessly pursued their own interests. The state therefore was not
  a neutral instrument for the common good but a means of domination
  by the triumphant group or class. Concepts like "people" (kokumiri),
  "public interest" (kori koeki), "national morality" (kokka dotoku), and
  "national spirit" (kokumin seishin), which had been so much a part of
  Oyama's analytical vocabulary in the 1910s, he now regarded as inven-
  60 The text may be found in Oyama Ikuo zenshu (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1947), vol. 1.
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  THE REVIVAL OF SOCIALISM 
  687
  tions of the dominant bourgeoisie to deflect resistance by the working
  class.
  In adopting a theory of conflict to explain politics, Oyama saw
  himself as trading a sentimental or idealistic position for one that was
  "empirical" and "scientific." As Kawai Eijiro later pointed out, one of
  the weaknesses of Taisho liberalism was its lack of an explicit philo-
  sophical or theoretical base. The minponshugi arguments for democrati-
  zation did not grow out of a comprehensive understanding of how
  societies were organized, nor did it link political analysis to an under-
  standing of basic human drives. Instead, it relied on an implicit opti-
  mistic faith in the inevitability of progress, in the triumph of morality
  over interest, and in the possibility of social harmony. Even the "whig
  view" of history crumbled when it was discovered that there was a
  history of human oppression as well as a history of human liberty. The
  theoretical poverty of democratic liberalism left it vulnerable to compe-
  tition from "social science" theories of the sort that Oyama embraced,
  but even more so from the social and historical theories of Marxism
  that took on new life in the 1920s.
  THE REVIVAL OF SOCIALISM
  The "winter years" of socialism ended when the main survivors of the
  radical wing of Meiji socialism-Yamakawa Hitoshi, Osugi Sakae,
  Arahata Kanson, and others-broke their long silence on political and
  social issues. What emboldened them in part was the Russian Revolu-
  tion of 1917. The mere news of the overthrow of the despotic czarist
  regime, Yamakawa often observed, had a profound effect on the radi-
  cal socialists and anarchists. In May 1917 a resolution prepared by
  Yamakawa and Takabatake Motoyuki, and approved by thirty other
  socialists, expressed hope that the Russian Social Democrats would
  take the lead in ending the European war and launch an international
  struggle of workers against capitalism in all belligerent nations. Yama-
  kawa and Takabatake enthusiastically greeted the seizure of power by
  the Bolsheviks in October as well. Aleksandr Kerensky's overthrow
  was right and proper, argued Takabatake, as he had attempted to use
  the Soviets of workers and soldiers as a springboard to conciliation
  with the "gentlemen's gang." The Bolshevik victory confirmed their
  belief in the efficacy of direct action. The success of the Russian
  Revolution was assured, said Yamakawa, when Lenin and his prole-
  tarian followers refused to come to the aid of Kerensky's bourgeois
  democracy, and just as certainly the failure of the German revolution
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  688 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  was assured by the German proletariat's support of bourgeois state
  capitalism.61
  Yamakawa's theoretical analysis of the Bolshevik revolution-which
  he described as a "socialist revolution," in contrast with the "bour-
  geois revolution" in France-would probably have been acceptable to
  the Bolsheviks themselves. It also set the terms for a future analysis of
  the political status of the Japanese bourgeoisie and the revolutionary
  potential of the Japanese masses. "Russia," said Yamakawa,
  had begun its second revolution. Its first was a dual revolution, both a
  political revolution by the new bourgeoisie against the despotic bureaucratic
  state and a social revolution by the working masses against capitalism.
  These two revolutionary forces became one for the purpose of overthrowing
  the despotic state. . . . Up to that stage the Russian Revolution followed the
  course set by the great French Revolution. The divergence comes in the fate
  of the mass armies of each revolution. In the French case, the masses were
  conquered by the bourgeois forces, while in Russia, although the bourgeois
  political revolution was accomplished in the same manner, the masses were
  equipped, both intellectually and in matters of organization, to push toward
  socialist revolution.62
  Few Japanese socialists, however, including Yamakawa, had heard
  of Lenin before, and none showed any understanding of Leninist
  theory. (In this, the Japanese were little different from the Europeans,
  as it was not until 1921 that translations of Lenin's work revealed that
  he had a systematic theory.) In 1917 Sakai Toshihiko described Lenin
  as an "anarchist." At first Yamakawa called him a "syndicalist" who
  used "direct action" to make a revolution, and in 1921 he character-
  ized him as an "orthodox Marxist," to be contrasted with a figure like
  Karl Kautsky, the German social democratic leader, who had turned
  from revolutionary Marxism to bourgeois liberalism. Only gradually,
  as more and more of Lenin's work made its way into Japanese, were
  the implications of his ideas fully understood. For the time being, he
  was mainly admired as a revolutionary hero who succeeded in estab-
  lishing a radical popular government in Russia.6*
  61 Osawa Masamichi, OsugiSakae kenkyu (Tokyo: Doseishi, 1968), pp. 274-7; Koyama Hirotake
  and Koyama Hitoshi, "Taisho shakaishugi no shisoteki bunka," Shiso 466 (April 1966): 121;
  George Beckmann and Okubo Genji, The Japanese Communist Party, 1922-194$ (Stanford,
  Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 15-16; Mitani, Taisho demokurashiirm, pp. 93-
  100; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, pp. 80-1; Watanabe Haruo, Nihon
  marukusushugi undo no reimei (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 1957), pp. 42-3, 46, 143-9, 186-7;
  Thomas A. Stanley, Osugi Sakae: Anarchist in Taisho Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
  University Press, 1982), pp. 128-9; Watanabe Tom, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," in
  Marukusushugi, vol. i2:Nihon(Tokyo:Nihonhydronsha, 
  1974),pp. 187-92.
  62 Watanabe, Nihon marukusushugi undo no reimei, pp. 47-8.
  63 Watanabe, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 43-4, 175-86; Kishimoto and
  Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, pp. 66,73-5,85; Beckmann and Okubo, The Japanese Commu-
  nist Party, p. 13; Koyama and Koyama, "Taisho shakaishugi no shisoteki bunka," p. 121.
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  THE REVIVAL OF SOCIALISM 
  689
  The veterans of Meiji socialism were also heartened by new stirrings
  of unrest among the people. Although the minponshugi liberals had
  viewed the rice riots with apprehension, the socialists saw them entirely
  in positive terms, as evidence of a growing class consciousness among
  the people. The socialists were also pleased by the growing militance of
  the labor movement. In 1919, at its national convention, the Yuaikai
  adopted a new name-the Greater Japan Federation of Labor and
  Friendly Association (Dai Nihon rodo sodomei yuaikai)-and promul-
  gated a new and more militant program that included demands for the
  legalization of trade unions, the establishment of a minimum wage, the
  passage of universal manhood suffrage, an eight-hour workday and a
  six-day workweek. During the war years, the Yuaikai had concentrated
  on resolving labor conflicts, but the Japan Federation of Labor took to
  the streets, organizing rallies to oppose the Peace Police Law and to
  support the universal manhood suffrage movement.6<»
  On May 1, 1919, Sakai Toshihiko's journal Shin shakai publicly
  announced that it would fly the "flag of Marxism." Although Sakai
  and Yamakawa, who had joined his staff, announced that they would
  eschew politics for the moment, it was clear that they thought the
  country was on the verge of massive change. In the fall of 1919 Sakai
  wrote, "There is a strong sense that the end of the year marks the end
  of an age. The new year will be upon us soon. . . . I have a sense that
  we will for the first time step into a world of our own." A "socialist
  craze" seemed to be sweeping the country.6'
  The main participants in this "craze" were not only erstwhile liber-
  als like Oyama Ikuo and Kawakami Hajime, who rejected a commit-
  ment to parliamentary (that is, bourgeois) democracy for more radical
  social and political critiques, but also a new generation of university
  students and recent graduates who ultimately were to dominate the
  political and theoretical leadership of both the Communist and the
  non-Communist Marxist left in the 1920s. Students, of course, had
  been involved in the Meiji socialist movement; they probably ac-
  counted for a majority of the ten thousand subscribers to the Heimin
  shinbun and provided the readership for other socialist periodicals as
  well. But during the late Meiji period, few students joined in the
  socialist activities or agitation for social reform. They were, in the
  phrase of the political scientist Maruyama Masao, "merely admirers of
  64 Beckmann and Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party, pp. 22-3, 102; Watanabe, "Nihon no
  marukusushugi undo ron," p. 152.
  65 Watanabe, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 44-5, 149-50; Beckmann and
  Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party, p. 12; Arahata Kanson, "Kindai shiso to
  Shinshakai," Shiso 460 (October 1962): 115-25; Koyama and Koyama, "Taisho shakaishugi
  no shisoteki bunka," p. 119.
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  690 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  a liberty which involved neither self-control nor responsibility." In his
  memoirs Yamakawa disparaged many of the student followers of Meiji
  socialism as "rucks, misanthropic cynics, and malcontents-in short,
  those who had dropped behind in the competition of capitalist soci-
  ety." By contrast, young men like Yamakawa, Arahata, and Osugi
  who became active in the movement as journalists or agitators did not
  graduate from college or university but deliberately chose lives of
  moral and political commitment instead of clambering up the conven-
  tional educational ladder of success.66
  The students who became radicalized in the 1920s and 1930s, how-
  ever, were "exemplary" students, confident of promising careers in
  academia, business, or the bureaucracy if they wanted them. Students
  who joined leftist movements, a Ministry of Education report ob-
  served, were "modest," "decent," "sober," and "diligent" young men.
  Investigations of the family backgrounds and personalities of arrested
  leftist students showed that 65.9 percent of those questioned fell into
  these categories and were classified as "good"; only 4.6 percent were
  typified as "hypochondriacal," "weakwilled," or "unrestrained" and
  classified as "bad." A report published by the ministry in 1933 refuted
  the prevailing assumption that only people who were unhealthy could
  become susceptible to "dangerous thoughts." "(T]he greatest number
  of leftist students under investigation," the report lamented, "were
  modest and sound in character."6?
  Not only did "exemplary" higher school and university graduates
  enter left-wing movements, but a number who became Marxist theore-
  ticians returned to their alma maters as professors. Fukumoto Kazuo,
  Miki Kiyoshi, Kushida Tamizo, Sano Manabu, Hattori Shiso, and
  Hani Goro became leading academic economists, philosophers, histori-
  ans, and critics. As members of the academic establishment, they gave
  Marxism social cachet, moral respectability, and intellectual influ-
  ence. Members of this intellectually accomplished group, many of
  whom received government grants for postgraduate study in Europe,
  transformed the relatively simple and often vulgar Marxism of the
  Meiji socialists, who had virtually ignored the dialectical dynamics of
  social change, into sophisticated and sometimes antagonistic theories
  of political action and social revolution.
  66 Matsuzawa Hiroaki, Nihon shakaishugi no shiso (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1973), pp. 65-7;
  Masao Maruyama, "Patterns of Individuation and the Case of Japan: A Conceptual Scheme,"
  in Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, ed. Marius Jansen (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 489-531, pages cited are 508-9, 514.
  67 Maruyama, "Patterns," pp. 520-1.
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  THE REVIVAL OF SOCIALISM 
  691
  What the new generation of student converts to the left shared with
  the older generation of socialists, to whom they first turned for leader-
  ship, was a belief that capitalism and the bourgeois state were on the
  brink of collapse. The "world trend" was toward social and political
  liberation, and the final stage of capitalism was well on the way. But
  the anarchist and Marxist leaders and their student followers did not
  think that revolution would drop like a ripe plum from a tree. The
  accomplishment of a Japanese social and political revolution lay in the
  hands of a self-conscious, class-conscious, and well-organized proletar-
  iat. Some older socialists who had been associated with the proparlia-
  mentary wing of the Meiji movement-Sakai Toshihiko, for example -
  at first cooperated with the liberal intellectuals in the organization of
  the universal suffrage movement, but by 1921 even Sakai had quit the
  movement and criticized it as "foolish." The more radical Marxists
  and anarchosyndicalists argued from the beginning that only through
  workers and their unions, not through Diet politics, universal suf-
  frage, or even a socialist party, could they bring down the capitalist
  state.68
  Undoubtedly, faith in the revolutionary potential of the Japanese
  workers and the Japanese labor movement was encouraged by the fact
  that activists in the Japan Federation of Labor in the spring of 1920
  began to advocate the tactics of "direct action," opposing the universal
  suffrage movement and parliamentary tactics. The failure of a univer-
  sal manhood suffrage bill to pass the Seiyukai-controlled Diet in 1919
  and 1920 probably deepened their disillusionment with parliamentary
  politics. Even Suzuki Bunji, who had begun his career as a moderate
  Christian social meliorist, called for the "thorough reform of present
  society" and described the Japanese industrial system as "violent and
  despotic." "We must first topple this despot," he said. "The inevitable
  consequence of the awakening of the workers will be the making of a
  new industrial system and organization."6'
  The awakening of the Japanese working class became the most
  significant and immediate project of the radical left. Only the proletar-
  iat, the Marxists and anarchosyndicalists argued, could be the active
  subject of a socialist revolution, and only the liberation of the working
  class could lead to the emancipation of the whole society. In contrast
  with their Meiji predecessors, the new generation of leftists also in-
  sisted that the workers' class consciousness could never be taken for
  68 Watanabe, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 154-5, 168-70.
  69 Ibid., pp. 149-50, 70. Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, p. 184.
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  692 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  granted; it had to be cultivated. In the imagination of both radical
  ideologists and student activists the worker became simultaneously the
  potential hero of liberation as well as the object of tutelage, a child
  whose mind and will had to be nurtured and guided.70
  Even though Meiji socialists had condemned the horrendous condi-
  tions under which workers labored and lived, few had become in-
  volved in working-class movements, and most had been indifferent to
  the workers' potential as conscious revolutionaries. At best, as in the
  writings of Kotoku, the workers were conceived of as a mass whose
  participation in a general strike might trigger revolution. In part, this
  attitude of the Meiji socialists resulted from the weakness of the labor
  movement and the legal restrictions on unionization, but as Yama-
  kawa later pointed out, it also derived from the socialists' obsession
  with pure theory. By contrast, in the 1920s, in order to capture worker
  support for their own movements, radical leaders and their student
  followers brought their theories and theoretical conflicts directly to the
  workers themselves, taking part in their organizations and their de-
  bates over tactics.
  OSUGI SAKAE AND ANARCHOSYNDICALISM
  One of the most attractive and influential radical leaders in the early
  1920s was Osugi Sakae, a former disciple of Kotoku and the main theo-
  rist of the anarchosyndicalist position. What made him so appealing to
  young university students and graduates is clear from his writings,
  which overflow with feelings of boredom, oppression, and idealism that
  fostered a diffuse rebelliousness and a sense of affinity with the workers.
  But above all, Osugi appealed to the young because of his conception of
  revolution as personal emancipation. "It is only when we have devel-
  oped a personal philosophy," he wrote in 1917, "that we become
  free. . . . No matter what happens then, we cannot become slaves."71
  Students and graduates vividly expressed the mix of sentiments and
  impulses that attracted them into later agitation. At once altruistic and
  self-absorbed, they identified their own search for autonomy and their
  desire for relief from feelings of "suffocation" (ikizumart) with the
  emancipation of the workers. As one wrote, commitment to the cause
  of the workers allowed them to break the fetters of "trivial knowl-
  edge . . . formality and convention." They spoke of their desire to
  70 Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 183-5.
  71 Arahata, "Kindai shiso to Shinshakai," pp. 117-19; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, p. 148.
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  OSUGI SAKAE AND ANARCHOSYNDICALISM 
  693
  express "true feelings"; they sought "a life that would be lived sin-
  cerely"; they wanted to fulfill themselves; and they dreamed of "an
  overflowing self (jiga nojuitsu). Only as rebels and only as servants of
  "the multitude in their own country," wrote one, could they live life
  sincerely. At times this relationship with workers was described as a
  romance, a near physical infatuation, even a self-seduction. "I search
  for a lover," Kataoka Takeo wrote in the journal Demokurashi in 1919.
  "The laborer is my lover. I cannot wait until that pale face becomes
  cheerful. To bring a smile is the first step of love." Identification with
  the worker and his cause allowed young members of the elite to tran-
  scend themselves by becoming a "vanguard."72
  Students and graduates in the early 1920s often wrote that the "dis-
  covery of social problems" made them rebels, even though no single
  idea or clear ideology inspired their actions. As Aso Hisashi (1891-
  1940) wrote, students felt they "knew the trend of the times." Their
  vocabulary was eclectic, neither specifically anarchosyndicalist nor
  Marxist. "To the people," the slogan used to exhort their fellows to
  join the worker's cause, had been borrowed from the nineteenth-
  century Russian populist cry, v narodni, but the Russian narodniki
  (populists) believed that a postrevolutionary social order would be
  constructed on the basis of the village community, an idea derided by
  Marxists and never a part of the Leninist canon. Although some gradu-
  ates described themselves as "heralds" of revolution, as Aso sug-
  gested, they sought "to clothe the workers in all the books that they
  themselves had read." They would give workers "freedom (jiyu), jus-
  tice (seigi), humanism, socialism, anarchism, revolution, syndicalism,
  and the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World).""
  The workers, however, were not attracted to the students by social-
  ism or any other ideology but by their anarchistic attitude. What
  workers understood about students, one labor activist wrote, was
  "that they [students] burned with the same spirit. [To them also]
  capitalism was an unpardonable system." In a memoir written decades
  later, one worker recalled: "Ideas of Marxism, syndicalism, labor
  unionism all entered my head at one time. I didn't understand the
  distinctions very well."74 But one simple thought was quite clear: "If
  workers organize, if we stop the factory smoke, we come into our own
  world. When we stop the smoke of the chimney, it will chasten the
  powerful. This would be the means of correcting the social evil.""
  72 Matsuzawa Hiroaki, Nikon shakaishugi, pp. 65-9, 156.
  73 Ibid., pp. 62-3, 148-52, 156-9. 
  74 Ibid., pp. 158-
  —O-» ft" 
  — J 
  7 7 ._,-,.
  74 Ibid., pp. 158-9. 
  75 Ibid., pp. 160-1.
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  694 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  Workers shared with students a feeling that resistance had to be total.
  As one worker wrote, "we would prefer an honorable defeat, even a
  miserable defeat . . . [never] cooperation or moderation." And still
  another said: "We will lose our families . . . we will lose human plea-
  sure. We will live only by a revolutionary resistance toward capital-
  ism." It was these ideals that brought students and workers to Osugi
  Sakae and anarchosyndicalism.76
  It was inevitable that Osugi and other anarchosyndicalists would
  turn against Bolshevik policies in Russia, reject the suppositions of
  Marxist-Leninism, and become bitter antagonists of all Marxists in the
  Japanese social and labor movements. Osugi initially had hailed the
  coming of the Russian Revolution because he believed it had been
  achieved by "direct action," in which the masses had risen spontane-
  ously and driven out Kerensky's bourgeois regime. In Japan, as else-
  where in the world, anarchosyndicalists found gratifying this image of
  the revolution. They had long argued that revolution could be accom-
  plished by a spontaneous uprising of all of the oppressed classes,
  which, in the course of widespread insurrection, would topple the
  state and replace it by some sort of autonomous community. In the
  early 1920s, the anarchosyndicalist strategists believed that the over-
  throw of capitalism could be accomplished by purely industrial organi-
  zation and struggle, and they rejected any kind of political activity or
  participation in bourgeois institutions. At the inaugural convention of
  the Japan Federation of Labor in 1919, for example, anarchosyndica-
  list militants objected to the organization's support for universal suf-
  frage, and they rejected all proposals that implied the compatibility of
  unions with the imperial values of capitalism. And in a debate over
  direct action (chokusetsu kodo) versus parliamentarianism at a 1920
  meeting of the federation, the cry of a Kyoto anarchist delegate, "We
  reject the Diet," was greeted with applause from anarchists at the
  convention. If led by a militant rank and file, the anarchosyndicalists
  believed, the labor union alone could become the instrument of the
  proletariat in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state.
  The anarchosyndicalists also refused to subordinate the economic
  struggle of the proletariat to the coming revolution. Characteristically
  then, labor unions led by anarchosyndicalists favored confrontation
  rather than conciliation, preferring to sabotage a factory rather than to
  seek a contract. As one militant Japanese anarchosyndicalist put it,
  "We do not say unions are useless. But they are effective only in
  76 Ibid., p. 146,11. 43,93, l67-
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  OSUGI SAKAE AND ANARCHOSYNDICALISM 
  695
  building, not in the work of destruction-destruction must come be-
  fore building." In the brief period from 1920 to 1923 when the
  anarchosyndicalists commanded a prominent position in the labor
  movement, they tried to incite the workers to carry out massive strikes
  that would paralyze the entire economy and to incite the workers'
  hostility against the existing order. Tokyo celluloid workers, watch-
  makers, and printers and Yawata steel workers, influenced by anarcho-
  syndicalist organizers and other direct-action militants, carried out
  violent strikes, smashed machines, and sabotaged workplaces. In-
  spired by the anarchosyndicalists, workers in 1920 at the Fuji Gas
  Spinning Company resolved "even to die" for the cause.77
  By late 1922, anarchosyndicalist influence in the union movement had
  begun to weaken. Because of their insistence on spontaneity rather
  than organization and coordination, their demand for individual union
  autonomy rather than the acceptance of the federation's centralized
  authority, and their failure to achieve much by direct confrontation,
  the anarchosyndicalists lost influence to reformists and Communists.
  The news that the Soviet Union had begun to persecute anarchists
  such as Emma Goldman and to disregard the will of local Soviets while
  centralizing all power in the party and central committee impelled
  Osugi to announce his disgust with Bolshevism and to break off all
  contact with Japanese Marxist-Leninists. For Osugi the establishment
  of the New Economic Plan, or NEP (which he believed was little more
  than a disguised attempt to establish state capitalism), and the reinsti-
  tution of national industrial discipline represented the end of the revo-
  lutionary era in Russia.78
  Anarchosyndicalists had a vision of a secular millennium; they
  sought a future in which workers autonomously united to govern
  themselves in small communities. Workers needed neither a party nor
  an ideology, the French anarchosyndicalist George Sorel had argued;
  in fact, they should reject both as part of the bourgeois game in which
  workers were subject to the tyranny of bourgeois rule. For Osugi the
  encouragement of worker resistance, the necessity of unceasing con-
  flict, and the call for disorder had the function of not merely disrupt-
  ing contemporary society but of also liberating the workers (and those
  77 Stephen S. Large, Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan (Cambridge,
  England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chaps, 1, 2; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp.
  263-9, 277-8, 311-12; Watanabe, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 175-92, 206-
  16.
  78 Large, Organized Workers; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, p. 317; Watanabe, "Nihon no
  marukusushugi undo ron," p. 192.
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  696 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  who sought to aid them) from history and hierarchy. Men must begin
  anew, with a "clean slate" (hakushi), Osugi believed. But "clean
  slatism" did not imply a belief in the natural spontaneity of the
  masses: self-emancipation, the self-recovery of the masses, demanded
  an effort and a transformation of the consciousness of the workers by
  the workers themselves."
  In an essay entitled Chitsujo binran (The breakdown of law and
  order), Osugi wrote that the majority, bound by the thought and
  actions of their rulers, had been sacrificed to the "rules" of the few. By
  "disorder," a breakdown of law and order that he equated with "rebel-
  lion," workers could overcome "old values." Without rebellion, the
  individual could not attain "true existence" (shin no sei). Thus the
  breakdown of rules, in effect, the alienation of the workers from their
  past, became the only means by which the potential of both the masses
  and the individual could be achieved. "Living" in the modern world,
  for Osugi, meant "rebelling." Life without rebellion was not life but
  nonlife, death itself.80
  Osugi exemplified in his life and thought the full sum of militant
  student ambivalence and aspiration. He doubted his ability to lead the
  workers because he believed he was crippled by his bourgeois or even
  petty bourgeois attitudes. Nonetheless, he offered the workers his
  leadership and the gift of his ideas, advising them that only by a life of
  constant rebellion could they overcome the tyranny of contemporary
  society. He summoned intellectuals to the cause of the workers, at
  times describing them as something like a vanguard. However, he
  questioned their revolutionary trustworthiness, identifying them as
  members of the bourgeoisie and hence no better than "passing friends
  among the enemy" (teki no naka no yujin). But he also suggested that
  intellectuals could be useful to themselves and to the workers if they
  understood the workings of modern society, subsumed themselves to
  and "become one" (ittaika) with the workers, and used the agency of
  workers to "practice rebellion."81
  Even more consistently than his anarchosyndicalist predecessor
  Kotoku, Osugi lived a life of dramatic resistance. He had a flair for
  confrontation. At one time or another he repudiated all the conven-
  tions of his society, including the orthodoxies of his radical allies as
  79 For Sorel, see Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vol. 2: The Golden Age (New
  York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 163; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 171, 259.
  80 Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 171-2, 184.
  81 Stanley, Osugi Sakae, pp. 115-19; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 115-19, 130,183-4,260;
  Mitani, Taishd demokurashiiron, p. 85.
