Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook 9789048559381

Citation preview

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Japan Documents Handbooks This series focuses on the broad field of Japanese Studies, aimed at the worldwide English language scholarly market, published in Tokyo in English. Each Handbook will contain an average of 20 newly written contributions on various aspects of the topic, which together comprise an up-to-date survey of use to scholars and students. The focus is on Humanities and Social Sciences. Titles in this series: Handbook of Higher Education in Japan (edited by Paul Snowden) Handbook of Confucianism in Modern Japan (edited by Shaun O’Dwyer) Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition (edited by Forum Mithani and Griseldis Kirsch) Handbook of Japanese Christian Writers (edited by Mark Williams, Van C. Gessel and Yamane Michihiro) Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers (edited by Rebecca Copeland) Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook (edited by Simon Avenell) Forthcoming titles in this series: The Annotated Constitution of Japan: A Handbook (edited by Colin P.A. Jones) Handbook of Environmental History in Japan (edited by Fujihara Tatsushi) Handbook of Sport and Japan (edited by Helen Macnaughtan and Verity Postlethwaite) Handbook of Japanese Martial Arts (edited by Alexander Bennett) Handbook of Japanese Public Administration and Bureaucracy (edited by Mieko Nakabayashi and Hideaki Tanaka) Handbook of Crime and Punishment in Japan (edited by Tom Ellis and Akira Kyo) Handbook of Disaster Studies in Japan (edited by Paola Cavaliere and Junko Otani) Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Diplomacy: The 2010s (edited by Tosh Minohara) Handbook of Japanese Feminisms (edited by Andrea Germer and Ulrike Wöhr) Handbook of Japan’s Environmental Law, Policy, and Politics (edited by Hiroshi Ohta) Handbook of Japanese Games and Gameplay (edited by Rachael Hutchinson) Handbook of Human Rights and Japan (edited by Tamara Swenson) Handbook of Europe-Japan Relations (edited by Lars Vargö) Teaching Japan: A Handbook (edited by Gregory Poole and Ioannis Gaitanidis) Handbook of Russia-Japan Relations (edited by Kazuhiko Togo and Dmitry Streltsov) Handbook of Women in Japanese Buddhism (edited by Monika Schrimpf and Emily Simpson) Handbook of Japanese Security (edited by Leszek Buszynski) Handbook of Japanese Tourism (edited by Hideto Fujii) Handbook on Japanese Civil Society (edited by Simon Avenell and Akihiro Ogawa) Handbook of Japanese Labor Practices: Changing Perceptions (edited by Robin Sakamoto) The Advent of Sound in Japanese Cinema: A Handbook (edited by Sean O’Reilly) Handbook of Global Migration and Japan (edited by Shinnosuke Takahashi and Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi) Handbook of Work and Leisure in Japan (edited by Nana Okura Gagne and Isaac Gagne) Handbook of Japanese Aesthetics (edited by Melinda Landeck) Handbook of Japanese Architecture (edited by Ari Seligmann) Handbook of Modern Japan-Korea Relations (edited by Mark Caprio and Robert Winstanley-Chesters)

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook Edited by Simon Avenell

Amsterdam University Press

First published 2023 by Japan Documents, an imprint of MHM Limited, Tokyo, Japan.

Cover design, layout, and typography: TransPac Communications, Greg Glover isbn 978 90 4855 937 4 e-isbn 978 90 4855 938 1 nur 692 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

Table of Contents Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Preface

Simon Avenell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era Simon Avenell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv Part 1: The Origins of the Postwar 1

Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan Deokhyo Choi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2

Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 Simon James Bytheway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Part 2: The Political Postwar 3

Arguing with Public Opinion: Polls and Postwar Democracy Adam Bronson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

4

Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right James Babb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65

5

Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism: Japanese Atomic Bombing Sufferers’ Struggle against the State Akiko Naono . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89

6

Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime: Conservatism and Constitution in Postwar Japan Christian G. Winkler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Part 3: Postwar Culture and Society 7

Gendering Postwar Japan Emily Barrass Chapman and Helen Macnaughtan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

8

Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams Eiko Maruko Siniawer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Table of Contents

v

9

Education in Japan since 1945: Equality, Hierarchy, and Competition Peter Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

10

From Raincoats to Ketchup: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era (1955–1973) Katarzyna J. Cwiertka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

11

Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History Janet Borland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

12

Japan’s Got Talent: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture Seong Un Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209

Part 4: The Transnational Postwar 13

Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective Julia C. Bullock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

14

Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics Aya Homei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244

Part 5: Japan’s Postwar in Asia and the World 15

Japan’s American Alliance: Forgoing Autonomy for Deterrence H.D.P. Envall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

16

The Endless Postwar: Okinawa at the Modern Frontier Luke Franks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276

17

Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity Kimie Hara. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .292

18

Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan Rebecca Suter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .307

Part 6: Defining, Delineating, Historicizing and Chronologizing the Postwar Era 19

Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar” Philip Seaton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

20

Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era Eiji Oguma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .345

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363

vi

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Contributors Simon Avenell is Professor at the Australian National University. He specializes in modern Japanese history, with a particular interest in civil society, social activism and the history of ideas in postwar Japan. His latest book, Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity, was published by Harvard University Press in 2022. James Babb is Associate Professor in the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo. His published journal articles often focus on post-war Japanese politics and political history, and he is the author of such books as Tanaka: The Making of Postwar Japan (Routledge, 2017) and A World History of Political Thought (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018). Janet Borland is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at International Christian University in Tokyo. Her research focuses on fundamental relationships between people and the natural and built environment. She is the author of Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo (Harvard University Asia Center, 2020). Her second book project, Endangered Icon, is a social, cultural and environmental history of the red-crowned crane in Japan. Adam Bronson is Associate Professor of History at Durham University. His work focuses on intellectual history and political culture. He is author of One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2016). His next book explores the history of the idea of public opinion in Japan. Julia C. Bullock is Professor of Japanese Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She is the author of The Other Women’s Lib (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) and Coeds Ruining the Nation (University of Michigan Press, 2019), and coeditor of three additional books on feminist theory and translation. Her research is at the intersection of Japanese literature, history, film and media studies. Simon James Bytheway is a Professor of Financial and Economic History at Nihon University. He is the author of thirty-two articles and chapters, with four monographs published by major US and Japanese academic presses, including Investing Japan: Foreign Capital, Monetary Standards, and Economic Development, 1859–2011 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014), and over thirty essays for magazines and webzines. His present research concerns itself with currency-related problems in Allied Occupied Japan and Korea.

Contributors

vii

Peter Cave is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. He holds postgraduate degrees in social anthropology and has written extensively on education in modern and contemporary Japan, including two ethnographic monographs: Primary School in Japan (Routledge, 2007) and Schooling Selves (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Emily Barrass Chapman did her PhD in History at SOAS University of London and is a SOAS Japan Research Centre (JRC) Research Associate. She is a full time parent, a writer and historian who specializes in the family in Japan after 1945. She is particularly interested in the stories we tell ourselves about family that gather in arenas both large and small: from the personal histories of family photo albums, to government policies and the glossy daydreams of adverts. She is also currently working on a novel based in 1950s Tokyo. Deokhyo Choi is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield. He has published numerous articles in three languages (English, Japanese and Korean), including “The Empire Strikes Back from Within: Colonial Liberation and the Korean Minority Question at the Birth of Postwar Japan, 1945–47” (American Historical Review 126, no. 2, June 2021). Katarzyna J. Cwiertka is Chair of Modern Japan Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Modern Japanese Cuisine (Reaktion Books, 2006), Cuisine, Colonialism and Cold War (Reaktion Books, 2012), and Branding Japanese Food (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020). Currently, Cwiertka is working on a book manuscript about the history of food packaging in Japan. H. D. P. Envall is a Fellow / Senior Lecturer in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University and an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe University. His research focuses on postwar Japanese foreign and security policy. He is the author of Japanese Diplomacy: The Role of Leadership (SUNY Press, 2015). Luke Franks is Associate Professor of History at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. His research explores the evolution of Japan’s modern political ideologies and approaches to local governance, including Okinawa’s historical relationship to the Japanese state and the ongoing controversy over the US military base presence there. Kimie Hara is a Professor and the Renison Research Professor in East Asian Studies, University of Waterloo. She specializes in modern and contemporary international relations of the Asia-Pacific region, Cold War history, and Japanese politics and diplomacy. She is the author of Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System (Routledge, 2007). Aya Homei is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. She specializes in the history of science and medicine in modern Japan, with a specific focus on the policies and politics of reproduction and population. Her latest monograph, Science for Governing Japan’s Population, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

viii

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Seong Un Kim is Assistant Professor of History at Duksung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. His research focuses on Japanese postwar media and queer theory. His recent articles include “Performing Democracy: Audience Participation in Postwar Broadcasting” (Journal of Japanese Studies 46, No. 1, Winter 2020). Helen Macnaughtan is Senior Lecturer in International Business & Management (Japan) at SOAS University of London. Her research interests focus on a range of topics relating to gender, employment and sport in Japan. She has been writing on women and work in Japan since her first book: Women, Work and the Economic Miracle: The Case of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1945–1975 (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005). Akiko Naono is associate professor at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University. She has written extensively on the memories of Hiroshima and political activism of the atomic bombing survivors. Her English publications include “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor” (Japanese Studies, 2019) and “Transmission of Trauma, Identification, and Haunting: A Ghost Story of Hiroshima” (Intersections, 2010). Eiji Oguma is professor at the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University. His sociohistorical works on modern Japan cover national identity, colonial policy, post-war democratic thought, the 1968 student movement, and Japan’s employment system. His major publications in English are A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images (Transpacific Press, 2002) and The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’ vols. 1 (Transpacific Press, 2014) and 2 (Transpacific Press, 2017). Philip Seaton is a Professor in the Institute of Japan Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He researches war memories in Japan and tourism induced by works of popular culture (“contents tourism”). His books include Japan’s Contested War Memories (Routledge, 2007), Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido (Routledge, 2016), and Contents Tourism in Japan (Cambria Press, 2017, with Takayoshi Yamamura, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada and Kyungjae Jang). Eiko Maruko Siniawer is Class of 1955 Memorial Professor of History at Williams College. She is the author of Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018) and “‘Toilet Paper Panic’: Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan,” in the American Historical Review. Siniawer has also published Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 (Cornell University Press, 2008). Rebecca Suter is Professor of Japanese Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Sydney and Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture in a comparative perspective. Her most recent monograph is Two-World Literature: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Early Novels (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020).

Contributors

ix

Christian G. Winkler is an Associate Professor of Political History at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka. His main research interests are postwar intellectual history, particularly conservatism, and the constitutional amendment debate. He is the author of The Quest for Japan’s New Constitution (Routledge, 2011).

Abbreviations ACJ AUKUS BHC BRI CDP CEDAW CGP CIC CIE CoJ DBJ DDT DPHD DPJ DSP EEOL EPL ESS ESS-FI EU FRBNY FY FOIP G2 GARIOA GDP GHQ IPH IPP IWSA JCP JEB JEXIM JFIC JIP JNR JSDF JSP JTU KMT Abbreviations

American Council for Japan Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (trilateral security partnership) Benzene hexachloride Belt and Road Initiative Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken Minseitō) Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Clean Government Party (Kōmeitō) Counter Intelligence Corps Civil Information and Education Division Constitution of Japan Development Bank of Japan Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane Department of Public Health Demography Democratic Party of Japan Democratic Socialist Party Equal Employment Opportunity Law Eugenic Protection Law Economic and Scientific Section (of SCAP) Finance Division in the Economic and Scientific Section (of SCAP) European Union Federal Reserve Bank of New York financial year Free and Open Indo Pacific Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence) Government Account for Relief in Occupied Areas Gross Domestic Product General Headquarters (of SCAP) Institute of Public Health Institute of Population Problems International Woman Suffrage Alliance Japanese Communist Party Export Bank of Japan Export-Import Bank of Japan Japanese Foreign Investment Council Japan Innovation Party Japan National Railways Japan Self-Defense Forces Japan Socialist Party Japan Teachers’ Union Kuomintang xi

KRTV LDP LEA M&B MAF MITI NET NGO NHK NHK BCRI NTV NTT OBOS OECD OKED PA PE PO PO & SR PP PRC PS PVC PVDC QUAD RFB ROC RYCOM SCAP SDF TBS TTC UN USCAR WAPOR WCTU WEF WWII

xii

Radio Tokyo Television Liberal Democratic Party (Law) Concerning the Organization and Management of Local Educational Administration Money and Banking Branch (of SCAP) Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Ministry of International Trade and Industry Nippon Education Television Nongovernmental organization Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute Nippon Television Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Our Bodies, Ourselves Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Okinawa Engineer District polyamide polyethylene public opinion Public Opinion and Social Research Section polypropylene People’s Republic of China polystyrene polyvinyl chloride polyvinylidene chloride The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue Reconstruction Finance Bank Republic of China Ryukyu Command Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Self-Defense Forces Tokyo Broadcasting System Television Tarento Center United Nations United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands World Association of Public Opinion Research Women’s Christian Temperance Union World Economic Forum World War II

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Preface Simon Avenell

Around eighty years have passed since Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War and the beginning of the country’s reemergence as a prominent global economy and liberal democracy. While the sense of a postwar era faded quickly for many other nations involved in World War II, for Japan the idea of the “postwar” has remained salient through to the present, albeit fading somewhat with each subsequent generation. The reasons for this persistence are complex, partly relating to wartime and colonial issues that remain unresolved but also due to the symbolism of the “postwar” as a marker for a positive turn away from a seemingly defective past. The essays in this volume attempt to rethink Japan’s postwar era from multiple perspectives. As readers will discover, the authors hardly speak with one voice about the postwar era—no doubt to be expected when tracing the multiple and complex histories of such a tumultuous period in Japan’s modern history. Nonetheless, in one way or another, all of the essays in this handbook point to the ongoing validity of understanding the period after August 15, 1945, as a coherent one, while also revealing how the era itself has incorporated identifiable sub-eras and phases. It is the authors’ hope that readers will be encouraged to think not only about the specific content of the chapters, but also the larger question of the “postwar” in Japan and why the notion has persisted for so long. I would like to sincerely thank all of the authors who contributed to this handbook. It was an honor to edit their work from which I learned so much. The willingness of such a distinguished group of scholars to join this project and the effort they put into their contributions was truly humbling. Thank you to Bennett Richardson for initially contacting me about editing a handbook in this series. I fondly recall our first meeting together with Mark Gresham in Fujisawa City on the eve of the pandemic in early 2020. My deepest gratitude to Mark Gresham who was enthusiastically supportive of this project from the outset and thereafter provided an astounding level of support as the handbook took shape. Mark’s steady hand and wise judgement made this volume better in innumerable ways. Thanks also to Shin Takahashi who served as a reviewer for the handbook. Likewise, Shin’s feedback helped to improve the final product. Finally, a few words on style. The handbook utilizes the Hepburn system of romanization for Japanese terms, including the names of organizations, publications, persons and places. Long vowels for “o” and “u” are denoted by a macron (i.e., ō and ū) except for place names and words that are commonly used in English (such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka). The Japanese convention of family name followed by given name has been adopted throughout the handbook. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in the handbook are those of the authors.

Preface

xiii

Introduction Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era Simon Avenell

The idea of postwar Japan Japan’s postwar era beginning in 1945 and (arguably) continuing to the present is now around the same duration as the prewar and wartime periods combined (1868–1945). Although politicians, bureaucrats, commentators and historians alike have ceaselessly declared the end of this era, both the postwar (sengo) and postwar Japan (sengo Nihon) have been remarkably durable concepts and, if usage is any indication, actually appear to have grown in frequency throughout this almost-eighty-year timespan. In its most straightforward connotation—although nothing is ever absolutely straightforward in historical periodization—the postwar simply refers to the era after the end of Japan’s war in the Asia-Pacific region. As the grammatical construction “the postwar” denotes, in Japanese sengo is used as both an adjective—as in “postwar Japan”—but also as a noun with its own “substance.” 1 In this sense, the postwar as both an idea and as a lived experience has for many Japanese represented the transition to a new nation—a severing of what came before. As Carol Gluck has observed, part of the attraction (or the repulsion) of the postwar idea has been the way it speaks to this sense of “utter rupture” and the “inversion of the prewar.” 2 This attribute of re-creation, rebirth and/or redemption may help to explain why the idea of the postwar has retained such currency and provoked so much animosity for such a long period of time both in popular consciousness and among historians and other observers.3 Interesting too, is the fact that the idea of postwar Japan as a comprehendible slice of history has resided quite comfortably alongside other period markers, like the imperial eras of Shōwa (1926–1989) which crossed the war divide, Heisei (1989–2019) which has come to represent a lost Japan, and Reiwa (2019–) whose beginning roughly coincided with the onset of a historic global pandemic. These eras certainly have their own historical resonances, yet they have not undermined consciousness of the postwar era as a contemporaneous historical overlay. Although immediately after defeat postwar simply meant after the war—après-guerre—it has somehow managed to become more than this, certainly because of its inextricable link with the war but, just as importantly, because of its association with a zeitgeist or mentality that has continued to make sense to many people across a great many years. For some, the

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xv

persistence of the idea is a serious problem for Japan, either in the sense of it holding back the country from becoming “normal” or because it exposes the reality that certain legacies of colonial empire and militarism have not been resolved—both of which may indeed be true. From an intellectual perspective, of course, if the postwar and postwar Japan are concepts that continue to have meaning for people, if they continue to be debated and discussed, and if they offer us avenues to understand Japan, then they represent valid points of conceptual entry into a slice of Japan’s past and present. This is the core motivation underlying the essays in this volume: while retaining a critical perspective on the very idea of the postwar, we want to use it as an entry point into the complex history of Japan over the past eighty years or so. Nonetheless, as with all other ways of carving up time—reigns, centuries, decades, etc.—as historical interlocuters of the postwar era we must remain vigilant to the potential tyranny of periodization and, moreover, be willing to use the postwar idea as a device for its own modification or even destruction. As Green has warned, “once firmly drawn and widely accepted, period frontiers can become intellectual straitjackets that profoundly affect our habits of mind, the way we retain images, make associations, and perceive the beginning, middle, and ending of things.” 4 While we might accept that the postwar and postwar Japan have experiential validity and intellectual worth, we must also realize that, as exercises in historical morphology, these concepts are replete with all the inconsistencies, contradictions, complications and silences necessarily contained in the value judgements rendering particular stretches of chronological time into coherent things.5 Most obviously, the postwar idea, while unequivocally connoting a Japan that wanted and needed to remake itself after the ruins of war, also remained problematically silent about a Japan that needed to remake itself after colonial empire. In other words, the postwar idea tended to mask Japan’s contemporaneous condition of postimperiality—a condition which remained relatively unaddressed and a constant thorn in the side of the country’s interactions with its neighbors throughout the postwar era. Very few speak about postimperial Japan and, accordingly, the postimperial never became an era marker like the postwar. Postimperial would always be a subservient adjective and never a self-assured noun.6 The postwar thus came to be associated with an arguably blinkered national experience. In the historian Narita Ryūichi’s telling, the naturalization of the “postwar” involved the formation of a “postwar identity” which “unconsciously affirmed current conditions” and eschewed any “active transformation.” 7 In turn, this consciousness of the postwar as something “self-evidently” uniform—free of “tears,” “ruptures,” “unevenness,” and “perspective”—affected the ways the postwar would be imagined and narrated.8 Indeed, so imagined and chronologized, the postwar arguably restricted and silenced other temporal and spatial imaginaries that might have drawn historical consciousness backwards or amplified its geographical horizons. Somewhat more technically, the idea of the postwar also arguably produced what I call a “historical infinity problem.” While the beginning of the postwar era can roughly—and I emphasize roughly—be dated to August 15, 1945, because it is an era defined by what came before (i.e., prewar, war and defeat), determining just when the period ended or if it will ever end is impossible.9 The unceasing declarations and prognostications of postwar endings over the years only evidence this situation, as too does the perpetual debate among political adversaries over whether it is “good or bad to be in a state of postwar.” 10 Viewed in this way, we can see how the postwar is as much a state of mind and a political position as it is a period marker, making it all the more difficult for historians to grasp in their quest for morphological certainty and their desire to discipline durée. xvi

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Yet this uncertainty and contested nature is precisely what makes postwar Japan so interesting as an object of historical study—especially this study in which we attempt to rethink the era. Indeed, as I noted above, we want to use the postwar and postwar Japan as heuristic devices in the very truest sense of the term: while these concepts clearly do not capture the reality of the past eighty or so years with absolute fidelity (period markers never can), they represent convenient tools for us to organize and reorganize, to re-temporalize and respatialize, or perhaps even to obliterate a history otherwise naturalized in time and space. In this volume we reconsider how postwar Japan has been understood and narrated to date and what new theoretical and empirical boundaries remain undeveloped or unexplored—the silenced histories so to speak. How, for example, has the postwar era been chronologized thus far and how might we rethink, subvert, or enhance such interpretations? What can we learn by adopting either a more fine-grained or expansive approach to seemingly established moments and subperiods such as the Occupation, the era of high–speed economic growth, the sixties, the bubble economy and Heisei Japan? What new issues might we introduce to subvert accepted understandings of the postwar era and its various sub-eras? Moreover, how might Japan’s internal postwar be expanded and opened up by rethinking the era through novel historical frameworks and regional imaginaries, such as East Asian history, Cold War history, environmental history and transnational and global history? As I explain in this chapter, the historiography on postwar Japan has its own history and, by better understanding the political and intellectual factors underlying this, we may be able to unlock new and provocative perspectives and interpretations. There is a tendency to think about periodizations like structured frameworks, but what becomes visible when we imagine them as elastic and amoeba-like?

The history of postwar Japanese historiography The term “postwar” was in use immediately on war’s end, initially in its simplest connotation of after the war.11 Publications on “postwar Japan” began to appear more and more frequently from around the early to mid-1960s and from the outset the phrase denoted a specific era beginning on August 15, 1945 and running through to the never-ending present. Historiography on postwar Japan arguably began with the publication of Tōyama Shigeki, Imai Seiichi, and Fujiwara Akira’s provocative History of Shōwa (Shōwa shi) in 1955, although only 33 out of 238 pages in that volume were devoted to the postwar era and it was not the primary concern of the authors. The first comprehensive history of postwar Japan I have been able to identify is A Concise History of Postwar Japan (Sengo Nihon shō shi) published in two volumes in 1958 and 1960 and edited by Yanaihara Tadao, the historian and former University of Tokyo president (1951–1957). Yanaihara’s volume began with a chapter on the significance of the Pacific War (interestingly, beginning with the Manchurian Incident of 1931), followed by a history of the Allied Occupation, and thereafter thematically organized chapters on democracy, economy, labor, politics, law and education.12 Soon thereafter the Historical Science Society of Japan (Rekishigaku Kenkyū Kai, or Rekiken) published its monumental five-volume History of Postwar Japan (Sengo Nihon shi) (1961–1962), beginning its narrative on August 15, 1945 and ending in late 1960, just after the massive anti-US-Japan Security Treaty protests and murder of Japan Socialist Party chairman, Asanuma Inejirō.

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xvii

Although the “postwar” was widely discussed in mainstream publications and scholarly journals, we do not see any major book-length works on postwar Japan thereafter until the late 1970s with Yamada Takao’s Postwar Japanese History (Sengo Nihon shi) (1979), Masamura Kimihiro’s Postwar History (Sengo shi) (1985), and three volumes on the postwar era in the ten-volume History of Shōwa (Shōwa no rekishi) (1989).13 With the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989, the ending of the Cold War, and the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble at around the same time, the 1990s and beyond witnessed a flurry of histories on both the Shōwa and postwar eras. Interestingly enough, as much as pundits were proclaiming the end of the postwar era around this time, authors continued to produce more and more publications on it, constantly drawing the postwar era into its never-ending future. In addition, these comprehensive histories now also shared a space in bookstores with an increasing number of postwar histories on specific domains of activity—postwar histories of education, gender, minorities, diplomacy, etc. The number of volumes whose titles include “postwar history” in the National Diet Library catalogue continues to increase yearly. The project of writing a historiography of the postwar and postwar Japan also struck roots abroad. Masataka Kosaka’s 1972 work, 100 Million Japanese: The Postwar Experience, appears to have been one of the earliest comprehensive English language histories of postwar Japan and, like most of its Japanese language counterparts, began with Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast of August 15, 1945, thereafter tracing developments through to the time of its publication. Writing in the foreword, historian and former US ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, praised Kosaka’s book for providing an insight into the “true reasons for Japanese success” which had “not always been perceived” and, thus, “misunderstandings of the story” may have resulted in “many false starts and disappointments elsewhere.” As Reischauer noted, “The Japanese experience may be our best chart for perceiving what lies ahead in the world, because the bulk of the world’s people are non-Western and are attempting to parallel, if not follow, the Japanese path toward industrialized affluence and modernized institutions.” 14 Somewhat at odds with Reischauer’s characterization, Kosaka’s book offered a more nuanced image of Japanese “success” and hardly advocated for its replication in other developing nations. Mirroring the growth in Japanese language postwar histories, the real burst in English language publications on postwar Japan occurred in the 1990s with pioneering works like the 1993 Postwar Japan as History, edited by the historian Andrew Gordon, and thereafter comprehensive histories like Dennis Smith’s Japan Since 1945: The Rise of an Economic Superpower (1995), David Bailey’s Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present (1996), and Gary Allinson’s Japan’s Postwar History (2004). Apart from offering comprehensive overviews of the postwar era, these publications went a long way to legitimizing the period after 1945 in Japan as one worthy of historical inquiry (as opposed to other disciplines) in English language scholarship. Leading the way here were scholars such as John Dower whose Pulitzer Prize winning Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999) set the standard for historical writing embedded in the postwar. The range of English language histories on aspects of postwar Japan proliferated in subsequent years and, of late, have even begun to cluster around certain sub-eras and thematic strands of this period. Among the more recent comprehensive publications on postwar Japan is Japan Since 1945: From Postwar to Post–Bubble (2013), edited by Christopher Gerteis and Timothy George. Replicating the somber and pessimistic mood of a Japan in the turmoil of economic decline, demographic mutation, and post-tsunami and

xviii

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

nuclear-meltdown trauma, the introductory chapter reassured readers that “of course Japan matters.” 15 Understandably, all of these works—whether in Japanese or English—imagine postwar Japan in terms of the present in which they were written and published, hence the shifting tone from the uncertainty of the early 1960s, to the confidence of the late 1970s, and the despondency of the new millennium. Changing mood nonetheless, the relative regularity with which such works have appeared and their growing frequency over time is testament to the ongoing relevance of the postwar and postwar Japan as concepts signifying some kind of discernable and shared historical experience for people—potholed and myopic that may be.

