Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

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

Book title: Eric Han. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

- Introduction - Japan was not often thought of as an immigrant-receiving country. Its barriers to foreigner were well recognized: citizenship law based on bloodline and restrictive naturalization procedure. (2) Yokohama was only 17 miles away from the capital; it had been cultivated as a thriving tourism industry. (4)

- the book narrates the development of a Chinese community in Yokohama, from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972 and beyond. (5) Han seeks to show how an awareness of national difference emerged through interactions between Chinese and Japanese. Such national conscious was an outcome of historical interactions that also yielded non-national collective identities. (5)  The public acceptance of Chinese hamakko challenges the Japanese myth of ethic homogeneity. (6)

- before we can speak of the local integration of these Chinese, we need to investigate the category of Chinese and how a collective identity as such emerged in Yokohama in the first place. (6) Yokohama Chinatown was an important state for the nation-building process at the end of the Qing dynasty. This book addresses the contributions of non-elites who over time acquired a Chinese political consciousness. (7) This consciousness signified a diasporic identity for these Chinese. The diasporic Chinese identity was denoted by the term hauqiao.

- according to Wang Gungwu, hauqiao was a militant commitment to remaining Chinese. This diasporic conceptualization of Chinese identity emphases homeland patriotism and downplay attachment to place of settlement. (7) The diasporic condition was instructive for understanding the process by which individual come to accept national identities. The imagination of a nation self was never uncontested. (7)

- as  Prasenjit Duara had argued, nationalist ideologies south to “fix and privileged a single identity form among the contesting multiplicity of identifications”.  Outside the homeland, nationalist ideology had to assert a vertical relation with the nation while denying other collective identities that linked the immigrant to her host society. (8)

- there were multiple and overlapping version of Chinese-ness, including the elite civilizational conception of China, political allegiance to Qing. This book tells the story of how a modern Chinese nationalism was reconciled within existing affiliation and interpreted. (8) Conversely, this study examines the institutional, social economic and legal mechanism by which individuals developed linkage to both China and Yokohama (8)

- the marker of Chinese self-identity were not static; the meaning of being Chinese in Yokohama shifted along with changing relations with Japanese society and their Chinese homeland. (12) A major theme of this book was the ongoing “social construction” of Yokohama Chinatown as a place and the Chinese as a community. (12)

- several Japanese detective fiction could help us probe the cultural meanings of the site of Yokohama Chinatown as an enclave with both threatening and alluring dimensions. (13) Akutagawa prize-winning author Okamatsu Kazuo’s 1988 novel narrates the two decades friendship between Akigawa and Arima, two men born in Yokohama but of different ethnic heritage. The half-Chinese, half Japanese Arima struggled to construct his life in local term – according to an ideal of Yokohama. (14)

- Arima’s psychological predicament, as both imperfect Chinese and Japanese, spoke to the exclusivity and narrowness of Chinese and Japanese identities, there was no Chinese Japanese identity analogous to Chinese American. Arima chose to self-identify as diasporic and as Yokohama-ite (hamakko)’ (15)

- since the 19^th century, political modernizers in both Japan and China had sought to inculcate national and ethnic consciousness. Government policy policies institutionalized national identity as an individual’s ‘terminal’ community. As Rupert Emerson explains, such a community was expected to override “the claim of lesser communities within it.”(16) Han’s study rejects the assumptions and priorities inherent in such terminal identities. It offers a critical examination of collective identities Yokohama to show both their historicity and multiplicity. Collective identity was relational categories that structured social life, defining friends and foes. They were distinguishable from self-identity, which was defined as the “absolute uniqueness” of an individual. (17)

- collective and individual identities were easily confused in everyday language, the  multiplicity of group affiliation that made up a unique pattern of personality were not always apparent.(17) When an individual reduced his or her multiple social affiliation to terminal one-dimensionality, the result was the annihilation of true identity. (17)

- For some scholars, the concept of diaspora had offered a way to counter one-dimensional identification with a territorial nation-stare. (17) In their work, the diaspora subject could function as “a figure for double and multiple consciousness … that crisscrossed boundaries.”  Identification with a diaspora is thus a mode of resistance. (17)

- the wider aim of this book was to consider how people attempted to reconcile a cosmopolitan and inclusive local identity with national ethnic identities that were exclusive and conflictual. (18)

- the first chapter opens with a discussion of Chinese migration to Japan form the premodern period. (19) Chapter 2 examines how, in the years before the Chinese revolution of 1911, Chinese expatriate leaders attempted to turn a sense of ethnic unity into active Chinese citizenship. Chapter 3 traces the institutionalization of Chinese identify in Yokohama from the founding of the ROC in 1912 to the Manchurian incident of 1931-32. The new Chinese state extended its power into the lives of its overseas citizen by registering them to be patriotic huaqiao.