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  OSUGI SAKAE AND ANARCHOSYNDICALISM 
  697
  well as those of his opponents. Although he liked the spirit of democ-
  racy, he hated what "the legal and political scientists call democracy
  and humanism." "Socialism," too, "I hate," he said, finding that
  orthodox socialism put too much emphasis on material determinism in
  the evolution of society and not enough on individual freedom. It is
  only a part of the truth, he asserted in criticism of socialism, that "new
  economics creates a new morality." No creed, no ism, no theory
  seemed wholly satisfactory. "For some reason," he wrote in February
  1918, "I hate anarchism a bit."82
  Underlying the ambivalence expressed in all of Osugi's arguments
  and attitudes was a belief, somewhat like that of his hero Nietzsche,
  that no fact was independent of interpretation and no vision of reality
  untainted by prejudice and perspective. Hence life became at its best a
  heroic act of interpretation in which the individual and the masses
  could transcend their society. Intellectuals, for example, had through-
  out history been thoroughly implicated in the ideological defense "of
  the ruling class and the deception of the oppressed classes." But if
  intellectuals abandoned their hegemonic role, desisted from imposing
  their ideology on the workers (an attitude, Osugi observed, prevalent
  among even socialist intellectuals), and resolved to be one "with the
  essence of the labor movement," they could overcome their class atti-
  tudes. In fact, Osugi's concern with individual freedom and his recom-
  mendation that individuals abandon their egos in order to find them-
  selves (jibun 0 torimodosu tame ni, jiga o kidatsu suru) place him among
  the ranks of radical libertarians and in clear opposition to the Marxist
  socialists. 83
  Not surprisingly, then, in an essay published in 1919, Osugi quoted
  from Nietzche to the effect that the "perfection of individuality" is the
  ideal, and even if only a vision, it is one with the direction of life. "The
  essence of life," he wrote, "is always to find a way out of an impasse." As
  an anarchosyndicalist, Osugi turned this vision of self-transcendence
  outward toward society and sought social revolution. He rejected Marx-
  ism (as he also questioned nineteenth-century notions of rationalism
  and mechanical inevitability) not only because of its emphasis on neces-
  sity but also because he found its proposition that "new economics
  creates a new morality" only a part of the truth. A new morality, he
  insisted, must be created within the old order so that it can become the
  basis of the new. Osugi thus believed that all men, not merely one
  82 Stanley, Osugi Sakae; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 117-18, 174.
  83 Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 168, 183.
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  698 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  special being, had the will to power of the "superman" (chojin). Work-
  ers could therefore transcend their society collectively and autono-
  mously; alienated from the present and their consciousness trans-
  formed, they could become the pacesetters of the future. And like the
  workers, the alienated radical student activists could share in the
  achievement of a new world.8*
  YAMAKAWA HITOSHI AND THE 'CHANGE IN DIRECTION
  The murder of Osugi by a military police captain in September 1923
  robbed the anarchosyndicalist movement of its only charismatic leader.
  The movement, however, had been devastated a year earlier when
  the Comintern became more interested in Japan and Japanese leftists
  acquired a better understanding of Leninist theories of revolution.
  Some leftist factions began to call themselves Bolsheviks, and many
  Marxists acquired a new understanding of Lenin's ideas about the
  dictatorship of the proletariat and the proper role of a socialist or
  communist party vis-a-vis the masses. With the formation of the
  secret Japanese Communist Party in July 1922, these issues became
  the focal point of controversy between the Marxists and the anarcho-
  syndicalists in the labor movement.
  At the 1922 annual meeting of the Japan Federation of Labor, an
  alliance of Communists and labor reformers had engineered the adop-
  tion of a resolution favoring a highly centralized organization based on
  national industrial unions. Rejecting the anarchosyndicalist principles
  of union decentralization, autonomy, and self-government, in which
  any union had the right to join or withdraw from any association at any
  time, the convention called for political as well as standard union
  economic tactics-all anathema to Osugi. Despite Osugi's growing
  distaste for the Soviet Union, the convention also passed a resolution
  supporting the communist regime in Soviet Russia.85
  Osugi had not only been defeated by Japanese Bolsheviks, but his
  longtime ally, Yamakawa Hitoshi, emerged as the ideological leader of
  the Bolshevik faction and the hero of the meeting. Yamakawa's July-
  August 1922 essay, "A Change in Course for the Proletarian Move-
  ment" (Musan kaikyu undo no hoko tenkan), provided the slogan for
  the conference, "into the Masses" (taishu no naka e); and his denuncia-
  84 Ibid., pp. 163-6.
  85 See Large, Organized Workers, chaps. I, 2; Beckmann and Okubo, The Japanese Communist
  Party, pp. 46-47; Osawa, Osugi Sakae kenkyu, pp. 267-9; Watanabe, "Nihon no
  marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 174-5,205-11,229-30; Matsuzawa, Nihon, pp. 101-2.
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  YAMAKAWA HITOSHI 
  699
  tion of the anarchosyndicalist "idealization of revolution" (kannenteki
  kakumei) received the approbation of Communists and labor reformers
  alike. Present at the convention as an auditor, as was Yamakawa, Osugi
  bitterly described the whole of the "Bolshevik gang"-Yamakawa,
  Sakai, and Arahata- as a "bunch of crooks."86
  Just as the Bolshevik-Reformist defeat of the anarchosyndicalists
  represents a decisive shift in the prevailing tactics and dominant ideolo-
  gies of the labor movement, Yamakawa's essay marks a critical junc-
  ture in the intellectual history of Japanese radicalism and particularly
  its theories of revolution. Rejecting the creed of millenarianism, which
  had dominated the thought of radicals since Kotoku, Yamakawa also
  expressed his objections to the radicals' misdirected expressions of
  moral indignation and criticized the tactical stupidity of radical sponta-
  neity. "Ten or twenty enthusiasts," he wrote,
  get together, dream about the next day of revolution and make big talk. . . .
  At best they would satisfy their "rebellious spirit" by taking "revolutionary
  action" against a policeman and spending a night under police detention.
  Although they reject the capitalist system, they actually do not lay a finger
  upon it.8?
  Yamakawa described the Japanese proletarian movement as having
  two aspects, a socialist movement and a labor movement. He castigated
  the former, including himself, for being overly concerned with the
  clarification of principles and the purification of ideology. As a result,
  socialists had isolated themselves from the proletariat as a whole,
  "[drawing] apart from the ordinary union members around them and
  even more so from the masses of the working class." They thus failed in
  their duty to raise the masses toward a maximum standard of class
  consciousness, instead allowing them to fall under the spiritual influ-
  ence of the capitalists. Although Yamakawa praised the union move-
  ment, he found it lamentable that the advanced members, the organized
  workers, found themselves "separated from the ordinary worker." And
  finally, he criticized both for their "passive attitude" toward bourgeois
  government. Workers little realized, he wrote, that victories won on the
  economic front can be jeopardized by politics.
  On any front where capitalism expresses authority and control, we must move
  on . . . to an attitude of positive struggle. The political front is the place
  86 Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon hikyosanld, pp. 95, 143-7. For quotation from Osugi, see
  Stanley, Osugi Sakae, p. 140. For Yamakawa's essay discussed in the next paragraphs, see
  Yamakawa Hitoshi, "Musan kaikyu undo no hoko tenkan," in Yamakawa Hitoshi zenshu, vol.
  4, ed. Yamakawa Kikue and Yamakawa Shinsaku (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1967), pp. 336-45.
  87 Beckmann and Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party, p. 51.
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  7OO 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  where the authority and control of the bourgeoisie find their most naked and
  direct expression. . . . Simply to reject the existing system of bourgeois poli-
  tics ideologically cannot bring the slightest injury to it.88
  "Change of Course" offered a tactical solution to both the isolation
  of the vanguard from the masses and the political passivity and feck-
  lessness of both. Ultimately, Yamakawa explained, "Our goal is the
  destruction of capitalism. . . . Any reform short of that can never
  liberate us." But if the mass of workers do not demand the abolition of
  capitalism and instead "demand the improvement of their immediate
  daily life, our present movement must be based on this popular de-
  mand." Even though the "movement must become more practical" in
  order to bring vanguard and mass together through their mutual strug-
  gle, he hoped that the vanguard could raise the demands of the work-
  ers and persuade them to expand their goals. "Change of Course" did
  not signal, Yamakawa insisted, "a fall from the principle of revolution
  to reformism" but, rather, an accommodation to worker demands in
  order to build a "concrete" movement for the achievement of the final
  goal. The vanguard must therefore take its ideology to the masses,
  retain its revolutionary consciousness, and, he insisted, never dissolve
  within the masses. Thus the second charge of the essay, "advance
  toward a political struggle," urged upon the vanguard the need to lead
  the proletariat toward recognizing that their call for "rights of liveli-
  hood" and for the settlement of the unemployment problem were
  demands aimed at the state. Hence the practical economic struggle
  could not be separated from the political one. Although in this essay
  Yamakawa did not discuss political parties or indicate a change in his
  attitude toward universal suffrage, he urged upon the proletarian
  movement a new sort of political action. "If the proletariat truly rejects
  bourgeois politics, it must not be simply passive. . . . It must put up
  proletarian politics against bourgeois politics."89
  Quite clearly, then, Yamakawa had repudiated both his own past
  position (and Osugi's continuing position) that standard union eco-
  nomic demands were politically ineffectual. Instead, he offered a near
  Leninist interpretation of the indispensable role of the vanguard in
  creating a revolutionary and social democratic consciousness among
  the proletariat. But in Yamakawa's discussions of the vanguard, and
  ultimately in his evaluation of the roles of trade unions and the secret
  vanguard party (that is, the Japan Communist Party [JCP]), he parted
  from Leninism. Lenin argued, and so would the JCP, that only the
  88 Ibid., p. 52. 
  89 Ibid., pp. 46-7.
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  YAMAKAWA HITOSHI 
  701
  vanguard and organizers could guide the workers beyond the horizons
  of bourgeois society to revolution. Left to their own devices, workers
  could never, autonomously, become conscious revolutionaries. "Since,"
  Lenin wrote, "there can be no question of an independent ideology
  formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their
  movement, the only choice is either bourgeois or socialist ideology."
  For Lenin, no working class, however powerful the trade unions it
  created, was capable of attaining consciousness of the fundamental
  opposition between their class as a whole and the existing social sys-
  tem. "We have said," he wrote, "that there could not have been social
  democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be
  brought to them from without."9°
  Yamakawa, however, had long been ambivalent about the Bolshe-
  viks' domination of the Russian workers. In a February 1922 essay, he
  was unwilling to testify fully to the "desirability" of the "leadership" or
  "dictatorship of the party"; he had merely accepted it as necessary,
  given the yet undeveloped class consciousness of the common people.
  Even earlier, in his criticism of minponshugi theories, Yamakawa had
  berated Yoshino and Oyama for feigning a belief in majority rule but in
  reality calling for the rule of an "enlightened few." Democracy, he
  wrote, demands rule by the people, who are never ignorant of the real
  needs of society. And several months after the publication of his
  "Change of Course" article, he roundly denied the charges by an anarch-
  osyndicalist that he had sold out the working class to an intellectual
  vanguard. By a vanguard, Yamakawa insisted, he meant only the orga-
  nized and hence more class-conscious members of the working class.91
  Yamakawa, in fact, never completely accepted Lenin's belief in the
  indisputable need of a vanguard to lead the workers to a revolutionary
  consciousness. He may or may not have been a Kautskyian, as the theo-
  retician Fukumoto Kazuo later argued, but his insistence after 1919
  that the workers' class consciousness was bound to develop through
  their struggle with capitalism and that labor organizations served both
  as organs of struggle for the workers' demands and as nuclei in the cre-
  ation of new social styles was certainly closer to the thought of Kautsky
  than to Lenin. Even in his "Change of Course" article, which members
  of the JCP contended had been written under party orders (Yama-
  90 This discussion of Lenin uses Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vol. 2, chap.
  16; for quotations, see pp. 386, 387.
  91 Yamakawa Hitoshi, "Rodo undo ni taisuru chishiki kaikyu no chii," in Yamakawa Hitoshi
  zenshu, vol. 3, ed. Yamakawa Kikue and Yamakawa Shinsaku (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1967),
  pp. 26-39; Yamakawa zenshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1966), pp. 82-91, 106-8;
  Yamakawa zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1968), pp. 191-9.
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  702 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  kawa's denial was supported by Arahata), he wrote that class conscious-
  ness is comprehensible not simply for the few with enough erudition to
  discern it; it inevitably grows in the mind of every member of the work-
  ing class, though not always at the same rate or to the same degree.92
  By 1924 Yamakawa's differences with the JCP had become clear.
  Arguments over proper revolutionary theory and tactics led to an exten-
  sive struggle that took several forms. In the labor unions, reformists
  (or pragmatists, as they are sometimes called) and Marxists clashed
  over the role of unions in a bourgeois state. Inside and outside the
  unions there was a sharp split over revolutionary theory between the
  independent Marxists, led by Yamakawa, and those associated with
  the JCP. Throughout, it was Yamakawa who dominated: his percep-
  tion of the proper tactics of the Japanese working class toward a united
  front with the bourgeoisie, his analysis of the character of the Japanese
  bourgeoisie and the workers' class consciousness, and his interpreta-
  tion of the revolutionary potential of organized workers and the nature
  of the Japanese state. Yamakawa denned the policies and practices of a
  non-Communist Japanese Marxist and provoked a theoretical debate
  among all Japanese Marxists. Ultimately, Yamakawa and the JCP,
  particularly the theoretician Fukumoto Kazuo, confronted each other
  over issues of theory and practice expressed in Comintern doctrine. As
  a result, Japanese Marxists began a debate on the origins and develop-
  ment of the modern Japanese state that stimulated the social scientific
  analysis of modern Japanese history and thoroughly embedded Marx-
  ism in the intellectual life of Japan. But for Yamakawa or Fukumoto
  and all their fellows, the function of historical analysis, like that of
  social theory, was never merely academic. It provided the "scientific"
  basis for their criticism of the Japanese state, an intellectual perspec-
  tive from which to criticize liberal formulas, and conceptual guidelines
  for a revolutionary movement.93
  WHOSE REVOLUTION IS IT?: FUKUMOTO VERSUS
  YAMAKAWA
  Within three years of the publication of "Change of Course," Yama-
  kawa's strategic assumptions and theoretical conceptions were chal-
  lenged by Fukumoto Kazuo (1894-198 3). A graduate of the law
  faculty of Tokyo Imperial University who became a lecturer in eco-
  92 Watanabe, "Nihon no marukusushugi undo ron," pp. 182, 198-200.
  93 Ibid., pp. 184-5, 230-5; Koyama Hirotake and Sugimori Yasuji, "Ronoha marukusushugi,"
  in Shdwa no hantaisei shiso, vol. 3, ed. Sumiya Etsuji (Tokyo: Haga shobo, 1967), pp. 278-
  334-
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  WHOSE REVOLUTION IS IT? 
  703
  nomics and law at Matsue Higher School, Fukumoto had recently re-
  turned from several years of government-sponsored study in Germany.
  While there he had steeped himself in the Marx-Engels classics and the
  works of Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebknecht. Using his
  encyclopedic knowledge of theory, a quality that particularly impressed
  young radical university students, Fukumoto by 1926 had revived the
  JCP and taken over its leadership.94 As Hayashi Fusao, a leader of the
  Shinjinkai, wrote:
  The one thing that could not be doubted was his extreme erudition. The
  passages he quoted were all crucial lines that I had never read. Neither
  Yamakawa, nor Sakai . . . had once quoted these for us. These fresh contents
  forced me to realize the ignorance of Japanese Marxists—or at least so I, as a
  student theorist, thought.«'
  Fukumoto had also learned the skills of sectarian vituperation.
  Shortly after his return in 1924, in a public address at Kyoto Imperial
  University, he neatly undercut the arguments of the prestigious Marx-
  ist professor of economics, Kawakami'Hajime, caricaturing him in
  front of his students as an "empiriocritic" (keikenhihan), a man who
  espoused a philosophy that Lenin had written a whole pamphlet to
  vilify. But in his first essays in Marxism (Marukusushugi), the major
  theoretical journal of the proletarian movement, Fukumoto confined
  himself to denouncing Yamakawa'c "Change of Course" as a "vulgar-
  ization of Marxism." He slandered Yamakawa as an "economist," a
  Leninist term of opprobrium to describe those who believed that eco-
  nomic struggle alone can lead to political transformation without the
  direct intervention of a party devoted to political struggle. He accused
  Yamakawa of failing to understand the "underlying principles" of a
  "change of course." In essence, Fukumoto was merely providing theo-
  retical documentation to demonstrate what already should have been
  clear: Yamakawa was not a Leninist.96
  Fukumoto was a Leninist, however; or at least he believed that he
  had preserved the essence of Lenin's doctrine in his maxims for a
  purified proletarian movement. Fukumoto accepted as axiomatic that
  "our true change of course" depended on "raising proletarian con-
  sciousness through . . . theoretical struggle." As described by Lenin,
  94 Koyama Hirotake, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei," in Showa no hamatsei shiso, pp. 106-9.
  95 Jeffrey Paul Wagner, "Sano Manabu and the Japanese Adaptation of Socialism," Ph.D. diss.,
  University of Arizona, 1978, p. 58.
  96 Iwasaki Chikatsugu, Nihon marukusushugi tetsugakushi (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1971), pp. 31-3;
  Furuta Hikaru, Kawakami Hajime (Tokyo: Tokyo dtigaku shuppankai, 1959), pp. 138-49;
  Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, p. 112; Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no
  keisei," p. no.
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  704 
  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  he wrote, a correct "change of course" for the proletarian movement
  "is a qualitative process of change within a dialectic process." In tacti-
  cal terms this meant that the proletarian movement must shift from
  trade union struggles to socialist political struggle. Like Lenin, Fuku-
  moto did not believe that the proletariat could comprehend on its own
  the aptness or necessity of such a strategy. Rather than rely on changes
  in objective conditions, the proletariat must, by a subjective leap, gain
  a "genuine class consciousness" (a consciousness that Fukumoto
  equated with the possession of Marxist "knowledge" [ninshiki]). Only
  a "true vanguard party," a Communist party, would be a veritable
  source of socialist consciousness; only such a party "could use, direct,
  promote, or transform all political opposition, thereby making the
  proletarian movement a genuine class movement."97
  After his return to Japan, Fukumoto decided that the broader tasks
  of the political struggle had to be set aside temporarily in order to deal
  with the corrupting influence of Yamakawa's "change of course" and
  his conception of a united front party. Yamakawa had envisaged and
  helped create, as he himself wrote in 1924, "a proletarian political
  movement uniting the largest possible part of the workers' movement
  in an organization that was as free as possible from bourgeois influ-
  ence." Yamakawa believed that the leadership of this "united front"
  should fall to the organized proletariat in urban factories and the
  organized tenants in rural districts. The creation of such a party dis-
  turbed Fukumoto: Neither a vanguard party nor an illegal revolution-
  ary corps, such an organization could never promote the revolutionary
  consciousness of the masses. In fact, Yamakawa had urged that it not
  be solely a proletarian vehicle. Rather, he believed, it should serve the
  broad democratic interest of the lumpen, all the unorganized, the colo-
  nial masses, the outcast burakumin, and even the lower elements of the
  petty bourgeoisie. Yamakawa also recommended that the vanguard
  elements dissolve themselves within the united front and "allow every
  fraction to express its views fully at the party congress and to be
  recognized fully within the party." Fukumoto felt that such a view,
  which ran counter to Lenin's conception of a party composed of profes-
  sional revolutionaries dictating policy, would be disastrous. Lenin had
  found "fractionalism," the organized activity of groups of members
  who were free to express minority views, to be destructive to the
  ultimate aims of a revolutionary party. Fukumoto believed, moreover,
  97 Iwasaki, Nikon marukusushugi tetsugakushi, pp. 32-5; Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no
  keisei," pp. 110-16; Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, pp. 129-37; Matsuzawa,
  Nihon, pp. 194-200.
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  WHOSE REVOLUTION IS IT? 
  705
  that his own desire to create a Marxist consciousness among the prole-
  tariat would come to naught in a united front party: The vanguard
  would be dissolved in the mass. He argued that Yamakawa's concep-
  tion of the natural growth of proletarian consciousness was, at best,
  mere "opportunism." Worse yet, Fukumoto wrote, Yamakawa had
  led the movement toward a belief in "spontaneity" and "infantile
  leftism," both thoroughly condemned by Lenin.'8
  Fukumoto therefore set as the immediate task of the Marxist left the
  establishment of a correct and unified theoretical program for the
  proletarian movement: "to give life to, deepen, and spread Marxism
  and Marxist influence." Following Lenin, he called for the creation of
  a Marxist vanguard that would follow a policy of "unity through sepa-
  ration" (bunri-ketsugo), a process by which genuine Marxists would be
  separated from false Marxists and reformists. This became the abso-
  lute prerequisite for the achievement of unity. In later years this glorifi-
  cation of ideological purity, the insistence on the priority of intellec-
  tual struggle over political praxis, and the worship of dogma would be
  denounced by both the Comintern and JCP. But for the moment (and
  some believe that it permanently damaged the movement), it turned
  the JCP into a confederation of mandarins and quite possibly made the
  Marxist movement of Japan the most theoretically sophisticated in the
  world.w
  Obviously, Yamakawa could not accept Fukumoto's propositions. A
  proletarian party, he wrote, "should represent the highest expression of
  the revolutionary demands of the proletariat, not simply an abstraction
  based on strategies for the establishment of a new society; it should
  incorporate all elements of the proletariat and reflect its current inter-
  ests and demands."100 Yamakawa quickly reconfirmed his belief in a
  "united front party": It, and neither a secret nor a vanguard party,
  should take the lead of the Japanese proletarian movement.
  Yamakawa opposed the reconstitution of the JCP and refused to
  join it. He also explained later that he believed that the "existence of
  the party in 1922-3 had been to the detriment of the overall move-
  ment." He opposed the reorganization of the party on empirical and
  98 Matsuzawa, Nihon, pp. 199-200. For a discussion of united front strategies in Japan and the
  West, see Inumaru Yoshikazu, Nihon no marukusushugi sono, vol. 2: Koza gendai no ideorogii
  (Tokyo: San'ichi shobo, 1961), pp. 39-40, 57-8; Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no
  keisei," pp. 89-92, 110-26; Koyama and Sugimori, "Ronoha marukusushugi," pp. 283-8,
  311-25; Iwasaki, Nihon marukusushugi tetsugakushi, pp. 34-5; Kishimoto and Koyama,
  Nihon no hikyosanto, pp. 110,125.
  99 Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, p. 137; Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no
  keisei," pp. 112-14; Iwasaki, Nihon marukusushugi tetsugakushi, pp. 32-4.
  100 Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei," pp. 91, 94-7.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  historical, not theoretical, grounds. "I felt that conditions being what
  they were in Japan, another Communist party at this time [1926]
  would not be any better. What suited Russia would not necessarily fit
  Japan." Yamakawa argued that only through an analysis of Japanese
  capitalism, an examination of the specific political structure of the
  Japanese ruling class, and an understanding of the historical peculiar-
  ity of the development of the modern Japanese state and society could
  a proper strategy for the proletarian movement be developed.101
  Yamakawa took as the basis for his analysis Marx's typology of the
  capitalist stages of development, which described how the bourgeoisie
  in Europe had constituted itself as a class in opposition to the rule of
  feudalism and absolutism. But with a conceptual flexibility similar to
  Marx's social analysis in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,
  Yamakawa observed certain historical anomalies in the way that the
  Japanese bourgeois had acquired political rule. Thus he suggested an
  analysis at odds on critical points with that offered by the Comintern
  and JCP.
  In 1922 the draft platform of the JCP (koryo soari) had defined Japan
  as "semifeudal." Although, the draft pointed out, the state was con-
  trolled by a definite part of the commercial and industrial capitalists,
  "remnants of feudal relationships" were manifest in its structure. This
  semifeudal character was most clearly shown "in the important and
  leading role of the peers and in the basic features of the constitution."
  Moreover, Japanese capitalism "still demonstrates characteristics of
  former feudal relationships. . . . And the greatest part of the land is
  today in the hands of semifeudal landlords." The draft continued,
  "The emperor, who heads the Japanese government, [is] the biggest
  landlord of all." Members of the JCP at that time, particularly Sakai
  Toshihiko, chose to suppress this part. Given the semifeudal character
  of the Japanese state, the party recommended a joint struggle of prole-
  tariat and bourgeoisie to overthrow the imperial government as the
  correct political strategy, that is, a bourgeois revolution.102
  Yamakawa accepted neither this strategy nor the historical interpre-
  tation on which it was based. "The center of power in our society," he
  insisted, "has decisively shifted from the bureaucracy to the bourgeoi-
  sie." When the Seiyukai party rose to power and its leader, Hara
  Takashi, became prime minister, Yamakawa argued, "the political
  power of the bourgeoisie existent today was thus consolidated." But
  101 Ibid.
  102 For a full translation of the draft platform, see Beckmann and Okubo, The Japanese Commu-
  nist Party, pp. 279-82; Inumaru, Nihon no marukusushugisono, vol. 2, p. 45.
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  WHOSE REVOLUTION IS IT? 
  707
  paradoxically, this transfer of power "explains the withering of democ-
  racy in Japan." Yamakawa explained this paradox by contrasting Ja-
  pan's capitalist development with that of Britain. "Britain took fifty or
  seventy years to pass peacefully through the gradual establishment of
  bourgeois democracy, and under the most favorable circumstances."
  But Japanese bourgeois capitalism had grown up under the "tutelage
  of bureaucratic politics." Whereas British capitalism grew quickly in a
  period of free trade, Japanese capitalism was "warped" and the "politi-
  cal development of the country perverted . . . because it took place
  under the wing of medieval bureaucratic politics." In contrast with the
  European bourgeoisie, Yamakawa continued, the Japanese bourgeoi-
  sie "had no revolutionary period. What succeeded feudal aristocratic
  politics [in Japan] was not bourgeois democracy but, rather, bureau-
  cratic militarist politics." Nor did the Japanese bourgeoisie ever "di-
  rectly attack the bureaucracy in order to take state power." When the
  Japanese bourgeoisie consolidated their political power, they did so
  without any sense of a distinctly bourgeois class consciousness: They
  acted "almost without conscious purpose, in a fit of absence of mind."