Questions of chronology: Beginnings, watersheds, endings? How then have historians narrated and chronologized the postwar: when does it begin, how and when has it changed and what about the question of endings? Surveying just those publications offering comprehensive accounts of postwar Japanese history, it becomes very apparent that there are as many answers to these questions as there are authors. Moreover, as the postwar becomes chronologically longer, earlier phenomena quite naturally dominate less of the narrative as new phenomena are incorporated. For example, in Masamura’s 1972 Postwar History eight out of fifteen chapters were devoted to the Occupation period (1945–1952), but in later works by Smith (1995), Bailey (1996), Allinson (2004), Nakamura (2005), Narita (2015) and others the Occupation is relegated to a single chapter. This is hardly surprising: as more things happen over time, historians are forced to consolidate earlier phenomena. One interesting aspect that has become more and more prominent in such works over time, however, is critical attention to what Seaton in this volume calls the “myth” of August 15th and the accompanying necessity to more consciously anchor postwar Japan in a longer “transwar” history. On the most microscopic level, historians like Narita Ryūichi remind us that the assumption the war ended and the postwar began on August 15th is factually tenuous. Even after the declaration of surrender, military exchanges with Soviet forces continued on Karafuto and Chishima and in Manchuria, and war’s end for civilians and military personnel scattered throughout the Asia-Pacific region was not simultaneous. Moreover, technically speaking, the postwar did not officially begin until the signing of the surrender instruments on September 2, 1945. Attention focuses on August 15th, but the reality is that there were many endings.16 But, more significantly, the notion of transwar encourages us to think beyond the great divide of August 15th. Drawing on a growing bank of scholarship, most comprehensive histories of postwar Japan now contain a precursor or “antecedent” chapter contextualizing the era in the longer durée.17 Gary Allinson, for example, begins his postwar history of Japan in 1932, arguing that the Keynesian policies of finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo “provoked broad social changes and structured developments in the industrial economy until the 1970s.” 18 In doing so Allinson wants to temper what he believes is an over-emphasis on the impact of the reforms of Allied Occupation, many of which had “prewar antecedents and Japanese advocates.” 19 Allinson sees transwar continuities “embedded” in individuals whose “life chances” in the postwar were shaped by earlier experience, and in institutions such as the bureaucracy and business.20 Although he retains the “postwar” nomenclature, then, Allinson is clearly pointing toward another temporal imagination. Andrew Gordon thinks similarly, persuasively arguing that “memories of ‘rebirth’ and an

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xix

America-centered narrative of revolution from above as frames for analysis limits understanding of the experience of postwar Japanese history” and that “the midcentury decades stretching across the war appear as a different, ‘transwar’ phase of history, prelude to what people usually identify as a truly ‘postwar’ condition.” 21 In other words, for Gordon, the postwar does not really begin until sometime around the mid- to late-1950s. Some, like Narita, use the analytical framework of the “total war system” (sōryokusen taisei) to suggest a continuity from wartime military rule under the imperial state to postwar military rule under the Allied Occupation. As Narita explains, the separation of ownership and management, the intensification of social mobility, the incorporation of social movements and the labor movement and governmental intervention in the economy under the Occupation were all in one way or another extensions of the total war system.22 The Occupation, Narita argues, continued to eat away at vested interests and their foundations—like large land owners—just as the now-defunct total war regime had been doing.23 If the beginning seems less certain as a result, then what of the watersheds and transitions of postwar Japan? As I have indicated, the ways of slicing up the postwar are manifold and author-dependent. Most recognize a distinct Occupation era, an age of high-speed economic growth and conservative political domination, and—in more recent accounts—a postgrowth era of stagnation and loss. The question for historians then becomes one of how these broad phases might be further subdivided or if they adequately capture experience. If politics matters most then years such as 1955 (the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party) and 1960 (the massive anti-US-Japan Security Treaty protests, the defeat of militant labor, the resignation of the Kishi Nobusuke Cabinet and the shift to unabashed economic growthism) feature prominently. But there are other just as valid ways of subdividing the postwar era in economic, cultural, social, international and other terms—some of which neatly overlap, others of which are not entirely in sync. Indeed, this is the challenge of historical morphology. As Green explains, unlike biologists who are able to classify living objects based on tangible structure and form, historians must identify the morphology of historical periods which only exist in the abstract. The practical problem for historians is that “rates of change differ widely among … politics, economics, demographics, and cultural values,” meaning that subdivision of an era by culture, for example, may not correspond neatly with political or other subdivisions.24 Table 0.1 summarizes the various sub-periodizations some historians have offered for the postwar. One way around this dilemma of a postwar delineated by chronological phases and watersheds, of course, is to consider not one but multiple postwars. As Michael Lucken puts it, the postwar “cannot be taken as a simple period of time. It is plural and complex. It is a network of historical time periods, rather than a single period, whatever may be the limits that one attributes to it. To use intellectual language, we are talking of a unit of measure that is metachronical.” 25 In this way, the postwar-as-amoeba and not the postwar as a unilinear structure reveals uneven, overlapping topographies and intersecting but not necessarily interlocking postwars. Carol Gluck, for example, has proposed five postwars: the mythistoric postwar, the postwar as inversion of the prewar, the Cold-War postwar, the progressive postwar, and the middle-class postwar, while Narita suggests postwars of social movements, conservative rule, and economics.26 This approach has its advantages and disadvantages. On the downside, it makes the task of writing comprehensive history more difficult on a technical level because each postwar will have its own unique morphology, making synthesis all the more difficult. A postwar history through the lens of social movements, for example, xx

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Table 0.1 Chronologies of Postwar Japan Gordon (1993)

1945–1955 Immediate postwar

1955–1970 High-growth

Smith (1995)

Bailey (1996)

Allinson (2004)

1868–1945 Vital legacies

1868–1945 Path to 1945

1932–1945 Antecedents

1945–1952 Occupation

1945–1952 American interregnum

1945–1955 Revival

1952–1960 Political stability and economic growth 1960–1973 High-speed growth

1970–1990 Late postwar

1973–1982 Oil shocks & miracle falters 1982– Economic superpower

1950s–1960s Creation of LDP and political conflict

1970s–1980s Economic superpower 1990s– End of LDP hegemony

1955–1974 Growth

1974–1989 Affluence

1989– Immobility

Nakamura (2005)

Narita (2015)

Oikawa (2016)

1945–1960 Establishment of the postwar

1945–1954 Defeat, occupation, recovery

1945–1947 Occupied Japan

1955–1964 1955 System and prehigh-speed growth

1947–1952 Cold War and peace settlement

1965–1974 High-speed growth

1955–1970 Era of high-speed growth

1975–1984 Stable growth and economic superpower

1971–1989 Becoming an economic superpower

1960–1973 Consolidation of the postwar

1973–1990 Instability of the postwar

1990–2000 End of the postwar

1985–1994 Bubble and end of Cold War 1995–2004 Lost Decade 2005– Age of searching

1989– Japan in the contemporary world

Sources: see list of references

might see watersheds in 1947, 1952, 1960 and 1968, while a political postwar history might emphasize 1955, 1960, 1982, 1993, 2009 and 2012. On the positive side, however, acceptance of multiple postwars can obviously expand our understanding of this period, making space for histories otherwise obscured or silenced. This possibility is particularly important in the context of addressing the methodological nationalism almost hardwired into the process of national history writing. If we accept the postwar-as-amoeba, it becomes possible to see beyond what Deokhyo Choi has called “island history,” effectively expanding not only the temporal but also transcending the spatial (i.e., sovereign national) boundaries of the postwar. Recent scholarship on Japanese postwar history has begun to address this lacuna and we advance the same intellectual mandate in this volume too.27 As Ōno and Banshō argue in an important recent volume aptly titled Reconsidering Postwar History: Comprehending “Historical Fractures” (Sengo shi saikō: “Rekishi no sakeme” o toraeru), “knowing, learning, and writing postwar history is a political act that presupposes the aggregation of the nation as given and substantiates this as a single unified entity.” As historians we need to “learn” by looking into the “fractures and discords concealed

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xxi

beneath a seamless ‘national history.’” 28 Incorporating minority, transnational, regional and global narratives of postwar Japan certainly contributes to enriching the content of the postwar itself, but importantly it also allows us to address the blind spot of postimperiality that I mentioned earlier. The concepts of the postwar and postwar Japan have assisted in rendering invisible Japan’s postimperial condition or what might be called postimperial Japan. The concepts are the linguistic manifestations of Japan’s shortcomings in addressing the “totality of colonialism in Japanese modernity [manifested in] the invasion of the colonies and the formation of empire.” 29 Only by accepting a multiplicity of postwars do such silences become audible. At the same time, like transwar narratives which would trace the beginning of the postwar to before 1945, these narratives that expand postwar Japan spatially and invoke the specter of postimperiality provide no answer as to what new conceptual terminology might better encapsulate the complex totality of this period. This brings us, then, to the issue of endings. How will we know if the postwar has ended, when it will end, or if it will ever end? Eric Seizelet neatly sums up the conundrum here, observing that “the postwar was defined at the outset by the identification of a founding moment clearly situated in time, whereas no particular event, no objective fact, exists that would allow one to proclaim and date its ending.” 30 Nonetheless, many have tried. As Andrew Gordon put it in 1993, the “temptation” to declare the end of the postwar has been intoxicatingly “hard to resist.” 31 Michael Lucken, for instance, suggests that “the postwar will remain an essential chronological framework and an essential issue” until the country experiences “an event having a scope comparable to that of the Second World War”—although he provides no advice about what that event might be.32 In his postwar history of 2005, Nakamura Masanori confidently predicted that the postwar would end with three accomplishments: the ending of subservience to America, the resolution of historical issues with Asian countries, and Japan’s permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council while maintaining its peace constitution.33 Drawing on the notion of a multiplicity of imaginable postwar eras, Oguma’s chapter in this volume suggests that the end of the era may ultimately depend on the lens through which people define it. For example, for those who see the postwar era as defined by the new constitution or the various treaties signed in the early 1950s, the postwar era will not end until the constitution is revised and the US-Japan Security Treaty abrogated. From a different perspective, if the postwar era is defined in terms of the survival of memories and traumas of the war, then it may not end until those possessing such memories die out—but even then it may not end if the memories are inherited by a new generation. As I mentioned earlier, not only historians but pundits from all spheres have repeatedly declared the postwar over—from as early as 1956 when a government economic white paper warned the Japanese that the postwar was over and now they would need to survive in a hostile global economic market, to as recently as 2020 when the scholar Kenneth Pyle declared that “Japan’s long postwar era is finally coming to an end.” 34 In 2019 the historian Hosaka Masayasu even argued that from around the middle of the Heisei Era (around 2005) the term “postwar” became more and more obsolete thanks to generational change, the fading of ideals like democracy and human respect, the failure to properly pass on the war experience, and the role of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in attacking the so-called “postwar regime” of national humiliation.35 Nonetheless, contrary to Hosaka’s observation, the postwar and postwar Japan have survived and arguably even thrived if usage is any indication. In the spirit of this volume, I will leave it up to the contributors and readers to make their own evaluations here. What I might suggest, however, is that looked at through the lens of a multiplicity of xxii

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

postwars, some of Japan’s postwars have certainly ended while others continue. Perhaps there will be some event in the future that ties all of these postwars together and offers us a widely accepted ending, but until then, our best approach may be to accept the postwar-as-amoeba and all of the multifarious postwars or other historical imaginaries that this makes possible. The challenge will be, on the one hand, satisfying the desire for precision and avoidance of arbitrariness, while, on the other, allowing different periodizations to “reflect their own sense of the ‘style’” of that particular postwar.36

Organization of the volume The chapters in this volume are organized under six broad themes. Part 1, the Origins of the Postwar, contains two chapters providing new perspectives on the early postwar years. Choi’s chapter challenges what he calls the “historiographical amnesia of empire” by examining two related phenomena: the “liberations” of Korea and Koreans in Japan, and Japanese colonial settlers’ repatriation from Korea. By doing so he hopes to “expand the scope of postwar history” by “decentering” the “dominant framework of US-Japan(ese) relations.” Bytheway’s chapter analyzes the understudied history of money, banking and fiscal reforms during the Allied Occupation. Contrary to the vision of a well-planned Occupation, what we see in these domains are a series of “perfunctory, performatory, and uninspired” reforms undertaken by occupiers who overlooked or under-regulated key areas of finance once thought essential to the Occupation’s mission. As a result Japanese finance emerged from a war, one it was alleged to have started and funded, without having to meaningfully engage in external audits, rigorous self-scrutiny, or almost any reforms that threatened deep and irreversible change. Fiscal reforms ended with the Dodge Line, austerity policies, and a campaign of mass retrenchments across the public service which, in turn, caused widespread anger and resentment against the Occupation. Part 2, the Political Postwar, contains four chapters on the actors and institutions that have shaped politics during this era. Bronson’s chapter traces the history of how public opinion polls have been critically debated, interpreted and applied to different projects in postwar Japan. We see how polls were used in political arguments that shaped culture over time and, moreover, how arguments over the interpretation and conduct of opinion polls generated new questions among a broad range of political actors and experts on all sides of politics. Babb’s chapter offers a thought-provoking reconsideration of postwar political history by positing a critical pivot from the Left to the Right, particularly the rise of the Left up to the 1970s and the rise of the Right thereafter. As Babb reminds us, the meaning of left and right in Japan, and even what it means to be Japanese, experienced a much more radical transformation over postwar era than most historians and certainly most Japanese might believe. Naono’s chapter turns to the history of pacifism in the postwar era through an examination of the Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Hidankyō), one of the most prominent pacifist organizations during this era. By closely looking at Hidankyō’s political action and discursive strategies the chapter shows how pacifism in postwar Japan has been shaped through its changing relations with nationalism and the state, which are often articulated via war memories. Related, Winkler’s chapter tackles the ongoing battles over Japan’s postwar constitution. As he notes, the debate over the desirability and necessity of amending or revising the 1947 constitution reflects the nature of postwar conservatism,

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xxiii

which has always had two distinctive sides: one that pragmatically accepted or embraced the postwar status quo centered on the constitution, and another that has rejected or attacked this status quo as an imposition on Japan by the US. The chapters in Part 3, Postwar Culture and Society, delve into continuity and change in the institutions and practices of postwar culture and society. Chapman and Macnaughtan examine the gendering of postwar Japanese society through the lens of work as a broad experience of both paid and unpaid labor. Why, they ask, has it been so difficult to move away from economic and social gender norms for both men and women in Japan, thereby limiting progress in gender equality by international standards? Siniawer looks at popular anxieties, insecurities, and uncertainties to position the early 1970s—the “era of anxiety”—as a significant inflection point in the postwar era (similar to Babb’s chapter on the Left and Right). How, Siniawer asks, might we begin to position the end of high-speed economic growth, the destabilization of middle-class life, and insecurities about the future into the longer arc of the postwar era? What was transient, what endured, and what fundamentally pivoted or shifted at this time? Focusing on post-compulsory education, Cave’s chapter similarly suggests a 1970s inflection, as increasing numbers of youth began to study beyond compulsory education (lower secondary). Cave’s chapter examines the postwar history of Japanese education through the lens of the sharp differences between compulsory and post-compulsory education. While compulsory education has witnessed sustained efforts to equalize the provision of resources, instruction and treatment of pupils, post-compulsory education has adopted a model in which institutions are hierarchized and students compete to enter, in the process being differentiated by credentials. Attempts to eliminate or reduce hierarchization of high schools met with limited success. Surveying this history Cave asks if the post-compulsory education system has done enough to enable children to attain their potential regardless of their socioeconomic situation. Cwiertka turns attention to another transformation of the high–growth era, namely, the encroachment of plastics. As she shows, the Japanese embraced the “plastic dream” into their akarui seiktasu or bright new lives through voracious consumption of electrical appliances and various forms of packaging and wrapping. Despite its centrality in stimulating domestic demand—which was, in turn, indispensable for high-speed economic growth—plastic has been largely missing from existing accounts of the postwar era. Cwiertka shows, however, just how deeply plastic has been embedded in the story of postwar Japan—from the environmental and human tragedy at Minamata, to the transformation and growth of Japan’s petrochemical industries, and ultimately the evolution of a culture of consumption based on an uncompromising demand for convenience and a disregard for environmental consequences. Borland’s chapter has a similar environmental perspective but shifts emphasis to the intersection of children and birds. As Borland shows, throughout the postwar era, children played an important role in protecting birds and their habitats as well as raising social awareness of the need for nature conservation. While scholarship on environmental activism in Japan to date has focused mainly on contention, protest and resistance, Borland’s chapter reveals how children pursued their environmental agenda as “charismatic conservationists” utilizing cooperation and consistent effort. Finally, in his chapter on television celebrities, Kim traces the links between the rise of so-called television tarento as accessible, multi-talented entertainers appealing to a broad public and contemporary discussions about media and democracy. Focusing on the 1950s and 1960s, Kim ponders the possibilities tarento culture demonstrated in the society that emerged from the war and the Allied Occupation. As both cultural icons and core elements of a rising TV culture, xxiv

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

“tarento were expected to contribute to the mediation between television and its viewers, and by extension, the mediation between mass media and people, ultimately leading to the creation of postwar democratic culture in Japanese society.” Part 4, the Transnational Postwar, contains two chapters exploring border-crossing phenomena throughout this era through the lenses of feminism and reproduction and population. Bullock’s chapter explores the development of postwar Japanese feminism through a transnational frame. The chapter identifies three forms of transnational activity that have been especially important to the development of Japanese feminist discourse: the physical movement of female intellectuals and feminist activists as they ventured outside the country (or non-Japanese ventured in), the role of translation of foreign texts and concepts as a process of knowledge transfer and negotiation and the participation of Japanese women in international organizations and frameworks, such as United Nations (UN)-sponsored conventions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As Bullock observes, “while feminists in Japan have learned much from like-minded activists and theorists abroad, the rest of the world might do well to take its own lessons from the experiences of Japanese women too.” Homei’s chapter traces the development of reproductive and population policies after the war, showing how apparently domestic phenomena were in fact shaped by political and historical factors in Japan’s region and globally. Looking at two interlinked episodes shaping reproductive and population politics in Japan between 1945 and the 1960s, the chapter reveals “both the precarity of Japan as a political unit and the intersections of domestic and transnational negotiations that profoundly shaped postwar Japan’s experiences with reproduction and population.” Linked to the theme of transnationalism, Part 5 is titled Japan’s Postwar Era in Asia and the World. Envall’s chapter reconsiders Japan’s American alliance which has so deeply shaped the contours of this era. Tracing the evolution of Japan’s approach to the alliance during the postwar, Envall argues that Japan has repeatedly prioritized deterrence over the desire for autonomy. Such an interpretation, he argues, does not fit easily with many past understandings of Japanese policymaking as being incoherent or absent. On the contrary, Japan’s alliance history has arguably been consistently pragmatic “in its strategic thinking, attuned to fluctuations in power, and capable of fine calculations of its strategic interest.” Despite hints that Japan might be moving toward a new balance between autonomy and national strength or deterrence in the early 2000s, with the rise of China and a less secure environment, Envall suggests that of late the appeal of increased autonomy has “shrunk significantly.” Franks’ chapter further explores the US-Japan alliance from the perspective Okinawa which is home to over 70 percent of American military bases on Japanese soil. As Franks shows, while the fate of Okinawa has often been determined by decision makers in Tokyo or a world away in Washington, the Okinawans have played an “outsized role” in defining the parameters of identity and the place of minorities in Japan’s postwar era. Hara’s chapter shifts focus from the USA to Japan’s regional neighbors and the country’s struggle to develop an identity in East Asia in the face of unresolved territorial disputes and historical issues. Reflecting on Japan’s historical tendency to “leave Asia and join the West” and its ambivalent engagement with regional imaginaries like Pan-Asianism, Hara argues that, even with growing economic interdependence and security dialogues, the persistence of these unresolved disputes remains as a constant source of instability, potentially reigniting into conflict at any time. Finally, Suter’s chapter examines Japan in the world through the lens of the production, circulation and consumption of manga in the postwar to reflect on the intersection between notions of Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xxv

national identity and internationalization (kokusaika). Suter argues that transnationalism has been part of the medium throughout the postwar era, challenging the view that manga is a uniquely Japanese cultural product. The evolution of postwar manga’s themes and styles as well as its institutions have been characterized by a constant oscillation between inward and outward drives, and between shunning manga in the domestic arena and promoting it as a valuable cultural export on the international level. The chapters by Seaton and Oguma in Part 6, Defining, Delineating, Historicizing and Chronologizing the Postwar Era, return to broader questions about the era. Seaton’s chapter challenges the idea of a temporally and spatially contained postwar by questioning the August 15th “myth,” the assumed absence of war in the postwar, the failure of deimperialization in the wake of colonial empire, and the many disjunctures that belie the existence of a unitary era from 1945 to the present. Despite ceaseless contestation over the past throughout the postwar era, Seaton argues that the term postwar embeds a conservative continuity at the heart of public national discourse relating to the war. Finally, Oguma’s chapter investigates popular perceptions of the postwar in the thirty or so years since the end of the Cold War—a period roughly coinciding with the imperial era of Heisei (1989–2019). Using debates among political and cultural elites and public opinion polls conducted during the Heisei era, Oguma teases out what the “postwar” has meant for the Japanese, the senses in which it has (or has not) ended and the ways in which it continues in the present. For Oguma, the longpostwar in Japan shares similarities with memory of the slave trade in the United States: “it has nothing to do with whether the generation that experienced it is still alive, or whether this generation has correct knowledge such as years or dates.” Just as memories of the slave trade might not disappear from the United States “until racial discrimination disappears,” in Japan, “the postwar era might not end until US military bases disappear” or the unresolved history of transgression against Japan’s neighbors is settled once and for all.

Notes 1

Carol Gluck, “The ‘End’ of the Postwar: Japan at the Turn of the Millennium,” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 3. 2 Gluck, “End of the Postwar,” 4. 3 See Oguma in this volume for another explanation for the durability of the idea of the postwar. 4 William A. Green, “Periodization in European and World History,” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (1992): 13. 5 Green, “Periodization,” 14. 6 On the question of so-called deimperialization see Seaton in this volume. See also Simon Avenell, Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022). 7 Narita Ryūichi, “Sengo” wa ikani katarareru ka (Tokyo: Kawade Bukkusu, 2016), 9–10. 8 Narita, “Sengo” wa ikani katarareruka, 10. 9 Oguma suggests some possible endings in his chapter in this volume. 10 Michael Lucken, “Introduction,” in Japan’s Postwar, ed. Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard–Sakai and Emmanuel Lozerand; and trans. J. A. A. Stockwin (Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011), 2.

xxvi

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

11

shūsengo (after the war) and haisengo (after defeat) were also used at the time. Yanaihara Tadao, ed., Sengo Nihon shōshi, 2 vols (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1958, 1960). 13 In the Shōwa no Rekishi series see the volumes by Kanda Fuhito, Shōwa no rekishi 8: Senryō to minshushugi (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989); Shibagaki Kazuo, Shōwa no rekishi: Kōwa kara kōdo seichō e (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989); and Miyamoto Ken’ichi, Shōwa no rekishi 10: Keizai taikoku (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989). 14 Edwin O. Reischauer, “Foreword” in 100 Million Japanese: The Postwar Experience, by Masataka Kosaka (Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1972). 7–8. 15 Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George, “Revisiting the History of Postwar Japan,” in Japan since 1945: From Postwar to Post-Bubble, eds. Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 1. 16 Narita Ryūichi, Kingendai Nihon shi to no taiwa: Senchū—sengo—genzaihen (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2019), 134. 17 See, for example, Andrew Gordon, “Society and Politics from Transwar through Postwar Japan” in Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia ed. Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); John Dower, “The Useful War,” in John Dower, Japan in War and Peace (New York: New Press, 1993); Yasushi Yamanouchi, “Total War and System Integration,” in Total War and Modernization, ed. Yasushi Yamanouchi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryuichi Narita (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1998); Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987); and Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). 18 Gary D. Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 200), 46. 19 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, 7. 20 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, 5–6. 21 Gordon, “Society and Politics,” 273. 22 Narita, Kingendai Nihon shi, 153. 23 Narita, Kingendai Nihon shi, 153. 24 William A. Green, “Periodization in European and World History,” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (1992): 14–15. 25 Lucken, “Introduction,” 2. 26 Gluck, “End of the Postwar,” 4–7; Narita, Sengo wa ikani katarareruka, 45. 27 See for example: Simon Avenell, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017); Pedro Iacobelli, Danton Leary, and Shinnosuke Takahashi, eds., Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration, and Social Movements (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007). 28 Ōno Mitsuaki and Banshō Ken’ichi, “Hajime ni,” in Sengo shi saikō: “Rekishi no sakeme” o toraeru, ed. Nishikawa Nagao, Ōno Mitsuaki, and Banshō Ken’ichi (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2014), 11–12. 29 Nakano Toshio, Takahashi Tetsuya, Nakanishi Shintarō, and So Kyong-sik, “Tettei tōron ‘sengo saikō’: ‘Sengo’ to wa nan dattanoka,” Zen’ya 3 (Spring 2005): 57. 30 Eric Seizelet, “The Postwar as Political Paradigm,” in Japan’s Postwar, ed. Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard– Sakai and Emmanuel Lozerand; and trans. J. A. A. Stockwin (Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011), 14.. 31 Gordon, “Conclusion,” 463. 32 Lucken, “Introduction,” 4. 33 Nakamura Masanori, Sengo shi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005), 286–88. 34 Kenneth, B. Pyle, “The Making of Postwar Japan: A Speculative Essay,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 1 (2020): 143. The Economic Planning Agency announced the postwar had ended in its 1956 economic whitepaper. See Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 31 nen: Nenji keizai hōkoku, online: https://www5.cao. go.jp/keizai3/keizaiwp/wp–je56/wp–je56–0000i1.html. See the section “Ketsugo.” Oguma Eiji posits three postwars: 1945–1955, 1955–1990, and 1990 and beyond. See Oguma Eiji, “Minshu” to “aikoku”: Sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2002), 12, 811. See also Oguma in this volume. Handō Kazutoshi views the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972 as the end of the postwar. See Handō Kazutoshi, Shōwa shi sengohen 1945–1989 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2009), 531. Andrew Gordon has proposed the end of the 1980s as the end of the postwar. See Gordon, “Conclusion,” 463. Carol Gluck also discusses various postwar 12

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xxvii

era endings in her essay in the same volume. See Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” in Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), especially 92–95. 35 Hosaka Masayasu, Heisei shi (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2019), 147–49. 36 Peter Toohey, “The Cultural Logic of Historical Periodization,” in Handbook of Historical Sociology, edited by Gerard Delanty and Engin F. Isin (London: Sage, 2003), 210.

References Avenell, Simon. Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022. ———. Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. Allinson, Gary, D. Japan’s Postwar History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Bailey, Paul, J. Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Choi, Deokhyo. “Guest Editor’s Introduction: Writing the ‘Empire’ Back into the History of Postwar Japan.” International Journal of Korean History 22, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. ———. “The Useful War.” In John Dower, Japan in War and Peace, 9–32. New York: New Press, 1993. Garon, Sheldon. The State and Labor in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. Gerteis, Christopher, and Timothy S. George. “Revisiting the History of Postwar Japan.” In Japan since 1945: From Postwar to Post-Bubble, edited by Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George, 1–5. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. Gluck, Carol. “The ‘End’ of the Postwar: Japan at the Turn of the Millennium.” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 1–23. ———. “The Past in the Present.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 64–95. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Gordon, Andrew. “Conclusion.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 449–64. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. ———. “Society and Politics from Transwar through Postwar Japan.” In Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, edited by Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon, 277–96. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Green, William, A. “Periodization in European and World History.” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (1992): 13–53. Handō, Kazutoshi. Shōwa shi sengohen 1945–1989. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2009. Hosaka, Masayasu. Heisei shi. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2019. Iacobelli, Pedro, Danton Leary, and Shinnosuke Takahashi, eds. Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration, and Social Movements. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. Kanda, Fuhito. Shōwa no rekishi 8: Senryō to minshushugi. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989. Keizai Kikakuchō. Shōwa 31 nen: Nenji keizai hōkoku. Available online at https://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai3 /keizaiwp/wp–je56/wp–je56–0000i1.html. Lucken, Michael. “Introduction.” In Japan’s Postwar, edited by Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard–Sakai and Emmanuel Lozerand, and translated by J. A. A. Stockwin, 1–7. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011. Masamura, Kimihiro. Sengo shi. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1985. Miyamoto, Ken’ichi. Shōwa no rekishi 10: Keizai taikoku. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Nakamura, Masanori. Sengo shi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005. Nakano, Toshio, Takahashi Tetsuya, Nakanishi Shintarō, and So Kyong-sik. “Tettei tōron ‘sengo saikō’: ‘Sengo’ to wa nan dattanoka.” Zen’ya 3 (Spring 2005): 18–60. Narita, Ryūichi. Kingendai Nihon shi to no taiwa: Senchū—sengo—genzaihen. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2019. ———. “Sengo” wa ikani katarareru ka. Tokyo: Kawade Bukkusu, 2016.

xxviii

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Oguma, Eiji. “Minshu” to “aikoku”: Sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei. Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2002. Oikawa, Yoshinobu. Mōichido yomu Yamakawa Nihon sengo shi. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2016. Ōno, Mitsuaki and Banshō Ken’ichi. “Hajime ni.” In Sengo shi saikō: “Rekishi no sakeme” o toraeru, edited by Nishikawa Nagao, Ōno Mitsuaki, and Banshō Ken’ichi, 9–24. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2014. Pyle, Kenneth, B. “The Making of Postwar Japan: A Speculative Essay.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 1 (2020): 113–143. Reischauer, Edwin, O. “Foreword.” In 100 Million Japanese: The Postwar Experience, by Masataka Kosaka, 7–10. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1972. Rekishigaku Kenkyū Kai, ed. Sengo Nihon shi, 5 vols. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1961–1962. Seizelet, Eric. “The Postwar as Political Paradigm.” In Japan’s Postwar, edited by Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard–Sakai and Emmanuel Lozerand, and translated by J. A. A. Stockwin, 11–33. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011. Shibagaki, Kazuo. Shōwa no rekishi: Kōwa kara kōdo seichō e. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1989. Smith, Dennis B. Japan Since 1945: The Rise of an Economic Superpower. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Toohey, Peter. “The Cultural Logic of Historical Periodization.” In Handbook of Historical Sociology, edited by Gerard Delanty and Engin F. Isin, 209–19. London: Sage, 2003. Yamada, Takao. Sengo Nihon Shi. Tokyo: Gakushū no Yūsha, 1979. Yamanouchi, Yasushi. “Total War and System Integration.” In Total War and Modernization, edited by Yasushi Yamanouchi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryuichi Narita, 1–39. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1998. Yanaihara, Tadao, ed. Sengo Nihon shōshi, 2 vols. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1958, 1960.

Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era

xxix

Part 1 The Origins of the Postwar

Chapter 1 Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan Deokhyo Choi What did decolonization and the Cold War look like in US(Allied)-occupied Japan? Previously, historians have understood that decolonization had no significant impact on Japan because the Japanese empire lost its colonies instantly as a result of defeat in World War II. Historians have also explained the beginning of the Cold War and its impact on Japan in terms of the reverse course, a critical shift in US foreign policy toward occupied Japan during 1947 and 1948. This chapter challenges these conventional understandings and provides new insights into the history of early postwar Japan.

Introduction Historical accounts on the formation of postwar Japan have often assumed a common temporal divide between wartime and postwar and have taken the form of an “island history.” In the conventional narrative, Emperor Hirohito’s speech announcing Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, marks the “postwar” as a “new beginning.” 1 The postwar is portrayed as both disconnected and inverted from the bleak wartime past, and this idea of discontinuity has dominated the narrative framework for decades. While some early works published by USbased Japan historians in the 1980s looked at the long historical trajectory of 20th-century Japan,2 a critical challenge to the temporal divide and the idea of discontinuity was posed in the 1990s by a group of international scholars who studied the “total war system.” 3 Their edited volume, Total War and “Modernization,” has illuminated the radical social transformations created by the war and the lasting, formative impact these transformations had on postwar society. Similarly, historians Andrew Gordon and Nakamura Masanori use a “transwar” analysis to understand the recurring dynamic of social change straddling the wartime and postwar periods.4 Some Japanese scholars have also shed new light on the wartime origins of postwar democratic reforms under US Occupation.5 The new scholarship understands postwar Japan as the product of a long process continuous with past transformations, rather than as a completely “reborn” entity. Despite recent methodological innovations about the temporal framework, much work on the formation of postwar Japan still operates within the same spatial framework of “island history” centered on a national unit of analysis, mostly on mainland Japan. More importantly,

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

3

it is primarily a story about the US Occupation of Japan and postwar encounters between the victors and the vanquished.6 Early English-language work on occupied Japan focused on how the United States radically and successfully transformed the Japanese militarist state and society through its initial “demilitarization and democratization” policy. New scholarship rejects this view as a US-centered, self-congratulatory understanding that neglects the agency of the occupied population. It has instead illuminated how Japanese elites and citizens played active roles in Japan’s postwar transformation, and also how Japan’s initial democratization was in fact betrayed or eviscerated by the joint efforts of the Occupation and Japanese elites.7 The masterwork of these new narratives is historian John W. Dower’s multi-prizewinning volume Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, which gives primacy to the role of the Japanese and the mutually constitutive relationship between the occupiers and the occupied.8 Inspired by Dower’s methodological innovation, much recent work has further enriched the field by expanding the scope of analysis to include underexplored dimensions of the occupation of Japan, such as the realm of direct personal encounters between American (white/Black/Nisei) soldiers and Japanese citizens, the politics of race and gender, and transpacific cultural interactions between occupied Japan and the United States.9 The critical problem of this growing diversification in the field is that scholarship still operates within the same paradigm of “postwar” US-Japan(ese) relations and thus reproduces the historiographical “amnesia of empire.” Where did the “empire” go in the history of postwar Japan? How can we understand the critical intersection of the “postwar” and the “postimperial” in Japanese history? The problem of the historiographical amnesia of empire is closely linked to the way that the Japanese empire ended, which can be characterized as a “third party decolonization” managed by the Allied Powers after World War II.10 Decolonization has been understood as a “nonevent” in Japanese history because the Japanese empire lost its colonies instantly as a result of defeat in World War II. Thus, scholars argue that unlike France, which eventually had to relinquish French Algeria after a drawn-out and bloody colonial war, decolonization had no significant impact on Japan and the imperial past fell into immediate oblivion.11 Yet, as historian Sebastian Conrad argues, such “narratives of instant decolonization” overlook the critical aftereffects of imperial demise that could still be felt in early postwar Japan, whether through the presence of large numbers of colonial subjects or the return of over 6.6 million overseas Japanese from former colonies and occupied territories.12 Indeed, the presence of both Japanese repatriates and Korean and Taiwanese former imperial subjects was decolonization’s tangible aftereffect in Japanese society. In this chapter, I will challenge the historiographical amnesia of empire by illuminating two mutually related phenomena of decolonization, namely, the “liberations” of Korea and Koreans in Japan and the repatriation of Japanese colonial settlers from Korea. The stories of these phenomena can open up a new opportunity to expand the scope of postwar history and decenter its dominant framework of US-Japan(ese) relations. Moreover, this chapter also reexamines the conventional explanatory framework for understanding the impact of the Cold War on Japan. Historical accounts of the Cold War in occupied Japan have been centered on the idea of the reverse course, a critical shift in US Occupation policy during 1947 and 1948. This chapter presents a different approach and discusses what the beginning of the Cold War in occupied Japan looks like when we move away from privileging US-Japan(ese) relations.