- chapter 4 narrates the effect of these wartime developments on Chinese community cohesion in Yokohama. For this part, the Yokohama Chinese attempted to resolve the competing imperatives of local attachment and national patriotism. (21) Chapter 5 traces the development of Yokohama Chinatown into a cohesive enclave and economic niche against the backdrop of the Cold War and Japan’s economic rise, culminating in the normalization of diplomatic ties between Japan and the PRC in 1972.(21) The book conclusion examines Chinatown from the 1980s and the district’s rising commercial fortune and further institutionalization as a key pillar of Yokohama local identity. (21) Chinese gained public acceptance as local resident, a status that conferred certain citizenship right. (21)

(to be continued)

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

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

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Ch. 6. - as Japan entered 1993, important new forces seemed poised to affect macroeconomic policy.(162) The Japanese economy did not seem to have been very stimulated by either of the discount rate cuts of 1992, or by the August fiscal stimulus plan. The stock market remained soft, land prices began to drop. More and more reports were surfacing concerning the bad loans. (162)

- prior to the July 1993 election, political pressure surely compounded the pressure on the Miyazawa administration for economic policy change. Subsequently, the non-LDP coalition government of Hosokawa Morihiro and Hata Tsutomu faced pressure to fix the problem of the economy. (163)

- in the period 1993-7, then, continuing economic problems and political uncertainty were intertwined. Bureaucrats in general and MOF officials in particular, became targets of political and media attacks alleging incompetence, even corruption. (163)

- following a successful vote of no confidence against PM Miyazawa’s administration on June 18, 1993, and the subsequent Lower House election on July 18,  Japan’s first non-LDP PM since 1955 Hosokawa Morihiro, was elected . He entered office as the head of a coalition of seven parties. (168)

- despite consistently strong citizen and market sentiment for fiscal stimulus, the year 1993-7 instead saw a stop-and-go approach to fiscal policy. For the most part, the policies of the increasingly unpopular MOF carried the day. (191)

-the overall strategy by LDP and other politicians to contain MOF included extremely heavy political pressure. As the next chapter demonstrates, by 1955, the MOF goal of maintain autonomy was under fire from a number of new directions. Following the catastrophic failure of the 1997 fiscal consolidation, the Ministry became the scapegoat, and contributed the fundamental structural change and a substantial weakening in its policy-making influence. (195)

-Ch. 7- by the mid-1990s, politicians were gaining a degree of power at the expenses of the MOF while playing within the existing rules of the game of macroeconomic politics. But by 1996, they were beginning to map out a new set of rules that would fundamentally change the game. (196)

- this chapter sticks closely to the themes of structural power and structural changes by focusing on personnel and organization changes. Following that, it turns to actual macroeconomic policies and to show how structural changes promoted policy changes. (197)

- in March 1998, there was finally a break in the old pattern when governor Matsushita and deputy governor Fukui were both forced to resign. The Hashimoto cabinet appointed Hayami Masaru as Governor, a long-retired BOJ OB. The cabinet appointed two deputy governors as well. For the first time since 1969, MOF retirees were excluded from the top ranks of the bank. (198)

- a final set of attacks on the personnel system of MOF could be seen in the forced resignation of two consecutive administrative vice-ministers in 1995.  In 1998, there was yet another forced resignation. (201)

- the attacks on MOF had multiple reasons. For one, the MOF was under fire for having protected weak and corrupt financial institutions. In addition to the scandals, the MOF was also tarred in the public eye with the label of incompetence and arrogance. At least some ruling party politicians were motivated by revenge for the slights of the non-LDP coalition period. With the element in place of widely recognized policy failure, public disapproval, a weakened relationship with ruling politician, and politician’s increased sensitivity to public opinion, the Ministry was vulnerable. (202)

-the reorganization ideas being floated by 1996 were extremely worrisome for the MOF. These included the reform and reduction of government financial institutions. Another idea that constituted an even more profound attack on MOF prerogative was a plan to move budgeting function to the PM office. (203)