  In fact, the Seiyukai became the "representative bourgeois party . . .
  because it joined with and identified with the bureaucracy." Given
  these circumstances and the fact that Japanese capitalism had ap-
  peared during the imperialist stage in the development of world capital-
  ism, Yamakawa concluded that "Japan had no leeway to elaborate a
  bourgeois democracy, or at least very little. Our age of bourgeois
  democracy, if it appears at all, will be very brief. "I03
  As a result of his analysis of Japanese history, Yamakawa believed
  that the proletarian movement had simultaneously to seek the aboli-
  tion of feudal institutions in society and to complete the democratiza-
  tion of Japan's political institutions. But given the rapidity of Japa-
  nese development, the proletariat-like the bourgeoisie-had not had
  enough time to constitute itself as a singular and conscious class. It
  thus faced the danger of "being absorbed by bourgeois and petty
  bourgeois political movements." It was on these grounds that Yama-
  kawa believed it necessary for the proletarian movement to take the
  lead (and to do so immediately) in "uniting the largest possible part
  of the workers' movement in an organization that is as autonomous
  as possible from bourgeois influence."104
  103 Yamakawa zenshu, vol. 5, pp. 77-82; Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei," pp. 81-
  7; Koyama and Sugimori, "Ronoha marukusushugi," pp. 282-4.
  104 Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei"; Koyama and Sugimori, "Ronoha maruku-
  sushugi," pp. 281-2.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  By contrast, Fukumoto did not ignore historical circumstances, but
  he saw historical changes in abstract global terms. Following Lenin and
  Luxemburg, he insisted that contemporary capitalism had reached its
  final and moribund stage of imperialism. Its collapse was imminent.
  Like Europe, Japan faced revolution, and its proletariat needed the
  guidance of a Leninist vanguard to accomplish its revolution. I05
  Ultimately, neither Yamakawa nor Fukumoto, neither the JCP nor
  Yamakawa's "united front" of laborers and farmers was victorious. All
  fell victim to government suppression. Fukumoto and Yamakawa also
  faced attack from the Comintern and many fellow leftists. The JCP
  expelled Fukumoto from the central committee in 1927, accusing him
  of Trotskyism, among other things. The Comintern described Fuku-
  moto's insistence on "unity through separation" as an error "that will
  isolate the party from the mass organizations of the proletariat."
  Yamakawa, his opponents wrote, encouraged "passivity." By ignoring
  the role of the vanguard, they charged, he left the proletarian move-
  ment powerless to transcend events and so reduced both to following
  them. Nonetheless, through their debates, Yamakawa and Fukumoto
  made the entire left aware that a conceptual understanding of history
  was important to the analysis of contemporary affairs. As Yamakawa
  had made clear, the strategic concerns of the present were predicated
  on a correct understanding of the past. If nothing else, this insight
  raised the level of the historiography of the Meiji Restoration.106
  IDEOLOGICAL DIALECTICS." THE PARADOX OF
  JAPANESE MARXISM
  No simple dichotomy between Leninists and non-Leninists or be-
  tween Communist and non-Communist Marxists can do justice to the
  ideological complexity of Japanese Marxism in the 1920s and early
  1930s. To be sure, Leninist theory and Comintern theses usually set
  the terms of discourse about proper political praxis for Marxists inside
  and outside the Japanese Communist Party alike. But throughout this
  period, a flood of translations and commentaries on the work of Marx,
  Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and others kept the Japanese abreast of
  developments in European non-Leninist Marxism. (For example, a
  translation of Kautsky's Karl Marx' Okonomische Lehren, a gloss on
  105 Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei," pp. 114-16.
  106 Koyama, "Nihon marukusushugi no keisei," pp. 99-100, 134; Takeuchi Yoshitomo and
  Suzuki Tadashi, "Shinkd kagaku no ham no mow ni to Yuibutsuron kenkyu," Shiso 465 (March
  1963): 108-10.
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  IDEOLOGICAL DIALECTICS 
  709
  the first volume of Capital, became a best seller, as did Marx's work
  itself.) Radical students like Fukumoto, Miki, and Hani who went to
  study in Weimar Germany also brought back what Alvin Gouldner
  called "critical Marxism"-a Marxism infiltrated by neo-Hegelian,
  neo-Kantian, and Heideggerian ideas. The Japanese socialists might
  not have heard of Lenin in 1917, but ten years later Japanese Marxists
  were well aware of the main currents of Marxist thought in both
  Western Europe and the Soviet Union.Io?
  Paradoxically, Marxism gained intellectual force and influence in
  the late 1920s and early 1930s even as the government intensified its
  crackdown on the Communist Party and defections from the move-
  ment increased. The intellectual significance that Marxism attained as
  a principium can be explained in part by the totality with which its
  theory of dialectical and historical materialism explained human so-
  cial, economic, and political behavior. In Fukumoto's words, "Every-
  thing must be understood as forms in motion, in contradictory devel-
  opment and as part of a totality, that is, must be grasped dialectically."
  It is also true that Leninist ideas regarding the importance of theoreti-
  cal purity and the hegemonic role of the rational intellectual appealed
  to the traditional bias of the Japanese mandarinate, as did the more
  general tendency of Western Marxism in the 1920s to give priority to
  theory over praxis and to emphasize cognitive clarity and conscious-
  ness. Although many academic Marxists like Miki, Fukumoto, and
  Hani were later attacked for their abstractness and their overemphasis
  on theory, a fault that some say has plagued Japanese Marxism ever
  since, it may have been precisely these qualities that made their writ-
  ings so widely read.108
  But Japanese Marxism also attracted the attention of intellectuals
  because of the apparent catholicity with which its chief ideologues
  integrated contemporary Western ideas into their theories. The extent
  of this can only be suggested. For example, Fukumoto was expelled
  from the JCP not merely because he insisted on the priority of theory
  but also because he emphasized the humanist element in Marx and
  asserted the priority of the transformation of consciousness in revolu-
  107 Kishimoto and Koyama, Nihon no hikyosanto, p. 79. For a good discussion of these prob-
  lems, see Iwasaki, Nihon marukumshugi tetsugakushi, chap. 1; Alvin Gouldner, The Two
  Marxisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). For comparable Western Marxist
  developments, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973),
  esp. pp. 76-80, 121-4, 272. A recent study of the Marxist debates in Japan is Germaine A.
  Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
  University Press, 1986).
  108 Takeuchi and Suzuki, "Shinko kagaku"; Iwasaki, Nihon marukusushugi tetsugakushi, pp. 39-
  41; Matsuzawa, Nihon, pp. 199-200.
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  SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, AND MARXISM
  tionary practice. These ideas he had borrowed from Karl Korsch, a
  neo-Hegelian Marxist, and from Georg Lukacs, who had introduced
  Weberian ideas to Marxism. In contending that Japan was on the
  verge of revolution, a position totally at odds with the Comintern and
  the JCP, Fukumoto followed Rosa Luxemburg, who had argued in a
  pre-World War I debate with Lenin that in the imperialist stage of
  world history, crisis was universal throughout the capitalist world.109
  For some Japanese Marxists, the humanist side of Marx's thought
  was tremendously appealing. In his interpretation of Marx's concept of
  commodity fetishism-usually explained by most Marxists as the sim-
  plest and most universal example of how the economic forms of capital-
  ism conceal underlying social relationships-Kawakami Hajime found
  evidence that Marx had been concerned not with material things but
  with human relationships. In most of his work after 1927 Kawakami
  explored this humanistic relationship through a study of the Marxist
  classics, having found in neo-Kantian Marxism a way to integrate dialec-
  tical materialism and humanism. The younger Miki Kiyoshi, just at this
  time, infused his Marxism with theories of knowledge borrowed in part
  from Heideggerian existentialism. In his analysis of the dialectic be-
  tween productivity and the relations of production, Miki introduced a
  primary logos of "existence," arguing in highly un-Marxian language
  that "man, in the process of life, is forced to advance an interpretation,
  in some manner, of his own quintessence."110
  What Fukumoto, Kawakami, Miki, and many of their peers
  brought into Marxism was a belief in the significance of the human
  actor and the role of human self-consciousness in carrying out revolu-
  tionary praxis. The theory of revolution and social praxis that intellec-
  tuals found in Marxism offered a positive philosophical alternative to
  the ahistoricity and passivity of the prevailing academic philosophy
  of "self-cultivation," kyoyoshugi. Whereas self-cultivation encouraged
  individuals to indulge themselves in a world of individuality, Marx-
  ism offered a philosophy of action.111 And it linked that philosophy
  of action with a universalistic or cosmopolitan conception of how
  human society developed, in Japan as elsewhere.
  109 Yamanouchi Yasushi, "Iwayuru shakai ishikx keitai ni tsuite," Shiso 568, 569 (October
  1971, November 1971): 23-37; 87-100.
  no Iwasaki, Nihon marukusushugi tesugakushi, pp. 102-8, 116-20, 128-32, 178-9; Yamanou-
  chi, "Iwayuru shakai"; Ouchi Hyoe, ed., Miki Kiyoshi zenshu, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami
  shoten, 1966-8), pp. 8-9.
  Ill Iwasaki, Nihon marukusushugi tetsugakushi, pp. 178-9; Takeuchi and Suzuki, "Shinko
  kagaku," pp. n o - l l .
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  CHAPTER 14
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST:
  POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CRITICISM
  IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
  INTRODUCTION
  Throughout much of Japan's modern history, the West has contrib-
  uted to its formulation of theories of culture and action. At one level
  the image of a monolithic West replaced an earlier interpretation of
  China as the "other." In the twentieth century and especially after
  World War I, Japan's conceptualization of the West affirmed a theory
  of militant and articulate revolt against the "other," usually imagined
  as a collective threat to Japan's national independence and cultural
  autonomy. The construction of the "other" required that it be por-
  trayed as the mirror image of the indigenous culture. It was this
  representation of the "other" that clarified for the Japanese the essence
  of their own culture. This reversing of images was no less true in
  the Tokugawa period, when an idealized China had constituted the
  "other," than in the twentieth century, when a monolithic West did. If
  the "other" defined what was exceptional in Japanese culture, it also
  offered a model of excellence against which such distinctiveness could
  be measured. Just as Tokugawa writers focused on the world of the
  ancient sages, changing it into an unhistorical abstraction whose val-
  ues existed only in pure form in Japan, so twentieth-century thinkers
  imagined a Japan destined to reach new levels of achievements realized
  by no single Western nation. Through this doubling of images, they
  shaped a theory of action aimed at maintaining a pure, indigenous
  cultural synthesis protected from outside elements that might disturb
  the perceived equilibrium. It was precisely because Japanese saw the
  urgency of keeping their culture uncontaminated and hence preserv-
  ing its essence against the threatened external pollution that many felt
  justified using militant forms of political and cultural action.
  Although desperate and even violent resistance against the West
  spread among nationalistic groups in the 1920s, reaching a climax in
  the mid-i93Os, the concern for keeping Japan's culture pure prompted
  others to try more moderate ways of preventing Japan from assimilat-
  711
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  712 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  ing too closely with the West. The impulse behind these efforts can be
  traced to the cosmopolitanism in the 1920s and the general conviction
  that Japan had contributed its own unique voice to a global civilization
  whose diversity was unified by a broad conception of humanity. Yet
  the emphasis on Japan's special contribution to world civilization nar-
  rowed easily in the political environment of the late 1920s and early
  1930s to a preoccupation with the status of Japan's uniqueness. Many
  believed that by realizing the best of East and West, Japan had
  achieved a new cosmopolitan culture. The recognition of having
  achieved this unprecedented synthesis validated the subsequent belief
  that Japan was uniquely qualified to assume leadership in Asia, al-
  though much of the rhetoric that the writers used referred to the world
  at large. Whereas an earlier cosmopolitanism promoted the ideal of
  cultural diversity and equivalence based on the principle of a common
  humanity, which served also to restrain excessive claims to excep-
  tionalism, the new culturalism of the 1930s proposed that Japan was
  appointed to lead the world to a higher level of cultural synthesis that
  surpassed Western modernism itself.
  The ambiguity between the capacity of an indigenous culture to
  withstand change and the claims of new knowledge demanding trans-
  formation was at the heart of the Meiji Restoration of 1868. On the one
  hand, the Meiji restorers announced, in the opening decree proclaim-
  ing the Restoration, that the aim of the new policy was to return to the
  "events of antiquity and Jimmu Tenno's state foundation." This
  meant returning to origins, a mythical time before Japan had been
  corrupted by Buddhism and Chinese civilization, and to the unalloyed
  practices of native experience. Yet at the same time, the new govern-
  ment declared in the Charter,Oath its determination to "search for
  new knowledge throughout the world" and to "eliminate old customs"
  "based on the universal way." The former intention led to a belief in
  cultural exceptionalism and even to presumptions of superiority in
  Japan's relations with foreigners. It also emphasized the basic similar-
  ity of all Japanese before the differentiating and alienating influence of
  foreign cultures and called attention to the real separation between
  demands of similitude (Japan) and difference (the "other"). The latter
  inspired the creation of the modern state and the transformation of
  Japanese society, classically expressed in the 1870s and 1880s as the
  establishment of "civilization and enlightenment" (bunmei kaika).
  Hence the call to origins authenticated all those proposals directed
  toward what was essential and spiritual and what was irreducibly Japa-
  nese, even though society had changed visibly and materially. The
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  713
  search for new knowledge, on the other hand, was identified with
  progressive development, modernity, and the West. The terms of
  cultural uniqueness increasingly stressed ends and essence, and the
  pursuit of rational knowledge privileged means and instrumentality.
  In the end the conflict was expressed in a struggle between culture-or
  the nation's distinctive spirit-and modern civilization-especially as
  expressed as functional political structure-and desperate efforts to
  overcome this polarization. Only Japan's defeat in the Pacific War and
  its dazzling economic recovery offered the occasion to complete the
  unfinished business of realigning these opposite claims and concealing
  their inherent contradiction in an improbable synthesis of Japan and
  the West.
  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT
  The particular militancy of the Japanese revolt against the West stems
  from the historical model of the loyalist samurai who overthrew the
  Tokugawa bakufu in the 1860s and established the Meiji state. In this
  model there were two related but distinct orientations in the theory of
  a restorationist action. One emphasized the necessity of resolving the
  question of domestic politics by ridding the country of incompetent
  leaders and ineffective institutions. It was believed that unless domes-
  tic problems first were solved, the nation would be left defenseless
  against the hostile ambitions of Western colonial powers. The other
  orientation focused on the foreign problem and sought to solve it
  through frontal military strategies. Whereas the theories of Kita Ikki
  and their ultimate incorporation in the mutiny of radical young offi-
  cers on February 26, 1936, exemplify the first orientation, the calcu-
  lated attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941-after a decade of trying to
  resolve the foreign problem-represents the second orientation.
  Beginning in the 1920s, with the assassination of Prime Minister
  Hara Takashi in Tokyo Station in 1921 and continuing thereafter in
  single acts of terror, the radical restorationists shunned public debate
  and conciliation as a way of resolving domestic political problems and
  instead used strategies of direct and violent action in order to shock
  and even shatter the confidence of political and industrial leaders.
  Drawing on the historical analogy of the sixteenth century when the
  "lower overthrew the upper" (gekokujo), activists reminded their con-
  temporaries that the idea of loyalty did not always mean compliance
  with the commands of superiors, that it could also mean righteous
  rebellion against incompetent and insensitive leaders. Indeed, this
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  idea of loyalty functioned as a double-edged sword to cut down the
  constitutional leadership and to remove all obstacles from achieving
  the goal of expelling the Western presence in Japan and Asia.
  Although it would be difficult to reduce all aspects of the Japanese
  revolt to a single doctrine or mode of action-as the ramifications were
  complex and branched over diverse areas of the culture-there are,
  nonetheless, some general characteristics that most of the groups and
  thinkers shared. Western conceptions of legal reason and rational cul-
  tural norms, often conveyed in the idiom of progress, rationalism,
  modernization, or simply Westernization, all came under scrutiny and
  were invariably modified but more often rejected as extensions of
  structures of power aimed at expanding Western interests. Moreover,
  such Western notions were seen as manipulating the indigenous cul-
  tural values in ways that were inimical to the legacies of a distinct
  history, particularly the aesthetic impulse of an elegant inheritance,
  and contrary to the communitarian experience vivified by the collec-
  tive memory of the folk. Often these aesthetic and communitarian
  values were signified by the vague yet provocative phrase calling atten-
  tion to the "national political essence" (kokutai), a concept that con-
  jured up mythical associations of a mystical union of spirit and body
  and that evoked a distinctive past and the creative potential for a
  unique future. The conception of kokutai captured in a single verbal
  compound the entire range of ideological virtues that defined what it
  meant to be Japanese, as opposed to the "other."
  The Japanese revolt also tended to link the resolution of Japan's
  problems with the revival of Asia as a world area, to emphasize the
  commonality of Asian peoples in their struggle to eliminate Western
  colonialism. Here, Japanese attitudes corresponded to the shift noted
  earlier from the Meiji enlightenment and its faith in rational progress
  to a preoccupation with an indigenous cultural spirit free from the
  constraints of alien logic and science. Thus, during the industrial and
  social revolutions that followed the Meiji Restoration, Japanese lead-
  ers spoke confidently of "leaving Asia" -datsu-A- meaning princi-
  pally the zone of Chinese civilization, and "entering Europe" -nyu-O-
  but this pattern was reversed in the twentieth century. Now leaders
  urged a "reentry into Asia" and an "abandonment of Europe," nyu-
  A, datsu-O. This reversal in phraseology was significant both politi-
  cally and culturally. Politically, it referred to a growing expectation
  that Japan, as a newly industrialized nation in Asia, should rightfully
  assume responsibility for developing that area. But a closer reading
  of the slogan suggested Japanese hegemony in Asia and the removal
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
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  of outside interference. Culturally, the call to reenter Asia heralded
  the reidentification of Japan with its continental roots, a return to its
  original sphere of civilization and the maintenance of Japan's unique
  place in it.
  This was early and powerfully articulated by the art historian
  Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913), who in a series of books (The Ideals of
  the East, 1902, and The Book of Tea, 1903), sought to establish Asia's
  cultural equivalence to the claims of Western hegemony. Okakura
  first formulated the principles that all Asians shared: "Asia is one," he
  wrote in The Ideals of the East, "The Himalayas divide, only to accentu-
  ate, two mighty civilizations, the Chinese with its communism of
  Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas." But,
  he added, this geographical divide has not "interrupted" a common
  inheritance marked by a "love for the Ultimate and Universal." It was
  precisely this shared disposition for the ultimate and universal that
  had enabled Asians everywhere to produce the great religions of the
  world and to emphasize the ends, not the means, of life that Okakura
  believed distinguished the maritime civilizations of the West. Al-
  though Asians had a mutual view of the world, Japan, he proposed,
  represented this cultural consensus through its aesthetic values. In-
  deed, Japan functioned as the key to this great cultural code, attesting
  to "the historic wealth of Asiatic culture" and therefore illuminating
  "its treasured specimens." Japan, Okakura announced, "is the mu-
  seum of Asiatic civilization." What he meant by this strategy of substi-
  tuting the part for the whole is that the artistic accomplishments of the
  Japanese had encapsulated the "history of Asiatic ideals" to form
  "sand-ripples" on the national consciousness with "each successive
  wave of Eastern thought." Long before writers like Watsuji Tetsuro
  identified the elements of the two different cultural styles, Okakura
  proposed that Japan alone assimilated two different ideals in an endur-
  ing tension: the Asian love for grand visions of "universal sweep"
  grounded in the concrete and particular and the Western propensity
  for science and "organized culture" "armed in all its array of undiffer-
  entiated knowledge, and keen with the edge of competitive energy."
  But Okakura was certain that the Japanese example would withstand
  the challenge of science and industry, to preserve the Asian "spirit"
  and to lead to a higher synthesis of both.'
  The twentieth century witnessed a powerful cultural and political
  1 Kakuzo Okakura, Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (Rutland, Vt.:
  Tuttle, 1970), pp. 1-9,206-7,236-44-
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  7l6 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  ground swell of resistance and revolt against the domination of Asia by
  Western powers, in which Japan assumed the role of leading this
  Asian renaissance. Yet before Japan could undertake this leadership
  role, it felt it necessary to cleanse its own society in a great "spiritual"
  restoration aimed at lowering the nation's reliance on Western modes
  of political and economic thought and organization. The various at-
  tempted coups and assassinations of the early 1930s-often under the
  authorizing banner of "restoration" (ishiri) or "reconstruction" (kai-
  20)-all shared the conceptual assumption that the times demanded
  direct action promising the establishment of a new order in Japan,
  unified and freed from the corrosive influence of the West. Indeed,
  thinkers and activists such as Okawa Shumei, Inoue Nissho, Tachi-
  bana Kosaburo, Kita Ikki, Gondo Seikei, and others represent noth-
  ing less than a program to "expel the barbarians" in the name of
  culture and spirit, or joiron, as this sentiment was denned in the 1860s
  before the Meiji Restoration.
  Another dimension of these theories of action prompted various
  evaluations relating to the performance of the modern Japanese state.
  It was widely believed that the Japanese state had been created in
  response to the threat to the nation's independence posed by the encir-
  cling Western powers. But underlying this conviction was the deeper
  fear of the structure of law enabling the formation of the modern state.
  This siege mentality in Japan led to the paradoxical conclusion that the
  best defense against the Western nation-states was the construction of
  a modern, legal state of its own. In other words, from the beginning,
  distrust of the West accompanied the act of state building in Japan, as
  ihe following quotation from Kido Takayoshi, one of the early leaders
  of the Meiji Restoration, illustrates:
  There is an urgent need for Japan to become strong enough militarily to take
  a stand against the Western powers. As long as our country is lacking in
  military power, the law of nations is not to be trusted. When dealing with
  those who are weak, the strong nations often invoke public law but really
  calculate their own gain. Thus it seems to me that the law of nations is merely
  a tool for the conquest of the weak.2
  The magnitude of the challenge suggested here reveals the urgency
  requiring the revolutionary samurai to construct the Meiji state. Yet a
  principal consideration of these Meiji state builders was to make sure
  that the Japanese state, as they envisaged it, would minimize and
  2 Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
  1979), P- 143-
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
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  eventually obliterate the perceived disparity between Japan and the
  superior Western powers. Such a mission required continuous demon-
  stration that Japanese achievements were equal to Western accomplish-
  ments. But ironically, it was precisely the need for demonstration that
  escalated the conflict that Japan hoped to avoid. For although Japan
  underwent with breathtaking speed a political and industrial transfor-
  mation in order to establish a new relationship with the Western coun-
  tries, the real and perceived challenge of a permanent condition of
  national peril never disappeared. Rather, this sense of continuing siege
  led to the belief that the challenge should be speedily resolved once
  and for all, in what many came to call the "war to end all wars" (saishu
  senso). Many were convinced that such a war would definitively expel
  the West from Asia, would make the continent free for Asians, and
  thus would complete Japan's own "spiritual" revolution. Simulta-
  neously, movements of dissent were unleashed against the modern
  state itself for its failure to realize the original vision of the Meiji
  Restoration, owing to the diverting influence of excessive Westerniza-
  tion, hence the "bureaucratization" of the constitutional system.
  Among such proponents of revolt against domestic politics, one
  group dramatized the inadequacy of the state's constitutional structure
  and sought to alter it through violent confrontation. The other group
  rejected the primacy of structure altogether as a Western aberration and
  instead invoked the power of the spirit to bind all Japanese together in
  common, not divided, purpose. The major theorist for the former
  group was Kita Ikki (1883-1937), whereas Gondo Seikei and Tachi-
  bana Kosaburo best represented all those groups that dreamed of replac-
  ing hierarchical structure with communitarian brotherhood. Nonethe-
  less, there was considerable overlapping between these groups. In fact,
  some activists, notably Okawa Shumei, were accomplished scholars
  who moved easily between the various restorationist factions as strate-
  gists and planners of coups d'etat.
  Kita Ikki
  Kita Ikki's restorationist theory of action originated in late Meiji na-
  tionalism and socialism. In Kita's first major treatise, "The Theory of
  National Polity and Pure Socialism" (Kokutairon oyobi junsei shakai-
  shugi, 1906), Kita proposed an identity between ancient political soci-
  ety and socialism and equated the traditional absence of private prop-
  erty with the diminished role of state structure. To him the emperor
  symbolized the common ownership of property and hence a commu-
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  7l8 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  nal form of social existence. He therefore regarded the idea of the
  national polity (kokutai) as an appropriate "historical" model for the
  present to emulate in order to remove inequality and the sources of
  contemporary divisiveness; it also justified undertaking political ac-
  tion to install the communalistic ideal. Although Kita remained faith-
  ful to this ancient ideal of community, he modified his overall thinking
  significantly in the course of his career as a theorist and activist.
  The crucial turning point altering Kita's angle of vision came with
  his involvement in Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement in China in
  1911. Following the revolution and China's subsequent effort to con-
  struct a viable state, Kita, though refusing to surrender his earlier
  communalism, became convinced of the importance of the imperial
  figure as a unifying principle of politics. In his estimation, the Chinese
  revolution failed precisely because of its leadership's inability to estab-
  lish a persuasive centralized political order. In the end they fell back,
  he observed, to relying on an illegitimate monarchy that only aggra-
  vated the problem and forestalled its resolution. While still in Shang-
  hai, Kita began to draft his program for total political reorganization,
  in a tract called "An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of the Japa-
  nese State" (Nihon kokka kaizo hoan, 1919). Soon to become a major
  manifesto read by a wide variety of malcontents in the military and
  civilian populations, Kita's "Outline" explained the contemporary po-
  litical malaise in Japan and the reasons that it called for radical action.
  He identified what many had felt uneasy about in the political environ-
  ment of the 1920s but what had not yet been articulated. Implicit in
  Kita's treatise was a perspective on what he called the crisis of the
  time, a plan for resolving the domestic failure and a sanction for direct
  action and the seizure of power in the emperor's name.