4

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Imperial legacies Memories of imperial demise At the end of World War II, Japan had a population of over two million Korean colonial migrants, and Korea had over seven hundred thousand Japanese settlers. The US forces placed Japan and Korea under military occupation, and the repatriation of Japanese settlers in Korea and Korean colonial migrants in Japan was administered by the two US Occupation authorities. Japanese settlers carried back to Japan their immediate memories of colonial liberation, and the stories of their traumatic repatriation brought imperial demise into the social imagination of early postwar Japan. In the Japanese media, numerous personal narratives of Japanese repatriates from Korea (and Manchuria) appeared in various forms, such as oral testimonies, written memoirs, travelogues, and Japanese-style short poems (tanka). My research on the catalogues of the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland has resulted in a new discovery about repatriate writings. The Prange Collection is the “most comprehensive archive in the world of Japanese print publications issued during the early years of the occupation of Japan, 1945–1949” and includes over 102,000 books, pamphlets, and magazine and newspaper titles.13 These publications were initially submitted to the US Occupation authorities for censorship, and Gordon W. Prange, who worked for General Douglas MacArthur, brought them back to the University of Maryland where he taught after his return from Japan. Currently, all the newspapers and magazines from the Prange Collection are available on microfilm, and the online catalogues and search engines allow researchers to search and locate newspaper and magazine articles. By using the search engines, I was able to identify 1,794 magazine articles whose titles include the keyword “repatriation” (hikiage), and 1,271 with the keyword “Korea” (Chōsen). Among these, some titles are easily identifiable as autobiographical essays and memoirs written by Japanese repatriates. For example, such titles include: “I miss Korea” (published in April 1946); “My life in Korea for thirty years” (June 1948); and “On my exodus from Korea” (March 1948).14 My new findings are crucial because these are first-hand accounts and contemporaneous memories of empire that Japanese settlers experienced and recorded immediately after their return to Japan between late 1945 and 1949. Moreover, these writings have been little known to scholars. Previously, scholars have assumed that it was the 1960s and 1970s when the major writings of Japanese repatriates, including so-called “hikiage mono” (repatriate memoirs) and “hikiage bungaku” (repatriate literature), emerged and created a new literary genre in postwar Japan. Japanese anthropologist Mariko Tamanoi, who has studied the historical memory of Manchuria in postwar Japan, argues that “although the first memoir written by a returnee from Manchuria appeared as early as 1949 … the upsurge in this genre came decades later, from the 1960s to the 1990s, with several published in the early years of the 21st century.” 15 The first repatriate’s memoir that Tamanoi refers to is the well-known autobiographical novel written by Fujiwara Tei in 1949, titled “The Shooting Stars Are Alive” (Nagareru hoshi wa ikiteiru). This autobiographical novel tells the story of the author’s tragic experience of repatriation from Manchuria to Japan through the Korean peninsula after the war. When it was published in 1949, it immediately captured the Japanese national imagination and became a bestseller in Japan—it also became a movie immediately after publication. Japanese

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

5

historian Narita Ryuichi characterizes this novel as the most significant repatriate writing that shaped the template for the collective memory of repatriation and the image of Japanese suffering and victimization in postcolonial Korea and Manchuria.16 My findings show that numerous repatriate memoirs and autobiographical essays had already appeared in the Japanese print media even before Fujiwara’s novel became a bestseller. Like Fujiwara’s novel, the narrative of suffering and victimization was a key and common feature in many repatriate writings. Many repatriates recollected the days of colonial liberation with deep bitterness and as a time of sheer suffering. For instance, Nakajima Eimatsu, the former chief of a Buddhist missionary association in Korea, wrote an essay titled “On the Repatriation of Buddhist Missionaries in Korea” after his return to Japan in November 1945 and described his experience of colonial liberation as follows: The Emperor’s radio speech about the end of the war shocked the Japanese in Korea beyond description. It felt like all of a sudden a ray of hope for the future had vanished and we were all thrown into an abyss. On the contrary, Koreans were exhilarated and acted as if they had won the war. Moreover, acting as if they were being liberated from slave-like oppression [doreiteki appaku], they conducted all kinds of atrocities [bōgyaku mujin no kagiri] toward the Japanese. We ended up feeling, deep in our bones, the bitter experiences of defeat.17 The liberation of Korea was depicted as colonial “atrocities” in Nakajima’s recollection. In this way, repatriate writings often presented the memory of empire in a sanitized form by erasing the traces of Japanese colonialism. It is important to note that these numerous repatriate writings that had been circulating in the Japanese print media partly prepared the ground for the nationwide acceptance of Fujiwara’s novel. In a sense, the Japanese audience was ready to accept this sanitized memory of empire in the same way that they were ready to embrace what historian James Orr has called a “victim mythology,” that is, the idea of ordinary Japanese people having been misled by militarist leaders and victimized by war catastrophes.18 “Colonial riots” in the social imagination Colonial liberation was also remembered by other repatriates as a “betrayal” of the imperial ideal of naisen ittai (“Japan and Korea as one body”). In his memoir written in late 1947, Okanobu Kyōsuke, a former Japanese colonial government official in Korea, claimed that the Japanese rule of Korea had been “for the peace and happiness of thirty million Korean people.” 19 Thus, he “could not understand at all why Koreans went into a frenzy [bakasawagi]” over Japan’s surrender. He was simply shocked to see Koreans celebrating it as their “victory in the war” and beginning to proclaim themselves as “victorious nationals.” But what enraged him even more than this experience in Korea was his encounter with the “insolence” (nosabari kata) of Koreans in Japan. Okanobu wrote how he felt after his return to Japan: [Upon returning to Japan] I was only hoping to indulge myself peacefully with the heartwarming love of my parents in my beloved homeland. I was only looking forward to relief from the appalling persecution by Koreans. But, once I

6

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

returned, what the hell? The way you [Korean] fellows are behaving is so outrageous that it looks as if Koreans are the main actors in our homeland Japan. The word disgusted [shakuni sawaru] is too light to express how I feel.20 Okanobu’s account shows how his immediate memory of suffering during the colonial liberation was projected onto the presence of Koreans in Japan. Okanobu, who had been kicked out of Korea with his colonial dream betrayed, became extremely “disgusted” with everyday encounters in which the Koreans behaved, in his words, like the “main actors in our homeland Japan.” In his imagination, the two separate realities in Korea and Japan obviously overlapped. What he had witnessed during the days of colonial liberation merged with his encounters with Koreans performing their liberation on Japanese soil. Importantly, this intersection of the two separate realities—colonial liberation and the liberation of Koreans in Japan—was a tangible aftereffect of decolonization in early postwar Japan. Decolonization was directly felt in Japanese society through its encounters with Japanese repatriates from Korea and with Koreans in Japan. An intelligence report drafted by the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs in September 1945, titled “The State of the Aftermath of the War: Reference Materials,” shows these tangible aftereffects of decolonization very precisely. It stated: News about the worsening of the security situation in Korea, particularly the news of Koreans’ unjust persecution of the Japanese, is being spread by Japanese repatriates [hikiage naichijin]. Also, all kinds of incendiary words and behaviors [furyō gendō] that Koreans [in Japan] express regarding Korean independence are provoking the Japanese. A strict watch for possible confrontations and fighting between Japanese and Koreans is required.21 In this report, one can see how two separate realities were converging in the social imagination of early postwar Japan. First, it shows how the reality of colonial liberation entered into the Japanese imagination through the return of Japanese settlers from Korea; colonial liberation was imagined as “Koreans’ unjust persecution of the Japanese.” In fact, the local police in Tottori Prefecture also reported a circulating rumor: “Riots have broken out in Korea and the Japanese are being persecuted.” 22 Second, this intelligence report shows a glimpse of how Japanese society responded to the “liberation” of Koreans in Japan. Although their practice of liberation is portrayed as “all kinds of incendiary words and behaviors,” the report accurately acknowledges what was “provoking” Japanese sentiments: the new reality in which established power relations were falling apart after the war and former colonial subjects had begun to perform a new selfhood with a posture of open defiance. Indeed, Japan’s defeat and colonial liberation in Korea invigorated Korean communities in Japan. Pak Hŏnhaeng, who lived in a Korean neighborhood in Hyōgo Prefecture at the time of Japan’s surrender, remembers what the historic day looked like to Korean residents: On the evening [of August 15th], Korean residents who had learned about Japan’s defeat began to crowd into the streets of Imakita, which turned into a large meeting ground. Soon, the streets were filled with ceaseless cheers of “manse!” “Chōsen banzai!” and “dokuritsu [independence] banzai!” People were excited and intoxicated. Full of joy and enthusiasm, the streets of Imakita became like Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

7

a festival. People brought doburoku [Korean rice wine] from their homes and played Korean drums and small gongs. The frenzy of jubilation continued until midnight.23 Some Koreans in Japan, particularly groups of conscripted coalminers who had lived a life of forced labor during the war, demonstrated their liberation more aggressively. In Akita Prefecture, for instance, the local police reported that on the evening of August 15th, eleven Korean miners who were intoxicated on celebratory drinks crowded into their Japanese supervisors’ office. They smashed office equipment and cursed the supervisors, saying: “Japan was defeated. This time around we will exploit you [kondo wa omaetachi o tsukatte yaru].” 24 A similar incident was also reported in Hokkaido on the same day. According to the Hokkaido Police, some six hundred Korean miners from the Utashinai coal mines organized themselves and besieged the company office, accusing the company of having exploited and abused them as forced labor.25 Apparently, the fear of violent reprisals sparked the spread of groundless rumors across Japan. On August 28, the local police in Toyama Prefecture reported that “seditious groundless rumors” were spreading among residents. The rumors had it that: “Koreans are starting to riot all over Japan”; “Koreans are assaulting and raping Japanese women all over Japan.” 26 In short, Japan’s imperial demise was deeply inscribed in the social imagination of early postwar Japan. On the one hand, the frontier of colonial liberation was brought into the Japanese imagination through the return of Japanese settlers from Korea, and colonial liberation in Korea was often imagined as “colonial riots.” Simultaneously, the liberation of Korean conscripted workers in Japan was imagined in a similar way, which sparked the spread of rumors of “Korean riots.” This convergence of the two rumored realities shaped new conditions in which it was possible that inter-ethnic relations could deteriorate into “confrontations and fighting,” as the above-mentioned Japanese intelligence report had warned. Indeed, postcolonial encounters between Japanese and Korean residents in early postwar Japan became infused with tensions and animosities.27 Colonial memory and countermemory As a growing body of Japanese-language scholarship on postwar Japanese literature has discussed, literary narratives of the Japanese experience in Korea and Manchuria at the end of the war are centered on the memory of suffering and the idea of victimhood.28 The central themes of the early repatriate writings I have found in the Prange Collection are also centered on the idea of nostalgia, suffering and victimization. The colonial experience is remembered and presented in a sanitized form, and such narratives can be easily subsumed under a “victim mythology,” erasing the imperial past from Japanese collective memory. Yet, the colonial experience could have been remembered and presented in a different way that could have unsettled the collective amnesia of empire and the victim consciousness. An autobiographical essay written by Hayami Shigeo, an ordinary Japanese worker and repatriate from Korea, demonstrates such a possibility.29 Unlike the majority of other repatriate writings, Hayami’s essay presents a glimpse of what colonialism actually looked like in everyday life by telling the story of his personal experiences in colonial Korea. Moreover, in

8

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

his writing, Koreans appear as individuals with their own names and personalities, rather than dissolving into a nostalgic landscape or merging into the spectacle of vengeful crowds. According to his essay titled “My Memories of Korea,” published in July 1949, Hayami was born to a farming family in Shiga Prefecture in Japan. His family became impoverished after his father failed in a small business, and Hayami decided to apply for a railway job in Korea when he was 16 years old after graduating from middle school. The reason he decided to work in Korea was that his starting salary there would be thirty percent higher than the salary for the same kind of job in Japan. He moved to Korea in 1938 and worked as a train station employee in the town of Yǒngch’ǒn, located between Taegu City and Pohang City. Soon, Hayami learned that his Korean colleagues, some of whom were more senior than he, earned much less than he did and that housing facilities were provided only for Japanese workers. He also witnessed how the local colonial police intervened in food distribution and discriminated against Korean households. During the war, supplies of staple foods, including sugar, were under government control due to the scarcity of foodstuffs. According to Hayami, the amount of sugar supplied to each Korean household was five times less than the amount given to each Japanese household, and the local police justified this discriminatory policy based on a cultural stereotype—that is, the Japanese have a sweet tooth (amatō) and Koreans prefer spicy food (karatō). Hayami also remembered how the so-called Korean “industrial warriors” had been recruited in his town and were sent to coal mines in Japan. During the war, conscripted Korean workers were glorified as “industrial warriors” (sangyō senshi), and Hayami tells how those warriors looked when they were about to embark on their glorified journey to Japan. When the conscripted workers were assembled at his train station, they were always accompanied by police officers and municipal officials so that they could not run away. They were also kept away from their family members who came to see them off. When their train arrived, the station would burst into an emotional uproar, filled with the cries of families. Hayami wrote that “more than anything, I think that the conscripts must have despised the police, loathed the war and felt angry at Japan.” He also wrote: I learned many lessons during my eight-year-long life in Korea. Among those many lessons, what I learned and what convinced me the most was that colonial rule must surely be the most intolerable form of national humiliation and suppression. We can easily understand this when we think about the ill feelings that Koreans in Japan held toward the Japanese and also the boundless joy of liberation that they have expressed in the wake of Japan’s defeat, which [the Japanese] have considered as an excess.30 Here, one can see how the colonial experience is remembered and presented in a way that is completely different from the conventional repatriate narrative. Hayami understood how colonialism functioned in daily life and what it meant to Koreans. Moreover, based on his first-hand experience in colonial Korea, Hayami also tried to understand the joy of liberation expressed by Koreans in Japan. In other words, the memory of empire could have opened up the possibility of mutual understanding and postcolonial reconciliation. His essay shows how the memory of colonial experience could have unsettled the collective amnesia of empire and the victim mythology.

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

9

The Cold War The reverse course On November 2, 1951, the major Japanese newspaper Yomiuri shinbun published a series titled “Reverse Course” (gyaku kōsu). The series, which appeared almost every day in the newspaper and completed its twenty-fifth episode on December 2nd, illuminated a growing trend of what the Yomiuri portrayed as the “revival” of various “prewar things” (senzen mono) in Japanese politics and society: “We are living just like in the ‘reverse course’ period” (yo wa sanagara ‘gyaku kōsu’ jidai ).31 In late 1951, when the US Occupation was about to end, people could feel “things” reminiscent of the wartime regime re-entering their everyday life, from local customs and popular culture to political and social institutions. On November 15th, the Yomiuri also published an editorial titled “Reflecting on the ‘Reverse Course.’” The editorial lamented that the “progressive mood” (kakushin teki kibun) at the time of the declaration of the new constitution had disappeared in Japanese society and instead a “strange phenomenon of frightening retrogression” had emerged.32 In scholarly accounts, the term reverse course has been used to signify a critical shift in US Occupation policy or a radical departure from the initial “demilitarization and democratization” of Japan.33 While historians agree on the existence of such changes, they disagree on the degree of the policy shift—whether it was a “reversal”—and how and when it occurred. In Japanese academia, the reverse course has been understood as a series of setbacks in “democratic revolution” initiated by the Occupation authorities (SCAP). Some Japanese scholars have traced its origins to General MacArthur’s prohibition of the general strike in February 1947 and viewed its climax in the so-called “red purge” offensives during 1949 and 1950, the Japanese version of “McCarthyism.” In their understanding, the reverse course is a continuum of turning points and a process of escalating social suppression enforced by SCAP, or through collaboration between SCAP and the Japanese government. On the other hand, US scholars have previously focused on the shift in the US government policy toward occupied Japan during 1947 and 1948. Washington’s revision of Occupation policy was an outcome of the US global Cold War strategy represented by the Truman Doctrine of early 1947. The containment of communist expansion emerged as the primary agenda for the reconstruction of the postwar global political economy, and US policymakers, such as George Kennan and Dean Acheson, envisioned Germany and Japan as regional pivots for the recovery of the world capitalist economy and the balance of power against Soviet expansion. On October 9, 1948, the Truman administration officially adopted the National Security Council’s proposal titled “Recommendations with Respect to US Policy toward Japan” (NSC 13/2), which emphasized “economic recovery” as the “primary objective” of US Occupation policy in Japan other than “US security interests.” 34 Japanese historian Nakamura Masanori conceptualizes the reverse course as the convergence of the global Cold War and a “rollback” in Japanese domestic politics.35 He argues that Washington’s revision of Occupation policy in late 1948 was institutionalized into the reverse course regime (gyaku kōsu taisei) when it intersected with the emergence of the Japanese conservative regime in early 1949. Nakamura understands the general election of the House of Representatives in January 1949, in which Yoshida Shigeru’s Democratic Liberal Party (DLP) won a landslide victory, as a critical turning point in Japanese politics. It was the first

10

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

time that a single political party secured a solo majority in the lower house, and the DLP’s landslide victory enabled Yoshida to form the first solid single-party administration (the “third Yoshida Cabinet”). For the United States, the Yoshida administration emerged as a crucial “collaborator” in transforming Japanese politics and society based on the US global Cold War strategy. At the same time, Yoshida took advantage of the anti-communist shift in Occupation policy for his own efforts to, in his words, “rectify the excess” of democratization. Nakamura claims that it was the US-Japanese “collaboration” (gassaku) that made Washington’s policy “shift” consolidate into the “reverse course.” 36 Indeed, the year 1949—remembered by Japanese historian Tōyama Shigeki as “the darkest time in postwar history,” 37—marked a sharp escalation in social control and the repression of labor movements and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Scholars who have studied the history of the “red purge” and anti-communist politics in postwar Japan stress the significance of the Organization Control Ordinance (Dantai tō kiseirei) issued by the Yoshida administration in April.38 The Organization Control Ordinance enabled the government to disband any “anti-democratic organizations” that demonstrated subversive tendencies. Importantly, as a prelude to the possible outlawing of the JCP, the Yoshida administration first targeted Korean leftist organizations and ordered the dissolution of the Korean League in Japan and the Korean Democratic Youth Alliance in Japan in early September. The national Japanese newspaper Asahi shinbun characterized it as “the first shot aimed at the extreme left.” 39 As Japanese historian Ogino Fujio argues, the clampdown on Korean leftist organizations indeed signified the government’s “declaration of war on leftist forces.” 40 While the linkage of global and domestic Cold War politics can expand our understanding of the complexities of the reverse course, the origins of the Cold War in occupied Japan are still understood within the same framework of US-Japan(ese) relations. In the following section, I will discuss what the Cold War in occupied Japan looks like when we move away from the reverse course debates. I will focus particularly on the significance of US “Cold War interventionism” that involved both occupied Japan and Korea and operated at the site of the “Korean minority question.” Beyond the reverse course In his monumental work titled The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, historian Odd Arne Westad has brought the “Third World” experience to the fore in the history of the Cold War. Westad understands the Cold War in the Third World as the product of US and Soviet “Cold War interventions” into indigenous political and social changes. Although the superpowers’ objectives were “not exploitation or subjection, but control and improvement,” for Third World countries the Cold War appeared as nothing but a “continuation of colonialism.” 41 The United States and the Soviet Union competed with each other to impose “their version of modernity” on those countries and thus, Westad claims, it is “easy … to see the Cold War in the South as a continuation of European colonial interventions and of European attempts at controlling Third World peoples.” 42 He also argues: Cold War ideologies and superpower interventions therefore helped put a number of Third World countries in a state of semipermanent civil war. In some cases there is likely to have been violent conflict at the end of the colonial period

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

11

anyhow, but the existence of two ideologically opposed superpowers often perpetuated such clashes and made them much harder to settle.43 The US and Soviet occupations of postcolonial Korea and the creation of North and South Korean regimes can be understood as a typical example of superpower “Cold War interventionism.” When the Soviet and US forces occupied the Korean peninsula after Japan’s defeat in World War II, Korean society was, according to historian Bruce Cumings, “ripe for revolution” and swept up in roaring “demands for thoroughgoing political, economic, and social change.” 44 The Soviet occupation in the North backed and promoted Korean leftist groups and radicalized their efforts to make a fundamental social change in postcolonial society. For instance, the radical land reform implemented in the Soviet-occupied North was an especially good example of Soviet intervention and collaboration with the North Korean leadership. Historian Charles K. Armstrong argues: Land reform in North Korea is perhaps the most important example of rapid and radical change in the years after liberation that combined initiatives from above with input from below, decisions made in Moscow with decisions made on the ground in Pyongyang by the Soviet occupation authorities and the North Korean leadership. Here we can see clearly where the context of the Soviet occupation allowed for the implementation of radical reforms with deep roots in the Manchurian guerrilla struggles of the 1930s and the social conditions of Korea of the 1940s, the “Koreanization” of Marxist-Leninist communism.45 In the US-occupied South, on the other hand, the political landscape of liberated Korea took a significantly different form. During the first three months of occupation, as Cumings has demonstrated, Americans in Korea overturned the indigenous “regime of liberation” created by left-leaning political leaders and hundreds of self-governing local organizations. The US Occupation denied the legitimacy of the Korean People’s Republic (Chosŏn Inmin Konghwaguk) and the people’s committees that had replaced central and local colonial authorities before US troops established full occupation in South Korea. Instead, the US Occupation forged a new order by reviving the colonial legal-governmental apparatus. It also retained Korean colonial bureaucrats and police officers, despite Washington’s initial directive to purge “criminal and ordinary police agencies” of those who had “collaborated with the Japanese.” 46 While the US and Soviet occupation of Korea can be characterized as quasi-colonial Cold War interventionism, some scholars also understand the US Occupation’s “remaking” of Japan as “neocolonial revolution from above” 47 or “American imperialistic intervention” comparable to “European colonialism.” 48 Like the Cold War in the Third World, the reverse course in occupied Japan can also be understood as the continuation of European colonial interventions. Yet, US Cold War intervention in the “Korean minority question” in occupied Japan complicates this understanding of the Cold War because the continuation of Japanese colonial interventions also mattered. The so-called “Korean school disputes” of early 1948, in which the US Occupation and Japanese authorities worked together to crack down hard on Korean demonstrations protesting the forcible closure of Korean ethnic schools and demanding non-interference in their self-determination, epitomized a crucial convergence between Japan’s “postcolonial” problem and the US global Cold War agenda. The Korean 12

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

minority question became a critical locus where postcolonial and Cold War politics intersected in occupied Japan. The “Korean minority question” and the Cold War in occupied Japan At the beginning of the Occupation of Japan, the US government instructed General MacArthur to treat Koreans in Japan as a “liberated people.” In the directive sent to MacArthur in early November 1945, titled “Basic Initial Post-Surrender Directive to Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers [SCAP] for the Occupation and Control of Japan,” Washington commanded SCAP to “treat Formosan-Chinese and Koreans as liberated peoples in so far as military security permits” (my emphasis).49 SCAP granted the “liberated people” status to Koreans in Japan for the purpose of giving them incentives to return to their liberated homeland at the earliest possible time. SCAP soon set up a time-limited “privilege of repatriation” that allowed Koreans to travel to Korea at the Japanese government’s expense.50 Later, in mid-1948, SCAP diplomatic official William J. Sebald wrote to Washington that “the status of Koreans as ‘liberated people’ has in the practice of this Headquarter been virtually limited to encouraging and giving every opportunity to Koreans to return to Korea.” 51 Although SCAP had no intention of extending the status of “liberated people” beyond the “opportunity” to return to Korea at the Japanese government’s expense, Koreans understood this status differently and performed their “liberation” in their own way. In particular, the establishment of Korean ethnic schools was an important marker of colonial liberation practiced by Koreans in Japan. If, as Frantz Fanon has claimed, “decolonization is the veritable creation of new men,” 52 Korean education was precisely aimed at the decolonization of the “Japanized” youth. The large majority of Korean children who had grown up in Japan only understood the Japanese language. Even the Korean youth who had been raised in Korea barely understood their own national language thanks to colonial education and forced “Japanization.” Korean parents and local organizers invested everything they could to make their own schools and create opportunities for their children to learn the language and history of their own nation. By October 1946, the Korean League in Japan, the largest Korean association in Japan, set up a total of 525 primary schools, 4 secondary schools and 12 youth schools across Japan. These Korean schools had more than forty thousand students in total.53 The rapid expansion of Korean schools across Japan was viewed by SCAP and the Japanese government as a serious challenge to their official position that Korean school children were subject to Japanese compulsory education just as Japanese children were.54 SCAP commanded the Japanese government to enforce full authority over the education of Koreans. On January 24, 1948, the Japanese Ministry of Education sent the following directive to local governors: Koreans currently living in Japan must obey Japanese laws, according to the statement made by SCAP on November 20, 1946. … Therefore, Korean children of school age must attend either public or private primary and secondary schools according to their age as in the case of Japanese children.55 In early 1948, the local Japanese and Occupation authorities began to take aggressive action toward Korean schools that were not obeying the directive issued by the Japanese

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

13

Ministry of Education. On March 5, the local Occupation authorities in Hyogo Prefecture told the prefectural governor to carry out the “evacuation of public school houses now occupied by the Koreans as their school-houses” and to enforce the “attendance of Korean children of school age to public elementary schools or secondary schools or approved private schools.” 56 Similar actions were also taken in other prefectures, and during March and April Korean residents organized mass rallies across Japan to protest the forcible closure. On April 23, Korean residents in Osaka held protest rallies at eight municipal offices, and later some seven thousand demonstrators gathered in the park near the Osaka Prefectural Office. The next day in Kobe City in Hyogo Prefecture, some five thousand Korean demonstrators gathered at the plaza in front of the Hyogo Prefectural Office, and a crowd of two hundred Koreans stormed into the office demanding to meet and negotiate with the governor. According to a Japanese government report to SCAP, “a call was made to the City Police, but within twenty minutes the Koreans had broken through the door and completely demolished all the furniture and cut off all communication with the outside.” 57 Soon, three US military police officers came into the office trying to rescue the governor who was besieged by the crowd of Koreans. When one officer pulled his gun, “Koreans defied him to shoot.” The three US officers gave up on trying to remove the governor and left the building. The governor succumbed and accepted the Koreans’ request that the local government withdraw the order to close Korean schools, grant Korean schools the status of a special school, and release those Koreans who had been arrested during previous demonstrations. The Korean demonstrations in Osaka and Kobe touched a raw nerve among US military officials of the Occupation, and the Eighth Army Commander General Eichelberger decided to launch a direct “police action” by US troops. On the night after Korean demonstrators left the Hyogo Prefectural Office, the US Commander of the Kobe Base declared a “state of limited emergency” in Kobe City. It became the first (and only) declaration of a state of emergency under US Occupation, and the Commander of the Kobe Base dispatched troops of the 24th Infantry Regiment, the largest all-Black unit of the US Army occupying Japan.58 The Kobe Base Commander also took direct command of the local Japanese police for emergency action. The Black military police and the Japanese police worked together and carried out indiscriminate roundups of Korean residents—they arrested whomever identified as Koreans. “From the night of April 24 to April 27,” SCAP reported, “about 2000 Koreans were taken into custody, the majority of them during the first twenty-four hours.” 59 Some Japanese were also arrested, including seven Japanese Communist Party members.60 Why did the Occupation authorities apply heavy-handed measures with its first declaration of a state of emergency? SCAP diplomatic official William J. Sebald pointed out the “unfortunate timeliness of the recent disturbances.” According to Sebald, the development of Korean protests against the closure of their schools marked an “unfortunate” event concurrent with spreading anti-US protests on the Korean peninsula.61 In Korea, a general election plan that the US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) had implemented for the establishment of a separate regime sparked massive anti-election movements in early 1948. The South Korean Worker’s Party called for “national salvation struggles” (kuguk t’ujaeng) protesting UN preparation for the election in the South, and launched a general strike on February 7th. On Cheju Island, leftists also organized mass anti-election rallies, and the Occupation’s violent suppression fomented serious tensions between the local state and society, which exploded into popular uprisings in early April. Moreover, in search for collaboration between the North and the South, rightist and leftist political leaders in the south joined the 14

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

so-called North and South Joint Conferences held in Pyongyang during mid- and late April, and their participation called into question the legitimacy of the election plan enforced by USAMGIK and its Korean collaborators, namely, Syngman Rhee and the Korean Democratic Party. Amidst the political turmoil on the Korean peninsula, SCAP was alerted to its possible repercussions for Japan. On April 10th, US military intelligence in Japan reported to the Assistant Chief of Staff in the Eighth Army that “a source of undetermined reliability has reported that on 26 March 1948 an unidentified Korean, a member of the Korean Communist Party … illegally entered Japan, ostensibly to lecture on present conditions in South Korea, but in reality to organize and incite riots similar to those that occurred in South Korea recently.” According to the intelligence report, the Korean man, who was “now believed to be at the Osaka Headquarters of the Korean League [in Japan],” had stayed at the Korean League offices in Fukuoka and Shimonoseki Cities and told them about a possible “revolt” by Communists in southern Korea and a “simultaneous aerial attack” by the North “before 18 April 1948.” Moreover, he allegedly claimed that “Communist guided riots will flare throughout Japan. The United States Forces in Korea and Japan will be powerless to stop these actions for they are not considered formidable enough.” The intelligence report also noted: “This information is forwarded for whatever action is deemed necessary.” 62 Apparently, the information had been passed on to higher-level military officials. The Far East Command’s staff study documents dated April 10th, which are cited in Japanese historian Ara Takashi’s work on the Kobe Incident, referred to the possible repercussions of riots in Korea for Korean communities, particularly those in Osaka. The staff study warned that Korean radicals in Japan might incite revolts against the Occupation forces.63 Against this background of early 1948, US military officials in Japan approached the Korean-school disputes through the lens of Cold War politics. In their approach, how to deal with the Korean minority question became closely linked with the Cold War on the Korean peninsula. As historian Mark Caprio puts it, the “Cold War explode[d] in Kobe,” 64 and the Kobe Incident provides fresh insight into the transnational linkages of Cold War politics between the two US-occupied territories of Japan and Korea. Moreover, it also illuminates how US Cold War interventionism intersected with continuing Japanese colonial interventions in the practice of liberation by Koreans in Japan. A new focus on the postcolonial and Cold War politics that operated at the site of the Korean minority question in occupied Japan complicates the more binary framework of US-Japan(ese) relations and superpower-Third World interactions.