-the most significant check on the MOF power in macroeconomic policy making was the revision of the Bank of Japan laws passed by the Diet in June, 1997.(204)

- along with the BOJ law revision, the cabinet also submitted bills to establish a new Financial Supervision Agency to take over MOF’s role as supervisor of the banking, security, and insurance sectors.(207)

- the changes in the macroeconomic policy-making structure seen were truly historic. It would have been nearly unimaginable in 1985, or even 1995, that the MOF would lose its preeminence in monetary policy, let alone be dismembered. BOJ was now largely autonomous. The Diet became the official overseer of the BOJ, it also took back the initiative in budgeting, and was the architect of the dismantling and reconstruction of Japan’s macroeconomic policy apparatus. (215)

Conclusion: over the previous seven chapters, the author has shown that the structures of power and information in Japanese macroeconomic policy making had fundamentally influenced the policies actually followed in japan. (218)

- this study has demonstrated the usefulness in using ‘the framework of institutional competition' in understanding an otherwise dauntingly confusing set of events and policies in the actual historical record. (219).

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

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

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Ch. 3- this chapter begins with fiscal policy, then turns to monetary policy, and finally to exchange rate management. The central contention in fiscal policy was the national budget. The first step in understanding Japan’s fiscal policy is to consider the general account budget. (74)

- the tools of the BOJ are essentially the same as those available to other central banks. They include manipulation of the discount rate, interbank market and reserves policies. (94) The basic operational goal of the BOJ included stable prices, sustainable economic growth, stable currency, the integrity of the financial system, and organizational autonomy. (98)

Ch. 4.-in the name of reducing international imbalance, the Japanese government was pressured to allow the yen to appreciate rapidly and to promote domestic demand. It responded with a policy mix that was fundamentally unsound and set the stage for the bubble burst. (108) To understand that response, we had to look at the domestic policy-making structure. The period could be broken down into four phases. From spring 1985 to the year end it emphasized on lowering the level of dollars through foreign exchange market intervention. Second, from January to June 1986, ad hoc monetary policy emerged as the centerpiece of international coordination effort.  From July 1986 before the Louvre Accord in February 1987, more bilateral US-Japan coordination began. From the Louver Accord until the end of 1987, there was a shift to coordination of domestic demand management. (108)

- in November 1980 voters in the US elected Ronald Regan on a platform of tax cut. The experiment, known as Reaganomics, began with unprecedented tax cuts accompanied by increased in government spending.  Coupled with the anti-inflationary program, the result was high interest rate drawing massive foreign investment and raised the value of the dollar. (109)

- analysts of the Plaza-Louvre period (1985-87) had used a variety of theoretical perspective to explain Japan’s action in the period. Each of this perspective offered some insight, but no satisfactory explanation could be made without considering the structure of Japanese macroeconomic policy making. Only by combining domestic structure with internal and external pressure were we able to come up with a consistently satisfactory explanation (127).

- the primary problem facing policy makers in 1985 were ‘bring down superdollar’. Recognizing that the US dollar was much overvalued, a cheaper dollar was needed to reduce current account imbalance. (127)

- looking at events from a two-level perspective suggested that the ultimate failure of the Louver strategy was that international-level commitments exceeded what domestic actors were willing to accepted. (134) On the Japanese side, we again saw the reluctance of MOF to use the fiscal policy tool, and its ability to block politician from using it. (135)

Ch. 5.-the year 1988 opened with a weak dollar and a lack of consensus among the G-7 countries on questions of coordinated action. 1988 saw a stabilized dollar against the yen. (136)

- much of the prosperity of the late 1980s was based on a speculative bubble. The bubble was fueled by rapid increase in the money supply caused by the continuation of BOJ’s low interest rate policy until May 1989, at least a year beyond the point at which it had ceased to be economic justifiable (an over-short).(137)

-monetary policy both encouraged and ended the bubble, but it was not able to put the economy back on track. This chapter examines both the economic policies that caused prosperity and then led to disaster, and the macroeconomic policies behind them. (137)

- in December 1989, governor Sumita of BOJ ended his term; he was replaced by his deputy Mieno Yasushi. Mieno was a BOJ careerist. Almost immediate, he acted to raise interest rate for the third time in seven months. (142) Mieno’s proposal angered the powerful Finance Minister, Hashimto Ryutaro, who exercised his legal prerogative to postpone any change in the discount rate. But the market situation forced Hashimato to drop his position. BOJ under Mieno would raise interest rate twice more. The last of the rate hikes was striking, coming as it did in the middle of a rapid decrease in stock prices on August 30, 1990; the Nikkei has fallen to 26,000 from the level of over 33,000 in early June. (142) These rapid rate rises were the monetary equivalent of driving a truck into a brick wall. (143)