  Underlying Kita's writings is a sense of national crisis unleashed by
  capitalist and bureaucratic exploitation and leading to extreme inequal-
  ity and misery in society that, he feared, would sap the strength and
  energy of the people. The existing constitutional order, he reasoned,
  had necessitated divisive party and interest politics (an observation
  shared by a number of contemporaries along the political spectrum),
  created new privileged classes, and separated the public realm from
  the general populace. Kita committed himself, therefore, to revolution-
  ary upheaval as the surest antidote to the evils of the modern Japanese
  state and its mode of distributing resources. Although he never aban-
  doned his earlier communitarian vision of socialism, derived from his
  reading of ancient mythohistory, he supplemented it with an organiza-
  tional scheme that would replace the existing constitutional structure.
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
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  In his earlier text on the national polity, Kita had failed to raise the
  question of industrial production; he was satisfied to base his concep-
  tion of communitarianism on an ancient agrarian model. But in his
  later work, he recognized the role of industrialism in modern social-
  ism. It was this perception that prompted him to find a new organi-
  zational model to replace the established constitutional order. To
  achieve his revolutionary aim, Kita advocated overthrowing the pre-
  vailing leadership in a swift and conclusive coup d'etat. By reconstitut-
  ing the structure of authority, he believed, Japan would rid itself of
  Western political institutions and economic practices as a necessary
  condition for a final confrontation in Asia. Kita called this program a
  "national renovation" (Nihon kaizo) based on the ideal of the "people's
  emperor" (kokumin tenno).
  The imperial principle was vital to Kita's overall plan for a revolu-
  tionary reorganization of the state. He saw the importance of the
  emperor not so much as an institution that had survived from ancient
  times but as a symbol of community. His view came close to the
  conception of the early Meiji rebels Eto Shimpei and Saigo Takamori,
  who demanded the installation of what they called a "people's em-
  peror" free from the meddling mediation of bureaucrats. In Japan,
  Kita argued, the imperial institution had been preserved to represent
  the national culture, but its potential as a social monarchy had been
  suppressed by the rise of bourgeois and bureaucratic politics within
  the constitutional order. It was precisely this principle of social cohe-
  sion that made the Meiji Restoration the proper solution to Japan's
  domestic and foreign problems in the nineteenth century but that
  subsequent leaders violated by reconstructing the state and society as
  sanctuaries for private interests and privileges. Kita was indifferent to
  the idea of a divine emperor. When he was executed for his role in the
  mutiny of 1936, he was ordered to recant by saying "long live the
  emperor" as a final act of reverence and submission. He is reported to
  have refused by replying that he had vowed long ago never to joke
  about his own death.
  In his "Outline" Kita proposed first to suspend the Meiji constitu-
  tion in the name of the emperor, that is, the national community, in
  order to liberate both the monarch and the people from the constraints
  imposed by a bureaucratic polity.3 Revealing his awareness of the
  history of modern revolutionary movements elsewhere, he envisaged a
  3 Kitalkki, "Nihon kaizo hoan taiko," in GendaiNihon shisotaikei, vol. 31: Chokokka shugi, ed.
  Hashikawa Bunzo (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1964), pp. 283-347.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  true Japanese revolution like the earlier upheavals in France and Rus-
  sia. He was convinced that such an event would inaugurate a new era
  in the twentieth century. Unlike earlier revolutions that had destroyed
  the monarchy for purposes of political and economic renewal, Kita's
  theory of revolution depended on establishing the principle of a "peo-
  ple's emperor" as a necessary condition for the eventual implementa-
  tion of a socialist order. In Asian societies such as China and Japan, he
  noted, the maintenance of the imperial principle of authority was vital
  to any radical reconstruction. Without it there would almost certainly
  be chaos and disorder, such as he had witnessed in China. Behind this
  view lay Kita's conviction that "true" revolutionary movements were
  shaped by the specific geographical area rather than the necessities of
  history. Here he undoubtedly broke with prevailing Marxist theories
  of revolution that were being debated by many of his contemporaries.
  Although Kita professed admiration for Marx and Kropotkin, prais-
  ing them as pioneers in the development of socialism, he believed that
  his conception of revolution was, by contrast, mediated by Asian reali-
  ties, to which the concept of class conflict was not appropriate. From
  this "new" perspective, he saw a Japanese revolution clearly marking a
  historical break from what came before: The new socialist order in
  Japan would be achieved without class warfare yet would include the
  new forces of industry and science. A socialist revolution in Japan,
  moreover, would be the first step in a chain reaction leading to the
  liberation of all Asian countries from Western political and economic
  domination. As examples, Kita cited China and India where indepen-
  dence movements had already begun.
  Kita's plan called for dismantling the structure of privilege that had
  been sustained by the Meiji state. The peerage would be abolished,
  and universal manhood suffrage would be instituted. Surplus land
  would be redistributed among the landless according to size and need
  of each household. Although allowing for the retention of personal
  property, Kita recommended the confiscation of "industrial capital."
  As this wealth was transferred to the new state, the power of big
  bourgeoisie, as it had been constituted, would be effectively dimin-
  ished; and through the mediation of a new order, widespread depriva-
  tion would be ended. It was Kita's purpose to relocate industrial
  production and its management in new state agencies. Corporate bod-
  ies would hereafter direct major enterprises such as steel and iron,
  banks, maritime trade, railways, and mining. Moreover, he envisaged
  specialized agencies to administer agriculture and labor affairs. Al-
  though he was sensitive to the needs of the countryside, he was princi-
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  721
  pally concerned with reorganizing the cities in order to rationalize the
  mobilization and distribution of industrial resources. The destruction
  of privilege, the reconstitution of community, the regulation of work-
  ing conditions, such as the establishment of an eight-hour workday,
  equality of employment for both men and women, and numerous
  other proposals shaped this theory of mobilization.
  Throughout the "Outline" Kita revealed his concern for the plight
  of the general population. His remedies stemmed from an earlier social-
  ism: worker ownership of companies, the state's responsibility for the
  parenting of children and schooling (tuition, books, meals, and so on),
  and a comprehensive social welfare program for the aged, poor, dis-
  abled, and orphaned. Included here was the vision he shared with
  other contemporary socialists and internationalists that a universal
  language be taught to all youngsters in place of national languages
  such as French and English ordinarily used in international communi-
  cation. Kita, therefore, prescribed the teaching of Esperanto as the
  second language after Japanese to be taught in all of the schools and
  the total abolition of the use of Chinese ideographs.
  The ultimate aim of socialism in Japan was to force the retreat of the
  West and to create a new civilization based on the revival of all of Asia.
  Japan was uniquely suited because it had maintained the highest prin-
  ciple of sovereignty-the imperial monarch-despite the incursion of
  Western political and social institutions and thus had withstood, as
  had no other Asian society, the challenge of modernism. The Japanese
  flag, he boasted, would one day be emblazoned on the minds of all
  Asian peoples. The "darkness" spread over Asia by the Versailles
  Treaty, especially the duplicity of the United States, he promised,
  would be lifted in the near future when Japan engaged the West in a
  conclusive naval confrontation, just as the Greeks in ancient times
  defeated the Persians in the battle of Salamis. Although the Greek
  victory represented the triumph of West over East, Japan's forthcom-
  ing success would signal the reemergence of East over West. Only
  through such an "ultimate war" would peace and power in Asia be
  secured.
  Not surprisingly, Kita ended his "Outline" with a passage from the
  Lotus Sutra, the central text of the Buddhist Nichiren sect, calling
  attention to the saint's determination to lead the populace from pas-
  sion and chaos to light, knowledge, and salvation. Nichiren's mission
  was to save Japan and all humankind, which meant Asia. Throughout
  much of his later career, Kita identified with the twelfth-century Bud-
  dhist reformer Nichiren and often chanted from the sacred scriptures
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  of the Lotus Sutra. He found a source of resolve in Nichiren's hostility
  toward the existing political order and in his intense faith in his new
  power as a bodhisattva to save Japan from the Mongol invasion. Kita
  no doubt saw himself as a latter-day saint in a time of grave national
  peril, as had been the case in Nichiren's time.
  Gondo Seikei
  Although Kita's "Outline" was the most articulate and comprehensive
  program for radical reorganization, it was not the only proposal for
  violent action against contemporary political and industrial leaders.
  Kita's platform gave special attention to the question of industrial
  capital and recommended ways to redistribute the wealth of the bour-
  geoisie while disenfranchising them of political power. Yet his princi-
  pal aim was to reorganize the industrial workplace, usually large facto-
  ries, in order to improve the lot of city workers. In a sense his national
  socialism represented a confirmation, rather than a rejection, of both
  industrialism and the cities. If by mobilizing the cities, Kita sought a
  solution to the conditions of urban existence, others, closer to a
  nativist agrarian tradition, saw both industrialism and the cities as the
  problem for, rather than a solution to, the countryside. And although
  Kita emphasized the importance of a reconstituted state structure,
  theorists such as Gondo Seikei (1868-1937), Inoue Nissho (1886-
  1967), and Tachibana Kosaburo (1893-1974), dramatized the ideal of
  an Asian agrarian community independent of the state and a sacred
  sanctuary free from the erosions of contemporary history. Moreover,
  this romantic view of society was shared by many important cultural
  theorists in the 1920s and 1930s who increasingly saw in the promise
  of community the only possible alternative to the divisiveness of mod-
  ern political and social relations. Where they differed from more pro-
  grammatic agrarian nativists was in their refusal to translate their
  ideals into a theory of violent action. Yet all agrarianists, like Kita
  Ikki, emphasized the imperial institution as central to any conception
  of community and frequently referred to the polity as a popular union
  of the emperor and people, the kunmin kyochi. The people were seen as
  an embodiment of a common essence that derived from the local land
  and the tutelary shrines that defined all within a marked-off space as
  "brothers" under the divine protection of spiritual entities. Far from
  the corrupt cities and the sites of industrial capitalism, the possibility
  of communal brotherhood, the agrarianists believed, continued to ex-
  ist as an accessible reality, even though in recent times it had been
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  723
  attacked by the forces of modernity. Included in these new corrosive
  forces were not only interest politics and bureaucracy but also the
  whole panoply of Western rationalism which many vociferous agrar-
  ianists saw as deceptive and alien to a community life close to nature.
  In the writings of people like Gondo and Tachibana, rational instru-
  mentality separated people from community, and thus from them-
  selves, as interest displaced reciprocity.
  Gondo's analysis of the contemporary situation stemmed less from
  the perception of inequality, as Kita's analysis had, than from the
  erosion of communal ties and agricultural work that, Gondo believed,
  had always been the bedrock of traditional Asian societies. He com-
  pared the societies of ancient Asia with those of the West and con-
  cluded that the former were based on agricultural cultivation by the
  peasantry, whereas the latter were founded on animal domestication
  by herders, a view that prefigured Watsuji Tetsuro's later geographi-
  cal typology. In fact, Gondo was convinced that the origin of agricul-
  tural production reached back so far that its recollection had lapsed in
  the social memory of the people. To remind the Japanese of this
  forgotten agricultural endowment, Gondo turned to "reading" the
  nature myths and first fables from the "age of the gods" when the folk
  first cleared lands to grow grain and irrigate paddies to cultivate rice.
  Yet Gondo also argued that this agricultural act was necessitated by
  the recognition that because the gods blessed humans with the gift of
  life, they were obliged to reciprocate by making this land habitable for
  each successive generation.
  In his principal essay, "Principles of Popular Self-Government"
  (Jichi minsei ri, 1936), Gondo summoned the authority of a divine
  ordinance attributed to the sun goddess-Amaterasu-to support his
  claims: "The five grains are necessary, as they give life to the people."1*
  This deceptively simple phrase indicated to Gondo the natural basis
  underlying the construction of civilized life; to reproduce the condi-
  tions of social life as they had been imparted by the gods in each
  generation was to produce civilization itself. It was this lesson that
  subsequent generations had forgotten as they were lured to the bland-
  ishments of modernity. Indeed, it was at this point that human com-
  munity had become a possibility. The supposition that humans were
  autonomous was erroneous, Gondo reasoned, because it disregarded
  the natural relationships into which all persons must enter. When
  people are engaged in agricultural work, they are naturally part of a set
  4 Gondo Seikei, "Jichi minsei ri," in Gendai Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 31, pp. 239-82, esp. p. 241.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  of communal relations; reciprocity renders the self into a "nonself,"
  inasmuch as the individual becomes a part of the whole. Moreover,
  there are corresponding moral and legal norms that regulate the life of
  the community that prevent the freedom of the individual from becom-
  ing absolute. Because these norms were wedded to the natural human
  quest for mutual nourishment and satisfaction, they were not to be
  confused with large, artificial, bureaucratic organizations and over-
  arching state structures. The moral dignity of the natural individual in
  a communitarian context of abundance and happiness was central to
  Gondo and represented what was genuinely human.
  If the most basic human relationships and interactions reveal the
  principle of mutual assistance and relief, then the village must repre-
  sent the natural basis for "self-government" among the people. The
  symbolic authorization for such local self-rule was the indigenous tute-
  lary shrines that, from antiquity, sanctioned the sacred character of
  Japanese life. From this perspective, Gondo saw the imperial institu-
  tion not as the source of constitutional authority, as many contempo-
  raries imagined, but as the sacred symbol of the natural community.
  In his view the creation of the land by the imperial ancestors was
  identical to this principle of a sacred community. In ancient times, he
  wrote, "politics" was referred to as a solemn religious ceremony-
  matsurigoto- ministered by a priest-king who formed a national com-
  munity from this unification of the sacred and secular. For Gondo, as
  well as his contemporary, the ethnographer Yanagida Kunio, Japan
  the imperial land was simply a large tutelary shrine. .
  Disclaiming that this ancient pattern was unusual to Japan, Gondo
  emphasized its "Asian" dimension. Ancient China had also known
  tutelary shrines, he argued, and they were used to mark off provincial
  boundaries. Yet they were also synonymous with the production of the
  five grains and thus symbolized community life itself. The shrines
  transformed the earth into something divine, and agricultural cultiva-
  tion was a form of religious supplication. As a result, there was no
  distinction made between secular administrative duties and the man-
  agement of the sacred fruits of the land. Without local management of
  land and its produce, societies could not have survived. Nothing in
  modern times could alter that basic truth regarding the continuation of
  human society in the future.
  Gondo's thinking regarding the natural community prompted his
  followers to reject the modern state in Japan as an artificial bureau-
  cratic construction imported from the West and disengaged from the
  realities of the agricultural experience. What troubled him the most
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  725
  was the imposition of an artificial, centralized administration over the
  tradition of local self-control. The new bureaucracy was thus oppres-
  sive and distant from the people; it had even denied the imperial
  institution from playing its familiar role as priest-king overseeing the
  people's local management of the sacred village. Without a system of
  local self-government steeped in peasant cultivation of the soil, the
  spirit of the nation, Gondo feared, would be dissipated, its continuity
  into the future jeopardized. And he attributed the cause of this contem-
  porary crisis to the shortsightedness and insensitivity of the modern
  state, centered in Tokyo, a city he especially disliked for its imperson-
  ality and its indifference to the needs of Japan's farming population.
  Concerned only with industrial production, the government was re-
  moved from the sacred agrarian foundations of Japanese civilization.
  Gondo begged the Japanese to resist the continuing migration of farm-
  ers into the cities and called for their return to the land as the only
  hope for retaining genuine human community. The rural landscape,
  like the Egyptian pyramids, emptied of humans and hope, resembled
  a ruin portending the death of Japanese civilization. The depth of
  Gondo's pessimism and the rage it generated led him to advocate
  direct action. Rejecting legal reforms as inadequate to Japan's needs
  and unlikely to succeed, Gondo envisaged an awakening of the peo-
  ple's consciousness stirred spontaneously by heroic deeds to save the
  sacred sources of Japanese life. The "evil" manipulators of the large
  bureaucratic, industrial, and military complexes, he believed, must be
  challenged and overthrown in order to realize the aim of a true "resto-
  ration." Here it is evident that Gondo's summons to act quickly in a
  desperate situation attracted radical activists searching for a program
  and malcontents seeking ways in which to channel their resentment.
  Tachibana Kosaburo
  The tendency in agrarian fundamentalism to elicit radical and often
  reckless action was best dramatized by the case of Tachibana Kosa-
  buro. Before graduating from the First Higher School, the elite educa-
  tional institution from which students embarked upon prestigious ca-
  reers in the bureaucracy, Tachibana decided to return to his native
  province in rural Japan. Although it is difficult to plumb motives,
  Tachibana's own testimony explaining this decision suggests that he
  felt compelled to deal directly with the spiritual and material misery of
  the countryside. In his mind there was no real distinction between
  spiritual and physical malaise. A complex thinker with an enormous
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  theoretical grasp, Tachibana acknowledged his indebtedness to the
  examples of Tolstoi, Gandhi, the history of Western socialism, and the
  early ideas of Kita Ikki. He sought to combine the various themes into
  a coherent synthesis of radical humanism and agrarian fundamental-
  ism. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tachibana turned to the strat-
  egy of direct and violent action against the existing order, inspiring
  sympathetic young officers in both services to commit even greater
  acts of daring and terrorism, which included the assassination of
  Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi in the so-called May 15 incident.
  Tachibana was also implicated in the bombing attacks on the headquar-
  ters of the Seiyukai, one of Japan's leading political parties, and on the
  Mitsui Bank in central Tokyo.
  The central thread of Tachibana's ideas appeared in the preamble of
  his summons to action, "The Basic Principles of Japanese Patriotic
  Reform" (Nihon aikoku kakushin hongi, 1932). In this text Tachibana
  announced: "There can be no people who are separated from the land.
  There can be no national society separated from the people."5 Despite
  its circularity, the call rang resonantly throughout Japan and invoked
  specific associations concerning the plight of the countryside among
  those who, because of their own agrarian origins, were most grieved
  by the unrelieved rural misery. Perceiving a general national crisis,
  much in the same manner as did Kita and Gondo, Tachibana prom-
  ised resolution through a reidentification of people with land as the
  source of the necessary spiritual regeneration that would culminate in
  a patriotic reordering of the nation itself. By this reordering he meant
  providing direct relief to the people in order to "save them" (kyukoku
  saimin). To accomplish this goal, however, it was necessary to uproot
  Western capitalistic and materialist civilization in Japan. Tachibana
  referred specifically to eliminating such institutions as political par-
  ties, interest groups, and large industrial combines known as zaibatsu.
  Although noted as a romantic and Utopian thinker, Tachibana re-
  jected characterizations that discounted his ideas as mere abstractions
  dissociated from the actualities of historical conditions. The primary
  aim of his program was "to liberate the people" from false and arbi-
  trary governance. Unfortunately, most Japanese had been persuaded
  to see their world in terms of Western concepts and things and to
  think of nothing else but money. The condition of life had reached this
  unhappy state because the Japanese, implicated in a global market,
  5 Tachibana Kosaburo, "Nihon aikoku kakushin hongi," in Gendai Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 31,
  pp. 213-38, esp. p. 213.
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
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  were compelled to sell not only goods in the conventional sense but
  also labor, land, women, and ultimately the nation itself. Nothing
  escaped the iron demands of exchange value. The villages' simplicity
  and undifferentiated community life were torn apart by the ravaging
  force of money and commodities. The privileged classes, political par-
  ties, and the industrial combines, all located in the cities, effectively
  robbed Japan of its basic conditions of social existence and sent the
  nation down the road to slavery. Convincing evidence for this conclu-
  sion was the devastating extent to which Japan already had been
  drawn into the corrupting network of world finance that produced the
  Great Depression. What men in power had failed to grasp, Tachibana
  observed, was the divergent historical bases accounting for the devel-
  opment of Asian and Western societies. Like Gondo, Tachibana be-
  lieved in the agrarian and village community as the original starting
  point of civilization in Asia, whereas the cities constituted the sub-
  stance of Western history.
  Tachibana also was convinced that Western modes of thinking were
  totally inappropriate to Asia. Marxism and dialectical materialism,
  with their privileging of class struggle to resolve social contradictions,
  were too rigid and formalistic to be applicable to Japan and Asia. The
  Japanese were not inclined to "assassinate reality," as he put it, by
  employing such abstract and limiting logic. The historical source for
  Western thought was rooted in the remote experiences of the ancient
  Greeks, whose idea of "logos" authorizing speculation and science,
  had led them to believe that all things and events resulted from a
  dialectical process. When compared with Asian modes of thinking, the
  differences became readily apparent. Thus in the great Asian intellec-
  tual and religious systems such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucian-
  ism, and even ancient Christianity (which Tachibana considered to be
  an oriental religion), the dialectical differentiation between self and
  others, subject and object, are completely overcome. For this reason,
  human reciprocity, the triumph of nonself over self, was the central
  principle in Asian civilization. The idea of humans conquering nature
  was offensive and alien to Asia, even though it had been used to justify
  the rise of capitalism everywhere. Yet this materialistic view of life
  now infected Tokyo and other Asian capitals. Ornamental evidences
  were visible everywhere, in large department stores, banks, newspa-
  pers, and industrial factories of every conceivable variety. When this
  new urban landscape was juxtaposed with the rural scene of Asia, it
  would be impossible to avoid conclusions regarding the fate of the
  Japanese people. What indeed, Tachibana asked rhetorically, would
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  become of those ideals of mutual faith and trust that have denned
  community life in Japan since the beginning? Japan had no alternative
  but to abandon the capitalism of the large cities and to return to the
  true spirit of Asian origins and the promise of holistic national commu-
  nity free from fragmentation and division.
  Tachibana's assessment of contemporary realities based on a concep-
  tual differentiation between East and West convinced him that only
  through direct action could Japan overcome the pernicious influence
  of Westernization. Such a liberation from the West would simulta-
  neously generate similar acts of separation throughout Asia. All this
  should be accomplished without relying on Western assistance. In
  Japan, he believed, a "patriotic revolution" was possible by activating
  the historical union between emperor and folk. The force of this union
  would sweep away illegitimate rule, as the past had always shown and
  made manifest for all to see the spiritual light of the national essence.
  Tachibana even speculated that the agrarian revolution begun in Japan
  would spread throughout the world and rid it of individualism and
  materialism.
  Tachibana's strategy called for the formation of a "patriotic brother-
  hood." All Japanese shared the idea of a communal brotherhood sym-
  bolized by the national essence itself. He also believed that the culmi-
  nating event could be realized only by brothers in blood (shishi) who
  would fearlessly and unselfishly lay down their own lives to save the
  people in accordance with the emperor's wishes. The members of this
  brotherhood would be recruited from all social classes and thus would
  represent a more perfect whole signified by the imperial will. Clearly,
  Tachibana aimed at a revolutionary upheaval in which the fate of the
  folk would once more be redirected to the establishment of an agrarian
  communalism. He was not recommending a mass movement but,
  rather, a vanguard action initiated by blood-sworn patriots pledged to
  violence and terror.
  Nakano Seigo
  Although the major theorists of the restorationist revolt often occupied
  positions on the margins of Japanese society, explaining both their
  resentment and their radical summons to return to the countryside,
  others closer to the mainstream were involved in similar modes of
  thinking concerning the problematical status of Japanese and Asian
  cultures. A well-known journalist and leader in the 1920s of one of
  Japan's major political parties, the Minseito, Nakano Siego is an exam-
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  729
  pie of one who tried to bridge the concerns of the center with those of
  the periphery. Noted for his fiery and moving speeches, Nakano be-
  gan his career as a journalist and identified with Miyake Setsurei's
  influential circle of intellectuals, the Seikyosha and the magazine Ja-
  pan and the Japanese..6 Nakano became the principal spokesman for
  the cultural program promoted by this circle. The political basis of the
  nation, he repeated in his speeches and writings, was the "people," a
  collection of spiritually idealistic individuals symbolized by the social
  monarchy. The emperor, therefore, was the people's emperor, a view
  widely held by the agrarianists; he was not the captive of elites en-
  sconced in the constitutional and industrial order. Thus, although the
  Meiji Restoration had succeeded in maintaining Japan's independence
  against the threat of colonialism, it had also produced a system of
  elitism contrary to the ideal of popular national community. Indeed,
  the new elites had led the people astray into the path of uncritical
  conformism with Western ideas, manners, and things and had di-
  verted them from their true and abiding purpose. Nakano believed the
  time had come to contest this deception by reidentifying with the true
  tradition of spiritual autonomy represented in the philosophic intu-
  itionism (Oyomeigaku) of such heroic figures as Oshio Heihachiro and
  Saigo Takamori. Given the failed expectations of the Meiji Restora-
  tion, Nakano called for a "second restoration" that would result in the
  "reorganization of the state" (kokka kaizo) and join the emperor and
  people into a powerful egalitarian order. He emphasized that such a
  reorganization would also signal Japan's leadership in the liberation of
  colonized countries throughout Asia to realize their own indigenous
  popular spirit. In Nakano's thinking, the opposition to domestic bu-
  reaucratism was closely associated with an expansive vision of Asian
  liberation, "Asia for Asians," a theme that was monotonously repeated
  by ideologues in the 1930s bent on justifying Japan's own imperialist
  adventures on the continent.
  Okawa Shumei
  Yet an even better example of this mode of thinking was Okawa
  Shumei (1886-1957) who, though not a "brown shirter" like Nakano,
  was involved in a range of activities that bridged the world of official-
  dom and militant paramilitary organizations. Okawa was, above all
  6 See Tetsuo Najita, "Nakano Seigo and the Spirit of the Meiji Restoration in Twentieth-
  Century Japan," in Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, ed. James Morley (Princeton, N.J.:
  Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 375-421.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  else, a scholar who brought impressive credentials and intellectual
  accomplishments to the vision of Japan's reconstruction and Asia's
  liberation. A respected scholar of Islamic studies trained at the newly
  established Institute for Oriental Studies (Toyokenkyujo) at Tokyo
  Imperial University and noted for his translation of the Koran, Okawa
  was devoted to the study of Asia's major religious systems as a condi-
  tion for "returning" to the sources of his own indigenous tradition.