Notes 1

Carol Gluck, “The ‘End’ of Postwar: Japan at the Turn of Millennium,” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 1–23. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); Andrew Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan Heavy Industry, 1853–1955 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); John Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 3 Yasushi Yamanouchi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryūichi Narita, eds., Total War and “Modernization” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). The Japanese version is Sōryokusen to gendaika (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1995). 2

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

15

4

Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: from Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); “Shōhi, seikatsu, goraku no ‘kansenshi,’” in Iwanami kōza Ajia Taiheiyō Sensō 6: nichijō seikatsu no naka no sōryokusen, eds. Kurasawa Aiko, Sugihara Tōru, Narita Ryūichi, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Yui Daizaburō, and Yoshida Yutaka. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006); Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012); Nakamura Masanori, Sengo shi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005). For more recent work on transwar history, see Reto Hofmann and Max Ward, eds., Transwar Asia: Ideology, Practices, and Institutions, 1920–1960 (London: Bloomsbury 2021). 5 For example, see Amakawa Akira and Masuda Hiroshi, eds., Chiiki kara minaosu senryō kaikaku: sengo chihō seiji no renzoku to hirenzoku (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shupppansha, 2001); Amemiya Shōichi, Senryō to kaikaku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008). 6 Deokhyo Choi, “The Empire Strikes Back from Within: Colonial Liberation and the Korean Minority Question at the Birth of Postwar Japan, 1945–1947,” American Historical Review 126, no. 2 (June 2021): 555–84. 7 For historiographical surveys, see Carol Gluck, “Entangling Illusions: Japanese and American Views of the Occupation,” in New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 169–236; John W. Dower, Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (New York: New Press, 1993), chap. 5; Laura Hein, “Revisiting America’s Occupation of Japan,” Cold War History 11, no. 4 (November 2011): 579–99; Franziska Seraphim, “Review Essay: A New Social History of Occupied Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (February 2014): 187–98. 8 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999). 9 Choi, “The Empire Strikes Back from Within.” 10 Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 11 Ōnuma Yasuaki, Tōkyō saiban kara sengo sekinin no shisō e (Tokyo: Tōshindō, 1993), 91–92; Arai Shin’ichi, “Sengo 50 nen to sensō sekinin,” in Sengo 50 nen o dō miru ka, edited by Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1995), 70–74; Leo T.S. Ching, Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 34–38. 12 Sebastian Conrad, “The Dialectics of Remembrance: Memories of Empire in Cold War Japan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 1 (January 2014): 4–33. 13 Gordon W. Prange Collection home page. https://www.lib.umd.edu/prange. 14 Sugihara Hyōichi, “Natsukashi ya Chōsen no omoide,” Kensetsu 1 (April 1946); Kamijō Nariaki, “Chōsen seikatsu 30 nen,” Nihon Yakuhō (June 1948); Fukumoto Minoru, “Chōsen dasshutsuki,” Compas 11–12 (March 1948). 15 Mariko Asano Tamanoi, Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 59. 16 Narita Ryūichi, “‘Hikiage’ ni kansuru joshō,” Shisō 955 (November 2003): 149–74; “Wasurerareta shōsetsu ‘haiiro no oka’ no koto,” in Keizoku suru shokuminchi shugi, edited by Iwasaki Minoru, Ōkawa Masahiko, Nakano Toshio, and Yi Hyodŏk. (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2005). 17 Nakajima Eimatsu, “Chōsen kaikyōshi hikiage ni tsuite,” Sōdōshūhō 136 (June 1946): 6. Gordon W. Prange Collection, S2424, University of Maryland Library, MD, USA. (hereinafter Prange Collection, UMD Library). 18 James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001). 19 Okanobu Kyōsuke, “Kōgendō ni okeru shūsen chokugo no gaikyō” [November 1947], in Kaigai hikiage kankei shiryō shūsei (kokugai hen) vol. 19: Shūsengo Chōsen ni okeru Nihonjin no jōkyō oyobi hikiage 2, edited by Katō Kiyofumi (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2002), 240–45. The date given is from the reproduced text included in Morita Yoshio and Osada Kanako, eds., Chōsen shūsen no kiroku: shiryō hen dai 1-kan: Nihon tōchi no shūen (Tokyo: Gannandō Shoten, 1979). 20 Okanobu Kyōsuke, “Kōgendō ni okeru shūsen chokugo no gaikyō” [November 1947], 247. 21 Dai Nihon Teikoku Seifu, “Shūsen chokugo no jōsei: sankō shiryō tsuzuri” (September 1945), T1554, Reel 229, Selected Archives of the Japanese Army, Navy and other Government Agencies, 1868–1945, National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan (hereafter Selected Archives of the Japanese Government, NDL). 22 Tottoriken keisatsu buchō, “Ippan bumin no dōkō ni kansuru ken” (September 5, 1945), T1490, reel 220, Selected Archives of the Japanese Government, NDL. 23 Pak Hŏnhaeng, Kiseki: aru zainichi issei no hikari to kage (Tokyo: Hihyōsha, 1990), 203.

16

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

24

Dai Nihon Teikoku Seifu, “Shūsen chokugo no jōsei: sankō shiryō tsuzuri” (September 1945), T1554, reel 229, Selected Archives of the Japanese Government, NDL. 25 Hokkaidō Keisatsushi Henshū Iinkai, ed., Hokkaidō keisatsushi 2: Shōwa hen (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Keisatsu Honbu, 1968), 600–1. 26 Toyamaken Chiji, “Taishō kanpatsugo ni okeru ryūgen higo hassei jōkyō ni kansuru ken” (August 28, 1945), T1490, reel 220, Selected Archives of the Japanese Government, NDL. 27 Choi, “The Empire Strikes Back from Within.” 28 Narita, “‘Hikiage’ ni kansuru joshō”; “Wasurerareta shōsetsu ‘haiiro no oka’ no koto”; Asano, Memory Maps; Pak Yuha, Hikiage bungakuron josetsu (Kyoto: Jinbunshoin, 2016). 29 Hayami Shigeo, “Chōsen no omoide arekore,” Gōgō 3, no. 11 (July 1949). Gordon W. Prange Collection, G371, UMD Library. 30 Hayami “Chōsen no omoide arekore,” 31. 31 Yomiuri shinbun, November 2, 1951. 32 Yomiuri shinbun, November 15, 1951. 33 On scholarly debates on the reverse course see Gluck, “Entangling Illusions” and Nakamura Masanori, “Senryō towa nandattanoka,” in Nihon dōjidaishi 2: senryō seisaku no tenkan to kōwa, edited by Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1990). 34 NSC 13/2 reproduced in Foreign Relations of the Unites States 1948 (hereinafter FRUS), vol. VI (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1974), 857–62. 35 Nakamura, “Senryō towa nandattanoka.” 36 Nakamura, “Senryō towa nandattanoka,” 240. 37 Nakamura, Sengo shi, 35. 38 Ogino Fujio, Sengo chian taisei no kakuritsu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999); Hirata Tetsuo, Reddo pāji no shiteki kyūmei (Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 2002). 39 Asahi shinbun, September 9, 1949. 40 Ogino, Sengo chian taisei no kakuritsu, 93. 41 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5, 396. 42 Westad, The Global Cold War, 5. 43 Westad, The Global Cold War, 398. 44 Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945– 1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), xx, xxvii. 45 Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 75–76. 46 “Basic Initial Directive to the Commander in Chief, US Army Forces, Pacific, for the Administration of Civil Affairs in Those Areas of Korea Occupied by US Forces” (SWNCC-176/8), FRUS 1945, vol. 6, 1076. 47 Dower, Embracing Defeat. 48 Mire Koikari, “Rethinking Gender and Power in the US Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952,” Gender and History 11, no. 2 (July 1999): 316. 49 “Basic Initial Post-Surrender Directive to Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers for the Occupation and Control of Japan” (November 1, 1945), in Documents concerning the Allied Occupation and Control of Japan, Volume I: Basic Documents, edited by Division of Special Records, Foreign Office, Japanese Government (January 1949), 129–31. 50 Choi, “The Empire Strikes Back from Within.” 51 Sebald to the Secretary of State, “Status of Koreans in Japan” (May 6, 1948), 895.012/5-648, Reel 5, Records of the US Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1945–1949. 52 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 36. 53 Pak Kyŏngsik, Kaihōgo zainichi Chōsenjin undōshi (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō 1989), 138. 54 “Chōsenjin jidō no shūgaku gimu ni kansuru monbushō gakkō kyōiku kyokuchō kaitō” (April 12, 1947), in Gaimushō Seimukyoku Tokubetsu Shiryōka, Zainichi Chōsenjin kanri jūyō bunshoshū, 1945–1950 (Tokyo: Kohokusha, 1978), 122. 55 “Chōsenjin setsuritsu gakkō no toriatsukai ni kansuru monbushō gakkōkyōiku kyokuchō tsūchō” (January 24, 1948), in Gaimushō, Zainichi Chōsenjin kanri jūyō bunshoshū, 123.

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

17

56

“Korean School Situation in Japan, March and April” (April 23, 1948), Folder: 000.8: Korean Schools, Box 5698, Civil Information and Education Section, RG 331, NARA. 57 Government Section, SCAP, “Report of Kobe Korean Incident by Prosecutor Matsuoka Saichi, Supreme Prosecutor’s Office” (May 4, 1948), Folder: Korea, Box 2241, Government Section, RG 331, NARA. 58 On the use of the 24th Infantry Regiment and the significance of racial politics in the Kobe Incident, see Deokhyo Choi, “Senryō to ‘zainichi’ Chōsenjin no keisei,” in Iwanami shirīzu sensō to shakai 3, edited by Araragi Shinzō and Ishihara Shun (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2022), 153–74. 59 Douglas Jenkins to William J. Sebald (May 4, 1948), enclosure to United States Political Advisor for Japan, “Korean Demonstrations in Kobe, Japan” (May 11, 1948), 894.4016/5-1148, Records of the US Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945–1949. 60 New York Times, April 26, 1948; Asahi shinbun, April 27, 1948. 61 USPOLAD to Secretary of State, “Korean Disturbances in Kobe and Other Cities in Japan” (April 29, 1948), 895.00/4-1948, Records of the US Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1945–1949. 62 Far East Command Military Intelligence Section, “Korean Communist Organizer in Japan” (April 10, 1948), Box 36, RG 338, NARA. 63 Ara Takashi, Nihon senryōshi kenkyū josetsu (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1994), 76. 64 Mark E. Caprio, “The Cold War Explodes in Kobe: The 1948 Korean Ethnic School ‘Riots’ and US Occupation Authorities,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 48-2-08 (November 24, 2008).

References Ara, Takashi. Nihon senryōshi kenkyū josetsu.Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1994. Arai, Shin’ichi. “Sengo 50 nen to sensō sekinin.” In Sengo 50 nen o dō miru ka, edited by Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1995. Armstong, Charles K. The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Caprio, Mark E. “The Cold War Explodes in Kobe: The 1948 Korean Ethnic School ‘Riots’ and US Occupation Authorities.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 48-2-08 (November 24, 2008). Ching, Leo T.S. Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Choi, Deokhyo. “The Empire Strikes Back from Within: Colonial Liberation and the Korean Minority Question at the Birth of Postwar Japan, 1945–1947.” American Historical Review 126, no. 2 (June 2021): 555–84. ———. “Senryō to ‘zainichi’ Chōsenjin no keisei,” In Iwanami shirīzu sensō to shakai 3, edited by Araragi Shinzō and Ishihara Shun. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2022. Conrad, Sebastian. “The Dialectics of Remembrance: Memories of Empire in Cold War Japan.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 1 (January 2014): 4–33. Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Gluck, Carol. “Entangling Illusions: Japanese and American Views of the Occupation.” In New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations, edited by Warren I. Cohen, 169–236. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Dower, John W. Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. ———. Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays. New York: New Press, 1993. ———. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Fujiwara, Tei. Nagareru hoshi wa ikiteiru. Tokyo: Hibiya Shuppansha, 1949. Gaimushō Seimukyoku Tokubetsu Shiryōka. Zainichi Chōsenjin kanri jūyō bunshoshū, 1945–1950. Tokyo: Kohokusha, 1978. Gluck, Carol. “The ‘End’ of Postwar: Japan at the Turn of Millennium.” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 1–23. Gordon, Andrew. The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan Heavy Industry, 1853–1955. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. ———. A Modern History of Japan: from Tokugawa Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

18

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

———. “Shōhi, seikatsu, goraku no ‘kansenshi.’” In Iwanami kōza Ajia Taiheiyō Sensō 6: nichijō seikatsu no naka no sōryokusen, edited by Narita Ryūichi, et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006. ———. Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. Hein, Laura. “Revisiting America’s Occupation of Japan.” Cold War History 11, no. 4 (November 2011): 579–99. Hokkaidō Keisatsushi Henshū Iinkai. Hokkaidō keisatsushi 2: Shōwa hen. Sapporo: Hokkaidō Keisatsu Honbu, 1968. Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982. Koikari, Mire. “Rethinking Gender and Power in the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952.” Gender and History 11, no. 2 (July 1999): 313–35. Nakamura, Masanori. “Senryō towa nandattanoka.” In Nihon dōjidaishi 2: senryō seisaku no tenkan to kōwa, edited by Rekishigaku Kenkyūkai. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1990. ———. Sengo shi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005. Narita, Ryūichi. “‘Hikiage’ ni kansuru joshō.” Shisō 955 (November 2003): 149–74. ———. “Wasurerareta shōsetsu ‘haiiro no oka’ no koto.” In Keizoku suru shokuminchi shugi, edited by Iwasaki Minoru, et al. Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2005. Ogino, Fujio. Sengo chian taisei no kakuritsu. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999. Ōnuma, Yasuaki. Tōkyō saiban kara sengo sekinin no shisō e. Tokyo: Tōshindō, 1993. Orr, James J. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Pak, Hŏnhaeng. Kiseki: aru zainichi issei no hikari to kage. Tokyo: Hihyōsha, 1990. Pak, Kyŏngsik. Kaihōgo zainichi Chōsenjin undōshi. Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō, 1989. Seraphim, Franziska. “Review Essay: A New Social History of Occupied Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (February 2014): 187–98. Tamanoi, Mariko Asano. Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. Watt, Lori Watt. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Yamanouchi, Yasushi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Ryūichi Narita, eds. Total War and “Modernization.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Chapter 1: Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan

19

Chapter 2 Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 Simon James Bytheway The following investigation will examine the progress of monetary, financial and fiscal reforms during the Allied Occupation of Japan, to argue that these reforms were a vital, if under-appreciated, component of the Allied Occupation’s mission in Japan from 1945 to 1952. Moreover, policy achievements and shortcomings will be addressed in terms of the actual historical experience of monetary, financial and fiscal reform in the context of Japan’s over-arching postwar economic rehabilitation. There is also an intuition and acknowledgement that there were many, inter-related and complex processes at play in mid-20th-century Japan—systematic, institutional, and increasingly global—that were ultimately, if imperfectly, reducible to personalities and political beliefs.

Introduction The American anti-inflationist, balanced-budget, export-based model of economic recovery, shown to be successful in postwar Germany, quickly became the Truman administration’s archetype for Japan and Korea. Occupation-era monetary, financial and fiscal reforms provided stable, new, national currencies which, despite the grave economic, ideological, political and military threats posed by the global Cold and hot Korean Wars, were an essential precondition of the remarkable Japanese and Korean postwar experiences of economic growth. Some historians and policy makers have gone so far as to claim that the economic rise of Japan was “probably the greatest legacy of Pax Americana,” being shaped and controlled almost entirely by the United States of America through “years of direct rule” during the Occupation, the “reforms of Joseph Dodge,” and the “Bretton Woods system itself.” 1 The following investigation will examine the progress, or lack thereof, of monetary, financial and fiscal reforms during the Allied Occupation of Japan, and to argue that these reforms were a vital, if under-appreciated, component of the Allied Occupation’s mission in Japan from 1945 to 1952. Moreover, policy achievements and shortcomings will be addressed in terms of the actual historical experience of monetary, financial and fiscal reform in the context of Japan’s over-arching postwar economic rehabilitation. There is also an intuition

20

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and acknowledgement that there were many, inter-related and complex processes at play in mid-20th-century Japan—systematic, institutional, and increasingly global—that were ultimately, if imperfectly, reducible to personalities and political beliefs.

Monetary reform in postwar Japan In respect to money and currency, the immediate objective of the military occupation of Japan was to gain control over the Japanese monetary system through the demonetization of old, military and occupational currencies of the Imperial Japanese Government and replace them with its own new, military and occupational currency. In General Douglas MacArthur’s “Proclamation No. 3” to the Japanese People, Article 1 announced the introduction and forcible acceptance of American-issued yen: Article 1. 1. Supplemental military yen currency, marked “B” issued by the military occupation forces is legal tender in Japan for the payment of all yen debts public or private. 2. Supplemental military yen currency, marked “B” issued by the military occupation forces, regular yen currency issued by the Bank of Japan and Japanese state notes and coin shall be equivalent in all respects and interchangeable at their face value. Article 2. Japanese Military Currency 3. All military and all occupational currency, which has been issued by the Japanese Government, Army or Navy, is void [valueless] and the giving or accepting of such currency in any transaction is prohibited.2 Article 2 subsequently reinforced the issue of the new yen currency of the Allied occupation forces by demonetizing all Japanese currencies other than that of “regular yen currency issued by the Bank of Japan,” Japan’s central bank.3 The importance of currency reform is underscored by the fact that MacArthur’s proclamation was delivered just hours after the Imperial Japanese Government’s formalized signing of the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, 1945. A further directive (SCAPIN-8) issued from the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) on September 6, 1945 repeated that all military and occupational currency issued by the Imperial Japanese Government, or the Imperial Japanese Government Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, had been rendered “void and valueless” and its use was prohibited. Once again reinforcing the point that all parastatal special bank currencies and military notes and scrips had been made totally worthless, with the exception of Bank of Japan banknotes which were legal tender in “Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu, and adjacent waters,” but not in Okinawa or Korea.4 All parastatal special banks “whose paramount purpose has been the financing of war production or the mobilization or control of financial resources in colonial or other Japanese-occupied territories for the benefit of Japan” were ordered to cease their operations and close their doors.5 As central banks, however, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of Chosen, in Korea, were privileged and effectively pardoned for their wartime actions, despite their long and uncontested reigns as the Imperial Japanese Government’s premier financial agents in Japan and its empire. Thus, for a brief moment in history, three countries were issuing yen currencies—each for different ends and purposes— but all with the implicit backing of the United States Army. The multinational issuance of yen happened, despite US Treasury concerns and contentions, with a pragmatic, if vague,

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

21

understanding that ultimately, the success of currency and monetary reforms most probably hinged not so much on the programs and policies themselves, but on the ability of the occupational forces to prevent total financial and economic collapse in the areas they were attempting to control, demilitarize, democratize or liberate—a hard-earned lesson learned earlier in the year (1945) by US Army administrators in Occupied Europe.6 The failure of the Imperial Japanese Government to publicly decree that the US supplemental yen (Type “B”) was legal tender in Japan caused SCAP to issue yet another directive (SCAPIN-21) just ten days later, on September 12, to formally rebuke the Japanese government, and to expressly prohibit it from using US Dollars (USD) or other foreign currencies in any transactions. The directive pointedly expressed dismay at the unauthorized publication (apparently with Ministry of Finance approval) of the USD—yen exchange rate in a Tokyo newspaper: henceforth, no publication, announcement or public speculation on exchange rates between the currencies was permitted.7 Lingering dissatisfaction, or distrust, led SCAP to issue a further, more punitive directive (SCAPIN-359) in late November which reasserted SCAP’s monetary powers: The Imperial Japanese Government will not print or issue, nor permit the printing or issuance of new types or series of Bank of Japan notes, state notes, subsidiary currency or any other currency without the previous consent of this Headquarters…8 Subsequent to the above communications—all in the last quarter of 1945—SCAP seemed broadly satisfied with the Japanese government’s response, and no further SCAPIN directives with respect to currency were issued. The Money and Banking (M&B) Branch of SCAP’s Finance Division in the Economic and Scientific Section (ESS-FI) were satisfied that the basic monetary objectives of the occupation were being met in Japan. But what of the special banks that were ordered to “cease their operations and close their doors” and those financial reforms contingent with antitrust legislation and the stated dissolution of the zaibatsu?

Financial reform in postwar Japan At the end of the Second World War over a thousand “wartime institutions” were ordered to cease operations by the key SCAPIN-74 directive from Tokyo.9 At the very core of these institutions were the parastatal special companies (tokushu-gaisha): the special banks and financial institutions (including the Bank of Japan and the colonial central banks), the huge colonial development companies (exemplified by the South Manchuria Railway Company), the vast array of Manchurian industrial enterprises, and the myriad of closely-related subsidiaries and spin-off companies. Ostensibly, all of these public policy, special companies were closed-down by the end of September 1945, often with US Army military police symbolically taking control of their head-offices in Tokyo, with bayonets drawn!10 In finance, approximately 260 wartime institutions were targeted by SCAP’s Finance Division (ESS-FI) for liquidation, with total assets of some 450 billion yen.11 In addition to the Yokohama Specie Bank (established as the Japanese government’s external agent in 1880) and the Bank of Japan (established as the Japanese government’s internal agent in 1882), there were fifteen special parastatal banks which were chartered (as explained below) in a

22

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

sixty-six-year period extending from the latter part of the Meiji, throughout the Taisho, and including the Showa eras, as the state orchestrated the development of Japan’s financial infrastructure. Radiating out from the main Japanese island of Honshu, to Hokkaido, and then on to the colonies of Taiwan and Korea, the first seven were the Hypothec Bank of Japan (1897), the Agricultural Bank of Japan (1898), the Industrial Bank of Japan (1902), the Bank of Taiwan (formerly the Bank of Formosa, 1899), the Hokkaido Colonial Bank (1900), the Bank of Chosen (formerly the Bank of Korea, 1909), and the Industrial Promotion Bank of Chosen (1918).12 After the First World War, further financial consolidation occurred with the establishment of the Industrial Cooperative Central Bank-Norinchukin (1923), however, a large, second wave of five special parastatal banks, consisting of the Commerce and Industry Central Bank (1936), the Pensioner’s Bank (1938), the People’s Bank (1938), the Wartime Finance Bank (1942), and the Reconstruction Finance Bank (1946) were chartered after the financial crises of the late 1920s and early 1930s as Imperial Japan increasingly became embroiled in military expansionism and war. In addition to the colonial central banks chartered in Taiwan and Korea, the Industrial Bank of Manchuria (1936) and the Southern Development Bank (1942) were also established in the new colonies of Manchuria and Nanyō (the Micronesian and Pacific Islands mandate) as special parastatal banks.13 Despite being integral to Japan’s wartime finances and slated for liquidation under SCAPIN-74, special banks, such as the Yokohama Specie Bank, Hypothec Bank of Japan, Industrial Bank of Japan, and the Hokkaido Colonial Bank were not “immediately closed” and continued to “operate” by trading with their accounts. SCAP appointed the Bank of Japan as the sole liquidator in SCAPIN-163,14 and then pressed for their closure with SCAPIN-210.15 Apparently, an understanding between the ESS-FI and representatives of the Ministry of Finance, worked out over a period of time, had ended with mutual agreement that “the special bank system should be eliminated at the earliest practicable opportunity.” 16 That notwithstanding, Japanese government officials convinced ESS-FI that the special banks performed essential functions, on a large (“too big to fail”) scale, in unique financial contexts, and thus they needed to be rehabilitated and re-chartered. A catastrophic end to Imperial Japan’s financial architecture, and particularly to its concept of special banks, may seem implicit in the Japanese defeat of 1945. The postwar establishment of new financial organs by the state, such as the Reconstruction Finance Bank (RFB), the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), and the Long-Term Credit Bank (LTCB), however, are indicative of continuity, rather than a new beginning. Moreover, most of the financial organs chartered by the state prior to 1945 managed to continue their operations in one form or another in the postwar period, demonstrating an astounding resilience. According to SCAPIN-1049, the Yokohama Specie Bank became the city (toshi) Tokyo Bank, while the Hypothec Bank of Japan (which had taken over the Agricultural Bank of Japan) became an ordinary (futsū) bank without a name change, as did the Industrial Bank of Japan.17 The Hokkaido Colonial Bank also became an ordinary commercial bank, and kept its Japanese name, but substituted the Japanese appellation Takushoku (lit. “colonization [of undeveloped land]”) for the problematic Colonial in its English title. The fate of the colonial central banks is more complex, nevertheless, the remnants of the Bank of Taiwan and the Bank of Chosen (Korea) were re-chartered (and repatriated) to form today’s Nichiboshin (a financial service provider) and Aozora Bank. All these examples affirm the enduring legacy of the state’s long involvement in Japanese finance. That is, in the period prior to the Pacific Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

23

War, the state designed, funded, promoted, legislated and regulated Japan’s key financial institutions. Critically, a surprisingly large number of key former special companies are still important in Japan’s contemporary political economy.18 There was some informed criticism of SCAP’s failure to close those financial institutions that most vigorously supported Japan’s war effort. For example, the resurrection of the Industrial Bank of Japan as a long-term bank in 1950 was described as one of the “most paradoxical omissions” of SCAP’s demilitarization of the Japanese economy.19 Legally, the reorganized Industrial Bank of Japan had lost its special bank status, but it was still very much a “kept” institution of the bureaucracy which shared its personnel and financial objectives with the Japanese state. Tsutsui, in his authoritative and pioneering study, derides the conservative Money and Banking Branch of SCAP’s ESS-FI as having done insufficient pre-surrender planning, being unable to secure the cooperation of the relevant Japanese authorities, and lacking knowledge of domestic conditions. No wonder that ESS-FI officials are described as having deep reservations about the mandated transformation of the wartime banking system—they were clearly not in any position to offer or supervise real banking reorganization.20 In effect: despite American claims of complete success in demilitarization, the ‘special’ banks were resuscitated, government financial controls were re-established and the status quo in commercial banking was not upset. … The liquidation of wartime banks and the financial reorganization were essentially complicated exercises in accounting which, in effect, merely enabled the wartime financial system to function under peaceful conditions.21 Thus, with nominal SCAP authorization, the special banks were saved from liquidation by making some nifty name changes, byzantine accounting reorganization and by being rechartered by the Bank of Japan as ordinary banks or financial institutions. The question then arises, how does that compare to the postwar experiences of the great zaibatsu banks? The Yasuda Plan Dissolution of the zaibatsu—the “money clique”—was a long-held objective of the Allied Occupation of Japan.22 The deconcentration of economic power would necessarily require reorganization of the financial architecture and underpinnings of Japan’s largest industrial combines, their main banks and numerous related financial institutions (in insurance, securities, real estate financing and trust banking). Faced with the prospect of years of humiliating US-led investigations and enquiries, prolonged business uncertainty and intense political horse-trading, representatives of Japan’s big four zaibatsu banks (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda) met with finance minister Shibusawa Keizō, the preeminent grandson and heir of Shibusawa Eiichi and thus a de facto representative of the Shibusawa (or DaiIchi) zaibatsu, to preempt the promulgation of any SCAP-mandated directives.23 A banking dissolution proposal of the five-member group was quickly drafted using as a template the Yasuda proposal, wherein the family holding company would be dissolved and the zaibatsu’s bank would cease to exercise administrative control over its client companies. The family members and executives appointed by the zaibatsu would be forced to resign from their

24

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

positions in all the zaibatsu’s group of companies. Shares in affiliates held by the family in the family’s companies and its zaibatsu bank would be sold to a government-controlled holding commission, with the proceeds of the sales being invested in “ten-year government bonds of severely limited negotiability.” 24 Thus, with some alacrity, the Ministry of Finance submitted the zaibatsu banks’ in-house dissolution proposal, the so-called “Yasuda Plan,” to SCAP in late October 1945.25 Almost immediately, SCAPIN-224 of November 6, 1945 acknowledged receipt of the dissolution plan of October 1945, approved it, and then announced the creation of the SCAPcontrolled Holding Company Liquidation Commission (HCLC) to ultimately “provide equal opportunity to firms and individuals to compete in industry, commerce, finance and agriculture on a democratic basis.” 26 Beyond the symbolism of forcing family members of Japan’s most prominent zaibatsu to resign their positions, and rearranging the highest levels of the management structure, the commercial and financial relations of the remaining zaibatsu structures (right down to the smaller subsidiaries, affiliates and subcontractors) were left undisturbed.27 SCAPIN-244, with its soaring rhetorical flourishes, sought to encourage the new Japanese government to take up the burden of planning a nation-wide, structural reform of finance, but given the magnitude of the challenges facing them, and the strength of vested interests directed against financial reorganization, it was pre-destined to be “conveniently ignored.” 28 Meanwhile in Washington D.C., the State and Justice Departments were concerned by MacArthur’s prompt acceptance of the lenient Yasuda Plan on November 6, 1945, and were worried that SCAP did not seem to have the drive, or personnel, to follow through with the zaibatsu dissolution program.29 Moreover, a SCAP memorandum from January 1946, entitled “A Financial Program for Japan” had concluded: The Finance Division [of the Economic and Scientific Section (ESS)] has sought to induce the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan to devise their own solutions to the financial problems that confront Japan. Either because of ineptitude or with intent to obstruct, they have accomplished virtually nothing. … an immediate and thorough extermination of the zaibatsu control over industry and banking, and thereafter an orderly liquidation in bankruptcy of the zaibatsu family interests, which thereby will be made to pay the price for the vast damage and losses created in Japan by the war. This appears to be an equitable and the only feasible solution to the present difficulties.30 Mounting concerns led to the commissioning of Corwin D. Edwards, the Northwestern University economist and former chairman of the policy board of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, to clarify the American position vis-à-vis the zaibatsu. His review from March 1946, titled “Report of the Mission on Japanese Combines,” called for the breakup of all economic enterprises constituting an “excessive” concentration of economic power. Unimpressed by the symbolic purge of directors and cosmetic changes in corporate governance promised by the Yasuda Plan, Edwards identified overlooked practices, such as interlocking directorates and extensive crossholding of corporate stocks,31 and championed the need for democratization (and privatization) by pointing out the damage that Japan’s giant industrial and financial conglomerates had wrought:

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

25

Japan’s industry has been largely under the control of a few great combines, the greatest of which began their rise to power in feudal times and all of which enjoyed preferential treatment from the Japanese Government. This type of industrial organization tends to hold down wages, to block the development of labor unions, to destroy the basis for democratic independence in politics, and thus prevent the rise of interests which could be used as counterweights to the military designs of small groups of ambitious men. … It is in this sense that the zaibatsu—that is, the money clique—are to be regarded as among the groups principally responsible for the war and as a principal factor in the Japanese war potential. The responsibility is primarily institutional rather than personal.32 Further to the Edwards report, a Far Eastern Commission (FEC) paper had concluded, “The dissolution of excessive private concentrations of economic power is essential to the democratization of Japanese economic and political life,” and thus essential to the Occupation’s mission.33 Indeed, as late as September 1947, MacArthur wrote in reply to uneasy enquiries from Prime Minister Tetsu Katayama: current overall policy provides that ‘a drastic change in the nature as well as the identity of the groups controlling Japanese industry and finance should be effected.’ Further, there is required the achievement of the following as a specific objective: “Elimination of the zaibatsu support for excessive concentrations…” 34 By mid-1947, however, powerful new counter-narratives had emerged, and active, influential US business and finance lobbies, such as the Japanese Foreign Investment Council (JFIC) and the American Council for Japan (ACJ) were concerned about the plight of their Japanese counterparts. American creditors and investors were “naturally anxious to recover their investments … with accrued interest, dividends, and licensing fees” (worth some four hundred million dollars).35 While taking his bearings in increasingly rough seas, MacArthur grasped at the face-saving, policy-changing lifeline thrown at him by the crusading Draper Mission of March 1948.36 Undersecretary of the Army William H. Draper, past (and future) vice-president of Dillon, Read & Co. of New York, first visited Japan in September 1947 after serving two years as the chief economic advisor to General Lucius Clay in the Allied Occupation of Germany.37 Against the backdrop of Communist advances in China and the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, Draper was highly critical of almost all areas of SCAP’s economic policy for allegedly creating the conditions of a weakened and under-performing Japan. The handpicked, five-man Draper Mission was accompanied by its own investigative committee, headed up by Percy H. Johnston, chairman of Chemical Bank & Trust Co. of New York. After just three weeks of investigations in Japan, the Draper Mission submitted its “findings” known as the Johnston Report to the Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal (who was another of Draper’s former colleagues from Dillon, Read & Co.). As a result of the Draper/ Johnston recommendations, what in Japanese historiography is commonly referred to as the reverse course was formally executed.38 That is, by July 1948, the list of companies designated as being “excessively concentrated” had dwindled from 325 to 18 and the broad-based program of business deconcentration was deferred, and then curtailed.39 In September 1949,

26

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

SCAPIN-162/1 formally amended SCAPIN-162 by stating that no further “Dissolution or Liquidation” would be accepted by SCAP for approval.40 In the rarefied field of banking and finance it was now apparent that the zaibatsu banks would not be forcibly restructured by SCAP. Nevertheless, echoing the “reformation” experiences of the special bank cousins, the zaibatsu banks temporarily changed their names in accordance with a recommendation from the “Reorganization of Financial Institutions” conference of 30 December 1947: “The zaibatsu name shall be changed and the word ‘Imperial’ shall be eliminated from all titles.” 41 Some seven months later, an all-encompassing “Prohibition of Zaibatsu Trademarks and Names” came in to force with SCAPIN-1923.42 Mitsubishi Bank thus became Chiyoda Bank, Sumitomo Bank became Osaka Bank, and Yasuda Bank became Fuji Bank. The Imperial (teikoku) Bank, which had formed during the last years of the war by the merger of the Dai-Ichi (Shibusawa) and Mitsui Banks, was dissolved and “de-merged” on September 23, 1948. Curiously, the Dai-Ichi title was deigned to be unrelated to any particular zaibatsu, but restoration of the Mitsui title remained problematic, and so Mitsui interests continued operating as the (New) Imperial Bank until January 1954 when the title of Mitsui Bank was formally restored.43 A final challenge to SCAP’s financial reform of the Allied Occupied Japan came on March 14, 1950 when Lieutenant Colonel W. R. Hodgson—the Australian member of the Allied Council, representing jointly the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India—expressed official concerns over the degree of financial control exercised by the special (half private/half-public) Bank of Japan “which it cannot be denied, is extreme,” and he asserted that eight banks dominated something like 80 percent of economic life in postwar Japan. SCAP’s ESS and Diplomatic Section carefully crafted replies to Hodgson’s enquiries in “rather a general manner in order to avoid commitments…” conceding that: there is a large measure of truth in the statement that a large proportion of the Japanese banking business is controlled by the large banks; however, the concept that an institution or a group is evil merely because it is large, should be summarily rejected.44 ESS-FI made a greater effort to deal with Hodgson’s concerns over the degree of control exercised by the Bank of Japan, and to explain why it had been left “largely untouched.” 45 A final memorandum then acknowledged that SCAP’s “Policy on Excessive Concentrations of Economic Power in Japan” (FEC 230) had been overturned,46 and Hodgson’s lingering allegations of the zaibatsu’s dominance in commercial banking were quashed by the claim that the “program divesting Zaibatsu stock ownership has been completed.” 47 In sum, despite the resounding rhetoric of demilitarization and economic democratization, the zaibatsu and special bank foundations of Japan’s wartime financial system remained firm and unshaken. Significantly, the legal underpinnings of Japanese banking and finance, dating back to the Meiji era, remained virtually unchanged throughout the almost eight years of Allied Occupation. Indeed, by mid-1948, SCAP appeared to be satisfied with the Japanese government’s response to its banking and finance proposals, perhaps owing to the fact that very few SCAPIN directives were specifically aimed at reforming it. Nevertheless, issues surrounding the wider questions of antitrust and the dissolution of Japan’s great zaibatsu periodically re-surfaced and challenged the efficacy of SCAP’s financial reform, as exemplified Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

27

by the Australian contentions with SCAP in 1950. All in all, however, Japan’s financial system experienced a remarkably long episode of continuity at a time of great and rapid change.

Fiscal reform in postwar Japan The word “fiscal” is typically defined as “of or relating to government revenue, especially taxes; or relating to financial matters.” 48 In the context of the Allied Occupation of Japan, fiscal reform primarily relates to the incidence of inflation vis-à-vis heavy deficit spending, and expansionary fiscal policies. SCAP’s official history of the Occupation of Japan discusses inflation as “the inevitable outgrowth of Japan’s long and unsuccessful war.” 49 As in all the economies of war-torn Europe, inflation was seen as a consequence of war, something that defeated nations had to endure and come to terms with as they attempted to effect (that is, finance) economic reconstruction.50 The aim of the US Army, had been essentially to crush their enemies, and they were not particularly interested or experienced in postwar governance and reconstruction. Moreover, destructive “weaponized” monetary inflation had marched side by side with Japanese soldiers throughout the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Indeed, in parts of China and Burma, for example, hyper-inflation made any hope of postwar economic recovery seemingly impossible. Having been responsible for bringing on inflation in areas where they occupied, some inside the US Army and members of the Truman administration thought it necessarily instructive and didactic if the Imperial Japanese Government was given a taste of their own medicine.51 The Ministry of Finance’s tight control of the economy and banking, combined with the massive use of government expenditure by the military juggernaut, helped check domestic (naichi) inflation throughout the war years to an annual average increase of around 30 percent. During the first two months of the Allied Occupation, however, the last Imperial Figure 2.1 Japanese Inflation (CPI), 1936–1965 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 –100

1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 CPI (indexed at 100 in January 1948)

Annual % change

Sources: Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 230; and Suzuki, Kinyū kinkyūsochi, 1970, 227.

28

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Japanese Government attempted to clear its debts by having the Bank of Japan pay out some 34 billion yen in expenses and compensation that it had accrued over the course of Japan’s long war. Largely owing to the Japanese government’s heavy deficit spending, the amount of Bank of Japan yen banknotes—to say nothing of the many other types of yen currencies in circulation—had more than doubled during the last half of 1945.52 Figures are imprecise, but the Bank of Japan’s banknote issue, registering “sharp and rapid expansions,” reached 55.4 billion yen in December 1945, some 225 percent above the wartime zenith of 21.7 billion yen during the war.53 The dramatic increase in the issuance of yen was reflected in the Bank of Japan’s black market and free market indexes, which had shown the purchasing power of the yen as having been greatly reduced and wholesale price inflation increasing by some 70 percent between September 1945 and January 1946 (see Figure 2.1).54 Inflation was not, however, some kind of pre-ordained, automatic response to war: it was also the result of a distinctive pro-inflationary Keynesian policy of massive industrial subsidies.55 These inflationary actions were rigorously theorized and promoted by Ishibashi Tanzan, Japan’s minister of finance from May 1946, who was subsequently purged from Yoshida Shigeru’s first cabinet just one year later (in May 1947) for “obstructing” SCAP policies.56 In an article titled “The Danger of Retrenchment Policy,” Ishibashi’s argument was clear and elegantly simple: The advance of commodity prices is caused more by the decrease of commodities than by the expansion of currency. Therefore, relief must be sought more in the increase of goods than in curtailing the amount of currency, and for that reason an expansion policy becomes more necessary than retrenchment.57 The underutilization of resources, and attendant large-scale unemployment associated with stagflation, were identified as the major problems of the day, and government spending was thus key to reflating the postwar economy. By providing working capital, “extraordinary” state intervention sought to restore war-damaged industries, and to keep Japan’s financial institutions afloat. Critically, in Japan’s new democracy, Ishibashi’s expansionary economic policies were electorally popular, while simultaneously facilitating the redemption of the government’s wartime debts in rapidly inflating (postwar) yen. In contrast, dreary fiscal conservatism and a gamut of austerity economics implied social disruption and continued belt-tightening, compounding all the difficulties that were starting to register after fifteen long years of repressed “luxury is the enemy (zeitakuwa tekida!)” consumption.58 What concerned SCAP, however, was that the Yoshida government had apparently financed its monetary policies by printing banknotes, and by lending from its own special financial institutions. By January 1946, after just four months of Occupation, SCAP was once again directing the Japanese government to adhere to anti-inflationary fiscal policies with “minimum expenditures, maximum revenues and the financing of deficits from savings to the fullest extent possible.” 59 The Ministry of Finance, however, had its own ingenious remedies for reducing the amount of its own banknotes in circulation. The Currency Conversion Program (of February 1946) recalled all Bank of Japan currencies from circulation in order for them to be replaced with new banknotes “on a controlled basis” from February 25 to March 2, 1946. That is, when an individual presented old currency for conversion, only a maximum of one hundred yen was returned to the individual, with the remainder being placed in a blocked Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

29

account “against which releases were permitted only for specified purposes and in specific amounts.” 60 The commercial banks, the post office and the urban and agricultural credit associations all served as deposit agencies for the Bank of Japan. From March 2nd to 7th old Bank of Japan banknotes were “legal tender only for purposes of deposits in blocked accounts.” As a consequence of the program, the value of Bank of Japan banknotes in circulation declined from 52 to 15 billion yen in March 1946, and the “free” or usable balance of bank deposits dropped from 128 to 13 billion yen during the same period. By late April, however, the value of Bank of Japan banknotes in “necessary” circulation (that is for living expenses, wages and salaries, war damage, etc.) had already doubled to 26 billion yen.61 Even worse, by September 1946, less than six months later, the value of the currency in circulation was 64 billion yen, embarrassingly surpassing the pre-conversion peak.62 Another attempted campaign against inflation was announced with the establishment of the Currency Stabilization Board on November 4, 1946. It called “on a patriotic basis” for the public to put aside the value of fifty billion yen in savings deposits by March 1947. In short order, approximately 90 percent of that amount was indeed raised, but almost all of the money so deposited was payable on demand and did not significantly alleviate the potential of inflation to continue and increase in the future (see Figure 2.1). In addition to the above measures, bank loans were heavily restricted to all but essential industries during 1947. That notwithstanding, under Ministry of Finance Notification No. 37, March 1, 1947: “Highest … and the second highest priority” industries, such as “petroleum, gold, copper and lead mining, silk and cotton manufacturing” all continued to be funded by the government’s own “special” financial institutions,63 and most obviously from its new engine of economic recovery and growth, the Reconstruction Finance Bank (RFB), chartered on October 8, 1946.64 Noting the failure of home-grown anti-inflation measures (see Figure 2.1), and that the Japanese government’s “unbroken line” of budget deficits stretched back to 1931, the “deliberate perpetuation” of deficit spending in the post-surrender period by Ishibashi, the Yoshida cabinet and the Ministry of Finance became a mounting source of frustration at SCAP’s ESS, whose staff judicially viewed inflation as potentially disastrous, and eminently capable of destroying the new stability that they were hoping to impose.65 Moreover, by midto late 1948, MacArthur and SCAP were being urged by Washington to “promote the selfsufficiency of the Japanese economy and thereby lessen its dependence on the United States taxpayers.” 66 Collectively, these concerns led to the execution of the Nine Point Stabilization Program throughout the early 1950s.67 The Nine Point Stabilization Program of December 1948, headed up by Ralph Young from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), attempted to reorient Japan towards a path of self-sufficiency through national austerity. First and foremost, the plan most urgently called for “balance in the consolidated budget,” that is the “elimination of RFB financing and the transfer of that responsibility to private banking,” and essentially tough talk for an accounting reorganization of the Japanese government’s public finances. The transfer of “cash resources” involved programmatically buying back outstanding, unredeemable government bonds held by the parastatal special banks in a way that would off-load (and on-lend) public debts by replacing them with new loans from select private banks. Largely owing to these accounting operations in credit and debit restructuring “commercial banks expanded their loans from 359.7 billion yen on March 31, 1949 to 647.6 billion yen on March 31, 1950.” 68 The remaining eight points of the plan identified revision of tax collection, credit extension, wage stability, price control, foreign trade, allocation and rationing, increased production, 30

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and food collection.69 Washington and MacArthur soon realized that SCAP did not have the “technical and political skills necessary for the successful implementation of an austerity programme…” hence the appointment of Joseph M. Dodge, with a very large “mandate from Washington.” 70 Dodge’s main qualification for the position of Financial Advisor to SCAP was that he had worked with General Draper as the deputy finance advisor in the Economics Division in Occupied Germany. In fact, Draper’s insistence that his former colleague be appointed—with the personal rank of “Minister” no less—was to be his “last, and most lasting legacy” to the economy of Japan.71 The Dodge Line The official history of SCAP makes no mention of the “Dodge Line” or similar terminology. Instead, it briefly relates how in effecting the Nine Point Stabilization Program of December 1948, Dodge and SCAP officials prepared budgets for Japanese governments during the last years of the Occupation. What became the “Dodge Budget Plan” or the “Dodge Stabilization Program” was, in effect, a constrictive policy framework imposed on the Japanese government’s own budgets by SCAP for financial years (FY) 1949, 1950, and 1951.72 As inflation raged, the Bank of Japan tried to reassure SCAP by claiming that unlike the Soviet Union, China or even European countries after the First World War, Japan had never experienced catastrophic inflation or drastic monetary policy changes. Moreover, isolated as they were from other nations, the Japanese public were not influenced by foreign exchange rates, which in any case had been suspended since the war. Thus, national confidence in the yen was “firm and solid.” Accordingly, the Bank of Japan urged SCAP to act with caution and reserve: “In short, for the sterilization of Japan’s inflation … attempts to effect hasty solution by forcible measures through over-zeal should be strictly avoided.” 73 By early 1949, however, a repeatedly frustrated SCAP were desperate to effect a quick solution to chronic inflation, and seemingly less concerned about the means to achieving that end than were their counterparts at the Bank of Japan! Dodge and a team of US Treasury officials arrived in Japan on February 1, 1949 with the immediate task of tackling Japanese inflation. The Dodge Budget Plan was essentially an austerity program “with a co-ordinated attack on government intervention in the economy” which intended to replace parastatal special bank funding with the targeted application of US aid to effect a more competitive, free-enterprise, basis for Japanese recovery and rehabilitation.74 Dodge’s plan might also be seen as paving the way for Japan’s return to the more orthodox, Anglo-American-influenced economic policies it had followed throughout the 1920s as it prepared to re-adopt the gold standard,75 or even as something of a precursor to the IMF-sponsored “structural adjustment” programs of the 1980s and 1990s.76 Whatever the case, Dodge’s policy demands to the Japanese government are most often presented as having four main policy aims: 1. Balance the national budget. 2. Stabilize national finances (that is, curtail RFB loans, reform US aid administration, and improve tax collection.) 3. Reduce government subsidies and direct-government controls over the economy. 4. Establish a single $1.00 = ¥360.00 exchange rate.77

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

31

Despite some domestic, and internal, government posturing, the Japanese government soon presented a consolidated “Dodge budget” for FY 1949, which projected a huge surplus—emphatically termed “super-balanced” (chōkinkō) at the time—with expected revenue exceeding expenditure by over 250 billion yen. By contrast, the previous fiscal year had recorded a deficit of 62.5 billion yen. To achieve such an amazing budgetary turnaround, however, the Japanese government was forced to raise taxes immediately, dismiss 140,000 employees almost instantly and slash desperately needed public works expenditure by a third (the socioeconomic effects of which are discussed below).78 The second policy aim of shoring up the nation’s finances was headlined by the liquidation (i.e., closing down) of the RFB, despite the Ministry of Finance having mounted a spirited campaign for its salvation. SCAP called for the “complete cessation” of RFB lending activities, and the gap in funding was partly bridged with the US Aid Counterpart Fund (estimated to be 175 billion yen) providing Government Appropriation for Relief in Occupied Area (GARIOA) and Economic Rehabilitation in Occupied Area (EROA) assistance to Japan for FY 1949. Accordingly, the incidence of (Bank of Japan-directed) commercial bank lending increased,79 and government debt decreased during FY 1949 from 503 billion yen to 385 billion yen as the Japanese government was forced to refrain from public lending to private industries.80 As for revision of tax collection, the SCAP-commissioned Shoup Mission of 1949 attempted to reconfigure Japan’s postwar taxation system in a more equitable, progressive, and decentralized manner, but soon ran up against resistance and hostility from the seemingly omnipotent Dodge.81 Turning to the remaining third and fourth policy aims, bringing an end to government subsidies and price controls was more difficult to realize than the first two policy aims. The cessation of government-controlled rationing during the early 1950s undoubtedly had great symbolic value, but it was naive to think that the Japanese government’s involvement in the economy would suddenly diminish owing to sharp SCAPIN diktats, or harsh “Dodge diplomacy” alone (especially in relation to money and banking, as outlined above).82 The FRBNY, in addition to drafting the Nine Point Stabilization Program, had its own people in Japan throughout 1947 and 1948 conducting “Top Secret” research into Japan’s currency issues. As central bank emissaries, they immediately focused on finding a new and viable international exchange rate for the inflation-riddled yen, in line with the principles that it be low enough to sustain at the outset, and later expand, the volume of Japanese exports, but high enough to encourage more efficient production in “high-cost” industries. The FRBNY report recommended a rate within 270 to 330 yen to the dollar (ideally 300) be introduced by all arms of the US military on July 1, 1948, and by SCAP on October 1, 1948.83 Despite recent scholarly conjecture in Japan, and a plethora of popular, conspiracy theories, there was nothing vindictive, punitive or nefarious in the report’s findings. A war-weakened “soft” yen would return to the fold of central bank currencies fixed to the gold-backed “hard” US dollar, allowing the postwar economy to achieve monetary and exchange stability, with the reasoning being: A firm, and initially adequate, exchange rate can impose upon the Japanese economy the wholesome discipline often associated with the gold standard of the nineteenth century.84

32

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Clearly, unrestricted foreign trade and a viable export-driven economy was essential if the Japanese economy was ever to become self-sufficient. Thus, erring on the side of caution, the foreign exchange rate of 360 yen to the US dollar was set by SCAPIN-1997 on April 25, 1949.85 After just six months in Tokyo, a triumphant Dodge was apparently turning the Japanese political economy around—by 180 degrees, no less—and felt compelled to present his stabilization program to finance minister Ikeda Hayato as a destiny-shaping challenge: This is a test period for the Japanese people and the Japanese economy … this is being done with substantial assistance from the United States, which can not and will not be forthcoming from any other source. Repeatedly, the United States has accorded assistance to Japan on a large scale. The receipt of these resources has been of great value to Japan. Unfortunately, in too large a part, they have been put to uses which only served to postpone the internal adjustments that are necessary and inevitable.86 The Japanese people and their economy were indeed tested and trialed by the “internal adjustments” that Dodge so dogmatically advocated, and continued to agitate for in FY 1950, FY 1951 and beyond. What in Western scholarship is most often presented as a “stabilization program” of policy directives, was in more holistic accounts of contemporary Japanese historians called the “Dodge Line”: a series of “disinflation” measures designed to induce a severe “stabilization depression” (antei fukyō) in the wider economy. These American-imposed policy positions had to be met, or at least seen to have been addressed or satisfied by the civilian Japanese government, in order for “substantial assistance” to be maintained. Not unsurprisingly, the Dodge Line typically dominates discussion of all the monetary, financial and fiscal reforms during the Allied Occupation of Japan in Japanese language histories. Arguably, no other name in Japan is as closely—and negatively—associated with the Allied Occupation of Japan as that of Dodge, with the possible exception of MacArthur himself, SCAP personified.87 Under the Dodge Line production slumped to “barely a third of 1931 levels” in manufacturing, mining and other hard-hit industries, while investment in small business and light industry reportedly fell to half of that of FY 1948.88 Nevertheless, in attempting to balance the national budget through ruthless cutbacks on “bloated” government expenditure, the largest driver of the Dodge Line came to be the massive, sudden and sustained retrenchment of government employees at all levels. Anathematizing the postwar creation of an organized labor (union) movement, Dodge favored an “increase in unemployment” as a means to “universal efficiency of labor and greater production.” 89 His push against labor led to the immediate dismissal of some 260,000 or more government workers and civil (public) servants by the end of 1949, although the proposed goal of 20 to 30 percent reduction that Dodge pushed for would have affected upwards of six hundred thousand government employees.90 With drastic reductions in government funding to prefectural and local governments, some 315,000 municipal workers were also laid off, as were 95,000 employees of Japan National Railways (most conspicuously members of the National Railway Workers’ Union, Kokutetsu Rōdō Kumiai or Kokurō). Alongside these huge reductions in the government and municipal workforces, the private sector dismissed some 430,000 workers, particularly in

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

33

those industries that relied on state-channeled funding and subsidies. All in all, more than a million workers were put “out of work” as modern Japan’s worst decade came to a close (and China became Communist). Moreover, those that kept their jobs were forced to endure 15 to 20 percent pay cuts and wage freezes in the so-called “Dodge Squeezes” of 1949–1951.91 The induction of a SCAP-mandated “stabilization depression” was slowing inflation (see Figure 2.1), but at what cost?92 The sort of postwar stagflation that Ishibashi Tanzan had prophesized—“the underutilization of resources, and attendant large-scale unemployment”—was rapidly coming to fruition. Intelligence from the Department of State in Washington D.C. alarmingly reported that, “for the first time since the surrender there is in Japan an appearance of wide political resistance to American control.” 93 Even worse, SCAP-ESS communications warned that the main aim of the Occupation itself was being put at risk: All “economic indicators,” stock market volume and prices, the industrial production index, housing “starts,” wages, prices etc. indicate that Japan has entered a deflationary economic crisis threatening Japan’s progress towards economic recovery and self-sufficiency. The crisis has developed as a result of policies formulated entirely in terms of “balanced” budgets, debt retirement, note issues, and other purely fiscal and monetary concepts. The Counterpart Fund is the instrument which has precipitated the crisis by favoring retrenchment and deflation over rehabilitation and stabilization.” 94 At a time when America’s Marshall Plan was financing the reconstruction right across Western Europe, Dodge was pushing his own, ideologically tinged, brand of austerity economics that seemed hell-bent on putting a stop to the government-led, special bank-financing of economic reconstruction in postwar Japan. SCAP-directed assistance from the United States, in the form of the Counterpart Fund, would temporarily support the repayment of the Japanese government’s most pressing debts, but Dodge’s longer-term goal was for it to be replaced by private capital lending from the United States, and thus reinstate the prewar financial relationship between Tokyo and Wall Street.95 With the Reconstruction Finance Bank’s operations having been wound down in 1949, the Dodge Line’s victory over parastatal special bank funding was seemingly complete. The Japanese government, however, redeployed RFB assets to establish new public financial intermediaries (that is, parastatal special banks), such as the Export Bank of Japan (JEB) which was chartered in December 1950, opened in February 1951, and then renamed and repositioned as the Export-Import Bank of Japan (JEXIM) in April 1952, and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) which was chartered in March 1951, and opened in May 1951 in order to take over from “reconstruction finance” as a redefined “development” bank.96 The Japanese government’s Development Bank of Japan Law (no. 108) of March 31, 1951 specifically authorized the DBJ to provide “long-term equipment loans to private industries when the commercial banks were not in a position to assume the risks involved.” 97 Government intervention in the Japanese economy through parastatal special companies was set to continue.98 Ironically, in his all-consuming drive against inflation, Dodge had failed to impose SCAP controls over government and commercial bank lending, or even Japanese-style “overlending,” policies. As a banker, moreover, Dodge had failed to reintroduce basic American practices, standards and ideals back into postwar Japanese banking.99 Thus, towards the end of the Occupation, the Dodge Line had become a “serious liability” to SCAP’s operation 34

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and performance.100 Harsh stew-in-their-own-juice austerity policies, regressive taxation and massive, nation-wide, broad-based retrenchments were never going to deliver rapid economic growth to postwar Japan, never mind the demilitarized, decentralized, deconcentrated and democratic socioeconomic reforms that had been proclaimed in September 1945. What saved SCAP from the messy end, typical of all military occupations, was the sudden outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, and the mammoth US military special procurements program for Japanese goods and services that transformed Japan into a US-led, antiCommunist breakwater in the context of the new Cold War.101

Conclusion and Coda Nowhere had any nation seemed more spectacularly revolutionized; but the astonishing achievement of redrafting political, social, educational, health, labor, and welfare laws was, for the most part, on paper only. The laws enacted, voluntary or under pressure, read magnificently but all too often were entirely disregarded.102 The investigation of the primary sources of the Allied Occupation of Japan, SCAP’s official, nonmilitary history, the Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies collection of Occupation-related materials, and indeed, the quite recent publication of key secondary sources (in both the English and Japanese languages) has provided us with a new historical understanding of monetary, financial and fiscal reforms during the Allied Occupation of Japan.103 We have seen how SCAP claimed the monetary prerogative to issue its own military yen, while it demonetized all other forms of yen currencies with the critical exception of Bank of Japan banknotes, which continued to circulate as legal tender in Japan. The new Japanese government, with its old central bank and “special” financial infrastructure, was thus able to maintain its economic relevance and increase its political power. Moreover, the appointment of the resurgent Bank of Japan as the sole liquidator of the special financial institutions, chartered by the Meiji regime and subsequent governments, allowed them to continue their operations as ordinary banks or financial service providers throughout the post-war period. Likewise, SCAP’s alacritous acceptance of the zaibatsu-led, and government-supported, Yasuda Plan meant that the call for zaibatsu dissolution never threatened their dominant position in commercial banking. In respect to fiscal reform, what started as a concerted campaign against inflation ended in austerity economics, an attack on the government’s role in the economy, the induction of economic depression, and the blight of large-scale unemployment associated with the Dodge Line. Coming as it did, late in the Occupation era, the nature and intensity of the Japanese reaction against the fiscal reforms championed by Dodge held back Japan’s postwar economic rehabilitation and threatened to overshadow SCAP’s main policy achievements during the Occupation. On September 2, 1946, a year after their government’s surrender, MacArthur told the Japanese people that they had experienced an irreversible and transformative “spiritual revolution” owing to the efforts of the Occupation he led. On March 19, 1947 in the only press conference given to foreign correspondents during his term as SCAP, MacArthur repeated this amazing claim in front of the world’s journalists, that is: the Occupation had brought

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

35

about a drastic and far-reaching change in the way that Japanese people thought and behaved. At the very end of his career, however, in June 1960, when MacArthur was decorated by the Japanese government with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, MacArthur was seemingly cognizant of the Occupation’s failings, and much less sanguine about its achievements in his acceptance speech: No honor I have ever received moves me more deeply than this one. Perhaps this is because I can recall no parallel in the history of the world where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander. What makes it even more poignant is my own firm disbelief in the usefulness of military occupations with their corresponding displacement of civil control.104 MacArthur’s enigmatic “disbelief in the usefulness of military occupations” should not surprise us. As the Pan-American generalissimo of all Pacific Theatres, MacArthur surrounded himself with a “praetorian guard of deferential subordinates” known as the “Bataan gang,” with some, such as Colonel Charles A. Willoughby (his Chief Intelligence Officer), serving from 1941 to 1951 in a single, uninterrupted term.105 Consequently, the upper levels of SCAP were manned “almost exclusively” by a gang seemingly untroubled by questions of proficiency or suitability, infamous within military circles for its contemptuous disregard to all others, equal or subordinate. And when it came to the Occupation, formal, documented knowledge of Japan was more than a disadvantage, it was often discriminated against. It is almost as if it was thought best that SCAP’s key figures be unburdened by knowledge and experience of Japan. For example, the main area of expertise of Major General William F. Marquat, the Chief of the ESS from 1946 to 1952, was in anti-aircraft artillery and not economic administration. The Allied Occupation of Japan was made up of military officers, albeit with civilian consultants and appointees. It was not an army of doctors, missionaries, counsellors, students or elected officials, and more often than not its officers rushed to get on with their duties without paying much attention to the attitudes, beliefs, opinions and psychology of the people that they were ostensibly there to help.106 Infamously, and all too often, civilian advisors adopted the Occupation’s military swagger. On his arrival in Tokyo, a bellicose Dodge did not want to briefed by the “SCAP people” he was supposed to be working with, that is: “Before he knew anything about Japan’s problems at first hand, he was presenting us with solutions.” 107 Even at the Pentagon, Draper, on assuming office with oversight of all US occupied areas, happily went on the record to say that he “knew nothing about Japan.” 108 The Allied Occupation of Japan could have been very useful if it had proceeded with its original mission of establishing Japan as a demilitarized, progressive democracy, with a decentralized, deconcentrated economy, at peace with its neighbors in Asia and its place in the wider world. In the above three sections on money, banking, and fiscal reforms, SCAP-ESS is characterized as being perfunctory, performatory, uninspired and unenthusiastic in its duties, at a time when Japanese finance—its zaibatsu and special banks—were charged with having started a war, funded a war, and of having profited mightily from some fifteen years of de facto military rule, with all the conflict and war it generated. Moreover, the Allied Occupation of Japan happened within a context when there was a broad-based, international and shared understanding that something had to be done to protect future generations from the scourge of wars. And big things were done, like the formation of the United Nations in 1945, 36

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the establishment of the International Court of Justice in 1946, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Fortunately for the people of Japan, its civilian government, for all its faults and foibles, never lost sight of its importance, and its much-maligned, civil (public) service never stopped believing in their own usefulness.