- despite the BOJ’s aggressive reversal of its bubble-bursting policies of 1989-90, the growing financial mess proved difficult to reverse. The fall of asset prices had led to a large increase in bankruptcies. (148)

- politicians were increasingly frustrated, one sign of this was LDP kingmaker Kanemaru Shin’s widely reported comments in February 1992 to the effect that “the discount rate should be lowered even if it means the PM firing the governor of the BOJ”. (149-150)

(to be continued)

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

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

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Introduction: the major puzzle facing observers of the Japanese economy in the 1990s had been a straightforward one:  ‘What went wrong?’, or “why did it go wrong?” To understand the ‘why’ question, we must turn to politics. In this book, the author argues that the structure of power in macroeconomic policy making was largely responsible for the policy failures since the mid-1980s. (xvii)

- the story began with the Plaza Agreement in September 1985 which marked the beginning of international economic policy coordination among the (then) G5 countries to increase the values of the yen and other currencies to the dollar. (xviii)

- this book addresses Japan’s macroeconomic policy making in a logical progression. Ch.1 lays out the structure of the macroeconomic politics. Chapter 2-3 offer more detailed analysis of the each institution.(xx) The central premise was that the way policy were made had an important effect on the shape of the policies themselves. (xx)

Ch. 1. - this chapter describes the structures. The subsequent chapters will demonstrate how it contributed to the expansion, and eventually bursting of the bubble, and show how changes in policy-making structure had altered the available policy choices. (1)

- a variety of explanation had appeared in recent years to account for both specific Japanese macroeconomic policy; yet more explanation focused on the problem of exchange rate, international power and the failures of the bureaucracy etc.(1)

- Japanese macroeconomic and the exchange rate policy making were essentially a game among the three official actors – the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan and the leadership of the Diet.(11) Policy making was a game played on two levels: the individual and the institutional. In the case of macroeconomic policy in Japan, we had to first ask ourselves what incentives were facing the individuals in the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan, and the political parties. These were primarily a function of career path of the officials/politicians. (13)

-to make sense of the collective action, we began at the level of individual. What incentive did the individual member of organization face? The individual would pursue his goal subject to the environment. The author assumes that the main goal for the individual was power and prestige.  The bureaucrat joined the agency not for amassing wealth. They entered their career through a sense of duty, or commitment to ideals. The best way to advance these ideals was to advance one’s own personal position in an agency, i.e. the mission was consonant with one’s own goal: seeking power and prestige. For the politicians, they looked for re-election. (14)

- there would be no conflict if the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) had identical objectives. The bank’s overriding objective had been price stability; they would be blamed for inflationary mistakes. The Bank rejected the possibility of a trade-off between growth and inflation. (21)

- there were three political actors. Until the BOJ law revision in 1998, the MOF was the central actor in Japanese macroeconomic policy making due to its broad legal jurisdiction and effective manage of information. It was responsible for fiscal policy and exchange rate management and was answerable to the Diet. (23)

- BOJ was responsible for making monetary policy. It had two objectives: to ensure low inflation, and improve autonomy in the conduct of monetary policy. The third actor was the Diet which had the authority to direct the Ministry in serving the nation. (24)

- in 1998 a number of key structural variable changed, leading to a major change in the game of macroeconomic politics. A quick summary was that there was a major structural-legal change in 1998. It was the implementation of a revised Bank of Japan laws and the establishment of the Financial Supervision Agency (FSA) that constituted changes that were important in reducing the power and network of the MOF. (28)

-Ch. 2- this chapter fleshes out the previous schematic description of the institutional actors and examines the resources and constraint under which these three parties had to operate. Career path and information managements pattern were central to an understanding the organization’s power. (30)

- the MOF had a degree of authority over macroeconomic policy making and implementation. Tax policy and collection, budget making etc. all been centralized in the Ministry. (30) The main counterpart to the MOF in macroeconomic and exchange rate policy was the BOJ. (39)

- the Diet had a variety of roles that impinged directly and indirectly on the policy-making process. In the areas of fiscal policy and exchange rate management, MOF was legally answerable to the Diet, or specifically to the Cabinet. (56)