  In a reflective essay describing his own reidentification with the
  Japanese spirit (Nihon seishin kenkyu, 1939), Okawa acknowledged
  that after many years of spiritual confusion, he had rediscovered the
  native place of the Japanese soul (waga tamashii no kokyo)J Recogniz-
  ing this return as a religious experience similar to conversion, he
  confessed how recovering the Japanese spirit resolved the psychologi-
  cal contradictions in his youthful mind that had so long afflicted him.
  He further analogized the return as the culmination of a long, perilous
  ascent up the side of a steep mountain. But Okawa's "mountain" was a
  metaphor for an uphill struggle to overcome personal cultural despair;
  it was not simply a specific "local place," as had been the case with
  Gondo and Tachibana. What Okawa found, therefore, was not the
  Utopian village of romantic agrarianists but the moral tradition tem-
  pered by the major religious and philosophic systems of Buddhism
  and Confucianism which, he believed, had always emphasized the
  close relationship between proper ethical conduct (dogi) and religion
  (shukyo). This combination of morality and religion was exemplified
  best in the spirit of the samurai class. En route to this discovery,
  Okawa observed the spiritual confusion and agony among vast num-
  bers of people. He grieved over what he imagined was the absence of
  purpose in society, which he felt was caused by the failure of the
  existing political order to provide clear direction. Much of the imagery
  he used to characterize Japan's contemporary predicament called forth
  spiritual malaise, isolation, and alienation. The actual world before
  him was devoid of both peace and compassion. In his lengthy retro-
  spective, "The Gates of Paradise" (Anraku no mon, 1951), Okawa
  recalled that a psychological dislocation bordering on a fatal illness had
  spread throughout all of Asia.8
  Okawa's "return" to Japan, then, included concern for the "awak-
  ening" of the Asian continent. Although he saw the importance of
  revolutions in the West as a model for overthrowing imperialism and
  7 Okawa Shumei, "Nihon seishin kenkyu," in Gendai Nihon shisd taikei, vol. 31, pp. 137-43.
  8 Okawa, "Anraku no mon," in Gendai Nihon shisd taikei, vol. 9: Ajia shugi, ed. Takeuchi
  Yoshimi, pp. 254-321.
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
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  facilitating an Asian renaissance, he believed that Asians must liber-
  ate themselves through collective movements and common purpose.
  The urgency behind his view was the belief that Europe and Asia
  stood in a relationship of master and slave; Europe had plundered
  the soul of Asia and had robbed it of its dignity and creative spirit. In
  an essay called "Revolutionary Europe and Renascent Asia" (Kaku-
  mei Europpa to fukko Ajia, 1922), Okawa meditated on the conse-
  quences of the domination of Asia by Europe and saw its solution in
  an Asian renaissance.9 The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was the
  turning point in the awakening of independence movements in Asia.
  The possibility of freedom was dramatized by Japan's victory over a
  Western power in this war. Okawa's argument also rested on an
  appreciation of Asia's cultural contributions to human civilizations.
  Many of the inventions used by the West to subjugate the East-the
  printing press, gun powder, and the like-had been developed in
  Asia. And all of the great religions, Okawa observed, had originated
  in Asia. It was for this reason that the peoples of Asia should not be
  cowed into accepting the status of inferiors that had been accorded
  them. During the past several years, he emphasized, the "yellow
  races" had been made to feel unworthy by being called the "white
  man's burden." Even though the Russo-Japanese war had sparked
  the first glimmerings of hope, there was still much that needed to be
  done to reach the goal of liberation and to create a new world history.
  The Asian renaissance must be based on the reconstruction of tradi-
  tional societies into modern states. And an essential ingredient in this
  transformation was the installation of representative government.
  Here, he pointed to the failings of the Chinese revolution and its ill-
  advised reliance on Western powers; the Japanese example offered
  the only possible promise of a genuine independence.
  For Asian independence movements to succeed, Okawa was con-
  vinced that each must reconstitute its society into an ideal state, an
  idea he derived from his interpretation of Platonic idealism. He argued
  that this ideal had been distorted by the Western experience, notably
  by Christ and Marx. Although he initially admired these two men, he
  acknowledged that a reading of Plato had changed his mind. In his
  view, Plato's state was divided into three parts, the leaders, who are
  endowed with "reason," the military who possess "commitment," and
  farmers, artisans, and merchants who provide for the needs of the
  "spirit." Yet Okawa's interpretation of Plato was closer to the ideal-
  9 Okawa, "Kakumei Europpa to fukko Ajia," in Gendai Nihon skisd laikei, vol. 9, pp. 239-53.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  ized representation of the Tokugawa order or indeed even Mencius'
  "ethical realm" than it was to the philosopher's idealized polity. If
  people were helped to prosper, were protected, and were nourished,
  they would serve as a firm and healthy foundation in the quest for the
  ideal good. In the ideal state, private interests and passions, such as
  Okawa observed in the conduct of party politics, must be suppressed
  for the public good; the state must, at all times, avoid corruption and
  elitist competition over issues relating to interest. The ideal of the
  good must be grasped to overcome short-term gains of partisan rival-
  ries. Here, he compared the Platonic state with the Mencian idea of
  kingly justice, odoron, and identified its traditional idealization of "let-
  ters," bu, with the Greek philosopher's concept of "philosophy" as the
  basis of civilized governance. Later he linked the Confucian tradition
  itself to the teachings of Plato. Within Japanese intellectual history,
  the philosophies of Kumazawa Banzan (i 619-91) and Yokoi Shonan
  (1809-69) disclosed to him a similar spirit consistent with this idealis-
  tic tradition.
  Okawa's spiritual peregrinations spanned the globe, often disclosing
  a close kinship with the cosmopolitanism of the 1920s. Along with his
  discovery of Plato's political idealism, his intellectual curiosity led him
  to probe the recesses of Western civilization for figures who had been
  able to transcend the constraints of Christianity. Okawa believed that
  like-minded cultural heroes could be found in both East and West,
  people who reflected a cosmopolitan idea in their personal effort to
  overcome race and region. Leonardo da Vinci thus represented the
  great complexity of the human spirit devoid of Christian associations.
  He felt similar admiration for Dante, Spinoza, and Ralph Waldo Emer-
  son. Okawa especially prized Emerson because of his discovery of
  individual "intuitionism," which went beyond Christianity, time, and
  place and reminded Okawa of the Tokugawa "intuitionism" that
  Nakano Seigo also admired. Yet it is also true that Emerson's appeal
  lay in the presumed relationship between New England "transcenden-
  talism" and the Indian religions. In any case, the spiritual resources
  that Okawa sought in the West were those that were functionally
  equivalent to Asian religiosity. He saw in this universal spirituality the
  means by which Asians might throw off the yoke of Western domina-
  tion, and the solution to Japan's own psychological dislocation under
  the impact of modernity and industrialism. Okawa's "cosmopolitan-
  ism" was therefore closely related to what he believed to be the general
  malaise of the human spirit in modern life. In it, individual self-
  awakening and the spiritual renaissance of Japan and Asia were really
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  RESTORATIONIST REVOLT 
  733
  one and the same thing. Through the mediating role of the "Japanese
  spirit," Okawa believed, it would be possible to gain release from the
  "prison" and "hospital" of modernity and realize fully the promise of
  the ideal state.
  Okawa's conception of the ideal state and its offer of deliverance
  from modern alienation led him to conclude that the existing order
  was prevented from accomplishing this task because it was dogged by
  corruption and partisan rivalries. Here Okawa used his idea of spiri-
  tual renaissance as a plea for action to purge political practice; to rid
  domestic life of the Western presence was the condition for expelling
  imperialism from Asia. As a student of Asian philosophy, Okawa had
  become interested in the fate of modern India and the imposition of
  British despotism in that country. The British had drained India of its
  spirituality. Hence, the cleansing of politics at home was directly re-
  lated to the broader goal of returning Asia to Asians. The incorpora-
  tion of capitalism in Japan, especially at the accelerated rate witnessed
  after World War I, produced conditions in Japan that had come to
  resemble those found in Western countries. Labor disturbances, ten-
  ant protests, conspicuous consumption by the new rich, and ruthless
  party politics all had worked against the spiritual needs of the people.
  Moreover, the Japanese were experiencing social conditions that ear-
  lier in Russia had led to revolution, in Hungary, abortive uprisings,
  and in Italy and Germany, fascism. What appeared on the horizon
  were "reconstructionist movements" (kaizd undo) consisting of various
  action-oriented groups dedicated to spiritual renaissance and political
  reorganization. Sometime in the late 1920s Okawa joined them.
  It was clear to Okawa and others that the object of reconstruction
  was domestic politics. This goal must be reached by any means,
  which, in the early 1930s, meant violence and terror. Indeed, violence
  was a necessity because of its "cleansing" propensities. It was not
  simply expelling the Western presence from Japan and Asia but purg-
  ing the spirit of putrefaction and pollution. Ablution of the personal
  soul {watakushi no tamashii) paved the way for the realization of the
  national spirit (kokka no seishin). The implicit Pan-Asianism that
  Okawa and other contemporaries advocated provided an ideological
  mapping for the construction of large-scale strategies to eliminate
  Western power from Asia in an ultimate encounter or, as it was increas-
  ingly expressed, "the war to end wars." That is to say, the spiritual
  reconstruction summoned by writers such as Okawa converged with
  plans to launch a war either on the Asian continent against the Soviet
  Union or in the Pacific against Great Britain and the United States.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  Yet the reasons for an Asian renaissance and its intended meaning
  were not always the same as the diplomatic and political causes leading
  to military confrontation. But the merger of a spiritual ideology and
  military aggression often produced self-serving justifications of Ja-
  pan's own presence in Asia and its destiny to lead the yellow races to a
  new order. If war were necessary for the "spiritual awakening" of
  Asia, peace would bring a "new order of coprosperity" under Japanese
  leadership. For example, in 1939, a pamphlet entitled the "Showa
  Restoration" openly declared that the "war to end wars" was a histori-
  cal necessity and the agency of progress.10 After World War I, the
  argument ran, the global trend was for states to reconsolidate into
  larger groupings. These new blocks were the Soviet Union, Europe,
  North and South America, and Asia. But according to the pamphlet,
  there were only two major spheres that required attention: Asia, which
  represented the just, and the West (Europe and North America),
  which was despotic. The inevitable clash between the forces of light
  and darkness would occur in the Pacific, where the two blocks con-
  verged. Such a war would inaugurate a millennium of peace and auton-
  omy for all of Asia. It was also the destiny of the Japanese state itself,
  founded on the principle of "imperial justice," to achieve not only a
  Japanese "restoration" but one extending to Asia as well, a Toa ishin,
  as it was called in the late 1930s.
  CULTURALISM
  Despite Okawa Shumei's own plunge into the stream of direct action,
  his thinking was linked to a deeper and more complex opposition to
  the West as it was being articulated in the 1930s. This resistance was
  the product of a widely shared intellectual shift from "cosmopolitan-
  ism" to "culturalism" (bunkashugi). The pattern of this movement
  exceeded the limited outlook of the radical right and its resentments to
  include many of the leading writers and critics of the day, such as
  Tanizaki Junichiro (1886-1965), Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Wat-
  suji Tetsuro (1889-1960), Yanagida Kunio (1875-1962), and Yoko-
  mitsu Riichi (1898-1947). What linked this group of writers and think-
  ers was not so much a program of action, as promoted by the radical
  right, but, rather, their search for spiritual and critical resources in the
  world's civilizations. This quest made culture problematical and made
  defining its contours and meaning a more-than-adequate substitute for
  10 Toa remmei doshikai, "Showa ishin ron," in Gendai Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 31, pp. 381-412.
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  CULTURALISM 
  735
  politics and violent action. The search for value led first to an examina-
  tion of Western culture which invariably sent the seekers to a "return"
  to the "native place of the spirit" (Nihon kaiki). After less than a
  decade, Japanese writers and intellectuals abandoned the cosmopoli-
  tan civilization for the familiarity of traditional culture. Those who
  had been most deeply engaged in discussions on "human cultivation"
  (kyoyoshugi) and "character" (jinkakushugi) as the condition for cul-
  tural renewal were often the same men who had turned to Western
  intellectual history to gain critical inspiration and who had been at-
  tached to one of the major philosophic movements in Europe in the
  1920s, Neo-Kantianism. It is hardly surprising that the middle-class
  intellectuals in Japan who flocked to Neo-Kantianism saw themselves
  in an analogous relationship to the German bourgeoisie which had
  constituted its main support earlier. Here was an idealistic and human-
  istic system of thought that privileged the role of individual conscious-
  ness and moral awareness in perceiving the world as it is. Yet the
  categories with which this world is grasped, a world that never could
  be known in itself, determined what that world should be. It was also
  one of the premises emphasized by the Kantian revival that the imme-
  diate subject-object distinction was deceptive and required an act of
  sublation. The objective world and subjective intention were not dia-
  lectical equivalents; the objective world was "determined" by the ac-
  tions stemming from subjective consciousness. Thus, Japanese Neo-
  Kantians recognized that because individual consciousness made the
  world or the categories with which to comprehend it, such activity
  would result in the creation of value. In other words, they believed
  that consciousness functioned primarily to judge value, as it could
  never really know the world as it is; the highest values acknowledged
  by a critical consciousness are the true (shin), the good (zen), and the
  beautiful (bi), and it is culture where such values are realized.
  Miki Kiyoshi
  The philosopher Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945), an early adherent to Neo-
  Kantianism, proposed that literature and philosophy, found in the
  ideal of self-cultivation, were essential to a science of culture, whereas
  physical science and technology belonged to material civilization.
  Clearly, "civilization" became a pejorative concept in the 1920s and
  came to mean material progress and human debasement, whereas cul-
  ture was associated with creative self-realization. The important impli-
  cation of this polarization of civilization (bunmei) and culture (bunka)
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  736 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  was the belief that individual self-cultivation could not be reached
  through capitalism and technological industrialism. Another contem-
  porary of Miki's, Kuwaki Genyaku (1874-1946), writing in the 1920s,
  announced that culturalism was a force that disclosed internalized
  human values endowed with universal meaning. Culture was under-
  stood as the product of human creation and contrasted with the natu-
  ral order, which was merely mechanical and repetitive. Others argued
  that because culture is created by humans, it must reflect the internal
  spirit. Yet to equate culture with interiority was to disengage the inner
  self, as many writers called it, from the external world of politics and
  technology. Such a separation persuaded thinkers and writers, bent on
  a quest for self-cultivation, to remove themselves from the corruptions
  of the outside world and to refrain from trying to change it. The search
  for value in the creation of culture, signifying universalistic meaning,
  transcended the particular historical and existential context in which
  they were produced. The emphasis on the capacity of the self to create
  universalistic values turned writers and intellectuals away from ques-
  tions of social responsibility and political action. In the final analysis,
  their philosophical aim was to construct a domain of pure creative
  spirit independent of the world of existing structures. Although the
  impulse toward culture as the manifestation of universal value was
  initially informed by cosmopolitanism, thus dramatizing the possibil-
  ity of a unique Japanese contribution to a universal human culture that
  recognized no national boundaries, the affirmative role of a particular
  cultural inheritance could easily dissolve into cultural exceptionalism.
  The hermeneutic "horizon of prejudices," the realm of historical expe-
  rience accessible to an observer, narrowed into provincial national
  culture. This was especially apparent during the years of domestic and
  diplomatic turbulence in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
  During this cosmopolitan interlude, the Japanese turned to produc-
  ing cultural histories and texts testifying to Japan's unique contribu-
  tion to a global culture and praising its accomplishments as equivalent
  to Western achievements. A common theme in many of these "histo-
  ries" was the concentration on Japanese culture before the modern
  era. Some of the better-known works in this genre were Watsuji's
  "Studies in the History of Japanese Spirit" (Nihon seishinshi kenkyu,
  1926), the sinologist Naito Torajiro's "Studies on the Cultural History
  of Japan" (Nihon bunkashi kenkyu, 1924), the humanist philosopher
  Abe Jiro's "Studies in Arts and Crafts of the Tokugawa Period" (Toku-
  gawa jidai ni okeru geijutsu no kenkyu, 1928), Tsuda Sokichi's exposi-
  tion of the manifestation of popular spirit in literature, Bungaku ni
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  CULTURALISM 
  737
  arawaretaru waga kokumin no shiso (1921), and Kuki Shuzo's "The
  Structure of Tokugawa Aesthetic Style" (Iki no kozo, 1929). All of
  these works positioned values and ideals such as beauty, goodness,
  and truth as central to Japan's creative endowment and as examples of
  how culture manifested the inner workings of self and spirit. Indeed,
  what many of these texts tried to make clear was not the history of
  cultural development but, rather, the journey of the spirit. Watsuji's
  "Studies" attempted to grasp "the existence or life of the Japanese
  throughout the ages in order to show how the self realized itself as it
  passes through a number of cultural artifacts."
  The most comprehensive philosophical synthesis of the problem of
  culture and values was formulated by Nishida Kitaro. An entire gen-
  eration of writers, intellectuals, and thinkers in the 1920s and 1930s
  fell under the powerful influence of Nishida, in either agreement or
  dissent. One of Nishida's key concepts was his theory of "place"
  (basho), which represented the existential space in which universal
  value is actualized. In his earlier and well-known treatise, "Studies of
  the Good" (Zen no kenkyu, 1911), Nishida formulated a theory of
  "pure religious consciousness." To conceptualize this state, he drew
  heavily on the philosophy of pure existence found in the tradition of
  Zen Buddhism. From this perspective he constructed an elaborate
  metaphysical framework for "place" as the locus of universal creation.
  Denying that it was his purpose either to revive Zen or to preach it,
  Nishida claimed to be looking for a philosophically stable basis of
  "life" that could transcend the limitations of material interest, histori-
  cal change, and the Western bourgeois concept of egoism. His critics,
  particularly the Marxist thinker Tosaku Jun (1900-45), a former stu-
  dent of Nishida's, found Nishida's thinking to have confused "exis-
  tence" with its "interpretation" in his search for metaphysical cer-
  tainty. But Nishida continued to emphasize, without compromise, the
  superiority of knowledge and interpretation over historical actuality.
  He saw the category of the universal negative (mu) as the location of
  "place" unconstrained by history, individual ego, and Western defini-
  tions of absolutes such as the Judeo-Christian God.
  The implications of Nishida's ontology were worked out by his
  students, many of whom were later associated with what was called
  collectively the "Kyoto school." The best known among them was
  Miki Kiyoshi, who was deeply affected by Nishida's "Study of the
  Good" and his study of German idealism. As a young intellectual,
  Miki was drawn to the humanistic ideas of twelfth-century Buddhism
  as formulated by Shinran, in contrast with Nishida's lifelong interest
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  738 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  in Zen. And it is quite likely that Miki saw in Nishida's synthesis of
  Buddhism and German idealism a model for his own philosophic pro-
  gram. First as a pupil in Kyoto and then later as an exchange student
  in Germany for three years, Miki explored a diversity of ideas ranging
  from Neo-Kantianism, originally learned from Nishida, to Marxist
  and existentialist thought.
  Yet the most philosophically distinct position for which Miki came
  to be known was his phenomenological and hermeneutical understand-
  ing of reality as it occurs in time." Based on his studies in Germany,
  which included a close reading of Wilhelm Dilthey, Miki argued that
  without a phenomenological interpretation of events, humankind
  would be left with only meaningless "action." In particular, Miki
  emphasized events' temporal and spatial dimensions as the key to
  human meaning. Like many of his contemporaries in Europe and
  Japan, Miki was convinced that the principal temporal or historical
  problem of the day was capitalism and its culture. In his view, capital-
  ism had spawned an egoistic and inequitable culture, and any assess-
  ment of meaning must include the possibility of going beyond the
  historical limitations imposed by capitalism. Miki was not advocating
  a simple restoration of feudalism and did not hint at a return to some
  essential spirit. Rather, he saw events as a world historical process and
  its dialectic. Yet this dialectic was produced by a combination of
  temporality and spatial specificity. Here he proposed a conception of
  "space" comparable to Nishida's idea of "place." By space, Miki
  meant the area of Asia that had been under Western domination and
  subject to the sway of capitalism and the ideas of "modernism" associ-
  ated with historical force. Events within Asia, he argued, must contain
  the potential for a new meaning, such as the possibility of creating a
  different order that would go beyond the historical limitations set by
  Western capitalism. Specifically, Miki emphasized a new "coopera-
  tivism" for Asia, which would join the various societies in accordance
  with "Asian humanism" (Toyoteki hyumanisumu), referring vaguely to
  Buddhist principles of compassion and mutual assistance. He also
  described this humanism as representing a synthesis of gemeinschaft
  and gesellschaft, traditional community and modern society. This new
  order would be an advancement over capitalism, as it would be the
  result of a dialectical encounter between capitalism and Asian society
  and thus would contain elements of both but yet be vastly different.
  ii See for example, Miki Kiyoshi, "Kaishakugaku teki genshogaku no kisogainen," in Kindai
  Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 27. Miki Kiyoshi shu, ed. Sumiya Kazuhiko (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo,
  1975)-
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  CULTURALISM 
  739
  Miki also pointed to the importance of resolving the problem of
  class. He regarded "cooperativism" as the means to achieve the goal of
  first exposing "class" as a fixed category of social existence and then
  overcoming it altogether. The "public sphere" should always override
  the interest of classes based on narrow interests and provide the space
  within which new divisions of labor would be formed based on the
  acquisition of knowledge and skills. In his vision of cooperativism,
  informed by the principle of techne, the technocratic idea would be-
  come central to public life and replace criteria mandating the class
  lines developed under capitalism. Here Miki revealed a kinship with
  Max Weber's earlier assessment of the political effects of capitalism
  and his subsequent effort to formulate a new vision of governance
  founded on the primacy of expert knowledge rather than the maximiza-
  tion of profit. Miki, like Weber, envisaged a nonhereditary technoc-
  racy as a new stage of development that would abandon social divi-
  sions based on class. He also distinguished between cooperativism
  based on technocratic proficiency and the romantic communitarianism
  advanced by the extreme right. Although right-wing polemicists had
  offered a critique of capitalism, liberalism, and communism, they had
  failed to provide a critical basis for action, other than turning back the
  clock, and had slipped into incoherent and dangerous forms of folkism
  (minzokushugi) in their desperate attempt to distance themselves from
  both modernism and Marxism.
  Miki turned his interpretative strategy to account for the China
  incident of 1937, which sparked Japan's full-scale invasion of China.
  He used the occasion to raise the question concerning Japan's future
  course. But he believed that this question could be answered only by
  grasping the "world historical meaning" of that decisive event. He
  understood the relationship between war and culture and saw the
  former as a causal condition in the transformation of the latter. Events
  in Russia and Germany after World War I provided him with ample
  evidence to support this conclusion. Writing shortly after the China
  invasion, he saw that the war there would produce far-reaching cul-
  tural consequences in both Japan and China. He compared these conse-
  quences with the revolutionary changes in Russia after 1917. In Japan,
  too, he believed that the status of its culture after the war could
  provoke a response from all sensitive and thoughtful intellectuals.
  War, he wrote, necessitated the establishment of control over popular
  thought and action and compromised creativity. Under such circum-
  stances, poets might compose jingoistic songs but never real poetry.
  Systems of control, however, could never eradicate the creativity of
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  the human spirit. Hence he was convinced that this spirit would re-
  main active throughout wartime in order to shape the new culture that
  would appear with the reestablishment of peace.
  Thus Miki refused to see the China incident simply as an act of naked
  invasion. Rather, he grasped the event as the starting point for the true
  unification of Asia based on a new order of cooperativism and the ideals
  of Asian humanism. As if he were able to speak for the "cunning of
  reason" itself, the Hegelian knowledge of hindsight, he believed that
  the event's larger meaning was to create a new spatial realm, free from
  the constraints of capitalism and poised to embark on a new develop-
  ment of world history. The promised liberation of Asia, Miki proposed,
  would signal an advancement to a new, yet-to-be-understood, historical
  stage beyond discredited forms of modernism. It was for this reason
  that Miki called on his society and those in power to understand the
  deeper historical meaning of the event. Moreover, it was his interpreta-
  tion of the possible meaning of events that helps explain Miki's decision
  to join the Showa Research Society (Showa kenkyukai) established in
  1938 and composed of leading scholars of the time, such as Ryu
  Shintaro, Shimizu Ikutaro, Royama Masamichi, and Hayashi Tatsuo.
  These were scholars and intellectuals who, again like Weber, believed
  that the fundamental crisis of twentieth-century capitalism-the effi-
  cient distribution of resources and power-necessitated bureaucratic
  organization. Accordingly, they felt that such bureaucratic structures
  should be managed by scientifically trained experts, free from party and
  interest, who could, with the right kind of knowledge, ascertain the
  general interest and formulate the appropriate policies. It was in this
  sense that they saw their role in government and seized the opportunity
  to influence the course of action taken by the state, an issue that was first
  recognized in the 1930s but that remains a continuing legacy of this
  century. In particular, members of the Showa Research Society wished
  to improve upon capitalism by supplying politically rational manage-
  ment - planning - of the state comparable to the economic rationality of
  technology and industrialism. In effect, this meant finding ways to
  overcome conflict and its enduring threat that the state hitherto had not
  been able to resolve.
  Miki saw his own participation in this group as an example of
  technocratic expertise serving public policy. He had long believed it
  important to recruit for managerial posts in government experts who
  had demonstrated their mastery of certain kinds of knowledge, and he
  saw his own role as an expert influencing policies in accordance with
  his informed cooperativist vision of a better future. Far from shaping
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  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM 
  741
  policy and determining the course of events, as Miki and others in the
  Showa Research Society hoped, the reverse occurred: The expert intel-
  lectuals participated little or not at all in the actual decision making,
  and the ideas they advanced, like Miki's conception of a cooperativist
  Asia, were ultimately used for propaganda by the war mobilization
  structure (kokka sddoin). Miki himself lived precariously throughout
  the war years and eventually was imprisoned by the very government
  he had earlier tried to serve. Before his death in prison, Miki wrote his
  last work on Shinran and seemingly returned to the point at which he
  had begun his intellectual odyssey as a young student and which ini-
  tially had attracted him to Nishida Kitaro.