Notes 1

Kwasi Kwarteng, War and Gold: A 500-year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt (New York: Public Affairs, 2014), 201. 2 “Proclamation No. 3” [Currency], General Douglas MacArthur to Japanese People, September 2, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES (Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies—Bank of Japan), eds., Materials on Japanese Monetary History (Showa Era, 2nd Series), vol. 25 (Tokyo: Ministry of Finance, 1996), 35–6. Wherever possible, the original GHQ/SCAP Records will be cross-referenced to the IMES series, as above. Please note, not all the relevant SCAPINS and other U.S. government materials are referenced in the IMES volumes, as exemplified by SCAPIN 8 below. 3 “Proclamation No.3” [Currency]. 4 “SCAPIN-8” [Legal Tender], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, September 6, 1945, (MG), [formerly from] Adjutant General’s Section, September 30, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C. 5 “SCAPIN-74” [Closing of Colonial and Foreign Banks, and Special Wartime Institutions], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, September 30, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 49–51. 6 General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, History of the Nonmilitary Activities of the Occupation of Japan, 1945–1951, vol. 39 (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Senta, 1990), 2; Frank A. Southard Jr, The Finances of European Liberation: With Special Reference to Italy (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 49, 200. 7 “SCAPIN-21” [Use of Supplemental Yen (Type “B”), United States Dollars, and other Foreign Currency], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, September 12, 1945, (MG), [formerly from] Adjutant General’s Section, GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C. According to the September 9, 1945 morning edition of the Mainichi shinbun, the exchange rate of the USD was equal to 4 yen and 25 sen. 8 “SCAPIN-359” [Control over Issue of New Currency], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, November 28, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 42–43. SCAP apparently saw the need to contain the circulation of Bank of Japan banknotes towards the end of November 1945. The reason given at the time was that the notes were simply produced by offset printing, rather than engraved printing, and thus comparatively easy to counterfeit, and would aid and encourage the burgeoning black markets. See GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 56–57. 9 “SCAPIN-74” [Closing of Colonial and Foreign Banks, and Special Wartime Institutions], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, September 30, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 49–51. 10 See Simon James Bytheway, Wakon gaishi: gaishikei no tōshi to kigyōshi oyobi tokushugaisha no hattasushi 1858–1939 (Tokyo: Tosui, 2019), 103–11. 11 William M. Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan: American efforts at reform during the Occupation (London: Routledge, 1988), 32. 12 Simon James Bytheway, Nihon keizai to gaikoku shihon: 1858–1939 (Tokyo: Tosui, 2005), 245; and Simon James Bytheway, Investing Japan: Foreign Capital, Monetary Standards, and Economic Development, 1859–2011 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014), 55. 13 Bytheway, Wakon gaishi, 80–126.

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

37

14

“SCAPIN-163” [Appointment of a Liquidator (BOJ)], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, October 20, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 53–54. 15 “SCAPIN-210” [Liquidation of Closed Banks by the BOJ], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, October 30, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 54–55. 16 “Special Banks,” Marquat (Chief, ESS) to LeCount (Chief, Financial Division) Memorandum, July 28, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 578–79. 17 “SCAPIN-1049” [Dissolution Plan for the YSB], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, July 2, 1946. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 51–3. “The name of the new institution will bear no similarity, either in Japanese or in foreign translation, to that of YSB.” And so the evocative and deeply symbolic name change, as if the Bank of Ostia had suddenly become the Bank of Rome. 18 See Bytheway, Wakon gaishi, 124–26. 19 Kent Calder, cited in Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 33. 20 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 35–37. 21 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 35. 22 “Policy on Excessive Concentrations of Economic Power in Japan,” FEC Document No. 230, May 12, 1947. Far East, Box #17. National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 286–305. The occupation’s policy with respect to the zaibatsu is stated in Basic Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (FEC-014), and is reaffirmed in Basic Initial Post-Surrender Directive to SCAP for the Occupation and Control of Japan (FEC-015). 23 The meeting was a result of Col. Raymond C. Kramer’s comment (while visiting Yasuda Hozensha on October 12) that he hoped that the Japanese side would act “voluntarily” (jihatsutekini) to identify appropriate reforms, rather than SCAP being forced to demand “oppressive measures” (danatsuteki shudan). Yasuda Hozensha, Yasuda Hōzensha to sonokankei jigyōshi (Yasuda Fudōsan, 1974), 885; and Fuji Ginkō Hyakku Nenshi, Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi (Fuji Ginkō, 1982a), 600–2. 24 John. G. Roberts, Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, 2nd ed. (New York: Weatherhill, 1989 [1973]) 372. 25 Appendix 6, “Proposal for Dissolution of the Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Yasuda, and Sumitomo Holding Companies (YASUDA PLAN) Submitted by the Japanese Government, October 1945” [sic] in General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), History of the Nonmilitary Activities of the Occupation of Japan, 1945–1951, (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Senta, 1990), vol. 28, 67–69. For more detail, see all the titles published by the Yasuda group of companies in the reference list, especially Yasuda Hozensha, Yasuda Hōzensha to sonokankei jigyōshi, 875–86. 26 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 28, 46–47; and “SCAPIN-244” [Dissolution of Holding Companies], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Imperial Japanese Government, Memorandum, November 6, 1945. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C. 27 Takemae Eiji, The Allied Occupation of Japan (New York: Continuum, 2003), 335; and Yasuda Hozensha, Yasuda Hōzensha to sonokankei jigyōshi, 895–916. 28 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 41–44. Nevertheless, Colonel Raymond Kramer, Major General William F. Marquat’s predecessor as Chief of the ESS, praised the zaibatsu behind the Yasuda plan for their “courageous determination” in accepting “great sacrifices” voluntarily. Quoted from Hosoya Masahiro, “Selected Aspects of Zaibatsu Dissolution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952: The Thought and Behavior of Zaibatsu Leaders, Japanese Governmental Officials and SCAP Officials” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1982), 40–77. 29 Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 335–36. 30 “A Financial Program for Japan,” Major Everett C. Sherbourne and Lt. R. B. Johnson, Memorandum (Draft), January 14, 1946. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 366–78. 31 Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 335–36. Tsutsui describes the report of the Edward’s Mission as “forming the basis American antitrust policy in Japan for the following two years … by articulating clear goals and establishing a comprehensive agenda for achieving them,” Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 42.

38

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

32

“Report of the Mission on Japanese Combines.” headed by Corwin D. Edwards (Consultant, Northwestern University), Confidential, March [no day], 1946. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 126–286 (136). 33 “Policy on Excessive Concentrations of Economic Power in Japan,” FEC Document No. 230, May 12, 1947. Far East, Box #17. National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 286–305. 34 General Douglas MacArthur to Tetsu Katayama, Prime Minister of Japan, Letter, September 10, 1947. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 305–7. MacArthur was under no illusions about what the Occupation aimed to achieve. In conversation with a British minister in Tokyo MacArthur “spoke most bitterly” against “tycoons” like Draper, Forrestal, Royall, and Harriman for opposing zaibatsu dissolution and the purge of the militarists purely “because they thought they would conflict with their own business interests.” See Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945–1952 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989), 185–86, 313 n64. 35 Roberts, Mitsui: Three Centuries, 391. The prosaic re-invention of Japan as “the Workshop of Asia,” a veritable “bulwark against communism,” and a new “Switzerland of Asia” owes much to the efforts of lobby groups like the Japanese Foreign Investment Council and American Council for Japan, and to their dreams of new investment opportunities in Japan and “the Far East,” See Bytheway, Investing Japan, 185–209. 36 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 59–63. A “sharp, little message” from Draper to MacArthur may have galvanized his and Marquat’s thinking on the matter: “extensive decentralization [deconcentration?] in the fields of banking and insurance would be most unwise” Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 63. Much to London’s consternation, Draper was rumored to be replacing MacArthur at and as SCAP. Imagining how British interests would fare with the “Wall Street General” in charge, the British government went so far as to express official “concern” to the Truman administration. See Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: the origins of the Cold War in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 129. 37 Regarding the “great restoration of Wall Street’s political fortunes,” see Mark Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 114. For some detail of the business activities of Dillon, Read & Co. in Japan, see Bytheway, Investing Japan, 138, 140. 38 See State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, “SWNCC-384” [The Economic Recovery of Japan], Top Secret, Memorandum, October 3, 1947. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C. The historical importance, and wider international implications, of the reverse course can hardly be understated. Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 282–85. For many Japanese people who experienced the policy reversals first hand, the term also conveyed “an acute sense of betrayal” by SCAP. Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 473. 39 The above, is at best, a radical summation of one aspect of the zaibatsu dissolution program. For a more detailed study, see General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), History of the Nonmilitary Activities of the Occupation of Japan, 1945–1951 (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Senta, 1990), vol. 29, 1–89, and Appendices; and excellent secondary sources, Steven J. Ericson, “Japanese Agency and Business Reform in Occupied Japan: The Holding Company Liquidation Commission and Zaibatsu Dissolution,” in The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan, edited by Thomas French (London: Routledge, 2017), 11–30; E.M. Hadley, Memoir of a Trustbuster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 115; Roberts, “The ‘Japan Crowd’ and the Zaibatsu Restoration.” Japan Interpreter 12, no. 3–4 (1979): 384–96; Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan, 85–140; Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 107–97; Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 461; Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 58–60; and Yasuda Seimei Hoken, Hachi-jū nenshi (Yasuda Seimei Hoken, 1961), 113–15. 40 “SCAPIN-162/1” [Dissolution or Liquidation of major Financial or Industrial Enterprises], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Japanese Government, Memorandum, September 9, 1949. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C. 41 “Plans for Reorganization of Financial Institutions,” Memo for file by Harry J. Robinson (Finance Division, ESS), January 2, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 100–3. 42 “SCAPIN-1923” [Trade Names, and Company Names and Marks …], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Japanese Government, Memorandum, July 29, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331;

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

39

National Archives, Washington, D.C. See GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 28, 176–88; and Fuji Ginkō Hyakku Nenshi, Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi, 606, 636. 43 “Japanese Bank Reorganization,” Speech by Harry J. Robinson (Finance Division, ESS) at SCAP Press Conference, December 17, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 122–26. 44 “Interim Report on the Preparation of Reply to the Australian Member of the Allied Council concerning Banking Reforms,” John R. Allison (Financial Division) to Marquat (Chief, ESS) Memorandum, March 19, 1950. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 513–14. 45 “Possible Controversial Points in reply to Colonel Hodgson’s Inquiries,” John R. Allison (Financial Division) to Marquat (Chief, ESS) Memorandum, March 29, 1950. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 528–29. 46 See FEC 230 “Policy on Excessive Concentrations of Economic Power in Japan,” FEC Document No. 230, May 12, 1947. Far East, Box #17. National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 286–305. 47 “Replies to the Thirteen Questions Raised by the Member of the Allied Council of Japan,” Marquat (Chief, ESS) to William J. Sebald (Diplomatic Section, ESS) Memorandum, UNDATED [March 1950?]. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 24, 515–27. 48 For example, see The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 10th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 534; Collins English Dictionary, (Glasgow: Collins, 2000), 578; and Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 2001), 724. 49 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 53. 50 For example, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, and Norway experienced an average 630% increase in prices during the 1939–1945 war period. See Southard, The Finances of European Liberation, 191. 51 See Vladimir Petrov, Money and Conquest: Allied Occupation Currencies in World War II (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967), 40, 195. 52 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 53; and Hubert F. Schiffer, The Modern Japanese Banking System (New York: University Publishers, 1962), 27–29. 53 “Present Condition of Inflation in Japan,” Hisato Ichimada (Governor, BOJ) to LeCount (Chief, Financial Division, ESS) Report, undated [April 1948?]. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 96–112. In his report to SCAP, Governor Ichimada Hisato cheekily noted that given the Bank of Japan’s “difficult mission” of covering the deficit in public finances at a time when production had collapsed, “curtailment of the Occupation Forces’ consumption of goods essential for the economic reconstruction of Japan is needed …” That is, SCAP would have to play its part, and accept austerity measures, if it expected the Bank of Japan to reduce its outlays and tighten its belt. 54 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 54. 55 Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 83–85. 56 See Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 202. 57 Ishibashi Tanzan, “The Danger of Retrenchment Policy,” Zaisei, December 1948, cited from “The Course of Inflation in Post-Surrender Japan,” Division of Research for Far East Office of Intelligence Research (Department of State) Restricted, Report, November 1, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 132–82 (151). 58 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 25–26, 92. 59 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 56–57. 60 The relevant pieces of legislation are Imperial Ordinance No. 84 of 17 February 1946, and MOF Ordinance No. 13 of 17 February 1946. 61 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 58–59. 62 “The Course of Inflation in Post-Surrender Japan,” Division of Research for Far East Office of Intelligence Research (Department of State) Restricted, Report, November 1, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 132–82. 63 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 59–62. SCAP-arranged finance was also important, see Ohata Takahiro, “The Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry and Economic Recovery under SCAP,” in

40

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan, edited by Thomas French (London: Routledge, 2017), 119–45. 64 Bytheway, Wakon gaishi, 99. Following Japanese sources, the author confusingly referred to the same bank as the Financial Recovery Fund-FRF (Fūkō Kinyū Kinko). 65 “The Course of Inflation in Post-Surrender Japan,” Division of Research for Far East Office of Intelligence Research (Department of State) Restricted, Report, November 1, 1948. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 132–82 (151). 66 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 40, 93. 67 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 54–55. 68 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 62–63. 69 Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 119. 70 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 95. 71 Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 196. 72 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 41. That is, the 1949–1950, 1950–1951, and the 1951–1952 fiscal years. The Japanese fiscal year starts on April 1 and ends on March 30 of the following calendar year. 73 “Japanese Inflation, Actual Conditions and Measures for Eradication,” BOJ, Report, undated [January 1949 or later]. Dodge Papers; Reel 6, Detroit Public Library, Michigan Burton Historical Collection; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 246–68. 74 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 97. 75 See Simon James Bytheway and Mark Metzler, Central Banks and Gold: How Tokyo, London, and New York Shaped the Modern World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 102–10. 76 Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 119. 77 See Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 123; SCAP, Nihon senryōshi: kokka zaisei, Dai 37 kan (Toshōshiryō Ka Tokubetsushiryōkei (1978 [1951]), 42–49; Schiffer, The Modern Japanese Banking System, 73–87; Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 206; Suzuki Takeo, Kinyū kinkyūsochi to Dojji rain (Seimeikai Shuppanbu, 1970), 253–71; and Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 97. Dodge’s demands to finance minister Ikeda Hayato, what Ōuchi Hyōe apparently called the “Dodge Line,” are listed as having anything from three to six aims. Metzler presents the Dodge Line as a five-point program, with the addition of the “elimination of hidden subsidies” as his second point. 78 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 98. 79 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 98, 105. 80 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 41. 81 See the authoritative W. Elliot Brownlee, Eisaku Ide, and Yasunori Fukagai, eds. The Political Economy of Transnational Tax Reform: The Shoup Mission to Japan in Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and the Shoup Mission’s exhaustive four-volume investigation of 1949. 82 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 99. 83 Report of the Special Mission to Japan, 1948, FF 4488 Top Secret, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Significantly, Fuji Bank employed “veterans” from the Bank of Taiwan to establish its Foreign Exchange Office which worked with SCAP to facilitate trade transactions in the months before the introduction of the yen’s new exchange rate. See Fuji Bank, Banking in Modern Japan (Tokyo: Fuji, 1961) 209; Fuji Ginkō Hachi-jū Nenshi, Fuji Ginkō hachi-jū nenshi (Fuji Ginkō, 1960), 223–25; and Fuji Ginkō Chōsabu, Fuji Ginkō no hyakku nen (Fuji Ginkō, 1980), 265–67. 84 R.V. Rosa to A. Sproul, Letter, 21 June 1948, FF 4489, Allan Sproul Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 85 “SCAPIN-1997” [Establishment of Official Exchange Rate for Japanese Yen], Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to the Japanese Government, Memorandum, April 23, 1949. GHQ/SCAP Records; RG331; National Archives, Washington, DC; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 761–62. The iconic 1 dollar = 360 yen exchange rate stayed fixed until the Nixon administration’s unilateral suspension of the dollar’s convertibility to gold in mid-1971, the so-called “Nixon shock” of Japanese history. 86 “Letter,” Joseph M. Dodge to Hayato Ikeda (Finance Minister of Japan), August 9, 1949. Dodge Papers; Reel 5, Detroit Public Library, Michigan Burton Historical Collection; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 314–21 (320–21).

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

41

87

Suzuki, Kinyū kinkyūsochi, 293–306; Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 470. The Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies (IMES) collection of Occupation-era monetary materials are saturated with references to inflation, the Dodge Line, and Mr. Dodge. 88 Fuji Ginkō Hyakku Nenshi, Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi, 757–59; Yasuda Kasai Kaijō, Yasuda Kasai Kaijō Hoken hyakku nenshi (Tokyo: Yasuda Kasai Kaijō, 1988), 166–67. 89 Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 200. When the socio-economic costs of the political unrest (strikes, stopwork meetings, political agitation, etc.) were pointed out to Dodge by SCAP-ESS, he glibly advised them to use “repression” as had been used by the Imperial Japanese Government up until the end of the war. 90 Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 208. 91 Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 470. 92 The “stabilization depression” was soon feared to be pushing Japan into a real depression, forcing “disinflation measures” to be eased by the Bank of Japan, while other branches of government simultaneously tried to hold inflation down. Fuji Ginkō Hyakku Nenshi, Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi, 757–59. 93 Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research, “Japanese Political Trends Affecting U.S. Position in Japan,” Report 5247, 23 May 1950, DOS, RG 59 cited in Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 225. 94 “The Deflationary Crises and the Counterpart Fund,” Kenneth D. Morrow (Chief, Programs and Statistics Division, ESS) to Marquat (Chief, Financial Division, ESS) Memorandum, January 14, 1950. Dodge Papers; Reel 9, Detroit Public Library, Michigan Burton Historical Collection; and IMES, Materials on Monetary History, vol. 25, 363–67 (363). 95 Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 123, 131. That is, reestablish Japan’s reliance on American capital investments, vis-à-vis the Draper/Johnston recommendations (above). 96 David Flath, The Japanese Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 198–202. The DBJ’s Japanese bank name remains unchanged, despite significant legal and organizational changes in 1999 and 2007. See Bytheway, Wakon gaishi, 99, 124. 97 GHQ/SCAP, History of the Nonmilitary Activities, vol. 39, 42. Unlike the RFB, however, the DBJ was not allowed to issue debentures, borrow funds, or grant loans to “cover operating expenses.” 98 See Bytheway, Wakon gaishi, 123–26. 99 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 114–19. 100 Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 225. 101 For more information regarding “special procurements” and the transformation of Japan into a free-world, capitalist bulwark, see Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 225–34, 279–85. 102 Harry Emerson Wildes, Typhoon in Tokyo: The Occupation and its Aftermath (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954), 196. 103 At what Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history,” I flirted with failure in one of my first Japanese History classes by being critical of the inflation-beating Dodge Line and making references to the reverse course. In lectures and tutorials, a heroic Dodge was described as giving the recalcitrant Japanese the “stiff medicine” they needed to restore their economic health (perhaps following Schiffer, The Modern Japanese Banking System, 73–87), but I was skeptical as the World Bank had demanded similar bureaucracy-cutting, balanced budget reforms from many developing countries during the latter half of the twentieth century, often with poor results. Some thirty years later, I feel grateful to have been able to finally publish my research on the Occupation’s monetary, financial and fiscal reforms. 104 British Pathe, “General MacArthur receives Japan’s highest honour,” FILM ID: 2778.2. June 1960. 105 Ronald Lewin, The Other Ultra (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 179–80. 106 Tsutsui, Banking Policy in Japan, 22, 122. 107 Theodore Cohen, Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 431. 108 Schonberger, Aftermath of War, 162.

References Primary sources Allan Sproul Papers. Federal Reserve Bank of New York. British Pathe. “General MacArthur receives Japan’s highest honour.” FILM ID: 2778.2, June 1960.

42

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) Records. RG331. National Archives, Washington, D.C. General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP). History of the Nonmilitary Activities of the Occupation of Japan, 1945–1951, vols. 28, 29 & 39. Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Senta, 1990. IMES (Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies—Bank of Japan), eds. Materials on Japanese Monetary History (Showa Era, 2nd Series), vols. 11, 24 & 25. Tokyo: Ministry of Finance, 1996. Nihon Ginkō Kinyū Kenkyūsho. Nihon kinyūshi shiryō: Shōwa zokuhen. Dai 11, 24, 25 kan. Ōkurashō, 1981. SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers). Nihon senryōshi: kokka zaisei. Dai 37 kan. Toshōshiryō Ka Tokubetsushiryōkei, 1978 [1951]. Secondary sources Brownlee, W. Elliot, Eisaku Ide, and Yasunori Fukagai, eds. The Political Economy of Transnational Tax Reform: The Shoup Mission to Japan in Historical Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bytheway, Simon James. Nihon keizai to gaikoku shihon: 1858–1939. Tokyo: Tosui, 2005. ———. Investing Japan: Foreign Capital, Monetary Standards, and Economic Development, 1859–2011. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. ———. Wakon gaishi: gaishikei no tōshi to kigyōshi oyobi tokushugaisha no hattasushi 1858–1939. Tokyo: Tosui, 2019. Bytheway, Simon James and Mark Metzler. Central Banks and Gold: How Tokyo, London, and New York Shaped the Modern World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Cohen, Theodore. Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Ericson, Steven J. “Japanese Agency and Business Reform in Occupied Japan: The Holding Company Liquidation Commission and Zaibatsu Dissolution.” In The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan, edited by Thomas French, 11–30. London: Routledge, 2017. Flath, David. The Japanese Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Fuji Bank. Banking in Modern Japan. Tokyo: Fuji, 1961. Fuji Ginkō. Shashin de miru Fuji Ginkō no 120 nen. Fuji Ginkō, 2002. Fuji Ginkō Chōsabu. Fuji Ginkō no hyakku nen. Fuji Ginkō, 1980. Fuji Ginkō Hachi-jū Nenshi. Fuji Ginkō hachi-jū nenshi. Fuji Ginkō, 1960. Fuji Ginkō Hyakku Nenshi. Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi. Fuji Ginkō, 1980. ———. Fuji Ginkō hyakku nenshi. Bekkan. Fuji Ginkō, 1980. Hadley, E.M. Antitrust in Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. ———. Memoir of a Trustbuster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. Hosoya, Masahiro. “Selected Aspects of Zaibatsu Dissolution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952: The Thought and Behavior of Zaibatsu Leaders, Japanese Governmental Officials and SCAP Officials.” PhD dissertation [8310502], Yale University, 1982. Kwarteng, Kwasi. War and Gold: A 500-year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt. New York: Public Affairs, 2014. Lewin, Ronald. The Other Ultra. London: Hutchinson, 1982. Metzler, Mark. Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Ohata, Takahiro. “The Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry and Economic Recovery under SCAP.” In The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan, edited by Thomas French, 119–45. London: Routledge, 2017. Petrov, Vladimir. Money and Conquest: Allied Occupation Currencies in World War II. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967. Roberts, John. G. Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, 2nd ed. New York: Weatherhill, 1989 [1973]. ———. “The ‘Japan Crowd’ and the Zaibatsu Restoration.” Japan Interpreter 12, no. 3–4 (1979): 384–411. Schaller, Michael. The American Occupation of Japan: The origins of the Cold War in Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Schiffer, Hubert F. The Modern Japanese Banking System. New York: University Publishers, 1962. Schonberger, Howard B. Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945–1952. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989.

Chapter 2: Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

43

Southard, Frank A. Jr. The Finances of European Liberation: With Special Reference to Italy. New York: Arno Press, 1978. Shoup Mission. Report on Japanese Taxation by the Shoup Mission. Tokyo: SCAP, 1949. Suzuki, Takeo. Kinyū kinkyūsochi to Dojji rain. Seimeikai Shuppanbu, 1970. Takemae, Eiji. The Allied Occupation of Japan. New York: Continuum, 2003. Tsutsui, William M. Banking Policy in Japan: American efforts at reform during the Occupation. London: Routledge, 1988. Wildes, Harry Emerson. Typhoon in Tokyo: The Occupation and its Aftermath. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954. Yasuda Kasai Kaijō. Yasuda Kasai Kaijō Hoken hyakku nenshi. Tokyo: Yasuda Kasai Kaijō, 1988. Yasuda Seimei Hoken. Hachi-jū nenshi. Yasuda Seimei Hoken, 1961. ———. Yasuda Seimei hyakku nenshi. Yasuda Seimei Hoken, 1980. ———. Yasuda Seimei 123 nenshi. Yasuda Seimei Hoken, 2003. Yasuda Hozensha. Yasuda Hōzensha to sonokankei jigyōshi. Yasuda Fudōsan, 1974.

44

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Part 2 The Political Postwar

Chapter 3 Arguing with Public Opinion: Polls and Postwar Democracy Adam Bronson How did the public opinion poll become a symbol of democracy and shape postwar political culture? This chapter addresses this question through the dynamic relationship among the Allied Occupation, the Japanese government and polling experts during the Occupation years. This period was characterized by disagreement over survey methods, the distinction between opinion research and propaganda, and the involvement of the state in polling. I argue such disagreement was not merely an ephemeral effect of the adoption of a new political technology, but indicative of how polling continued to stir up and channel public debate throughout the postwar era.

Introduction Japan is one of the most heavily polled nations in the world. Every year thousands of surveys are conducted in hopes of yielding insight into the changing values, habits and voting intentions of the Japanese population in aggregate and the countless subgroups into which it can be divided. The five largest pollsters—all affiliated with major news media corporations—regularly survey around five hundred thousand citizens in the lead-up to national elections.1 The ever-increasing frequency of calls from pollsters employing random digitdialing technology has given rise to concerns of survey fatigue driving response rates down. Today over one hundred polling firms compete for the attention of a shrinking population in an industry worth hundreds of billions of yen. Such figures hardly do justice to the significance of the opinion poll to discussions of postwar Japanese political culture. Regular reporting on fluctuating cabinet approval ratings has long been a quotidian symbol of postwar democracy. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) strategically timed Upper House elections to maximize favorable public opinion poll results throughout its long postwar reign.2 Powerful norms have surrounded the public treatment of these polls by the media and prime ministers, who have long faced pressure to step down or call a snap general election once their approval rating slips below 30 percent.3 Abe Shinzō’s seeming imperviousness to such pressure when his approval ratings dipped fed into concern over the future of democracy during his time as prime minister.4 Reconciling

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

47

norms regarding aggregate public opinion with the notion that politics in Japan is dominated by factional interests has long been generative to theories of Japanese cultural uniqueness as well as prognostications of gradual change. Contemporary debate about the political significance accorded to polls is entangled in divergent assessments of Japan’s postwar democracy. There is a telescopic quality to this discourse. A particularly influential work by the media historian Satō Takumi highlighted the Second World War and the US-led Occupation as the origin of a new understanding of public opinion and democracy of special relevance to understanding the poll-saturated present. The administration of Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō arguably demonstrated the power of poll-tested politics over ideological coherence. State-of-the-art polling techniques, postCold War political reforms and changes to the media landscape all contributed to enabling Koizumi’s electoral successes. Yet beyond these proximate developments, Satō suggested that the ideal of a democratic politics highly responsive to public opinion polls was an imperfectly realized promise bequeathed by the American Occupiers half a century earlier, hitherto stymied by structural features of Japan’s Cold War political economy.5 Satō’s argument implied postwar democracy was no longer an incomplete project or critical-normative ideal vis-à-vis the enduring legacy of wartime and prewar regimes. His conceptual history of public opinion was predicated on the notion that postwar democracy has become the taken-for-granted orthodoxy of the powers that be. It recounts how prewar ideas of “public opinion” (輿論) grounded in rational deliberation were displaced by a new understanding of “public opinion” (世論); one originating in wartime mobilization and propaganda, and further encouraged by the Americans. US Occupation officials conveyed new techniques for measuring the opinions encapsulated by this new emotional and impulsive idea of public opinion around the same time as they pushed through script reform on the Japanese written language. This changed the way the neologism used to render “public opinion” in Japanese was rendered in print. The conceptual shift in the way public opinion was understood was thus marked in writing but concealed in speech. The distinction between these two ways of translating “public opinion” (輿論／世論) from English to Japanese has been used as a framework for studies of prewar political thought that adopt an overtly conservative standpoint.6 Yet it also evoked a widespread understanding of critical theory on the Left—beyond Japan—that distinguished between qualitative “critical research” and quantitative “administrative research” supportive of the status quo.7 The classic formulation of this distinction was made by Paul Lazarsfeld, a mid-century social scientist whose entrepreneurial academic career straddled the world of market research and the Frankfurt School.8 In recent years, intellectual historians have done much to complicate this dichotomous understanding of critical and administrative research. They have done so by focusing attention on the different ways people appropriated the results and methods of empirical research in connection with different political and cultural agendas. Such work has shown that mid20th-century thinkers critical of the technocratic tendencies of mass society had a more nuanced and complex relationship with opinion polls than suggested by the category of administrative research.9 Scholarship on the historical process by which political opinion polling became commonplace in postwar Western Europe has also drawn attention to a range of ambivalent reactions and limited applications, irreducible to a stark contrast between critical opposition and whiggish embrace.10 Attention to the critical relationship between political actors and polls across the mid-20th century undermines linear and teleological narratives 48

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of “Americanization” and “modernization” while also revealing broadly comparable shifts in political culture mediated by transnational networks of social scientific expertise. With this comparative frame in mind, this chapter focuses on the history of how public opinion polls have been critically debated, interpreted and applied to different projects in postwar Japan. My intention is to elucidate the contours of a shifting field of political contestation mediated by polls. This allows me to relate cooperation and conflict between the American Occupiers and the Japanese government to the insider politics of parties and factions and the outsider politics of protest and civic activism, showing how both sides involved a range of different political actors and experts who made use of polls in different ways. Public arguments regarding the interpretation and conduct of opinion polls generated new questions—and suggested new political strategies—pertaining to the social and political changes measured, if always imperfectly, by quantitative techniques.