- the Japanese macroeconomic policy-making system tended to limit the short-term option of political leaders for having a meaningful effect on policies. The overall picture had been one of a highly pork-barrel-oriented political party with little expertise and only sporadic interest in macroeconomic impacts. (71)

(to be continued)

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)

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. 2. It stresses that one of the critical requirement in the study of the late 20^th century political economic was to understand the sociopolitical forces that had fostered Japan’s high speed economic growth, and by extension that of its copiers in east Asia: the four dragons. (38)

-the chapter suggests that there were problems with Weber’s theory of the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism in Asia. (39) The author believes that Weber’s contribution had been seriously misunderstood. His theory was a reaction to Marx’s mutualism, they were arguing about whether values (ideas) were independent or depending variable in explaining social phenomenon.(40) Weber showed that values and similar force of belief (idea/thinking) influenced development as powerful as material forces (Marx’s idea). Capitalism was not possible without appropriate values. (41)

- the chapter suggests that an explanation of the high speed economic growth in east Asia could not be reduced to merely religious value. (44)

-late developers differed from the original developers in that social-economic factors such as the rise of bourgeoisie, private investments, entrepreneurship, and even protestants were not as important as the conscious politic decision to industrialize.(45)

Ch. 3 – suggests that the reforms were the work of the new dealers. This was true as far as it went, but it failed to take into account of the Japanese government’s prewar and postwar industrial policy and how it was built on and thus shaped the heritage of the occupation. (64)

-contrary to American political science theory, the power of the Japanese state had not been delegated to it by the elected representatives of the people, the state had instead imposed its economic achievement on the people and owed their allegiance in doing so.(67)

Ch.4 - it shows four aspects of growing tendency of Japan and American that saw each other as adversaries. Japan’s peculiar pattern of trade, American policy, revisionism, and doctrinaire economist, together they constituting a complex whole that would be analyzed in the chapter. The author uses nine aspects to show that Japanese economic behavior had shown that Japan was mercantile power, not a free trader. By mercantile power it meant a nation that used state action to export the utmost possible quantity, and to import as little as possible. By free trader it meant a nation that used state action to promote trading system in which the lowest cost product always got the order. (71) When confronted with these evidence, Japanese spokesman usually retreated to the argument that foreign salesmen did not try hard enough in Japan. The American’s response to Japan was inconsistent and torn by series of contradictions. (89) This reflected both the changing nature and distribution of power globally and the collapse of bipolarity. (89)

- international trading system was supposed to be self-correcting: current account surplus would lead to capital flows and currency realignment that either alerted consumer’s purchasing decision or lower their levels of living. When this mechanism was not working, this was the realm of the so called macroeconomic imbalances that some analysis thought that it was the true cause of the American trade deficits. After the Regan administration cut American taxes, there should either a sky high interest rate or a drastic cut in government spending. But neither had happened because of the influx of Japanese capital into the US. (90)

Ch. 5. The endless MacNeil Lehrerism that afflicted American public policy discussion was one of the most frustrating aspects of the current Japanese American relation. There were three particular reasons: First, the ideological blinders that prevented American from looking squarely at Japan. These were caused by the ideological dimension of the cold war: the ideology to fit Japan into the west. The second was the unusual situation in which Japanese nationalism was expressed: almost entirely theory of economic claim and achievement. Third, it was the fact that Japanese economy was guided by the state strategy. (96)

- the goal of this chapter is to put some flesh on each of these three arguments. At the end it shall return to the famous question: What was to be done? (98)

- the economists were unable to analyse the Japanese problem because at root it was not an economic problem, but a matter of differing in political system. The key variable and asymmetry was the state structure. (99) The first thing to be done was to strengthen and reorient US national analytical capacity to understand and react to Japanese achievements. Second, the US had to adopt its own industrial policy. State could be important contributor to the success of market economies. (111)Third, the US had to adopt results-oriented trade. (112)

Ch. 6. Practicing political scientists were not yet prepared to answer ‘Who governs in Japan?’, although we had mountains of evidence, much of it contradictory, to sift on the subject. (117)

- the key difference was that the postwar bureaucracy in Japan, at least for the greater part of the postwar period, had fewer rivals of power than did the prewar bureaucracy. John Maki generalized that modern Japan, until the surrender in 1945, was ruled by a combination of three power groups, the militarist, the monopoly capitalist (zaibatsu) and the bureaucrats. From about 1948, and until the conservative’s merger in 1955, the answer to ‘who governs in Japan’ was clearly the bureaucracy. After 1955, political party influence grew. The creation of the Tanaka cabinet in 1972 owed less to the actions of the politician factions than to the weakening of the ex-bureaucrats faction. (127)