  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM
  If Miki assessed the impact of war on culture negatively and yet recog-
  nized the necessity of intellectuals and writers preparing themselves for
  peace, the philosophers of the Kyoto school inverted this formulation to
  regard war as a requisite condition for determining national culture.
  These philosophers, students of Nishida, formed a group called the
  Kyoto faction and identified with the philosophy faculty of Kyoto Uni-
  versity. The principal members were Koyama Iwao (1905- ), Kosaka
  Masaaki (1900-69), Suzuki Shigetaka (1907- ), and Nishitani Keiji
  (1900- ). It was their purpose to make Nishida's more formal concepts
  more tangible so that they could direct national policy and action. These
  thinkers wrote a series of books and articles in the late 1930s dealing
  largely with the historicist implications of Nishida's ideas for the cur-
  rent political situation. Their statement was summarized in a sympo-
  sium in 1941 entitled "The World Historical Position and Japan"
  (Sekaishiteki tachiba to Nihon) and later published in the widely read
  periodical Child koron.'2 This group's central purpose was to construct
  what they called a "philosophy of world history" that could both ac-
  count for Japan's current position and disclose the course of future
  action. But a closer examination of this "philosophy of world history"
  reveals a thinly disguised justification, written in the language of
  Hegelian metaphysics, for Japanese aggression and continuing imperial-
  ism. In prewar Japan, no group helped defend the state more consis-
  tently and enthusiastically than did the philosophers of the Kyoto fac-
  tion, and none came closer than they did to defining the philosophic
  contours of Japanese fascism.
  12 Published in book form in 1943 by Chuo koron.
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  The Kyoto philosophers specified Nishida's ontological concept of
  "space" to mean the "world stage" where all human and social problems
  will be resolved under Japan's leadership role. History, or the world
  stage, consisted of the interaction of "blood" and "soil," a conclusion
  already reached by a number of Nazi apologists. Yet Japan was uniquely
  appointed to resolve the struggle of history because philosophically it
  had successfully synthesized Eastern humanism and Western rational-
  ism and thus moved to a higher stage of human development. This
  accomplishment demanded the dismantling of Western hegemony.
  Thus despite their use of abstract philosophical language, the Kyoto
  philosophers unashamedly spoke on behalf of Japanese imperial expan-
  sion as the creative moment of a vast historical movement to a new level
  of human excellence. The historical present was pregnant with meaning
  for state and culture. In fact, the Kyoto faction rarely differentiated
  between these two categories, using them interchangeably. In the
  world, the state realized its fullest ethical potential in war. War was the
  central event, they believed, by which states came into existence. It
  would continue as the agency to forge a new order. The self-awareness
  of the state, as Kosaka put it, would be sustained by war. "Only as the
  folk experience war do they become aware of the state and its subjective
  nature." "Place," then, was not the formal category that Nishida had
  envisaged but, rather, the "world, which served as the moral training
  ground of the state."'3 For Kosaka, war was the test that validated or
  invalidated the state's moral status. And through war alone is the
  world's historical meaning made manifest. If war is waged for a proper
  cause, then the state will authenticate its ethical subjectivity. But if it is
  lost, Kosaka cautioned, it will have been fought for unethical and
  uncultural reasons. Echoing Leopold Ranke, he proposed that world
  history would turn into world judgment.
  The members of the Kyoto faction openly acknowledged their admi-
  ration for European fascism and its own struggle with the forces of
  modernity. They saw it as part of the larger world movement in which
  they had identified Japan's historical destiny. The purpose of this
  movement was the overthrow of communism and the establishment of
  a new future order. As homegrown fascist writers, Kosaka and Ko-
  yama insisted on the necessity of strict state control of domestic soci-
  ety; the elimination of intellectual heterodoxy, however moderate or
  unpolitical; and rigid conformism in behavior and conduct. Although
  it is tempting to associate Miki Kiyoshi's own intellectual depen-
  13 From Takeuchi Yoshitomo, Showa shisd shi (Tokyo: Minerva shobo, 1958), p. 406.
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  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM 
  743
  dence on Nishida, and his subsequent involvement in Konoe's "brain
  trust" to the fascism of the Kyoto faction, the two programs were
  worlds apart. Miki addressed his philosophy to a new future that
  would liberate the creative human spirit under conditions of peace.
  The Kyoto faction glorified the state as the ideal embodiment that
  justified Japan's leadership role in a war of revolt against the West.
  Although it is often suggested that the revolt against the West was a
  militant and jingoistic movement populated by putschists, assassins,
  or "Japanese-style fascists"-such as some of the members of the
  Kyoto faction-such a characterization misrepresents the compelling
  nature of that problem broadly felt throughout much of Japanese
  culture. Involved was the reappraisal of the status of culture and the
  more pressing question concerning its Japanese form. Even the most
  rabid putschist and admirer of fascism agreed on the importance of
  this intellectual issue of reconceptualizing the nature of Japanese cul-
  ture in the industrialized context of the twentieth century. In much of
  this, an earlier cosmopolitanism evolved into an appreciation of Japa-
  nese culture distinct from Western, capitalist, and "modern" society.
  Thus although such thinking did not necessarily require an overt
  revolt against the West, it informed a good deal of the Japanese vision
  of itself as an alternative model of culture superior to the achievements
  of the West.
  Watsuji Tetsuro
  One of the most influential theorists of this cultural problem was the
  philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro, who taught at Kyoto University be-
  tween 1925 and 1934 and then at Tokyo University until 1949. As a
  young scholar, Watsuji, like many of his contemporaries, immersed
  himself in the culture of cosmopolitanism exemplified by a deep fasci-
  nation with Western philosophy and literature and in particular with
  the problem of the self in modern society. His graduate thesis focused
  on Nietzsche. Even though he rejected the Neo-Kantian explanation,
  which had tried to derive consciousness of the entire world from the
  immediate life experience, Watsuji was nonetheless concerned with its
  conception of a "philosophy of life." Nietzsche's philosophy offered
  Watsuji a powerful critique of capitalist civilization and concentrated
  on the contradiction between social constraints of inequalities and
  individual expressibility. He also was attracted to Nietzsche's idea of
  the heroic and creative individual. Watsuji promoted the superiority
  of spiritual over material civilization and thus prized the creative elite
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  744 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  over the general populace, whose lives were determined by the relative
  abundance or deprivation of material things. It was within this frame
  of reference that he opposed universal manhood suffrage, the labor
  movement, and the social mass parties of the late 1920s. Nietzsche also
  made precisely the same criticism of the socialist movement in Ger-
  many in the 1880s. As applied by Watsuji, the Nietzschean thesis also
  denounced rationalism, technological culture, and utilitarianism, all of
  which were representations used to mask the materialistic and inau-
  thentic life-style of the newly emergent industrial bourgeoisie. In
  much the same manner that Nietzsche had sought an authentic and
  creative moment in ancient Greece, untainted by modern bourgeois
  rationalism which had appropriated much from the Judeo-Christian
  heritage, Watsuji similarly sought in ancient Japan a comparable mani-
  festation of an essential creative spirit. Watsuji's quest was reminis-
  cent of Tachibana's search for an original Utopian movement at the
  beginning of history. But unlike him, Watsuji was more concerned
  with the creative spirit than with the communal ties of brotherhood
  that Tachibana had emphasized. However, their search for an unal-
  loyed existence, free from materialistic impulses, suggests a close re-
  semblance. In the environment of the 1920s, Watsuji recommended a
  "spirit of opposition" that would lead individuals to free themselves
  from the material realities of the present. Such a liberation could be
  realized through an identification with the genuine creativity in the
  indigenous culture. Watsuji was specifically interested in showing how
  Buddhist art and architecture represented, after the middle ages, the
  purest expression of the Japanese creative spirit. In a series of works-
  "Pilgrimages to Ancient Temples" (Koji junrai, 1919), "The Culture
  of Ancient Japan" (Nihon kodai bunka, 1920), and "Studies of the
  Japanese Spirit" (Nihon seishinshi kenkyu, 1926)-Watsuji reminded
  his contemporaries of the pure expression of the Japanese creative
  power that was manifested in the past but neglected in the present. It
  should be noted that this path to a tradition of aesthetic purity had
  already been charted at the turn of the century by the art historian and
  Pan-Asianist Okakura Tenshin.
  Watsuji's plea on behalf of Japan's creative past was reminiscent of
  Nietzsche's efforts to restore some of the great monuments of ancient
  Greece. His valorization of the creative spirit in ancient and medieval
  times was grounded in the conviction that he had discovered the essen-
  tial creative form of the Japanese people. Here Watsuji idealized this
  creative tradition and even believed that the early Japanese Yamato
  court embodied it over time. In that ancient culture, the communitarian
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  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM 
  745
  society resolved the contradictions between spirit and physicality, na-
  ture and person, sovereign and subject. Just as the spirit of ancient
  Greek culture was destroyed by Roman "materialism," so Watsuji
  feared that Western civilization, exemplified by Anglo-American self-
  centered individualism, now threatened to eliminate Japan's spiritual
  legacy. Americans, Watsuji once wrote, were especially afflicted by the
  plague of materialism. Relentlessly pursuing material things, they had
  lost their souls, discarded their philosophy, neglected their arts, and
  returned to the life of the "birds and beasts." Americans, he noted, had
  exchanged "capital" for the blood and iron of the ancient Romans. But
  it came to the same thing. With it, they had enslaved the world to the
  demands of materialistic civilization. Thus in Watsuji we see what
  earlier German politicians had referred to as the necessary "cultural
  struggle" (Kultur Kampf) which provided some of the ideological argu-
  ments for war stated in cultural terms. The thought of Watsuji, as it
  derived from Nietzsche, synthesized the idea of a "spiritual commu-
  nity" (seishinteki kyodotai) and the "personalism" of the philosophy of
  existence (iki no tetsugaku) and resulted in a powerful resistance to
  modern bourgeois culture, its rationalism, and the civilization that
  spawned it.
  It was within this frame of reference that Watsuji embarked on a
  scholarly project to uncover the historical roots of Japanese ethics. In
  doing so, like Okawa, he expanded his understanding of the area of
  authenticity to include all of Asia. He justified this inclusion by using
  Buddhism as the integrative spiritual force. This "cultural struggle"
  also included a contest between Asian spirituality and Western materi-
  alism. The crucial element in Watsuji's grasp of Buddhism was the
  category of "nothingness" (m«), which Nishida Kitaro had already
  articulated in broad philosophical terms. To Watsuji, the transition
  from "nothingness," as the detachment from existing material condi-
  tions, to the pure life was the identification of that Buddhist category
  with universal "nature" itself. This elision of "nothingness" with "na-
  ture" was aimed at transcending the rationalist proposition that nature
  was an "object" to dominate or manipulate for human ends, however
  they might be defined. This ethic of nothingness thus opposed the
  rational characterization of the self as being "outside" nature rather
  than within its embrace. Watsuji sought, therefore, to clarify the
  source of this Asian view and the reasons for its superiority over the
  Western dialectic between humans and nature. To do so, he believed
  that it was necessary to begin by considering human society within
  nature and to explore its customs, habits, and mores in their essential
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  746 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  and pure setting. Watsuji saw in the world of thought two basic but
  different ways of thinking, logical reasoning and intuition. Although
  the former obviously belonged to the traditional Western mode of
  thinking, and the latter to the East, it was important to explain the
  consequences of these two divergent epistemologies. It was this prob-
  lem that prompted Watsuji to compose his well-known essay entitled
  "Climate and Culture" (Fudo, 1935).
  When Watsuji was a student in Germany in 1927, he had devoted
  much attention to Heidegger's classic work "Being and Time" (Sein
  und Zeit, 1926), which juxtaposed the relationship between existence
  and the dimension of historical time. In his own work, Watsuji clarified
  his relationship to Heidegger: Although "tunefulness" was extremely
  important to Heidegger, especially in his exposition of a subjective and
  existential structure, Watsuji wondered why at the same time he had
  not seen "spacefulness" in a comparable philosophical light. The cen-
  tral problem for him, he admitted in the preface of "Climate and Cul-
  ture," was to consider in detail the significance of climate and environ-
  ment as they related to historical culture. In his words: "The activity of
  man's self-apprehension, man, that is, in his dual character of individ-
  ual and social being, is at the same time of a historical nature. Therefore,
  climate does not exist apart from history, nor history apart from cli-
  mate."14 If Heidegger had seen time as distinct from nature and thus
  remained within the dialectic that he had inherited from Hegel, Watsuji
  aimed instead to introduce existentialism into nature, thus earning
  Tosaka Jun's criticism that he had "subjectivized" nature.
  By concentrating on "climate and space," Watsuji was able to iden-
  tify the essential features of the two major climatic divisions-monsoon
  and mediterranean-that accounted for the basic differences between
  Europeans and Asians. The theory resembled the prevailing geopoliti-
  cal discussions on the geographical determination of culture, political
  relations, and racial differences. In Watsuji's analysis, the mediterra-
  nean zone was characterized as temperate, semiarid, and essentially
  pastoral, requiring relatively nonintensive agricultural labor. Grains
  could be planted with ease without the arduous construction of terraced
  farms to ward off severe climatic conditions. Nature, therefore, was
  seen in this area as benign and also subservient, as evoked in the female
  image of "mother nature." Nature was also predictable, geometrical,
  steady, and hence calculable. It represented orderliness and stood for
  14 From Watsuji Tetsuro, Climate, translation of Fudo by Geoffrey Bownas (Tokyo: Hokuseido
  Press, 1961), p. 8.
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  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM 
  747
  "reason." "In other words," Watsuji wrote, "where nature shows no
  violence she is manifested in logical and rational forms. . . . There is a
  link between lenience and the rationality of nature, for where she is
  lenient man readily discovers order in nature. . . . Thus Europe's natu-
  ral science was clearly the product of Europe's meadow climate. "'5
  In monsoon Asia, however, Watsuji saw a unique seasonal relation-
  ship between the Asian continent and the Indian Ocean. During the
  summer months the monsoon blew across the land from the southwest
  when the sun crossed the equator, and in the winter the winds re-
  versed direction. The result was intense humidity and heat in the
  longer summer months, punctuated by torrential rains. In Watsuji's
  view, the combination of moisture and heat had produced countries
  that were rich in plants and an epistemology that saw the world as a
  place teeming with plant and animal life. "For nature is not death but
  life, for death stands instead by the side of man. Hence, the relation
  between man and his world is not that of resistance, but that of resigna-
  tion."16 Watsuji also noted that the violent rainstorms, savage winds,
  floods, and droughts persuaded the inhabitants of this area to abandon
  all resistance to the elemental forces of nature. Here, he believed, he
  had found the source of Asia's characteristic resignation to the inclem-
  ency of nature that was often reflected in the religions of Asia. Even
  more fundamental, however, nature was not bound by regularity and
  order but, on the contrary, was harsh and irregular, producing cul-
  tures that did not view the space around them in terms of geometric
  reason. Whereas the mediterannean climate encouraged the human
  domination of nature as a benign and passive object, thus allowing for
  a view of progressive and predictable historical time, the monsoon
  climate produced a different kind of culture. Human life was wholly
  engulfed by nature and hence resided outside progressive historical
  time, as it was not governed by logical sequence but was subordinate
  to nature and its eternal presence. It is important to recall that Hegel
  earlier had proposed, in his recounting of the migration of "liberty"
  from monsoon cultures to the West, that Asia did not possess "his-
  tory" and thus had not developed a concept of "progressive" time.
  Watsuji may be seen in this regard as trying to recast the Hegelian
  scheme in terms of the relative strengths of East and West and as
  avoiding the characterization of world history according to the move-
  ment of the absolute spirit from one world area to another. To
  Watsuji, therefore, the Western spirit had led to an individualism that
  15 Ibid., p. 74. 
  16 Ibid., p. 19.
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  748 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  separated humans not only from nature but also from the society
  around them. Although in Asia, nature and the community super-
  seded the individual, in the West, humans constantly struggled to
  dominate nature and to claim a separate life meaning from society.
  Here Watsuji complemented Heidegger's conception of "human inten-
  tionality," ex-sistere, which is temporal and bounded by history, with
  his idea of "relationality," aidagara, which calls for humans' unique
  relationship to a specific "spatial" environment.
  Central to Watsuji's theory of relationality was the characterization
  of Japan within monsoon Asia and, in turn, its position in the world.
  Watsuji argued that although Japan faced conditions similar to those
  of the great continental civilizations such as India's and China's, it also
  possessed features quite unlike the rest of Asia because it encountered
  climatic conditions that ranged from cold to temperate, marked by
  abrupt and predictable seasonal changes. In short, Japan was at the
  eastern extremity of the monsoon zone and thus had a "dual" weather
  system. The rhythms between monsoon and nonmonsoon, cold and
  temperate, produced a society in which the emotional vitality and
  passionate swings that followed the shifting season were distinct from
  those of the continental Asian cultures. This observation led to
  Watsuji's principal argument, that owing to its particular climatic
  conditions, Japan had created a distinctive culture based on spacial
  "relationality." In particular, Watsuji pointed to the organizational
  structure of the "household" (ie) and the emotionality fostered within
  that space. In the household, its several members were not merely a
  gathering of individuals but a cooperative group of selfless human
  beings engaged in fundamental roles of nourishing life. However, in
  the household, its members were not totally resigned to the massive
  and unpredictable forces of nature, as on the Asian continent, but also
  nurtured a tense and active relationship with nature. Watsuji com-
  mented, therefore, "that passivity in Japan indicated a distinctive
  form of selfless action," that disciplined action served not the advance-
  ment of self-interest but the good of others in the communal whole.17
  Though admitting that this communal conception of action was no
  longer as prevalent as it was in the Tokugawa era, he nonetheless was
  convinced that it distinguished the Japanese mode of action from the
  individualism shaped by Western history and especially European capi-
  talism. Hence, Japanese capitalism resembles Western capitalism only
  17 Ibid., pp. 136-7.
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  CULTURAL PARTICULARISM 
  749
  in external and superficial ways. It is grounded in the climatic and
  spatial foundations of Japanese civilization and is thus not influenced
  by Western individualism.
  Watsuji claimed to have gained many of his insights into the unique-
  ness of Japan after his "return" from an extended tour of Europe. For
  the first time, he acknowledged, he realized the inappropriateness of
  Western uses of space, as manifested in imported buildings and trams
  in the Japanese setting. He likened the tram, for example, to a "wild
  boar" rampaging through the fields, out of step with traditional civi-
  lized society. Although he did not go as far as to urge the eradication of
  these objects from Japan, at the same time he clearly viewed them as
  "foreign." Watsuji thus despaired of the urban sprawl that had come
  to dominate the Tokyo landscape, viewing Western objects as an intru-
  sion into the established order of things. He emphasized that the
  Japanese house was constructed so as to minimize privacy or to crear
  it with only minimal separations and without the need of locks anc
  bolts. Its security relied only on the language of trust. Despite his
  concern that Western architecture might steadily erode the value of
  community on which the small Japanese house was constructed, he
  also felt deeply that the people would neither relinquish their attach-
  ment to domestic architecture nor give up the integrity of that space,
  even as industrial capitalism persisted. Because of this attachment,
  true parliamentary democracy or proletarian movements, as had devel-
  oped in the West, would not (and should not in his view) establish
  firm roots in Japan. Although there could be leaders of such move-
  ments in Japan, the people would remain confined to their architec-
  tural "space" and to the natural history that produced it. What
  Watsuji meant was that Japan, owing to its unique sense of space, was
  unlikely ever to assimilate the conception of the "public" that so much
  Western political practice required.
  Although Watsuji did not advocate an open revolt against the West,
  as he expressed his thought in terms of an aesthetic protest, it is
  obvious that much of what he had to say could easily be worked into a
  programmatic ideology advocating a frontal rejection of the Western
  presence in Asia. His extended treatise on climate, in short, may be
  summed up as an indictment of Western individualism, materialism,
  and rationalism. His judgment against both parliamentary democracy
  and Marxist proletarian movements as inappropriate to Japan was also
  a principal condition for an overall rejection of Western civilization as
  a hegemonic force over Japan.
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  Yanagida Kunio
  Watsuji's ideas on community and aesthetic space interconnected with
  two other influential themes also current in his day, the ethnographic
  folklorism (minzokugaku) of the cultural anthropologist Yanagida
  Kunio and the aesthetic nostalgia of the novelist Tanizaki Junichiro.
  Compared with Watsuji, Yanagida proceeded from a deep distrust for
  the expansive power of the Meiji state. Reflecting his upbringing in a
  family of devout believers in local Shinto, as well as his scholarly
  training under Matsuura Shuhei, a well-known poet and scholar of
  national studies in the Meiji era, Yanagida was especially influenced
  by the critical attitude toward the bureaucracy and its ideology, such
  as the Confucianism of the Tokugawa era, that had been shaped in the
  popular national studies. It is hardly surprising that Yanagida revered
  Hirata Atsutane (d. 1843), one of the major thinkers of this anti-
  bureaucratic intellectual tradition in the Tokugawa who functioned as
  the unspoken inspiration for his own effort to formulate a Japanese
  science of folklore. Yanagida viewed with intense foreboding the bu-
  reaucratic penetration into the regional and local countryside. He
  feared its disruption of the Japanese communal life that was rooted in
  indigenous and customary beliefs.
  Even before Yanagida resigned from his post in the Ministry of
  Agriculture in 1919, he had already been actively interested in Japa-
  nese folklore and popular customs. He published his first major collec-
  tion of folktales, called "Tales of Tono" (Tono monogatari, 1910),
  based on extensive travels particularly in the northwest regions of the
  country. In recounting these tales, Yanagida was able to show the vast
  disparity of customs and beliefs in these regions. More importantly, he
  was able to use these tales to support the idea that commoners in Japan
  were unimpressed with the official order or with a powerful emperor
  and, in turn, with the claims of state Shinto. Through this approach,
  Yanagida stated his opposition to the government's policy of coordinat-
  ing Shinto shrines throughout the country within a unified bureau-
  cratic system.
  In turning his focus to the preservation of indigenous communal
  culture, Yanagida set out also to formulate a distinctive Japanese social
  science. Here he rejected the historical method that emphasized writ-
  ten documents and political events as constituting the central experi-
  ence of the past. By avoiding this authoritative reconstruction of his-
  tory, Yanagida envisioned the reunderstanding of the culture of the
  people as it was lived in villages and towns. Essential to his analysis
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  were unwritten oral traditions, folktales, local dialects, regional reli-
  gious practices, rituals and beliefs, and seasonal festivals. Although an
  assiduous collector of data concerning folk customs, Yanagida was not
  simply an antiquarian but believed that knowledge should be socially
  useful. This conviction stemmed from an earlier concern for agricul-
  tural economics that would enhance the well-being of the country
  populace in concrete ways. Therefore, the construction of a science of
  folk culture meant that it should help solve problems of rural poverty
  and distress caused by modern technology. He believed that his
  method promoted the cause of "social reconstruction" (shakai kaizo)
  and also that people learning about themselves without superficial
  adornments might lead to self-knowledge and self-renovation. A new
  society based on indigenous culture would thereby be created from
  within that culture itself, without relying on the bureaucratic and
  technological instruments being fashioned above by the central govern-
  ment. In order to achieve these goals, Yanagida revealed a pragmatic
  eclecticism so that the data could include a wide variety of materials
  and strategies. The ethnographic method of British anthropology, for
  example, though drawn from without, was considered appropriate to
  the task of organizing and ordering local data derived from the Japa-
  nese experience.
  Yanagida's project was informed by an identification with the "abid-
  ing folk" (jomiri). Before being a functional individual of society as a
  farmer, laborer, or white-collar worker, all were first and foremost
  members of thejomin. What this meant was that one of the most divisive
  aspects of modern Western capitalism was its relocation of the people
  according to a functional division of labor based on presumed rational
  premises that in fact had come to be manifested in contending classes.
  Although most evident in Western industrial society, comparable con-
  flict could be observed in the context of industrial expansion in Japan.
  To call attention to the abiding folk and their customs was to also
  discuss the peculiar form of community to which they had given expres-
  sion through a life-style actually lived in the countryside. Yanagida
  identified its distinctive feature as communitarianism, which referred
  to the horizontal social relations held together by a system of mutual
  assistance and confirmed by a territorial tutelary shrine deity. More-
  over, he was confident that the communitarian life in the villages charac-
  terized Asian society and was in imminent danger of disintegrating
  before the relentless penetration of Western capitalism and central bu-
  reaucracies. Yanagida thus counterposed an Asian gemeinschaft against
  these modern intrusions. It was for this reason that he strongly resisted
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  the policy of the Meiji state to organize the local shrines according to a
  systematic bureaucratic scheme.
  Yanagida promoted the movement to preserve local folktales and
  beliefs as a means to oppose the reorganization, in late Meiji, of
  shrines throughout the country within the framework of state Shinto.
  He believed state Shinto to be a dishonest and artificial representation
  of popular religious practices. In folk Shinto, he emphasized, there
  were no professional priests or formalized doctrines. Its beliefs had
  sprung from the experiences of the collectivity and had been transmit-
  ted as an oral tradition since ancient times by ordinary laypersons.
  Moreover, these beliefs were centered on respect for communal deities
  wherever they were enshrined. These deities, accordingly, repre-
  sented the spirit of human ancestors, both men and women equally.