The Allied Occupation and Japanese public opinion research On March 25, 1947, a two-day conference was convened in the lobby of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence (Sōri Daijin Kantei, hereinafter Kantei) in Tokyo. The event brought together the worlds of journalism, academia and government to learn about the latest opinion polling techniques from American specialists who had been invited to Japan by Occupation officials. On the Japan side, the gathering included representatives from two major wire bureaus, four nationally distributed newspapers and a handful of newly established independent polling organizations, including the Public Opinion Science Association. Over a dozen Japanese social scientists and statisticians employed by universities, research institutes and the Occupation’s Civil Information and Education Division (CIE) were in attendance. They were joined by PM Yoshida Shigeru’s cabinet secretary Hayashi Jōji, the polling team in the cabinet planning office and officials in charge of research conducted in several different ministries and government offices. The expert instructors from America were Columbia sociologist Herbert Hyman, the statistician Jerome Cornfield and W. Edwards Deming—a census expert who later became renowned in Japan for his ideas regarding business management and quality control circles. Herbert Passin, the driving force behind CIE’s Public Opinion and Social Research Section (PO & SR) and far and away the most prominent foreigner in retrospective accounts of the origins of public opinion polling in Japan, was also involved in the proceedings. Like the Occupation itself, the event was very much a co-production involving American and Japanese officials. Yoshihara Kazuma attended the event as head of opinion research in the cabinet office. He later likened its historical significance to the introduction of Western anatomical science to Japan via Dutch contacts in the 18th century. He proclaimed it was the “dawn” of scientific public opinion research; a turning point that signified the end of a period of groping around in the pre-scientific dark.11 In the dark aftermath of the war, Yoshihara’s office had focused on analyzing public opinion through the flood of letters sent to the government by conscientious citizens. Prime Minister Higashikuni Naruhiko made a public appeal for such letters the day of General Douglas MacArthur’s arrival in Japan, bumping the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers from the most privileged spot on the front page of newspapers.12

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

49

Yet truly scientific knowledge of public opinion required more sophisticated methods than sorting and categorizing letters. As Gallup and Rae had argued in 1940 “one can never be sure that the letter, telegram, or petition avalanche is the product of a genuine protest, or merely the organized effort of a small but powerful pressure group parading as a majority.” 13 Their argument suggested that polls based on statistically-sound sampling techniques would better supplement free elections and a free press in the task of ascertaining the “freely expressed will of the Japanese people”—a key condition for fulfilling the objectives of the Occupation as outlined in the Potsdam Declaration. The attention and effort invested in accurately measuring and publicizing the results of such polls would also demonstrate the difference between occupied Japan, its fascist past and the totalitarian systems of the Cold War present. The public opinion research conference at the Kantei was a ceremony of knowledge transfer. It addressed sensitive issues pertaining to the rationale for the Allied Occupation and its early policy shifts. Yet its implications for the relationship between opinion research and cultural criticism extend beyond the Occupation era. Yoshihara’s reference to the “darkness before dawn” touched on this. It to alluded to the fact that the conference event was far from the beginning of public opinion research in Japan. It was rather the symbolic rebirth of this new field of study on what would now be considered truly scientific foundations. Like separate delegations of American experts in the fields of education, scientific research and government statistics; the overall staging reinforced narratives that portrayed the Americans as the harbingers of democratic enlightenment and the postwar as radically discontinuous with wartime and prewar past.14 Such narratives were not only promoted by Americans. Japanese academics like Koyama Eizō, a propaganda expert who became a leading figure in the field of opinion research, had ample reason to draw a clear line between the wartime dark age and the postwar enlightenment.15 During the war, the Japanese term for “public opinion” (yoron) frequently appeared as part of the phrase “yoron shidō”: leadership or guidance of public opinion. For example, in 1940 the Mainichi Osaka Newspaper invoked the phrase in connection with an early example of an opinion poll that aspired to scientific accuracy. An article accompanying the results of the poll, which sought to ascertain the public reaction to wartime educational reforms, explained that it was important to accurately reflect and convey “the people’s voice” so as to “contribute to the guidance of public opinion.” 16 Koyama worked to improve the effectiveness of public opinion leadership in another way. He worked in an ethnic policy research institute and wrote articles on how race science offered insight into improving the effectiveness of propaganda in Japan’s colonies. His wartime research on the empirical measurement of the effectiveness of propaganda was a springboard for his postwar study of public opinion.17 Two months after the war ended, Koyama was summoned to the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Occupation in Hibiya, where he was interviewed by three American officers about his knowledge of opinion polls and statistical sampling. He had expected to be purged from academic office, but was instead asked to become director of a new public opinion research center to be set up by the Japanese government with the blessing of CIE. Koyama later claimed that he aced his “stealth interview” because he had recently obtained a copy of Gallup and Rae’s The Pulse of Democracy from an acquaintance who had been in the US, but this downplays the degree to which he was already familiar with much of the underlying social science from his wartime propaganda work.18

50

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Koyama’s influence is still palpable in the terminology used to refer to public opinion polls. After his fateful meeting with GHQ, he faced the problem of choosing a name for the new national research organization he would head. The challenge lay in the fact that a relatively obscure and complex kanji character (輿) had been used to render “public opinion survey” (輿論調査) in Japanese. This character did not appear on a list of 1,850 frequently used kanji permitted for use in government documents by Occupation reformers who sought to simplify the Japanese written language. Koyama thus replaced it with a more common character that could conceivably be pronounced the same way and overlapped with it in meaning (世). Yet the combination of characters that resulted had negative connotations in well-known contexts. It evoked the 1882 Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, which warned members of the military against being “led astray by current opinions” (世論に惑は す). At the same time, insofar as the scientific measurement of public opinion was intended to symbolize a dramatic shift in values after the war, Koyama’s choice of name for the National Public Opinion Research Center (Kokuritsu Yoron [世論] Chōsajō) made sense.19 Prior to the establishment of a national center, the Occupation had already exacerbated the discontinuity between wartime and postwar eras was by ordering a halt to Japanese government efforts to gauge public opinion from June 1946 until the arrival of American experts the following year. This occurred after Lieutenant Colonel Donald Nugent, section chief of CIE, caught wind of an attempt by the government’s new public opinion research team to ascertain the popular reaction to the Occupation’s handling of May Day protests over food shortages. At the end of May, a member of the government’s public opinion team had contacted major newspapers, requesting they fill out and return an enclosed postcard with information on the public reaction to the protests and to General MacArthur’s controversial directive prohibiting “riotous demonstrations” (bōmin demo) in its aftermath. The Yomiuri newspaper then ran an article about being contacted by the cabinet public opinion (PO) team that came to the attention of CIE.20 While CIE had encouraged government initiatives to survey public opinion under the earlier leadership of former NBC executive Kermit Dyke, it abruptly changed course after Nugent’s arrival. The official reason for the moratorium on surveys was to allow time for experts to travel from America and instruct their Japanese counterparts on proper survey techniques, thereby guaranteeing the accuracy of results. Yet it was also likely that Nugent suspected the Japanese government sought to gather information about public opinion and make use of it to strategically distance itself from unpopular Occupation policies and directives. That the control of such information was considered crucial to the success of the Occupation was evident in its censorship policy. This policy extended beyond prohibiting overt criticism of the Occupation to encompass factual reporting on incidents that might stoke controversy. This limited the kinds of questions that could be posed by opinion researchers. The fact that researchers affiliated with the government crossed the line was particularly problematic, because it touched on wider disagreement over the degree to which the Japanese government ought to be involved in public opinion research at all. Within the Occupation bureaucracy, idealist advocates of radically deconcentrating and dispersing the power of the wartime state—with its propaganda and surveillance apparatuses in mind—clashed with realists who sought to use it as a vehicle for achieving the objectives of the Occupation and gaining advantage in the global Cold War struggle against Communism. The tension between the two sides was palpable when Nugent interrogated a Japanese official about the postcard sent to newspapers after the May Day protests. The official Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

51

responded that it was done at the request of an unknown officer in the Occupation.21 The truth of this claim remains uncertain, but it was not immediately implausible to Nugent. CIE clashed with the Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence) section (G2) of GHQ over whether to establish a division in CIE devoted public opinion-related matters. According to CIE officials who eventually won this debate, one issue was whether survey research was primarily a public-facing—and arguably propagandistic—driver of democratization or the source of information that would give the Occupiers a strategic advantage over hidden enemies—and thus might need to remain confidential.22 The latter approach to public opinion research would be readily understood by members of the public opinion team in the cabinet, which had institutional and personnel connections to the wartime Cabinet Intelligence Bureau.23 A member of G2 might have asked the cabinet PO team to poll the popular reaction to the protests without Nugent’s knowledge in order to supplement its organization’s own efforts at gathering intelligence. Japanese polling experts continued to debate the status of opinion polls long after the Occupation ended in a way that evoked these earlier cleavages over publicity and secrecy. In the 1970s the opinion researcher Nishihira Shigeki lamented the fact that the results of sampled polls commissioned by government ministries were not subject to public disclosure requirements imposed on other statistical data.24 This requirement was put in place during the Allied Occupation in response to a scandal surrounding agricultural statistics and food shortages. Experts from America were summoned and the Statistics Law (Tōkeihō) was passed in 1947. Polls were exempt however, and this led Nishihira to suspect bureaucrats were selective about the data they released. His argument that the law ought to be revised to include opinion polls touches on two different sides to the historically ambivalent relationship between the Occupation and postwar polling. Occupation authorities invested polls with much significance as a symbol of the country’s new postwar democracy, but their actions also ended up strengthening the suspicion that they were a form of manipulative propaganda.

Sampling technique and social critique While the activities of the Japanese government’s public opinion team were on hold, polling organizations that had proliferated like “bamboo sprouts after the rain” following the end of the war continued to operate, alongside the new polling divisions set up in major newspapers and wire services.25 This was a positive development for Occupation officials wary of the involvement of the government opinion in political polls, but they found many of the independent pollsters were fronts for racketeers that extorted money from their socalled “newsletter subscribers.” CIE’s PO & SR division spent much of its time monitoring the quality of polling organizations, and this work fed into the division’s study of traditional paternalistic relationships in organized crime.26 Other independent pollsters surprised the Americans with their technical accomplishments. Of particular note was the Public Opinion Science Association (Yoron Kagaku Kyōkai) credited with achieving the first accurate opinion poll of voter intentions based on a random sample in Japan.27 The association conducted a poll of voters in the run-up to the first ever election for governor of Tokyo, just 10 days after its researchers attended the conference on public opinion research at the prime minister’s residence. Their poll was based on a random

52

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

sample of five hundred voters with an impressive 95 percent response rate. The association correctly predicted the victory of the conservative Yasui Seiichirō, a former appointee to the governorship before it became an elected position, over the socialist Tagawa Daikichirō in a race decided by 6 percentage points.28 The accuracy of the association’s poll demonstrated the superiority of random sampling over other polling techniques before the practice was widely taken up in the United States. Earlier newspaper polls on Occupation reforms and Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s approval rating relied on quota sampling, an easier method of selecting poll respondents that did more to determine the demographic representativeness of the sample in advance.29 Some Japanese polling outfits that made use of quota sampling in the Tokyo election incorrectly predicted victory for Tagawa, the candidate who seemed to better reflect the democratizing mood on the eve of a general election held later that same month, producing Japan’s first cabinet headed by a socialist Prime Minister, Katayama Tetsu. The Asahi newspaper was the first major organization to follow the Association’s lead in random sampling in a poll on the Katayama administration in August 1947.30 This was still over a year before the Gallup organization adopted random sampling in response to its famously botched prediction that Harry Truman would lose to Thomas Dewey in the 1948 US presidential election. The story of the Public Opinion Science Association’s random sampling coup was recounted in a way evocative of other retrospective accounts of the legacy of the Occupation for postwar war. One of its founders suggested that its success demonstrated the ability of Japanese experts to quickly grasp and improve on American ideas and techniques, crucial to the country’s postwar prosperity.31 Yet like other postwar success stories, wartime experience also played a crucial role. The association had been founded by a group of psychologists and mathematicians who worked for the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Technology Research Institute (Kaigun Gijutsu Kenkyūjo) in the aftermath of defeat. The institute’s involvement in creating aptitude tests and control systems for the Navy was relevant to survey design and statistical sampling. Members of the institute who came together to research public opinion during the Occupation were also involved in a social psychology group that studied the spread of rumors using materials provided by the the military police corps or secret police (Kenpeitai) in the final months of the war.32 Several social scientists and writers who became prominent public intellectuals after the war were involved in this multi-disciplinary rumor research group as contract researchers. Among these, the sociologist Shimizu Ikutarō was later credited with encouraging interest in social surveys among institute-affiliated psychologists and mathematicians who went to on to found the Public Opinion Science Association.33 Other historical developments enabled the rapid turn toward randomly sampled polls after 1947. From a sampling perspective, the country was a pollster’s dream come true. The household registry system instituted by the Meiji state in the late-19th century spurred the creation of overlapping population lists. This system was instituted throughout Japan’s expanding empire. Empirical survey techniques employed in the colonial management of Taiwan stimulated the development of methods that could be applied to the population of the Japanese archipelago.34 Of greatest proximate importance was the fact that Occupied Japan had a food rationing system that maintained a mostly complete and up-to-date list of population data. In both Japan and Germany, early postwar polls relied on food rationing lists to compose statistical samples.35

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

53

Attention to the background of Japan’s pioneering Public Opinion Science Association softens some of the sharp distinctions—between wartime and postwar, state and private and Japanese and American social science—that continue to animate accounts of the origins of public opinion polls today. This need not nullify the historical significance of the visit of American experts to Japan in 1947, but it suggests we should look beyond the problem of statistical accuracy to understand it. Attention to the involvement of the sociologist Herbert Hyman is helpful in this regard. A member of the delegation of American public opinion experts to Japan in 1947, Hyman’s work had little to do with the transfer of new random sampling techniques, but it did offer encouragement to critical social survey research.36 A skeptic of whiggish narratives surrounding the rise of sampling, he argued that failures to accurately measure public opinion could not be explained away with reference to faulty research methods and sampling techniques. Failures of measurement—for example in the form of uneven response rates—were valuable because they could reveal undemocratic features of the society under investigation whether American or Japanese. Conversely, technical improvements to surveys might yield more responses while also concealing structural cleavages related to racial, class and religious difference and discrimination. More response data was not necessarily better data, even if it contributed to the statistical representativeness of a random sample. Foregrounding “the quality of the quantitative” was in tension with what would become an orthodox distinction between quantitative and qualitative research in academic sociology in Japan and the United States.37 Hyman raised this issue, prior to traveling to Japan, in a paper from 1945 that called on American public opinion researchers to pay more attention to “community background” in their work. The article drew attention to low response rates and skewed survey results from African Americans, Catholics and other minority groups in US cities, arguing that more detailed community background studies were needed to design surveys and interpret quantitative data. Instead of “traditional polling interviewers” following “a rigid schedule of questions,” Hyman called for trained field workers with “ability to obtain rapport, knowledge of the social structure, judgment of the selection of informants, ability to probe for elaborate information and initiative in conducting and interview in the absence of a guiding schedule.” 38 This could be construed as criticism of the approach of Hyman’s teacher Paul Lazarsfeld, who had honed a method of designing free-response interview questions to elicit data necessary to formulate better questions and interpret quantitative results.39 His technically sophisticated approach to survey design put fewer demands on field interviewers, but it was not adapted to diagnosing the kinds of structural problems that Hyman sought to illuminate. The distinction between these two different approaches to survey design and field research was relevant to Hyman’s experience in Japan. He first traveled to the country as a member of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey team in October 1945. Like its counterpart in Germany, the survey team sought to measure the effects of the Allied firebombing campaign on enemy morale. The sensitive context in which the survey was conducted—just a few months after the war and into the Occupation—was incorporated into its design. Survey respondents were initially contacted by “Japanese-speaking Caucasian officers” because “it was felt that, at first contact, Japanese ancestry personnel in American uniforms might arouse suspicion of Kempei or civil police trickery.” 40 Officers and civilian experts of Japanese ancestry then conducted the actual interviews. The fact that the survey concerned the

54

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

aerial bombing campaign was carefully concealed from respondents, and questions explicitly related to bombing only appeared toward the end of interview.41 References to “Kempei trickery” in the final report drew a sharp contrast between Japanese wartime authorities and the American Occupiers, but other sections drew attention to similarities between the two sides and acknowledged that Japanese wartime propaganda was “skillful” and “reasonably successful until it was contradicted by events”—most notably the escalation of the devastating Allied firebombing of Japanese cities.42 Beyond this specific focus, the report suggested that the Occupiers had a lesson to learn from their Japanese counterparts about the limited effectiveness of propaganda that diverged from social reality, no matter how skillfully designed. Ikeuchi Hajime, a former researcher at the Navy Technology Institute and founder of the Public Opinion Science Association, emphasized the difference between wartime, Germaninfluenced efforts to ascertain the degree to which propaganda effectively shaped public opinion, and American efforts to accurately measure public opinion as a spontaneous expression of the popular will—in line with the democratic demands of the Potsdam Declaration.43 Hyman’s conception was different from Ikeuchi’s characterization of American social research. He conceived public opinion research as means to diagnose impediments to democracy, rather than democratic in itself. This attitude explains why Hyman remained neutral in the controversy between CIE and G2 over the locus of public opinion research division in GHQ when he returned to Japan in 1947. He occupied a critical academic standpoint that resisted treating public opinion research as either propaganda or clandestine intelligence. The Occupation context heightened the tension between these two poles, complicating Hyman’s insistence on the importance of background community study. Early-Occupation polls attracted attention to the issues they were about even when the results were unsurprising. When the cabinet PO team’s first opinion poll revealed that most people had not read the government’s first economic policy white paper in 1946, the novelty of conducting a poll on this subject was newsworthy and managed to drum up a degree of belated interest in government policy.44 In this context, the involvement of CIE’s PO & SR division in village surveys that sought to survey attitudes toward land reform could appear problematic. Did selecting villages with minority Burakumin and Ainu communities long subject to discrimination exaggerate popular approval of such reforms for propaganda purposes? Conversely, an academic study conducted by Japanese researchers soon after the Occupation ended was far more critical of the negative side-effects of Occupation reforms, but the “typical village” in this study was more homogenous than the sample selected by CIE.45 Histories of social surveying in the United States recount a shift from a reformist focus on poverty and minority communities in the progressive era (1890s–1920s) to growing popular and academic interest in studies of “normal” and “average” communities—the target of public opinion polls—in the middle decades of the 20th century.46 American involvement in social research in Japan complicated the distinction between the descriptive and normative dimensions of these different approaches to social surveying, and this set the stage for intense postwar disagreement over the treatment and definition of minority populations, several of which were accused by critics of the Occupation of being privileged interest groups. A US-backed literacy survey conducted in 1949 provides a different example due to the implicit criticism it conveyed toward the Occupation. The survey was widely hailed as a breakthrough in the application of sophisticated random sampling techniques on a national Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

55

scale, but it was also notable because the evidence of Japanese reading and writing proficiency it collected served as a basis for critical discussion of Occupation reform proposals within limits acceptable to the authorities. The statistics were used to justify rejecting the more radical American proposals to overhaul the Japanese writing system, although without entirely undermining the case for limited reform and greater attention to functional literacy in the educational system.47 While polls about cabinet approval ratings and Occupation reforms might be a flimsy basis for democratic legitimacy in themselves, the literacy survey helped establish the idea that sampled data could act as a medium for open-ended argument, as part of a wider culture of democratic debate. The Occupation did not introduce public opinion polls and surveys to Japan. The significance of the role it played in transmitting polling techniques to the country was arguably exaggerated as part of broader efforts to endow war, defeat and occupation with a meaning complementary to the strategic relationship forged between the two countries during the early Cold War. Yet partly because the Occupation was internally divided, it offered up opportunities for social scientific research and intellectual exchange irreducible to this geopolitical rationale. This encouraged both advocates and skeptics of opinion polls to pay attention to how they reflected and shaped postwar public culture in critical and affirmative ways.

The postwar culture of polling Public opinion research became a truly international discipline after the Second World War. Its claims to scientific respectability were predicated in part on the notion that its methods were applicable across borders, rather than specific to American culture. The internationalization of the discipline took a step forward in 1950, when the newly founded World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) held its third conference on the outskirts of Chicago. Academics, government and municipal researchers, professional pollsters, journalists and corporate executives based in the US, Britain, Germany, Denmark and Norway presented. This was also the first WAPOR conference attended by a delegate from Japan. Though still occupied by the Allied powers, the country played an important role at the conference. Its presence signaled the international bonafides of this research beyond Europe and the United States. Koyama Eizō, who had become the first director of the National Public Opinion Research Institute in 1949, was in attendance. Herbert Hyman was a discussant for two of the more academic panels. CIE’s Herbert Passin delivered a presentation that hailed the rapid progress of the field of opinion research in Japan as evidence of the advance of democracy in that country.48 Japan was more than just a symbol of the global validity of public opinion research after the war. The country became a major hub of polling activity after the Occupation ended. The number of opinion polls conducted in the country grew from 276 in 1951 to 2,141 in 1960.49 With the support of the government, academia and business, Japanese pollsters also made important contributions to polling research. These contributions ranged from new statistical sampling and modeling techniques to insights into how sociolinguistic factors affected response rates. In international comparisons, the most striking characteristic of Japanese polling institutions was their commitment to longitudinal studies—surveys repeated at regular intervals

56

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

to track changes over time. Japanese pollsters conducted a remarkably large number of such studies domestically on reading preferences, family planning, awareness of human rights and many other topics.50 They pioneered the use of this technique for international comparative research in the World Survey of Youth Attitudes, conducted at five-year intervals since 1957. Japanese attitude surveys were also acknowledged as important precedents for the well-known World Values Survey.51 Longitudinal studies conducted over the course of multiple decades pose special problems for researchers. Care must be taken to pose questions that remain relevant and clear over the long term, since even minor changes to the wording of questions compromise the comparability of sample sets. Future demographic changes that might impinge on how sound samples are collected must also be taken into account. Statistical fastidiousness is necessary to ensure a high probability that change registered over time is not the product of random variation. These challenges are further complicated when such studies are undertaken on an international scale, across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The social psychologist Minami Hiroshi considered several of these longitudinal studies, focused on “national attitudes” (kokumin ishiki) and “national character” (kokuminsei), to contribute to a long-standing discourse on Japanese cultural uniqueness (Nihonjinron). He acknowledged that the results sometimes clashed with popular theories of Japanese collectivism, but they also offered up evidence that Japan followed a trajectory of cultural change that was qualitatively different from that of Western Europe and North America. In the 1970s, this supported the theory that the economically advanced post-industrial nations were converging on a “post-materialist” value system from different directions. In the West this manifested itself in the form of survey responses that suggested a growing desire for belonging to a community. Surveys conducted in Japan provided evidence for gradually increasing individualism. Together they suggested a way of reconciling cultural particularism with the universalist pretensions of Cold War modernization theory.52 Yet skepticism of the authenticity of responses to questionnaires bolstered the appeal of longitudinal studies long before this theory of post-materialist convergence was fully articulated. Polling experts voiced concern that surveys on controversial, timely subjects simply tracked what respondents believed pollsters wanted to hear. In some respects, such concerns overlapped with the famous theory proposed by the German social scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, who argued that the mass media contributed to maintaining a social environment in which large numbers of people withdrew within a “spiral of silence,” impeding efforts to discover majority views on controversial issues.53 This theory transmitted themes of repression and manipulation evocative of anti-totalitarian critique to a different social and political milieu. The mass media manipulated the social environment in such a way that the majority would spontaneously choose to repress its own views. In the 1950s, public intellectuals and sociologists in Japan were also wary of the sway of the mass media over the general population.54 Criticism of its influence was in some respects a reformulation of the wartime paradigm of treating polls and surveys as measurements of the effectiveness of government propaganda. One key difference was that the state now outsourced some of these functions to media corporations in order to evade oversight. For example, when the government dismantled the National Public Opinion Research Institute in 1954, many of its remaining associates joined Central Research Services (Chūō Chōsasha), a new organization formed out of a merger between Koyama’s Institute and the survey division of the relatively conservative, pro-government Jiji Tsūshin news agency. This development Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

57

did not go unnoticed by critics, who suggested polls released by this organization were an extension of the LDP government’s media strategy in the 1960s, which evolved in response to massive protests against the revised US-Japan Security Treaty at the start of that decade.55 Critics also argued that Japanese culture stood in the way of efforts to measure public opinion as a variable not totally determined by other socioeconomic indicators.56 They pointed to efforts to understand the culturally mediated context of interviews and written questionnaires as evidence. Japanese respondents were reluctant to flatly answer “no” to questions, and surveyors had to avoid literally translating multiple-choice questions from other languages that included this as an option.57 Because longitudinal studies focused on change over time, it was easier to correct for different baseline cultural assumptions regarding the act of answering an interviewer, filling out a questionnaire, or interacting with the media in other ways. Even if they were not a part of a longitudinal study, early opinion polls in Occupied Japan were publicly interpreted as a snapshot of a people in transition. This was true of the earliest debate in the Diet focused on the results of a questionnaire—in this case on the controversial question of eliminating the emperor-centered national holiday Foundation Day (Kigensetsu). In response to a poll conducted by the cabinet PO office indicating a degree of popular support for retaining the holiday in 1948, the socialist representative Inomata Kōzō argued: And as for movements of public opinion, well I think public opinion requires leadership for a time. Unless you gather statistics after endowing the masses with the right consciousness, they generally lag behind. Clinging to old customs is an expression of human sentiments, so I don’t put much weight in this public opinion poll. I rather think that in order to instill a new national ideal, we— tasked with leading—have a duty as members of this committee to consider the meaning of this holiday and its place in the lives of the people.58 The holiday was eliminated during the brief period of the Occupation the Socialist Party was in government. The idea that polls symbolized a new form of respect for democratic principles and scientific methods after World War Two did not mean they immediately carried weight in policy discussions. Two decades later, the conservative LDP Prime Minister Satō Eisaku revisited the Foundation Day issue in response to growing movement on the Right.59 Although he was backed by much data from polls, petitions and public hearings that showed support for reestablishing the holiday, he nonetheless failed to pass a bill to this effect in 1965. Criticism of Satō for following rather than leading public opinion during his tenure as prime minister was not limited to opponents of reviving this imperial holiday on the Left. The conservative political thinker Kōsaka Masataka compared him unfavorably to his predecessor Yoshida Shigeru, who seemed more willing to challenge the views of the majority.60 It was not only conservatives who criticized their own camp for following public opinion. On the Left, Sakamoto Yoshikazu drew on an array of seemingly contradictory public opinion poll results related to the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty to excoriate the Socialist Party for failing to transform growing pacifist sentiment into a politically viable form of progressive patriotism.61 Sakamoto was Kōsaka’s opponent in a prominent debate over the degree to which Cold War neutrality could be squared with realist geopolitical strategy. His critical use of opinion polls also provided evidence that major voices on the Left were also 58

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

lending support to a realist approach to electoral politics as well. This went beyond simply lending support for positions that polled well. When political parties emerged in the latter half of the 1960s that tried to stake out a moderate position on the left between the Japan Socialist Party and the conservative LDP, they were accused of being unprincipled “public opinion poll parties” (yoron chōsa seitō).62 Attention to the use of opinion polls as both a source of evidence for political arguments and as a symbol of weak or unprincipled political leadership in the 1960s and 1970s encourages us to look beyond the structural accounts of postwar politics focused on intra-party factions and used to justify electoral reforms in the 1990s.63 Such accounts were initially predicated on the notion that the political dominance of the factionally-divided LDP was connected to the incomplete modernization of Japanese society. As Japanese society became more modern, the LDP would need become an increasingly modern, centralized and democratically accountable political party. After the powerful and scandal-ridden LDP power broker Tanaka Kakuei resigned as prime minister in 1974, the reformist Miki Takeo promised to end political factionalism and finally realize of “a true politics of public opinion” (shin no yoron seiji)—a slogan he had first invoked during the Second World War.64 However, while Miki managed to prolong his time in government by appealing to the court of public opinion against factional interests within the LDP supportive of Tanaka, he was widely considered a disappointment. Thus the actual outcome of Miki’s tenure as prime minister offered encouragement to those who now believed the long-standing narrative of political modernization was outdated in a “postmodern” world. Yet they too made creative use of polls to make their case. The student radical turned LDP “brain” Kōyama Ken’ichi drew on public opinion data to work out a theory of Japanese pluralism critical of Miki’s notion that factionalism was a problem to be overcome through modernization. He argued that LDP was superior to so-called “modern” political parties on the left that imposed a greater degree of ideological conformity. Because the party was factionally divided and ideologically inconsistent, it could better appeal to educated yet politically-apathetic (“post-materialist”) voters who responded to polls in ways suggesting dissatisfaction with the conventional distinction between Left and Right. Kōyama supported reforms intended to realize intra-party democracy within the LDP, but he argued that they needed to preserve the “value pluralism” that gave it an advantage in post-growth Japan.65 His approach to reform was clearly at odds with Miki’s effort to use public leverage from outside his party to eliminate factionalism within. It also showed how questionnaires that had been used to gauge the progress of a gradual cultural shift associated with a modernization narrative could be critically reinterpreted in a way that stood that narrative on its head.

Conclusion Advocates of polls argued that popular sovereignty had to be grounded in an objective understanding of how the people were gradually changing over time—as the wartime state receded into the past—rather than based on momentary expressions of panic or a mass media feedback loop. Careful longitudinal studies conducted over decades were called for, rather than snapshot polls of popular views of hot button issues. Cultural issues that could provide evidence of a gradual, generational cultural shift in a clear direction towards or even

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

59

beyond modernity were invested with special significance because they were more amenable to longitudinal study. This was also true of the issue over whether to revise the 1947 constitution. Close attention to newspaper polls on the constitution showed views had shifted back and forth several times since the 1950s, great fluctuations of public attention to the issue from the 1960s to the 1990s, and more sensitivity to the latest geopolitical developments than an approach focused on gradual changes of value would suggest. This did not stop commentators from trying again and again to synthesize these results into a coherent, linear narrative of gradual democratic maturation—with the endpoint in a stable consensus one way or the other.66 While too much focus to the day-by-day fluctuation of opinion polls may encourage political cynicism, the variability of polls also opened a space for creative criticism and improvisation. Conversely, fastidious attention to rigorous longitudinal polls that looked beyond ephemeral political issues made sense when memories of totalitarianism were readily evoked, but it also put certain kinds of politics on hold, relegated to a future when Japan had become more completely “modern.” The only way to steer a course between these pitfalls is to make critical use of polls, and this requires attention to the history of not only how they became a taken-for-granted part of political culture but also how they were put to use in the creative political arguments that shaped culture over time.

