Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book Title: Chalmers Johnson.1995. Japan: Who Governs? The rise of the developmental state. NY; London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Main Points:

Ch. 7 - it explores the extent, the cause, and the effects of the movement of personnel from bureau office to board rooms. In many critical industries, the businessmen who had dealing with government officials were themselves retired government officials. (141)

- the reemployment of retired government officials by private enterprise in Japan began as largely ad hoc processes in response to very real needs of business and bureaucrats. Over time, it came to be semi-regularized. It was the way that Japanese had actually dealt with some of the personnel problems of their civil service; and it was one aspect of their implementation of the so-called 'administrative guidance'. (156)

Ch.8 - there were indeed a nihon-teki imi to the most ordinary Japanese political words, depending on being used to refer to the omote or ura level of politics. (159).

- the nuance of omote and ura were not the only problems that faced the political and economic translators.  The chapter illustrates 18 specific areas where the author had encounter problem. (162) - - to illustrate the difficult, the chapter focuses on the language of the constitution of 1947 as the example. (178)

Ch. 9 - by about 1980, Tanaka’s group had become the most important influential patronage-dispensing center with the LDP, totally in control who would be named as the Prime Minister of Japan. This political machine, the Tanka faction, dominated Japanese politics until 1985 when Tanaka was paralyzed by a stroke. His case thus had a major significance for the question of ‘Who governs in Japan?’, and ‘where was Japanese democracy heading?’ (185)

- until about 1975, there was no question who governed Japan: It was the official state bureaucracy. However, during the late 1970s a subtle combination of events started an apparent decline in the power of the bureaucracy - from bureaucratic leadership structure to party leadership structure. (207)

Ch. 10 - the chapter presents the author own distillation of  what serious Japanese analyst were saying about the political changes in Japan and the possibility of reform since the election of the 1993.(213) It offers two case studies that was believed to reflect that some political changes were showing up. The first was the appointment of a public prosecutor general who was not a graduate of either Tokyo or Kyoto university; the second was the dismissal of a siting bureau chief by a politically appointed minister. (213)

- this chapter shows that Japan was undergoing changes in it political structure and procedures. Whether these changes added up to reform would depend on the value of the observers. (231)

Ch.11 - it talks about the pattern of Japanese relations with China from 1952 to 1982. Japan’s postwar China policy had been subtle, sophisticated, and largely successful; the chapter was written from a Japan’s point of view, it would be different from a Chinese perspective. (236)

Ch. 12 - Nakasone’s defense policy could be broken down into four large components: steady increases in defense expenditure, close cooperation with the US, to reengage the Soviet Union diplomatically, and to make a major effort at public education. (274)

Ch.13- this chapter proposes, first to sketch in some of the things that the end of the bipolarity would logically entail in America’s relations with Japan, Korea, and China. Second, it offers a few theoretical generalizations about the related phenomena of transnational economic integration. Third, it reviews some of the scenarios for the maintenance of peace and stability in Asia and the Pacific. (282)

Ch. 14 - it talks about the Japanese- American relation by the end of the 20^th century. Centering on the collapse of communism and the end of bipolarity, two theses stood out for their insight and originality. One was Francis Fukuyama’s “The end of history?”; the other was Alan Tonelson’s “What is the national interest?”(296)