  No deity was to be seen as hierarchically superior to another, as pro-
  posed in state Shinto. Also important, the collective beliefs of folk
  Shinto were rooted in a worship of nature in which trees, creatures,
  and all other natural objects were endowed with a spirit comparable to
  that of human beings. Finally, Yanagida repeated that the central
  purpose of folk beliefs was to offer respect for the spirits of the de-
  parted ancestors. Often, this form of worship was associated with
  fertility deities of agricultural production. In all of this he emphasized
  that folk Shinto exemplified the continuing reality of an agrarian com-
  munity worshiping itself and celebrating its own communal unity and
  solidarity between human beings and nature. In place of the state that
  was responsible for the bureaucratization of folk Shinto, Yanagida
  envisaged an expanded tutelary shrine. In short, popular community
  would assume greater importance than the hierarchic state.
  Although Yanagida was certainly not an exponent of militant revolt
  against the West, his emphasis on popular, agrarian community sug-
  gested a powerful alternative to the claims of the modern industrial
  and technological state, which he saw as a Western import. In this
  regard, his ideas may be seen as dovetailing with those of the more
  militant variety of agrarian fundamentalists. Even though Yanagida
  did not become involved in programmatic political action, as did some
  of these fundamentalists, such as Inoue and Tachibana, he did share a
  kinship with their ideas.
  Tanizaki Junichiro
  Yanagida's protest against modern rationalism, based on the "natural
  culture" of one's native place, can also be related to a similar criticism
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  from the point of view of indigenous aesthetic theory. In this theory,
  the "native place" is identified with aesthetic space. The Heideggerian
  perspective that Watsuji used in his essay on climate and character in
  which he emphasized the importance of geography and, in turn, living
  space, is shared by a number of writers who called attention to the
  determinant relationship between "geography" and indigenous "aes-
  thetic style." Perhaps the most elegant representative of this view was
  the novelist Tanizaki Junichiro. In his essay "In Praise of Shadows"
  (In'ei raisan, 1934), Tanizaki redefined space in terms of nuances that
  were grounded in indigenous culture and that he as a Japanese chose
  not necessarily because they were superior to the aesthetics of other
  societies but because they were Japanese and he preferred them.18 The
  trend toward Western industrialism was irreversible. At the same
  time, he felt that for this reason the aesthetic choice of "shadows"
  must be made in order to preserve Japan's distinctive creative soul. In
  an ironic gesture, Tanizaki explained the reason for his choice:
  But I know as well as anyone that these are the empty dreams of a novelist,
  and that having come this far we cannot turn back. . . . If my complaints are
  taken for what they are, however, there can be no harm in considering how
  unlucky we have been, what losses we have suffered, in comparison with the
  Westerner . . . we have met a superior civilization and have had to surrender
  to it, and we have had to leave a road we have followed for thousands of
  years."
  The importance of Western technology, which Tanizaki called "bor-
  rowed gadgets," had resulted in inconvenience for the Japanese, the
  worst of these being the incandescent light bulb that had invaded the
  world of shadows. This powerful gadget had illuminated the fine dis-
  tinctions in Japanese life and had erased the blurred and shadowy lines
  that were central to indigenous sensibility.
  Tanizaki developed his argument by referring first to ah example
  that would strike his audience as absurd, the interior space of the
  Japanese toilet in comparison with the well-lit Western version and
  then, building outward from that reference, to more elegant and exqui-
  site examples, both visual and spatial. Along with spaces defined by
  Japanese architecture reminiscent of Watsuji, Tanizaki also focused
  on the shadowy coloring of foods, skin complexion, lacquer ware,
  pottery, and the No drama. These were elements in the world of
  shadows on which Japanese should self-consciously "meditate," pre-
  18 Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, translation of In'ei raisan by Edward Seidensticker
  and Thomas Harper (New Haven, Conn.: Leete's Island Books, 1977), p. 42.
  19 Ibid., p. 8.
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  cisely because of the unwanted glare of Western technology whose
  light demanded precision rather than subtlety. The shadows for Tani-
  zaki signified silence and tranquility. The apparent mystery that West-
  erners saw in the Orient referred to the "uncanny silence of these dark
  places."20 In these places were found the creative "magic" and "mys-
  tery" that had been vital to the cultural tradition of the Japanese, who
  had "cut off the brightness on the land from above and created a world
  of shadows. . . . "2I
  It is important to emphasize that for Tanizaki the world of shadows
  was no longer a dominant and realistic presence, as he saw the pull
  toward technology as relentless and unavoidable. The world of shad-
  ows was, therefore, for him an aesthetic and cultural choice that had to
  be articulated intellectually as an abstraction. Yet Tanizaki strained to
  express the ineffable, seeking to restore a tangible emotional identity
  that time and change threatened to banish. His melancholic medita-
  tion dramatized the contrast between Japanese and Western compre-
  hensions of the world. Our way of thinking, he wrote, concentrates on
  finding "beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows,
  the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates."22
  In the West the restless quest for light has dominated aesthetic
  sensitivity, as best characterized by the ever-increasing brightness ex-
  hibited in the candle, succeeded by the oil, gas, and electric lamps.
  Although Tanizaki made no claim as to the superiority of Japanese
  aesthetics, it is also clear that his preference for it was absolute. In-
  stead of arguing that it should be defended militantly, he asserted that
  perhaps through literature or the arts, something essential to the world
  of shadows might still be saved. "I do not ask," he concluded, "that
  this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one
  mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like
  without them."2^
  The Romanha writers
  The cultural protest against Western technology that Tanizaki encap-
  sulated with the metaphors of the "electric light" and the "toilet" was
  echoed by a school of contemporary aestheticians referred to as the
  "Japan romantic school" (Nihon romanha). These were writers such
  as Yasuda Yojuro (1910-81), the acknowledged leader of the group,
  Hayashi Fusao (1903-75), Kamei Katsuichiro (1907-66), Sato Haruo
  20 Ibid., p. 20. 
  21 Ibid., p. 33. 
  22 Ibid., p. 30. 
  23 Ibid., p. 42.
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  (1892-1964), Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942), and for brief periods
  in their young careers, the well-known novelists of the postwar era,
  Dazai Osamu (1909-48) and Mishima Yukio (1925-70), and were
  associated with a literary journal called Nihon romanha, which was first
  published in 1935.24 These writers rallied around the intellectual posi-
  tion in a statement written by Yasuda Yojuro that came to be seen as
  the "manifesto" of the entire group. This manifesto marked their
  collective break with Marxism and literary modernism, best summed
  up in Hayashi Fusao's words as a "farewell to realism."
  Although the intellectuals in this group concentrated their criticism
  on the status of modern civilization, their opposition was expressed in
  a general condemnation of literary modernism. In the manifesto itself,
  they specifically identified naturalism and realism as the literary forms
  of rational Western society. They further called attention to the litera-
  ture of vulgar and popular customs that depicted in exhaustive detail
  the petty trivia of everyday life. The purpose of the Japan romantic
  school, they announced, was "to wage war" with the pernicious trend
  of literary naturalism. They feared above all that the requirements of
  rational society had eroded the artistic sensibility of indigenous Japa-
  nese culture, expressed most recently by Tanizaki. Naturalism had
  vulgarized the "voice of the people," mechanized artistic talents, and
  made a fetish of the popular spirit. The creative self had lost all
  autonomy before the incessant demands of mass markets.
  The romantics called upon their contemporaries, therefore, to re-
  turn to the authentic literary tradition. It was time, they announced,
  to celebrate openly the Japanese songs of all the ages since the nation's
  ancient beginning and to call these the songs of youthfulness (seishuri).
  In this context, these men outlined the creation of a new literary
  movement that would eliminate the influences of Western-oriented
  writings. Identifying their movement as the "main way" (hondo), they
  denounced the prevailing subordination among their contemporaries
  to what they termed vulgar and mediocre Western aesthetic forms.
  And again reminiscent of Tanizaki on "shadows," they described their
  effort to restore a native aesthetic sensibility and recommended the
  rejection of the present as "self-conscious irony." It was therefore their
  journal's stated aim to represent the condition of traditional aesthetics
  24 See Takeuchi Yoshimi and Kawakami Tetsutaro, eds., Kindai no chokoku (Tokyo: Fuzambo,
  !979)> and also Takeuchi's essay, "Kindai no chokoku," in Kindai Nihon shisoshi koza, vol. 7:
  Kindaika to dento, ed. Kamei Katsuichiro and Takeuchi Yoshimi (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo,
  '959)> PP- 227-81. Also, Hiromatsu Wataru, Kindai no chokoku ran (Tokyo: Asahi
  shuppansha, 1980).
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  that had been diminished by the impact of Western technology and to
  provide a new forum for its resuscitation.
  The sense of loss that the romantics felt was often articulated with
  the metaphor of the "return" {kaiki). It was a theme already in evi-
  dence in activists such as Okawa Shumei as well as in writers such as
  Watsuji and Tanizaki. For the romantics, the return was also accompa-
  nied by an awareness that it could not be fully realized. It was clearly
  expressed by writers such as Kamei Katsuichiro who thus identified
  the return with the "dream" (yume). The longing and yearning for
  return coupled with the acknowledgment that the journey's end would
  never be reached went far toward defining the special character of
  these writers as romantics. The idea of the return was perhaps best
  captured by the poet Hagiwara Sakutaro in his poem entitled "The
  Return to Japan" (Nihon e no kaiki, 1938).
  In this poem Hagiwara lamented that although the Japanese had not
  been deprived of material things, they had surrendered their spiritual
  selves. "We have not lost things," he thus wrote, "but we have ex-
  hausted our all."2* He admitted that he too had been attracted to
  Western culture at an earlier time, enjoying the creature comforts that
  it had provided, such as beds, sofas, and foods. Now, however, these
  things no longer satisfied him. He would thus seek a quiet home with a
  small tearoom and locate it in an out-of-the-way area of Kyoto and
  strum gently on the ancient biwa in the presence of a traditionally
  kimonoed Japanese woman. This extremely influential poem provided
  the romantics with a coherent metaphor to express their vague yearn-
  ings for a return to Japan. It also conveyed the return to a true aes-
  thetic self, a sense of "wholeness," an attachment to the native land as
  a pristine manifestation of nature, and the identification with an indige-
  nous historical time distinct from the Western chronological scheme of
  human history. These themes can be found in such writings as Yasuda
  Yojuro's "The Japanese Bridge" (Nihon no hashi, 1936), which called
  for a "return" to the Japanese classics and the ancient aesthetic sensibil-
  ity. The return to a concrete and familiar geographical "place" was
  also evident in Yokomitsu Riichi's novel, The Lonely Journey Home
  (Ryoshu, 1946). This novel describes an exchange student in Paris
  contemplating his slow journey across the Siberian tundra, becoming
  increasingly aware of the profoundness of the "return" to his spiritual
  home. And finally, it was at this time that Tanizaki himself translated
  the Tale ofGenji (1938) into elegant modern Japanese, hoping thereby
  25 Hagiwara Sakutaro, "Nihon e no kaiki."
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  to preserve the spirit of that ancient classic for his contemporaries who
  had strayed too far from the "Japanese thing" (Nihonteki na mono).
  Even more important, the return also contained the concept of a
  reidentification with indigenous time. Hayashi Fusao's "farewell to
  realism" referred to a rejection of the Western rational description of
  the past and the narrative of material progress. Just as the Western
  portrayal of human experience in literary form was said to be inappro-
  priate to Japan, so too was its mode of conveying the meaning of
  history. Rational description was seen as a facade for the presentation
  of the West's supremacy. Along with this, the dialectical mode of
  representing history was also discarded as misleading and inapplicable
  to any understanding of Japanese history. In its crudest ideological
  guise, the romantics claimed that history did not begin with the Chris-
  tian era, but rather, in the case of Japan, it should be measured
  according to the origins of the nation, calculated as being roughly 660
  B.C. The main issue, however, was not so much when the rational
  sequence began. For the romantics, the crucial point was to find a
  creative origin, or an authentic "moment" in which a whole was re-
  vealed for which Western modes of calculating time could not ac-
  count. The return to an original aesthetic moment and to Japan's
  natural homeland also meant the avoidance of the Western evolution-
  ary scheme of history. In short, the yearning for "wholeness," "na-
  ture," "native place," true and enduring aesthetic "spirit," and the
  culture of the indigenous folk all called attention to the dimension of
  "timelessness" which signified the abandonment of historicism and
  the discounting of progressive historical time itself.
  The return to true origins and the belief in the timelessness of a
  cultural uniqueness distinct from the West also inaugurated a quest to
  create a new future that would go beyond the limitations of the pres-
  ent. Much of this assessment was already implicit in the meditations of
  Yasuda Yojuro and the romantics. In an essay written in 1937 entitled
  "On the End of a Theory of Civilization and Enlightenment" (Bunmei
  kaika no ronri no shuen ni tsuite), Yasuda complained that modern
  literature expressed or concretized Western knowledge so that literary
  movements had merely become the thoughtless pursuit of rationalism.
  In this essay, he also anticipated the deterioration of the self without
  ever specifying what this actually meant. Yet it was true that for
  Yasuda, intelligence in modern Japan referred to a theory of civiliza-
  tion and enlightenment, which he identified with the new Meiji bu-
  reaucratism and the men who founded it. In its speculative form, it
  was transmitted downward as Marxism and proletarian literature. De-
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  spite the power of this modernist tradition, in Yasuda's view, there
  had been a number of courageous people who had self-consciously
  opposed the modern state and its ideology. Among those he favored
  most were Kumoi Tatsuo (d. 1869) and Saigo Takamori (1827-77).
  Beyond these rebels, Yasuda also cited, from the late Meiji era, the
  Japanist group, such as Miyake Setsurei (1860-1945) and the cultural
  essentialist Okakura Tenshin. In a sense, Yasuda saw the romantics as
  inheritors of this tradition of critical idealism directed against rational-
  istic modernism and the tyranny of the self. In proposing the end of a
  theory of civilization and enlightenment, Yasuda and the romantics
  were also suggesting the possibility of transcending or overcoming the
  modern, kindai no chokoku, as this effort came to be called. "The last
  stage of civilization and enlightenment was the development of Marx-
  ian literature and art," Yasuda announced.26 To him Marxism was also
  the last stage in the civilization and enlightenment movement that
  began in the early Meiji era. And he therefore saw the special mission
  of the Japanese romantic school as ending this last phase of history and
  starting a new one or, as he put it, to span "a bridge in the night
  reaching toward a new dawn." The metaphoric phrase "bridge in the
  night" was used to attract many intellectuals and writers to take part in
  the famous debates of July 1942 in Kyoto on the theme of overcoming
  modernity. All believed that the debates would mark the end of mod-
  ern civilization in Japan and disclose the character of the glorious new
  age.2?
  THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY
  In particular, the participants in the debate on modernity represented
  two major intellectual groups, the literary society (bungakukai) and the
  romantic school. Included were literary and film critics, poets, novel-
  ists, composers, philosophers, scientists, psychologists, and histori-
  ans. Among the better-known figures were Kobayashi Hideo, Nishi-
  tani Keiji, Kamei Katsuichiro, Hayashi Fusao, Miyoshi Tatsuji,
  Kawakami Tetsutaro, and Nakamura Mitsuo. The debate took place
  shortly after the outbreak of the Pacific War and had as its central
  purpose a discussion of the larger "world-historical" meaning of the
  event itself as it might relate to the vision of the uncertain future that
  these intellectuals sought to envisage. Kawakami Tetsutaro, one of the
  26 Yasuda Yojuro, "Bunmei kaika no ronri no shuen," quoted in Takeuchi and Kawakami,
  Kindai no chokoku, p. iii. 
  27 Ibid., p. iv.
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  THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY 
  759
  organizers of the sessions, best stated this overall concern in his con-
  cluding remarks. Aside from the deliberations' success or failure, he
  observed, it was an indisputable fact of immense importance that such
  intellectual debates had taken place within the first year of the out-
  break of the war. Moreover, he saw the discussions as reflecting a
  struggle between "the blood of the Japanese that truly motivates our
  intellectual life" and "Western knowledge that has been superimposed
  on Japan in modern times." Unavoidably, therefore, the conflict must
  be a desperate and bloody one.
  Using the analysis of Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-77), an eminent
  scholar close to the antimodernist temperament of the romantic move-
  ment, the details of the discussions may be separated into the follow-
  ing broad themes: Takeuchi emphasized the commonly shared as-
  sumption that the outbreak of the Pacific War had convinced the
  participants that the conflict was both intellectual and military. The
  intellectual confrontation was between "Western intelligence" and the
  "blood of the Japanese."28 The struggle was analogized to "war" as
  "peace" was to cultural submission. In Kamei's terms, "more to be
  feared than war was peace. . . . Rather a war among kings than the
  peace of slaves."29 The idea of "overcoming" was also a criticism of
  evolutionary as well as dialectical historicism. According to Takeuchi,
  this included the denial of the Meiji movement for "civilization and
  enlightenment" (bunmei kaika), a view that had been advanced by
  members of the romantic school. The participants were also disap-
  pointed with the insensitivity of the population at large regarding the
  meaning of that confrontation, often resorting, in their view, to the
  mere recitation of slogans. And connected with this, the discussants
  expressed the hope that the symposium would help overcome the
  fragmentation of culture into specialized fields and eliminate the wide-
  spread feelings of alienation in society, by reconstituting a sense of
  cultural wholeness. All the participants felt immersed in the problem
  of "Japan's modern intellectual fate" (gendai Nihon no chiteki unmet)
  and the peculiar tragedy in which they were compelled to live out their
  lives, a view expressed most eloquently for the entire symposium by
  Kamei Katsuichiro in his perception of the "modern" as being an
  unyielding illness or malaise.
  Although some used the metaphor of disease to refer specifically to
  the actual outbreak of the "glorious" war, Kamei used his phrases as a
  general proposition in the intellectual struggle against modernity. But
  28 Ibid., p. 166. 
  29 Ibid., p. 298.
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  in either case, the analogy to actual events could hardly be separated
  from the war, suggesting therefore that the war's larger purpose was to
  accomplish the final conquest of the modern. In retrospect, this view
  cast a cloak of intellectual deception on the proceedings themselves.
  Takeuchi went through some pain to argue that the deliberations at
  the end remained entirely unresolved and to point out that this was
  due to the many differences in viewpoints among the participants
  regarding the meaning of the future order. Yet the sentiments ex-
  pressed by certain intellectual luminaries such as Miyoshi Tatsuo
  (1902-64), Kawakami, Kamei, and others, clearly suggest an intellec-
  tual convergence beneath the metaphoric umbrella of "overcoming
  modernity."
  Among many, the celebration of the "glorious war" contributed to
  their willingness to abandon all desire to "resist" the course of events
  that the government had taken. Although this desire had remained
  strong even after Japan's invasion of China, it dissipated rapidly after
  the outbreak of the Pacific War. In its new meaning, the war was
  interpreted as a revolt against the "modern" West and its hegemony
  over Asia, a view that was not unattractive by any means to Marxists
  and former Marxists as well. By contrast, the earlier attack on China
  was seen differently, not as the uncontrolled expansion of Japanese
  imperialism, but as part of the liberation of Asia, not yet under the
  domination of the West, and its subsequent modernization under Japa-
  nese tutelage.
  For most, "modern" was invariably associated closely with rational
  "science." Much of the discussion concentrated, therefore, on show-
  ing how modern science had developed in a historically specific con-
  text, namely, the Renaissance and its aftermath in Western Europe.
  Recalling the thinking of Watsuji in his "Climate and Culture," the
  debaters traced the spirit of the European Renaissance to its roots in
  ancient Greece where the philosophy of science was first articulated.
  As expressed by Hayashi Fusao, the subsequent development of sci-
  ence in the West differed substantially from the Japanese experience.
  In the myths of the West, he noted, men were always in a state of
  "struggle" with the gods. But in Japan, gods and men did not contend
  with each other, as conflict occurred among the gods alone. This
  reference to mythology was aimed at showing that Western science
  was fundamentally inappropriate to the spirit of the Japanese people.
  Kamei went even further to argue that because the Japanese spirit had
  been alienated from the gods (Jkami), in overcoming modernity the
  Japanese must reintegrate themselves with the spirit of these kami.
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  Here, Kamei employed kami as a metaphor representing the spirit of
  the entire Japanese people. He denned the ways of achieving this
  reunion as the central problem of contemporary Japanese philosophy.
  In the end, the wish to overcome the West became a revolt against
  reason itself.
  On closer examination, the basic culturalist premise appears to mili-
  tate against the idea of a progressive "overcoming" of modernity.
  Kobayashi Hideo recognized best the problem it inspired and under-
  scored most clearly the inescapable ambivalence resulting from any
  attempt to overcome the modern. The real enemy were ideas of change
  and advancement, which unfailingly mislead modern people to create
  false intellectual expectations. The "burden" of history had now come
  to presuppose the demonstration of progressive modernization. Among
  the accounts written by modern historians of Japan covering the various
  ages, Kobayashi claimed to have found all of them to be merely reviews
  or narrative summations of the past and hence shallow representations
  of human actualities. This was especially true of those discussions of
  aesthetic forms embedded in the past. Beauty, Kobayashi insisted, did
  not "evolve" in a progressive manner leading to modernity. It could
  not, therefore, be understood from the perspective of the modern experi-
  ence. Yet to him, it was this subject of beauty in history in specific
  places and contexts that had to be perceived and grasped. However one
  understood history from the modern point of view, such a stance actu-
  ally prevented the mind from encountering the structure of beauty in
  history because of the presupposition of historical evolution that con-
  cealed beauty as beauty. In short, beauty was closed off from the histo-
  rian's view. The discerning eye, however, must disengage itself from
  the existentialist dimension of history and penetrate the underlying
  structure that goes beyond that immediate moment. Kobayashi exempli-
  fied this argument by explaining that the essence of Kamakura religious
  art contained a deep and abiding form that outlived its immediate his-
  tory and the moment that had given expression to it. The art objects of
  the Kamakura period are before our eyes, he explained, but they con-
  tain a beauty that is independent and possesses an abiding "life" that
  transcends modern scholarly interpretations. Because such objects con-
  tain a passion and an elegance unbound by the specific constraints of the
  historical era, beauty may indeed be said to be universal. In the debates
  themselves, Kobayashi readily admitted that his view pointed to a uni-
  versalistic conception of aesthetic form, which, as his critics acknowl-
  edged, indeed differed from modernistic historicism. Ironically, Koba-
  yashi's ideas about beauty appeared to coincide with Western Platonic
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  idealism, which the debaters were quick to point out. On this point,
  Kobayashi agreed that the distinction between existence and eternal
  form should be kept separate in order to grasp the fundamental aes-
  thetic in history. Here, he acknowledged his sympathy for the spirit of
  Plato's idealism and, among recent philosophers, Henri Bergson's con-
  ception of creativity. 3°
  To Kobayashi, then, "overcoming" the West meant essentially
  reidentifying with the Platonic idea of eternal forms of truth and
  beauty that had fallen beyond the purview of modern interpretations
  based on the idea of progressive evolution. Rejecting the use of such
  terms as ancient, medieval, modem, and the like, Kobayashi refused to
  see the "overcoming" of modernity as an "advancement" to a new and
  glorious era. Rather, he thought of it as "transcending" the limitations
  of Western modernism and as readdressing the question of eternal and
  enduring forms of beauty. Kobayashi's idea of lasting beauty, how-
  ever, simultaneously coincided with prevailing opinions regarding the
  adverse effects of Western civilization in modern Japan and the need
  to be liberated from that unhappy legacy. Although the advocates of
  "overcoming" modernity spoke of a vague future better than the
  present-and Kobayashi did not indulge in such thinking, as he re-
  mained skeptical of this mode of conceptualizing time-they agreed on
  the imperative to reidentify with indigenous cultural ideals and to
  allow them enough space and time that they might serve as sources of
  renewal and creative inspiration within a continuing history.
  What troubled Kobayashi most was the fear that Japan would be-
  come a pale replica of Western societies. He dramatized his concerns
  on this issue by drawing on the ironic lines from Marx's Eighteenth
  Brumaire. He thus referred to the modernization of the West as a
  "tragedy" and the second manifestation of it in Japan as a "comedy."
  The quintessential comedians in Japan, he observed, had not yet cap-
  tured the stage, but they inevitably would.^ The central issue for him
  was the proposition that history was constant change, whereas in his
  view, change in fact was basically unimportant to the creative act of
  producing art and literature. Convinced that aesthetic creations were
  "unhistorical" and eternal, as they were expressed in terms of form
  and order and not of history, Kobayashi was equally convinced that
  modern persons (including the Japanese) had abandoned the life-
  giving energy of art. Yet it was the engagement with this aesthetic
  energy, Kobayashi asserted, that generated the dynamic and balancing
  30 Ibid., p. 229. 
  31 Ibid., p. 219.
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  THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY 
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  "tension" undergirding the flow of history itself and that could not be
  grasped from the perspective of linear change in which one thing was
  shown to be different and somehow better than what came before. For
  this reason, then, Kobayashi expressed profound pessimism about the
  ideas of "change" and "progress," claiming to feel "sick" and "nau-
  seous" about them. In expressing these views, Kobayashi had as-
  sumed a position close to one already occupied by Tanizaki.
  What Kobayashi hoped to overcome was the conception of linear
  time that Japanese had imported from the West during the Meiji era.
  Many of his colleagues at the debates were also deeply concerned with
  the general question of evolutionary time and, more specifically, the
  meaning of "civilization," buntnei, that had captured the attention of
  early Meiji intellectuals. To Kamei Katsuichiro, for example, the civili-
  zation of enlightenment in Meiji Japan had introduced the Western
  idea of the specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge.
  This epistemological import, he claimed, resulted in the loss of a sense
  of "wholeness" in life among the Japanese. An identifiable event, the
  incorporation of Western ideas of functional specialization, was thus a
  major disruptive force in the spiritual life of Japan. Those who con-
  tested this disruptive impact sought solutions in nonconformist modes
  of thinking. Kamei cited as an outstanding example in this regard the
  Christian leader Uchimura Kanzo (i861-1930). To Kamei, Uchi-
  mura's greatness was his refusal to conform to the pattern of specializa-
  tion that had increasingly come to dominate the world around him.