(to be continued)

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:

- Introduction: the American was wary of state officials or bureaucrats in general, but while in Japan it was quite different. Japan had a non-adversarial political culture, and its state had attracted the best talent, leading the campaign of modernization from above. (7-8) Japan was a capitalist development state, distinct from a socialist development state (USSR) or a capitalist regulatory state (USA). (8)

- the five essays grouped in part I elucidate the role of the Japanese state in the economic role of Japan (11). The first essay compared Japan to medieval Venice as an example of a trading state, one that used economic policies to achieve what other nations attempted to achieve through the military. The second essay considers the nexus, if any between religion and capitalism as propounded by many western theorists. It rejects creative Confucianism as the eastern equivalent of Weber’s version of Protestantism. Instead, the essay credits Japan’s industrialization to a dictatorship of development.

- the comparison of Japan with Venice led to the third essay: the idea of comparative capitalism (12). Japan pioneered the capitalist developmental, or catalytic, state; and illustrated to the rest of world that the state could play an important role in market economies well beyond the laissez-faire economic. (68)

- the fourth essay focuses on the trade deficits that the US had with Japan since the late 1960s. This essay, together with the fifth essay, raises the issue of ‘revisionism’. Revisionism was referred the observation that Japan had a political economy different form the Anglo-American countries, most American academic economists maintained their pattern was the orthodox norm that defined capitalism; hence Japan had differed from this norm. Those who pointed out this were called revisionist. (12)

- these five essays attempt to show why a policy of pressuring Japan to alter its economic system to make it look like the American was doomed to fail.(12)

Part II addresses Japanese politics and bureaucratic government. In Chapter 6, the essay entitled ‘Japan: Who governs’ reflects the author’s growing understanding that the American-written Japanese constitution of 1947 did not fully describe the way the Japanese political systems actually worked. (13)

-chapter 7 suggested that those who governed Japan was its elite state bureaucracy. It was recruited from the top rank of the best law schools students in the country. The bureaucracy drafted virtually all laws. It also had the power of administrative guidance unrestrained in any way by the judicial system. (13) It talks about what these officials did when they left office: they became amakudari.  Ch.8 talks about the language of Japanese in governing and in politics. Ch.9 talks about the candidate in author’s mind who would breathe life into the constitutional political system; he was the former PM, Tanka Kakuei. The author had expected Tanaka to lead Japan into a kind of democracy. Ch. 10 talks about the collapse of the LDP in 1993.

Part III (ch.11 -14) deals with Japan’s international relations – with China and other nations of the Asia-pacific region. These four essays all were about the implication of Japan’s newly achieved great economic power that combined with a comparative reluctance to assume commensurate political responsibility. (15)

- one main point in part 3 is to refute the view that the Japanese state was incapable of grand strategy because it was not under the kind of democratic guidance prevalent in the West. It seemed to the author that in responding the hegemonic actions of the US, and the emergence of a group of emulators of its own economic achievement in Asia (South Korea, Taiwan etc. the four dragons) Japan had preserved the country’s independence while also accommodated the Americans and the Communist adversaries (i.e. China). (16)

Ch.1.- it quotes a comment on the Most Serene Venetain Republic, which was founded in AD 421 and whose constitution persisted unchanged for almost five centuries , from 1310 to 1796. There were many striking similarities between this old Venice and contemporary Japan. Venice was surrounded by larger, more powerful states, but it survived and preserved its independence by successfully combining a preference for peaceful trade with a willingness to fight with all its resources to preserve it independence. Modern Japan was likewise normally preferred commerce and its wars all had a commercial basis. (23)

- separately in his book on MITI and on the history of industrial policy, the author has summarized the ingredients of the post war Japan’s high-growth as follows: a combination of the legacy of cartelization and state control, the emergency of pilot agency, i.e. the economic general staff, and the Yoshida School in politics. Another compatible formation was noted by one of Japans’ leading economic historian Nanakumra Takafusa. Nakamura saw two complex sets of causes: war and occupation. In his view the mobilization for the war had contributed to at least seven different Japanese institutional invocations that were salvaged after the defeat. (30)

(to be continued)