  Although an expert in marine biology, Uchimura saw his work as part
  of a unified system of knowledge in which all things were informed by
  an intrinsic and divine spirit (kami), and he retained his identification
  with this view of the universe. His "churchless Christianity" (mukyo-
  kai) was nothing other than a sophisticated rendition of this deeper
  ontological commitment to a unified view of the universe.
  The process of specialization, however, proceeded into the twentieth
  century. The cause of this disquieting trend was the adoption of West-
  ern utilitarianism accompanying the assimilation of the idea of progress
  in the Meiji enlightenment. In the process, the "philosopher of real life"
  (tetsujiri) was destroyed. Central to Kamei's antimodernist vision was
  the restoration of the philosophy of "wholeness" and the "unity of
  knowledge" as it related to all beings, creatures, and things evident in
  the folk Shinto of these wise men. The resemblance here to the ideas of
  Yanagida Kunio is apparent, except that Kamei focused on literate
  culture rather than on country villages and oral tradition. Kamei and his
  colleagues had also shaped a cultural position analogous to that held by
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  some of the political activists who had turned against Meiji history as a
  "betrayal" of the spirit of the Meiji Restoration, by manifestly construct-
  ing the bureaucratic and technological state. Even though Kamei was
  silent on the particular problem of state formation, unlike Kita Ikki and
  Nakano Seigo, he did see in the Meiji movement for civilization the
  unrelieved inundation of Western utilitarian and functional philoso-
  phies that, in the twentieth century, promised to destroy the theory of
  knowledge founded on the unity of all things that had informed the
  spirit of Japanese civilization before the modern era. In Kamei's harsh
  terms, Meiji civilization and enlightenment had introduced "deformed
  specialists" into contemporary Japanese culture.
  This critique of Meiji bureaucratic culture was taken a step further
  by another leading participant in the debates, Hayashi Fusao, a novel-
  ist, cultural critic, and former Marxist who had turned his intellectual
  allegiance to the pure cultural ideals of Japan as advocated by the
  Romantic school. "I believe," he stated, "that civilization and enlight-
  enment meant the adoption of European culture after the Meiji Resto-
  ration and resulted in the submission of Japan to the West." From an
  external perspective, the Meiji Restoration represented the last opposi-
  tion of the East against the West. Although at one level it may be seen
  to have been a victory-as India was overwhelmed and China dismem-
  bered, and only Japan managed to withstand the Western wave-yet at
  another level, in order to maintain opposition to Europe, it was also
  necessary to incorporate Western utilitarian civilization. Civilization
  and enlightenment were thus a utilitarian culture devoid of fundamen-
  tal substance.32 Hayashi believed that the Japanese dissatisfaction with
  this utilitarian culture emerged in the late 1880s at which time a
  number of reflective intellectuals began to call for a return to cultural
  fundamentals. Among these prescient critics were again the Christian
  idealist Uchimura Kanzo, the art historian Okakura Tenshin, and
  such heroic figures as Saigo Takamori and General Nogi Maresuke
  (1849-1912). Hayashi also contended that all the men who drew atten-
  tion to this critique of utilitarian civilization were defeated by the
  Westernizing trends of the time. Until recently, he concluded, the
  European conception of civilization had persisted as the dominant
  force over the skeptical view of progress found in the native tradition.
  It was in this context that Hayashi discussed the East Asian War as the
  final chance to turn back the tide of utilitarianism in Asia. Those in
  Japan who still held to this Western epistemology must also be de-
  32 Ibid., pp. 239-40.
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  THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY 
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  feated and transformed according to true native sensibilities. Hayashi
  believed the bureaucratic culture and elitism spawned by utilitarian-
  ism in the Meiji period had been resisted by the Movement for Popu-
  lar Rights. Although some of the discussants disagreed with his view,
  seeing the movement as a product of the very ideals he had criticized,
  Hayashi clung to the belief that it was an indigenous movement di-
  rected against the acquisition of absolutist power by bureaucratic
  cliques bent on constructing a utilitarian state. In this manner, Hay-
  ashi reinterpreted the Meiji Restoration by denying its revolutionary
  impulse, rejecting the French or American models of such transforma-
  tion, and emphasizing instead the emergence of the Japanese people as
  a "classless" community unified with the emperor.
  Consistent with this position, Hayashi and his colleagues singled out
  "Americanism" as the primary force behind the global expansion of
  utilitarianism. Increasingly in the twentieth century, Europe had
  come to be replaced by the United States as the leader of the Western
  world. The debaters specifically cited the importation, following
  World War I, of crass, hedonistic materialism among Japan's urban
  youth, exemplified among faddish groups who called themselves
  "modern boys" (mobo) and "modern girls" (moga). American movies,
  especially, had spread the cult of '"fast living" (supido) and "eroti-
  cism," seducing young Japanese minds and leading them away from
  their cultural roots. These cultural invasions were the result of the
  power of mass-production strategies developed in the United States.
  However impressive these strategies might seem in a certain quantita-
  tive sense, they also undermined Japan's cultural virtues and the soci-
  ety's faith in itself. They were especially visible in the marketing of a
  mass culture that reflected the absence of a deeply rooted sense of
  cultural purpose in the United States itself. Because the United States
  was a relatively new nation, these men reasoned, its cultural traditions
  in art and morals were perilously shallow. Their products, therefore,
  were accessible to everyone, owing to their simplicity and lack of
  philosophical depth. But here indeed was the deceptive nature of
  utilitarian mass-production culture that undermined societies with
  long cultural traditions. The danger of this Americanism was its capac-
  ity to spread a "universalistic" culture of simple materialism. Thus
  from a land of immigrants characterized as a "frontier" nation, the
  United States had acquired a new and negative image in world history.
  Implicit in the comments on the mass production of movies and
  other American "gadgets" was the view that the ready acceptance of
  this materiahstic culture by the youth of the early twentieth century
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  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  was due to the insidious influences of Meiji utilitarianism. This harsh
  reading of Meiji intellectual and political history was closely linked to
  the deep concern that the twentieth century had witnessed the emer-
  gence of a consumer culture satisfied only with the possession of
  plenty rather than with the quality and beauty of scarcity and re-
  straint. American democracy, therefore, had as its real substance the
  satisfaction of the masses with trivial goods produced in large quanti-
  ties, a condition that had permeated Japanese life as well.
  The repeatedly pessimistic appraisal of the Meiji enlightenment by
  the debaters points to a deep intellectual bifurcation in the intellectual
  history of the 1920s and 1930s. Their comments, though locked in the
  language of historical reassessment, were also directed against contem-
  poraries who were quick to evaluate positively the Meiji movement for
  civilization and enlightenment as the starting point for a humane mod-
  ern order. The representative figure of this position was the leading
  theorist of Taisho democracy, Yoshino Sakuzo. Under his direction,
  there was a collaborative effort to reconstruct Meiji intellectual his-
  tory. The multivolume work on that subject, Meiji bunka zenshu,
  remains a monument to Yoshino's conviction that the Meiji achieve-
  ment rescued Japan from a somnolent feudal order and backwardness
  and set society upon its civilizing course. Yoshino and his colleagues
  took a dim view of the bureaucratic elites that had come to dominate
  the Meiji state and that sought to redirect politics away from the
  democratic future as envisaged in the early Meiji enlightenment. But if
  the antimodernists and Yoshino found common cause in their condem-
  nation of the bureaucratic order, they parted company over the more
  compelling question concerning the essence of modern Japanese cul-
  ture. Hayashi Fusao and his group decried the emergence of utilitarian
  bureaucratism, functional specialization, and mass production and
  consumerism. To resist these forces, they demanded the restoration of
  "timeless" cultural values. Although the participants in the debate
  differed widely among themselves, they all subscribed to an "ahistori-
  cal" perception of culture and frequently expressed it in recurring
  criticisms of linear conceptions of time such as "progress." By con-
  trast, Yoshino and those like him who prized the Meiji enlightenment,
  denied the virtue of "timeless" culture and emphasized instead the
  "tunefulness" of historical movement and the continuous human po-
  tential for achieving new creative and moral goals in the future.
  The debate on "overcoming the modern" concluded with a general
  consideration of the possibilities for Japan in the context of the early
  1940s. The problem in the final analysis was how might Japan retain
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  THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY 
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  its technological achievements yet preserve those irreducible cultural
  elements that made the Japanese distinctive. None of the participants,
  when faced with the choice, contemplated the unrealistic solution of
  turning back the clock of industrialization. To these men, however,
  the "machine" must be defined unequivocally as the mere servant of
  humans, and the human spirit the creator of technology. Spirit, there-
  fore, was determined to be autonomous and separate from manufac-
  tured things and unaffected by such products. They denied in this
  regard the Marxist theory of "alienation" in which manufactured
  goods were objects that "dehumanized" the spirit. The true "poten-
  tial" (kanosei) for modern Japan, then, was in the creation and reten-
  tion of a culture in which the human spirit would remain independent
  by being anchored to timeless and essential values, whereas manufac-
  tured goods would function simply as external objects divorced from
  aesthetic considerations. It was over the question of how best to resur-
  rect and clarify this cultural essence that they emphasized the signifi-
  cance of the great literary texts from ancient history. The importance
  of the great scholars of the "national studies" of the Tokugawa period,
  such as Motoori Norinaga, was that, by "rediscovering" those classics
  in the eighteenth century, themselves became manifestations of the
  spirit and highly esteemed artifacts.
  The criticism of the harmful effects on Japanese culture by Meiji
  utilitarianism and the bureaucratic state was inseparable from the
  more general denunciation of the international order constructed and
  dominated by the Western powers. The criticism of domestic bureau-
  cratism, therefore, also included the rejection of Western hegemony
  over Asia. To overcome the modern meant to many of these men the
  internal and external uprooting of Western materialism and power in
  Asia. Their reidentification with Japanese ideals thus led them to
  acknowledge the importance of reviving similar cultural ideas in other
  Asian countries and recognizing the necessity of Japan protecting
  them against colonialism. Liberating Japanese cultural idealism from
  Western materialism and separating Asia from Western hegemony
  were thus closely related sentiments, so much so that the attack on
  modernity provided the underlying intellectual justifications for the
  ideology enunciated by Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro (1891-
  1945) in the declaration of 1938 calling for the establishment of an
  "East Asian Cooperative Union." It was in Konoe's conception of
  cultural communalism that the more pragmatic formulations of a "new
  order" were articulated. Japan's Asian neighbors, the declaration
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  768 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  boasted, would live in friendship, defend the area in common, and
  cooperate economically. Although the Chinese in particular were in-
  vited to join with Japan in creating such a system of mutual coopera-
  tion, there was little doubt-despite language that strained to suppress
  Japan's own imperial ambitions-that the "new order" would in fact
  be directed primarily by Japan. Here, the rejection of the presence of
  Western bureaucratism was linked to Pan-Asianism in order to autho-
  rize Japan's own expansion as the hegemonic power in Asia and virtu-
  ally paralleled the American claim to rope off the Western Hemisphere
  by the cordon sanitaire authorized by the Monroe Doctrine. It is
  inconceivable that the participants in the debates against modernity
  were not aware of the relationship between their criticism and the
  expansionist designs of those in the government. It may indeed be the
  case, as claimed by some later, that the debates did not produce a
  coherent and comprehensive ideology for the Pacific War and that it
  was hardly their aim to come up with one. Yet the fact remains that
  their negative reading of the Meiji legacy of the bureaucratic state had
  turned ironically to an endorsement of expansionism by that very
  order, or at least its successor, that they had so consistently vilified. In
  particular, the language demanding an East Asian war as the condition
  for Asia to reestablish control over its own cultural destinies indeed
  only underscores the unconsciously ironic deception in which the de-
  baters were implicated.
  EPILOGUE
  In the 1930s the Japanese romantic Yasuda Yojuro called attention to
  Japan as irony. What he was referring to was the effort to preserve
  those elements in traditional life that attested to Japan's irreducible
  uniqueness while seeking to become a modern society. Yasuda recog-
  nized that the conditions for modernity necessitated eliminating those
  elements and forms from the past that he and his associates sought to
  preserve. What he failed to see was the possibility of other kinds of
  ironies that war and defeat eventually made certain. Indeed, more
  than one level of irony was already present in the debates against
  modernity and the strident call for a war against the West. The debat-
  ers could not have known that a total military defeat of Japan would,
  in fact, remove "war" itself as a central object in the discourse on
  culture that had dominated the 1930s. Without the militancy of the
  prewar years, however, much of the earlier discourse spilled over into
  the postwar period as issues of compelling and immediate concern. It
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  EPILOGUE 
  769
  was almost as if the earlier discourse had not quite yet completed an
  agenda that was interrupted by the war and that the cessation of
  hostilities then offered as an occasion to return to unfinished business.
  The implication was that nothing really had changed, yet the physical
  and social landscape everywhere announced ruin and tragedy. But just
  as ironic was that despite the criticism by the prewar writers and
  intellectuals against the modern state and its bureaucratic excesses,
  what would eventually emerge in the rubble was an even more rational
  bureaucratic arrangement of power, dedicated not to the pursuit of
  war but to industrial growth and supremacy. If as Yasuda noted ear-
  lier, modern Japan could be understood only as a totally ironic experi-
  ence, a double irony prevailed to characterize the postwar restoration.
  For the arguments of cultural exceptionalism that earlier had been
  used to criticize modern organizational forms were later harnessed to
  represent the spiritual basis for the installation and success of a large-
  scale technological order capable of unprecedented productive power.
  The new Japanese order succeeded in producing, on a scale and at a
  level of excellence never before reached by most industrial nations,
  those things that earlier cultural critics had denounced as Western and
  dangerously disruptive of traditional Japanese life.
  The overarching irony was captured by Kamei Katsuichiro, a refu-
  gee from the prewar debate on modernity, in a self-reflective and
  plaintive confessional essay, "The Ideal Image of Twentieth Century
  Japan" (Nijuseiki Nihon no riso, 1954). Even as postwar Japan pre-
  pared itself for massive industrial expansion, Kamei was calling for a
  return to Asia. The summons evoked the echo of earlier declarations
  for a Japanese return to the cultural homeland:
  One of the problems with which the Japanese have been burdened since the
  Meiji Era has been the necessity of examining Japan's place in Asia and our
  special fate as Asians. Japan, as everyone knows, was the first country in Asia
  to "modernize," but it is not yet clear what meaning this modernization had
  for Asia. It is also a question whether Asian thought, which possesses strong
  traditions despite repeated taste of defeat and a sense of inferiority before
  Western science, is doomed to perish without further struggle, or if it is
  capable of reviving in the twentieth century something which will enable us to
  surmount the present crisis. . . . [T]o study it [Asia] has become since the
  defeat the greatest responsibility incumbent on us."
  Kamei continued an earlier critique by stating his open displeasure
  with Meiji rationalism and enlightenment and sought to return to the
  33 Ryusaku Tsunoda, Theodore de Bary, et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York:
  Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 392-3.
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  77° 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  vision of Asian unity announced by Okakura Tenshin when he opened
  his Ideals of the East with a rousing call to brotherhood, "Asia is One!"
  Japan had abdicated its place in Asia, Kamei noted, by slavishly mim-
  ing Western civilization, only to win for itself the status of a poor
  "stepchild." Worse still, it ended by using foreign technological instru-
  ments to wage war against Asian brothers. Japan must now return to
  Asia and, directed by a sense of genuine guilt and humility, secure its
  place as the "stepchild of the Eastern world." The need for cultural
  resistance against the West, he pleaded, was far from over and would
  continue throughout the rest of the twentieth century to complete the
  work begun by Gandhi, Tagore, Lu Hsun, and Okakura.
  Kamei's reminder to "return to Asia" heightens our awareness that
  although the harsh language of the earlier "revolt against the West"
  had been removed because of the war, Japan's proper cultural place
  had remained as the central intellectual issue for the postwar period.
  Japan's real roots, in short, were to be found only in Asia, closer to the
  native land and not within the remote confines of Western civilization.
  This sense of cultural kinship by propinquity was reinforced by the
  elegant meditations of Takeuchi Yoshimi, a scholar of considerable
  stature who disclosed an affinity for leading cultural critics such as
  Okakura and Okawa Shumei. Takeuchi, an authoritative interpreter
  of Chinese literature and culture, the translator of Lu Hsun's complete
  works, proposed to his generation the construction of a new science of
  knowledge which he described as "Asia as method" (Jtoho to shite no
  Ajia). Acknowledging that this method, inspired by Asians' diverse
  experiences, had not yet been fully formulated, Takeuchi was certain
  that a sympathetic understanding of how Chinese, Japanese, and other
  Asian peoples had comprehended the challenge of modernity would
  offer instructive models for the task ahead.
  In this essay, in which Takeuchi introduced the possibility of find-
  ing an alternative method to understanding the Asian experience, he
  confessed how he, as a student before the war, had studied China and
  Chinese literature as if neither the language nor its considerable litera-
  ture any longer existed. Even more, he noted, he was not certain that
  China was anything more than an abstraction. "When we studied
  Chinese history and geography we never studied the fact that there
  were humans there."34 Only on his first trip to China did he recognize
  how remote and abstract his training had been from the real thing and
  how ill prepared he was to cope with the enormity of a living experi-
  34 Takeuchi Yoshimi, Hoho to shite no Ajia: Waga semen senchu sengo (Tokyo: Sokisha, 1978).
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  EPILOGUE 
  771
  ence. He admitted that he could not even communicate with the Chi-
  nese because his training had been principally in the classical language
  and had omitted the spoken tongue. It was as if, he mused, nobody
  really spoke Chinese. Yet Takeuchi apparently felt real empathy with
  the Chinese he encountered, recognizing that they, like the Koreans,
  were Japan's closest neighbors, indeed friends and brothers, yet made
  to appear remote by virtue of his education. To redress this great
  failing, he began a study of the spoken language and ultimately discov-
  ered a living literature embodied in the writings of Lu Hsun. This
  discovery that people did live in China, which hitherto had been pre-
  vented because of the dead hand of sinology, inspired Takeuchi to
  devote his own life to seeking the traces of what he called the "heart"
  (kokoro) of living Chinese.
  The recognition of geographic immediacy and an authentic Chinese
  experience revealed to Takeuchi that Japan's own efforts to direct
  China's modernization were based on the same method that led him
  and his contemporaries to overlook the human presence and the possi-
  bility of vast differences. His own subsequent research showed him
  that the Chinese, the Koreans, the Indians, and other Asians had,
  owing to their own cultural experiences, forged different responses to
  the challenge of Western modernity. But what all Asians shared, apart
  from geography, was the quest to make sense of modernism without
  forfeiting their own cultural endowments. This, he observed, was not
  only the message of Tagore, as seen in his several trips to China and
  Japan, but also of Tenshin. Ironically, it was confirmed by Westerners
  like John Dewey and Bertrand Russell when they also visited Japan
  and China. Yet the Japanese, owing to their propensity to identify
  with Western techniques and methods, were blinded by their own
  experience of grappling with the problem and sought to impose on the
  rest of China a method of modernity alien to their own impulse. To
  return to Asia meant, therefore, to account for the diverse approaches
  enabled by living experiences and to develop an authentic method
  stressing differences, not abstract sameness. "There are severe limits
  to Western power," Takeuchi wrote:
  I believe that Asians have always recognized them. Oriental poets have intu-
  itively known this. Whether it is Tagore or Lu Hsun, they have accomplished
  the ideal of a general humanity in their own personal examples. The West has
  invaded the East; there has been opposition to this. Some, like Toynbee, have
  proposed to homogenize the world, but many contemporary Asians have not
  seen this as merely a Western limitation. In order to realize superior Western
  cultural values, the West has to be entrapped once more by Asia, as a means
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  772 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  of revolutionizing Westerners themselves; it has to create universalism accord-
  ing to this cultural rewinding of values. The strength of the East is in revolu-
  tionizing the West in order to elevate the universal values that the West
  produced.
  This, Takeuchi concluded, was the problem for the contemporary
  East and West and should be the "model for Japan, as well."35
  A central corollary to this new "return to Asia" was the renewed
  emphasis on the communitarian ideal of folk culture that the Meiji
  state had unthinkingly suppressed in order to satisfy bureaucratic
  expediency. The older form of communalism celebrated by the eth-
  nographer Yanagida Kunio was, in postwar Japan, the clarion cry of
  all those who believed that the state had intruded too far into the daily
  lives of ordinary people. Hence, it is not surprising that writers and
  movements would derive identity and forms of enablement by sum-
  moning the ideal of the jomin, the abiding people, in their several
  efforts to contest and even reverse state intervention. In a sense
  Yanagida himself became something of a folk hero in the postwar era,
  and the so-called Yanagida boom that swept the country in the 1960s
  and early 1970s attests to the veracity of this alternative. Yet like its
  prewar progenitor, the new communalism was linked to all those senti-
  ments that called for a return to Asia. The boom and its consequences
  for the restitution of folk culture did not mean simply a revival of the
  great anthropologist's writings nor a fad popularized by intellectuals
  and scholars. Rather, it was a countrywide movement to save folk arts
  and crafts, to emphasize the diversity and difference of regional and
  local culture against the inexorable demands of bureaucratic sameness.
  Because of Yanagida's emphasis on the structureless communitarian-
  ism of indigenous folk life, scholars, writers, and intellectuals began to
  explore the utility of this ideal for the new postwar social order. The
  appeal escalated as the rationalistic momentum of Japan's "phoe-
  nixlike" industrial recovery quickened. In the 1960s, intellectuals and
  activists like Yoshimoto Ryumei (1924- ) and Irokawa Daikichi
  (1925- ) appropriated Yanagida to anticipate the state and became
  leaders of local protest movements demanding bureaucratic account-
  ability in such vital issues as ecological pollution and the apparent
  elimination of regional self-governance. Yoshimoto, perhaps the most
  powerful theorist of this resuscitated ideal of community, hoped to
  transmute the state into a structureless entity occupied by a folk held
  together by mutual respect and affection. Yet this concentration on
  35 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 420.
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  EPILOGUE 
  773
  the community opened the way for a renewed emphasis on particu-
  larism and cultural exceptionalism. The discourse on cultural excep-
  tionalism was transformed into a social science or "sociology" focused
  on explaining Japan's uniqueness. But it should be recalled that
  Yanagida and his generation of researchers had already called atten-
  tion to the possibility of establishing a social science in Japan as the
  necessary methodology to gras'p difference. Where the new interest in
  social science departed from this prewar precedent was in its insistence
  that normative conceptions and methods could be used to explain
  what was unique about Japan. Many of its most strident students were
  Japanese who had been trained in the West. Books too numerous to
  mention appeared in the 1960s and 1970s pledged to performing a
  "scientific" analysis of Japan's uniqueness, why Japan was fundamen-
  tally unlike and hence superior to other societies.
  The withdrawal from a universalistic understanding of the world to
  the familiar confines of a culturally unique homeland was most pro-
  nounced among ultranationalistic critics such as Hayashi Fusao, an-
  other survivor of the prewar debates on modernity. His own celebra-
  tion of the native land was expressed in a work called "Japan, the
  Green Archipelago" (Midori no Nihon retto, 1966) and in an influen-
  tial dialogue with Mishima Yukio on the meaning of Japanism. Mi-
  shima also made his own statement in the "defense of culture" (Bunka
  boeiron, 1969). It is hardly surprising that both attempted to recon-
  firm the martial spirit of the prewar restorationist radicals who had
  sacrificed their own lives to dramatize the urgency of the cultural
  problem. Whereas Mishima extolled the revolutionary idealism of
  Oshio Heihachiro, recalling the prewar idealization of this late Toku-
  gawa radical, Hayashi provided a historical interpretation of the Pa-
  cific War. In his "Thesis Affirming the Great East Asia War" (Dai Toa
  senso koteiron, 1964), Hayashi saw Japan's revolt against the West as
  the culmination of the "first one-hundred-year war in Asia" that began
  with the Opium War in 1840 and reached its climax with the bombing
  of Pearl Harbor. War was now over for Japan, but a second one-
  hundred-year war had already started in other places in Asia, such as
  Southeast Asia and the Chinese mainland. Thus Hayashi read these
  signs as an affirmation of Japan's own revolt against the West and a
  justification for its decision to go to war despite the overwhelming
  odds favoring defeat and destruction. And as recent events showed, he
  concluded, the contest was still far from over.
  Both the range of articulations concerning what it means to be
  Japanese (Nihonjinron) and the concomitant impulse to "return to
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  774 
  JAPANESE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST
  Asia" were represented by the Nobel laureate Kawabata Yasunari
  (1899-1972). Although he reached back to the idea of enduring aes-
  thetic forms marking Japan's exceptionalism-as proposed earlier by
  Tanizaki, Kobayashi, and the Romantics-in his Nobel Prize accep-
  tance speech, "Japan, the Beautiful," Kawabata called attention to
  this "unique" inheritance of the beautiful that distinguished the Japa-
  nese from others. Yet some years earlier in an eloquent poetic eulogy
  he delivered to his departed friend Yokomitsu Riichi, he acknowl-
  edged this tradition of beauty as part of a larger Asian whole. His
  language applied to an entire generation of prewar and, later, postwar
  intellectuals and writers of whom Yokomitsu was perhaps the arche-
  type because of his own tortuous odyssey from West to East. Kawa-
  bata lamented:
  Sufferer of the New Asia that fought the West,
  Pioneer of the New Tragedy in the Asian Tradition,
  You shouldered such a destiny.
  And you left the world sending a smile to Heaven. 36
  36 Quoted in Yuasa Yasuo, Watsuji Tetsuro (Tokyo: Minerva shobo, 1981), dedication page.
  Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
  
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