Notes 1

Nishihira Shigeki, Yoron o sagashi-motomete (Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō, 2009): 147. Saitō Jun, Jimintō chōki seiken no seiji keizaigaku (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2010), 87–89. 3 For an account of the postwar history of public opinion in Japan more focused on the establishment of such norms within the political process, see Yukio Maeda, “Changes in Public Opinion polling: How Newspaper Polls Gained Political Clout,” Social Science Japan Journal 22, no. 2 (2019): 261–70. 4 Watari Eitarō, “Ronpyō: Media no yoron chōsa ni motozuku ‘naikaku shijiritsu hōdō’ no mondaiten” Nara sangyō daigaku chiiki kōkyōgaku sōgō kenkyūjo nenpō 1 (March 2011): 105–13. 5 Satō Takumi, Yoron to seron (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2008). 6 Nishibe Susumu, Nakae Chōmin (Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshinsha, 2013), 110–23 7 For a nuanced account of the distinction between administrative and critical traditions of public opinion research, see Slavko Splichal, “’Public opinion’ and the controversies in communication science” Media, Culture and Science 9 (1987): 237–61. 8 See for example the varied treatment of social issues pertaining to class, gender and race in Sarah Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Adam Bronson, One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016). 9 See for example the Frankfurt School’s rediscovered contribution to public opinion research in postwar Germany, Friedrich Pollock and Theodor W. Adorno, Group Experiment and Other Writings; The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 10 Laura Dumond Beers, “Whose Opinion? Changing Attitudes Towards Opinion Polling in British politics, 1937–1964” Twentieth Century British History 17, No.2 (2006): 177–205. Anja Kruke and Benjamin Ziemann, “Observing the Sovereign: Opinion Polls and the Restructuring of the Body Politic in West Germany, 1945–1990” in Engineering Society edited by Kerstin Bruckweh and Richard Wetzell (London: Palgrave, 2012): 234–51. Wim De Jong and Harm Kaal, “Mapping the Demos: The Scientisation of the Political, Electoral Research and Dutch Political Parties, c. 1900–1980” Contemporary European History 26, no. 1 (2017): 111–38. 11 Makita Hiroshi, “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei” Seikei kenkyū 19, no. 3 (1983): 128–29. 12 Asahi shinbun, “Chokusetsu min’i gochōshu” (Aug 31, 1945), 1. 13 George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), 26 2

60

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

14

On these delegations, see R. W. Home and Morris F. Low “Postwar Scientific Intelligence Missions to Japan” Isis 84, no. 3 (1993): 527–37. 15 On Koyama, see Barak Kushner, The Thought War (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Ethnic Engineering: Scientific Racism and Public Opinion Surveys in Midcentury Japan,” positions 8, no. 2 (2000): 499–529. Banno Tōru, Teikoku Nihon to jinruigakusha (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2005) 403–68 16 Nishihira Shigeki, Yoron o sagashi-motomete, 82. On wartime public opinion surveys, see Makita Hiroshi, “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei” 534–46. 17 Morris-Suzuki, “Ethnic Engineering,”501–13. 18 Miura Keiji notes that Koyama did however admit the relevance of his social survey research background in the preface of a book on polling he published in the 1950s. Miura Keiji, “Koyama Eizō to Nihon kōho kyōkai,” Kōhō (May 1997): 5–17 19 Nishihira, Yoron o sagashi-motomete, 1–2, 7–8, 40–41. Nishihira considers examples from the wartime years that suggest this semantic shift predated postwar script reform. 20 Kawashima Takane, “Sengo yoron chōsa kotohajime (1),” Media-shi kenkyū 2 (February 1995): 49–65. 21 Kawashima, “Sengo yoron chōsa kotohajime (1).” 22 On the rivalry between CIE and G2 as regards public opinion, see for example Bennet, Paternalism in the Japanese Economy and Yoshida Jun, “Senryōgun to Nihon no yoron chōsa,” NHK Hōsō bunka chōsa kenkyū nenpō 39 (30 January 1994), 165–66. 23 Makita, “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei,” 549–50. 24 Nishihira Shigeki, Yoron han’ei no hōhō (Tokyo: Seishin Shobō, 1978). 25 Iwamoto Hiroshi, Yoron chōsa to wa nani darō ka (Tokyo: Iwanmi Shoten, 2015), 14–29. 26 This was the basis for John W. Bennett and Iwao Ishino, Paternalism in the Japanese Economy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), 3–24. 27 See the timeline in Yoshida Jun, “Senryōgun to Nihon no yoron chōsa” 187. 28 Makita, “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei,” 571–72. 29 Nishihira Shigeki, “Chōsasha no shakaishi—Makita Minoru-shi—sono 3: Yoron kagaku kyōkai no setsuritsu to yoron chōsa,” Shijō chōsa (278) 2008, 30. 30 Yoshida Jun, “Senryōgun to Nihon no yoron chōsa” 187. 31 Makita, “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei,” 573. 32 Adam Bronson, War and the latent public: Shimizu Ikutarō on rumours and public opinion in transwar Japan, 1937–1960,” Global Intellectual History (5 September 2020): 9–11. Satō Kenji, Ryūgen higo: Uwasa-banashi o yomitoku sahō (Tokyo: Yūshindō, 1995), 60–74. 33 Nishihira, “Chōsasha no shakaishi,” 29. 34 Satō Masahiro, “Tōkei chōsa no keifu—shokuminchi ni okeru tōkei chōsa shisutemu,” in “Teikoku” Nihon no gakuchi, v. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006), 179–204. 35 Nishihira, Yoron o sagashi-motomete, 100–1. 36 Okumura Genki, “Sengo senryōki ni okeru Haiman no chōsa kenkyū,” Soshioroji 53, no. 2 (October 2008): 91–106. 37 Satō Kenji, “Ryōteki / shitsuteki hōhō no tairitsu-teki rikai ni tsuite, ”Nihon toshi shakaigaku nenpō 14 (1996): 5–15. 38 Herbert Hyman, “Community Background in Public Opinion Research” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 40, no. 4 (1945), 411–13. Originally presented in September 1944. 39 Okumura, Sengo senryōki ni okeru Haiman no chōsa kenkyū,” 96. 40 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale (Washington: Morale Division, 1947), 160. 41 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing, 161. 42 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing, 135. 43 Bronson, “War and the Latent Public,” 11–12. 44 Takatsuki Tōichi, “Sengo yoron chōsa hishi kōhen,” Bōsei 10, no. 12 (1979): 116–17. 45 Imanishi Kinji, Mura to ningen (Tokyo: Shin-hyōronsha, 1952). 46 Sarah Igo, The Averaged American, 6–17. 47 Sumi Tomoyuki, “’Nihonjin no yomikaki nōryoku chōsa’ (1948) no saikenshō,” Tenri daigaku gakuhō 56, no. 2 (February 2005), 105–24.

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

61

48

World Association for Public Opinion Research Records, 1947–2001, Box 009, Folder 6:30, UNC / Duke Special Collections. 49 Takatsuki, “Sengo yoron chōsa hishi kōhen,” 117. 50 See the list in Nishihira, Yoron o sagashi-motomete, 188. 51 Ronald Inglehart, Silent Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 108–10. 52 Minami Hiroshi, Nihonjinron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006), 314–15. 53 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 54 Bronson, “War and the Latent Public,” 13. Katō Shūichi, “Masu komi wa yoron o tsukuru ka,” Chūō Kōron (May 1959): 46–49. 55 Hara Toshio argues this in his pseudonymously published Desuku nikki. See the discussion in Nezu Tomohiko, Sengo Nihon Jānarizumu no shisō (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2019), 25–92. 56 The impact of the LDP politician Ishida Hirohide’s warning in 1963 that the Socialist Party would soon overtake his party is evidence for the widespread assumption that objective socioeconomic statistics trumped opinion poll data. The fact that this influential argument was almost entirely based on the demographic shift from rural agricultural to urban industrial and service sectors of the economy showed that if opinions were in anyway worth understanding as independent variables, they had to be carefully teased out through longitudinal study. Ishida Hirohide, “Hoshutō no bijon,” Chūō Kōron (August 1963). 57 Nishihira, Yoron han’ei no hōhō. 58 “Dai-2 kokkai shūgiin bunka iinkai dai-4-gō (2 April 1948),” Kokkai giroku kensaku shisutemu, accessed March 17, 2022. https://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/txt/100205069X00419480402/0 59 Kenneth Ruoff, The People’s Emperor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center), 160–82. 60 Kōsaka Masataka, Saishō Yoshida Shigeru (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron, 2006), 77–162. 61 Sakamoto Yoshikazu, “Kakushin nashonarizumu shiron” in Heiwa kokka no aidentiti, edited by Sakai Tetsuya (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016): 112–28. 62 Tomita Nobuo, “Seiji rinen naki ‘seikyō itchi’ rosen—Kō kyōsan ronsō to san’insen to no kanren nit suite,” Kaikakusha 174 (September 1974): 35–42. 63 Sasaki Takeshi relates a long-standing structural analysis of LDP factionalism—as an adaptation to the postwar political system—to contingent post-Cold War reforms in Sasaki Takeshi, Seiji kaikaku 1800-nichi no shinjitsu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1999), 12–20. The mixed results of electoral reforms have led to important revisions to this analysis that take into account the history of earlier efforts at reform, rather than seeing factionalism as a direct outcome of the electoral system. Ellis S. Krauss and Robert Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 100–127. Yet a parsimonious explanation of postwar political dynamics, focused on the relationship between LDP and its kōenkai supporter groups, cannot fully account for marked shifts in public opinion vis. the political process across the period of LDP dominance. This requires more attention to public debate, including the wider reception of intra-party arguments over the future of the LDP analyzed in Nakakita Kōji, Jimintō seiji no hen’yō (Tokyo: NHK Books, 2014). 64 Quoted in Muramatsu Genta, “Miki Takeo no seijiteki hatsuwa to sono suikō katei,” Daigakushi kiyō 14 (March 2010): 103–4. 65 Nakakita, Jimintō seiji no hen’yō, 69–105. 66 Sakaiya Shirō, Kenpō to yoron (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2017).

References Asahi shinbun. “Chokusetsu min’i gochōshu.” August 31, 1945, morning edition, 1. Banno Tōru. Teikoku Nihon to jinruigakusha. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2005. Beers, Laura Dumond. “Whose Opinion? Changing Attitudes Towards Opinion Polling in British politics, 1937–1964” Twentieth Century British History 17, No.2, 2006: 177–205. Bennett, John W., and Iwao Ishino. Paternalism in the Japanese Economy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963. Bronson, Adam. One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. ———. “War and the latent public: Shimizu Ikutarō on rumours and public opinion in transwar Japan, 1937–1960.” Global Intellectual History. (September 5, 2020): 1–19.

62

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Gallup, George and Rae, Saul Forbes. The Pulse of Democracy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940. Iwamoto, Hiroshi. Yoron chōsa to wa nani darō ka. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015. Home, R. W. and Low, Morris F. “Postwar Scientific Intelligence Missions to Japan.” Isis 84, no. 3 (1993): 527–37. Hyman, Herbert. “Community Background in Public Opinion Research” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 40, no. 4 (1945), 411–13. Igo, Sarah. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Inglehart, Ronald. Silent Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Imanishi, Kinji. Mura to ningen. Tokyo: Shin-hyōronsha, 1952. Ishida, Hirohide. “Hoshutō no bijon.” Chūō kōron. August 1963: 88–97. Jong, Wim De and Kaal, Harm. “Mapping the Demos: The Scientisation of the Political, Electoral Research and Dutch Political Parties, c. 1900–1980.” Contemporary European History 26, I (2017): 111–38. Kawashima, Takane. “Sengo yoron chōsa kotohajime (1).” Media-shi kenkyū 2 (February 1995): 49–65. Kōsaka, Masataka. Saishō Yoshida Shigeru. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron, 2006. Krauss, Ellis S. and Pekkanen, Robert. The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Kruke, Anja and Ziemann, Benjamin. “Observing the Sovereign: Opinion Polls and the Restructuring of the Body Politic in West Germany, 1945–1990.” In Engineering Society, edited by Kerstin Bruckweh and Richard Wetzell, 234–51. London: Palgrave, 2012. Kushner, Barak. The Thought War. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006. Maeda, Yukio. “Changes in Public Opinion polling: How Newspaper Polls Gained Political Clout.” Social Science Japan Journal 22, no. 2 (2019): 261–70. Makita, Hiroshi. “Yoron chōsa no hatten katei.” Seikei kenkyū 19, no. 3 (1983): 534–74. Minami, Hiroshi. Nihonjinron. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Miura, Keiji. “Koyama Eizō to Nihon kōho kyōkai.” Kōhō (May 1997): 5–17. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Ethnic Engineering: Scientific Racism and Public Opinion Surveys in Midcentury Japan.” positions 8, no. 2 (2000): 499–529. Muramatsu Genta. “Miki Takeo no seijiteki hatsuwa to sono suikō katei.” Daigakushi kiyō 14 (March 2010): 97–169. Nakakita, Kōji. Jimintō seiji no hen’yō. Tokyo: NHK Books, 2014. Nezu, Tomohiko. Sengo Nihon Jānarizumu no shisō. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2019. Nishibe, Susumu. Nakae Chōmin. Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshinsha, 2013. Nishihira, Shigeki. Yoron han’ei no hōhō. Tokyo: Seishin Shobō, 1978. ———. Yoron o sagashi-motomete. Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō, 2009. Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. The Spiral of Silence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Okumura, Genki. “Sengo senryōki ni okeru Haiman no chōsa kenkyū.” Soshioroji 53, no. 2 (October 2008): 91–106. Ruoff, Kenneth. The People’s Emperor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. Saitō, Jun. Jimintō chōki seiken no seiji keizaigaku. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2010 Sakaiya, Shirō. Kenpō to yoron. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2017 Sakamoto, Yoshikazu. “Kakushin nashonarizumu shiron.” In Heiwa kokka no aidentiti, edited by Sakai Tetsuya. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016 Sasaki, Takeshi. Seiji kaikaku 1800-nichi no shinjitsu. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1999 Satō, Masahiro. “Tōkei chōsa no keifu—shokuminchi ni okeru tōkei chōsa shisutemu.” In “Teikoku” Nihon no gakuchi, vol. 5. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Satō, Takumi. Yoron to seron. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2008. Satō, Kenji. “Ryōteki / shitsu-teki hōhō no tairitsu-teki rikai ni tsuite.” Nihon toshi shakaigaku nenpō 14 (1996): 5–15. ———. Ryūgen higo: Uwasa-banashi o yomitoku sahō. Tokyo: Yūshindō, 1995. Splichal, Slavko. “’Public opinion’ and the controversies in communication science.” Media, Culture and Science 9 (1987): 237–61. Sumi, Tomoyuki. “’Nihonjin no yomikaki nōryoku chōsa’ (1948) no saikenshō.” Tenri daigaku gakuhō 56, no. 2 (February 2005): 105–24.

Chapter 3: Polls and Postwar Democracy

63

Tomita, Nobuo. “Seiji rinen naki ‘seikyō itchi’ rosen—Kō kyōsan ronsō to san’insen to no kanren nit suite.” Kaikakusha 174 (September 1974): 35–42. United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale. Washington: Morale Division, 1947. Watari, Eitarō. “Ronpyō: Media no yoron chōsa ni motozuku ‘naikaku shijiritsu hōdō’ no mondaiten.” Nara sangyō daigaku chiiki kōkyōgaku sōgō kenkyūjo nenpō 1 (March 2011): 105–13. Yoshida, Jun. “Senryōgun to Nihon no yoron chōsa.” NHK Hōsō bunka chōsa kenkyū nenpō 39 (January 30, 1994): 165–66.

64

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 4 Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right James Babb Instead of the standard division of postwar Japanese political history into three periods—early postwar, postwar and post-postwar—it can be argued that it is better to make the simpler and more dynamic distinction between the rise of the left up to the 1970s and then the rise and dominance of the New Right from the late 1980s onwards. Most historians of the postwar period tend to focus on cultural continuity or gradual change but such narratives mask dramatic changes so that the meaning of left and right, and even what it means to be Japanese, has seen a much more radical shift overtime during the period than most historians and certainly most Japanese seem willing to acknowledge. Looking at the change in the left and right in Japanese postwar history helps to make more sense of key events and obvious shifts in the political landscape overtime than can be understood through standard historical accounts of postwar Japan.

Introduction When I first came to Japan in 1980 as a university student, Japanese students were strongly influenced by the ideas of the political left. The word feudal (hōken) was used to discuss what they viewed as outdated traditional practices, drawing for the most part unconsciously on earlier Marxist debates. Few young people admitted to supporting the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In contrast, in 2019, when I began to work at a Japanese university for the first time in many years, all the young people I met demonstrated immense pride in Japan rather than being critical of it. At first, they would invariably ask if I like Japan and seemed to crave reassurance that Japan was a great and special place. It is not that students in 1980 did not love Japan, with some exceptions, but that my recent conversations with young people focused on nationalistic pride. At the time, Abe Shinzō was still prime minister and his book Towards a Beautiful Country (Utsukushii kuni e), which he published in 2006 during his rise to power, was in the background, in sharp contrast to the ideas of the political left in the 1970s.1 There is a clear explanation for this shift from left to right among young people. In explaining it, it is necessary to rethink the periodization of what is meant by postwar Japan.

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

65

Most scholars divide the postwar into early postwar, the postwar and the post-postwar.2 From the point of view of political history, early postwar is mainly the Allied Occupation period (1945–1952) and its aftermath up to 1955. There has been a tendency on both the Right and the Left to emphasize the role of the US and the Occupation authorities in this period when in fact internal political dynamics were more important. The postwar period can be viewed as the period from 1955 to 1993 or the so-called 1955 system of the LDP as the ruling party and the JSP as the main opposition party. This period has often been portrayed as static when in fact the underlying dynamics were fluid. The post-postwar period is the period since 1993 on which the focus of most scholarship has been on the aftermath of the bubble economy and the changes in Japanese politics away from the 1955 system. It may be, however, that there is a simpler distinction might be made between the rise of the Left up to the 1970s and then the rise the Right until it has come to dominate Japanese politics today. That is, rather than focus on cultural continuity or gradual change, it is important to point out the nature of political change in Japan. The meaning of left and right in Japan, and even what it means to be Japanese, has seen a much more radical transformation over time during the postwar era than most historians and certainly most Japanese might believe. The Left shifted from the prewar old guard immediately after the war to far-left socialist activists by the 1950s. The socialist Left attempted to expand its appeal to a wider constituency but also had the challenge of new competitors on the center-left in the 1960s and 1970s. The Old Right of prewar Japan was reincorporated into the establishment to a degree but it was in the 1970s at the peak of the Left, that the New Right emerged. There was then a revival of a modernized Old Right under Nakasone but more important was the growth and increasing dominance of what might be called the New-New Right from the mid-1990s onwards so that it now dominates Japanese politics. For reasons that will be explained below, the Left rose and fell without becoming the predominant political force in Japanese politics even if it was close to doing so at key junctures. The most persuasive argument explaining why the JSP failed can be found in the 1986 Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism by Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, which makes the most sense in this context. Przeworski and Sprague argue that Marx’s thesis that the proletariat would become the majority as capitalism advanced and industrialization progressed has empirically been shown to be incorrect. The proportion of industrial workers has tended to peak at around 40 percent of the work force even in the most industrialized nations, after which the service sector of the economy has tended to become predominant while industry declines. This suggests that there is a natural limit to the size of left-wing political parties based on the working-class beyond which it must appeal to other groups in society to achieve an electoral majority, including small business owners and farmers. The Left is also more successful when support for it is concentrated in one party so that when support is split between a socialist left and communist left in the form of two substantial political parties, the Left as a whole is less successful politically. In Japan, the socialists were narrowly focused on the working-class and the Left as a whole was riven into disparate parties and factions. The relevance of this discussion for Japan might seem unclear. It is often assumed that Japan is a “traditional” country that is inherently conservative. This is a common prejudice that assigns any non-Western country to the category of exotic and traditional. In fact, Japan has been among the most modern nations for most of the modern era. This fetishism of the notion of traditional Japan can cause one to overlook the key role played by the Left in postwar history and to see the current dominance of the conservative Right as natural when 66

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

it was the outcome of the political process shaped by the interaction of conservatives with the political Left. The postwar political Left was as strong in Japan as in most major industrial democracies, including France, Italy, Germany and the UK. It is true that the Left in Japan never gained national political power, with one or two short-lived exceptions, to the extent that the Left did in Western Europe. However, the reasons for the lack of success at the national level will be explained below. At the same time, the Left influenced the pace and nature of change in Japan for the first few decades of the postwar era. The conservatives recognized the threat of the Left and were compelled to respond. Certainly, the Left was much more of a political force in Japan than in the United States where the failure of socialism has distorted academic understanding of the importance of the Left in Japanese politics.

The unsurprising prominence of the socialist Left in immediate postwar Japan The political Left was already a growing force in prewar Japan even if it had often been often repressed. The Social Masses Party (Shakai Taishutō, 1932–1940) championed the rights of workers and tenant farmers, and increasingly competed with the mainstream Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken Minseitō, CDP, 1927–1940) for the urban vote. In fact, there was a clear correlation between the rise of the socialists and the decline of the CDP vote during the 1930s in the major cities of Japan and in some rural districts too. This pressure from the Left helps explain CDP reformist tendencies, including collaboration with the state bureaucracy to draw up proposals for land reform and labor legislation—though these were thwarted by landlords or reactionary industrialists in their own party or in the unelected Privy Council and the House of Peers.3 It is true that the coming of war, particularly the Pacific War in 1941, was a setback for the socialist Left in Japan. The single party system centered on the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, which was formed when all parties were abolished and merged in 1940, tended to exclude socialists and their exclusion from the wartime election in 1942 helps explain a slight revival of CDP candidates during this period as they were the natural recipients of votes that would ordinarily have gone to socialists. In particular, it was noticeable that in the wartime election, former CDP candidates did better in urban districts in which the socialists had begun to make inroads before the war. At the same time, the war led to increased industrialization and mobilization of the population by the state for the war effort. Both industrialization and the expansion of the state increased the number of workers. In addition, the intervention of the state in all aspects of Japanese life suggested that the state could be used to manage the economy to deal with economic inequality as well as for the purposes of war. Allied bombing of major cities had reduced urban Japan to rubble and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of many but also created a sense of solidarity and equality in urban areas. Food shortages and rationing during the war briefly benefited rural areas but tensions between landlords and tenant farmers persisted. The end of the war saw an explosion in tenant farmer and worker unrest. Tenant disputes had peaked at 6,824 in 1935 and declined progressively as Japan went to war, first with China in 1937 and then with the United States in 1941, so that by 1945, there were only 1,212 recorded

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

67

disputes. However, as table 4.1 shows, within one year after the war in 1946, the number of disputes of tenants against landlord had rocketed to 27,193! Table 4.1 Number of Tenant Disputes in Japan (1935–1946) Year 1935

Number of Disputes 6,824

1936

6,804

1937

6,107

1938

4,615

1939

3,573

1940

3,165

1941

3,308

1942

2,765

1943

2,424

1944

2,168

1945

1,212

1946

27,193

Source: Data from Yabe, 1973, 24

The number of labor unions increased dramatically soon after end of the war in August 1945 (table 4.2) and workers began to strike for better pay and conditions, even occupying and running some factories to avoid being locked out by employers.4 These unionization efforts were led by the Left and extended throughout the Japanese economy. Table 4.2 Unionization Trend in Japan (October 1946–July 1946) Month/Year Oct. 1945

Number of Unions 8

Union Membership 4,026

Nov. 1945

74

67,484

Dec. 1945

508

379,631

Jan. 1946

1,516

901,705

Feb. 1946

3,242

1,536,560

Mar. 1946

6,537

2,567,467

Apr. 1946

8,530

3,022,933

May 1946

10,540

3,413,653

Jun, 1946

12,006

3,677,771

Jul. 1946

12,923

3,813,665

Source: Data from Ayusawa 1966, 258.

Japan was controlled by the Allied Occupation from 1945 to 1952 but the relationship was complex with some in the Occupation opposed to the Left and others believing that the Left could be a partner in reforming Japan.5 Indeed, the Occupation pushed forward an agenda that was more radical than the Japanese Left had previously dreamed was possible. From the outset the occupiers insisted on political freedom for all, including for the Japanese

68

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Communist Party (JCP) who were shunned by most Japanese in the period, including most moderate socialists. The Occupation also promoted substantial land reform, labor reform and the breakup of Japanese economic conglomerates, the zaibatsu. It is true that this reform program ran into conservative opposition but many in the Occupation believed that the alternative to reform was revolution. This was most dramatically demonstrated when the Left and associated labor unions called for a General Strike on February 1, 1947. The Occupation would not permit the strike due to the fragile nature of the Japanese economy at the time. However, instead, parliament was dissolved on the pretext of the promulgation of a new constitution so that the Left could make their case to the Japanese public through the peaceful and legal channel of an election. The result of the election of 1947 was that the Japanese Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō, JSP) emerged as the party with the most seats and became central to forming a new government under their leader, Katayama Tetsu. The Katayama government was a coalition government. It relied on the Democratic Party and the People’s Cooperative Party, two centrist parties, for its parliamentary majority. It was an unwieldy but natural coalition committed to economic intervention and nationalization of industry. The problem was that the Democratic Party also contained many conservatives opposed to reform. The socialists also soon came into conflict with the JCP over control of the labor movement, and the general distaste for wartime and postwar economic controls as well as persistent inflation meant that the socialist government lasted about one year, and the coalition only slightly longer. Nonetheless, substantial change occurred during the socialist-led government. Farmers gained from land reform, the bulk of which was carried out while the socialists were in power (table 4.3). However, socialists failed to make themselves useful to these newly independent owner-farmers after the land reform ended and support for the socialists in rural areas began to decline.6 At the same time, land reform eliminated the tension between tenants and landlords in rural communities and created the basis on which the conservatives could rely on rural and provincial areas even as the population grew dramatically in urban areas in postwar Japan. Table 4.3 Changes in the Distribution of Types of Farmers (in per centage) Ownership Status Owner

1 August 1947 36.5

31 December 1948 70.0

Part-owner

20.0

22.5

Part-tenant

16.9

2.0

Tenant

26.6

5.5

Note: Owners were defined as owning at least 90% of the land they cultivate, part-owners as owning 50–90%, part-tenants as owning 10–50% and tenants owning less than 10%. Source: Data from Natural Resources Section of the General Headquarters (GHQ), Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific, (n.d.) Report 127, “Japanese Land Reform Program,” 64, 93.

The Occupation authorities are often accused of engaging in a reverse course against the socialists in 1948, though in reality Japanese domestic political conflict determined the course of events in Japan.7 For example, the union democratization movement was led by the socialists in an attempt to take control of labor unions where the JCP had seized the top positions. Subsequent agitation by Communist and far-left militants, however, led to the

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

69

imposition of increasing restrictions on the right of labor to organize. It is true that these restrictions were put in place under pressure from the Occupation but with the full cooperation of the JSP. Moreover, the socialists were subsequently removed from power due to a corruption scandal and their defeat in the 1949 election and not by the Occupation. The failure of the government led by old prewar socialists, who tended to be more moderate, ultimately enabled more radical-left socialists to come to the fore. It was the radical socialists who had fought off the communist challenge. It was also the Left Socialists who led the reorganization of the labor movement in the formation of the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Nihon Rōdōkumiai Sōhyōgikai), or Sōhyō for short. The Occupation authorities were not happy with Sōhyō because it was too far to the left for their liking, but this demonstrates that the Occupation did not completely control events and the rise of the Left was unstoppable.

The growth of the socialist Left and conservative consolidation in the 1950s The early 1950s saw the return to politics of conservative politicians who had been purged by the Occupation immediately after the war. The new conservative politicians that had risen in their place were not eager to let the old conservative guard back into power. For example, Yoshida Shigeru, the Liberal Party prime minister from 1948 to 1954, immediately came into conflict with his supposed mentor, Hatoyama Ichirō, when the latter was de-purged, and Hatoyama ended up defecting to the rival Democratic Party. Yoshida was clever in using fear of the revival of militarism, represented by the de-purgees, and fear of communism, represented by the Left in Japan, to retain the support of America—the leading force in the Occupation and key ally of Japan after the Occupation ended in 1952. The Cold War in Asia became a hot war with the start of the Korean War (June 1950–July 1953). The JCP then committed political suicide by engaging in violent action against the United States, which led them to be effectively outlawed in Japan. Even after the death of Stalin and the revelations of his crimes, the JCP was still reluctant to criticize Stalinism or the Soviet Union. The JCP lost support dramatically and more importantly alienated many on the Left, including most student activists. Left-wing student activists were central to Japanese politics from that point forward, first at the Sunagawa struggle against the expansion of the US Tachikawa airbase in Tokyo from 1955–1957, which helped to force Japan to renegotiate its security treaty with the United States. Left-wing students subsequently played a leading role in demonstrations against a new Security Treaty with the United States in 1959–1960, and more prominently unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as we shall see. The JSP had split into the Left Socialists and Right Socialists in the early 1950s, and the Left Socialists were more successful in attracting support, particularly from those alienated from the JCP. However, in 1955 the two wings of the party decided to reunify and in doing so became the largest party in Japan. This, in turn, compelled the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to merge to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in an effort to keep the socialists out of power. The creation of the LDP in 1955 became one of the most significant events of the postwar period but it must be remembered that it was caused by the threat of a growing JSP.

70

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

After reunification, the JSP rose to 166 seats in the all-important lower House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet in 1958, the peak of its strength, but with the unification of the center-right parties into the LDP, the JSP only held one-third of the seats in parliament with no prospect of another coalition government. In 1959, moreover, the JSP lost all of its seats in Tokyo in an Upper House election. Debate raged in the party over how to overcome the barriers to further electoral growth. Even so, most observers at the time believed that eventually the JSP would one day challenge the LDP for power.

High growth and high levels of political competition in the 1960s The left socialist strategy was to gain worker support through labor militancy. They focused in particular on the Miike Mine Struggle (Miike tōsō) in 1960, which the Left propelled into a cause célébre against monopoly capitalism. One far-left socialist academic, Sakisaka Itsurō, put enormous effort into educating workers at the Miike Mine and beyond to help them view their problems as related to the problems of capitalism as a whole. The Miike coal mine was meant to be closed with the loss of many jobs because it had become uneconomical with the availability of cheap petroleum. The Miike workers lost their battle but the fierce resistance of workers in this struggle helped to lead business leaders to find ways to improve labor relations. The second and more dramatic event where the Left played a key role is associated with the passage of a new security treaty between Japan and the United States, the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (Nihon-koku to Amerikagasshūkoku to no aida no sōgo kyōryoku oyobi anzen hoshō jōyaku), or for short, the US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo in Japanese). It had its origins in the security treaty adopted by Japan and the US in 1952 at the end of the Occupation which had been an unequal treaty with many advantages for the US but none for Japan. In 1958, the government of Kishi Nobusuke secretly began negotiating a new treaty and in January 1960 it was signed by both nations. It gave Japan the right to expect US aid in the event of attack which was lacking in the old treaty and after ten years (that is, in 1970) it could be abrogated by either nation. Therefore, the most obnoxious features of the old treaty were removed, albeit after ten years of further humiliation. There were those on the Right who also opposed the treaty, but the main opposition, in parliament and on the streets, was from the Left. It became a defining event of the postwar period.8 In 1959, the JSP, Sōhyō, the JCP and anti-nuclear groups pledged to block treaty ratification. However, the right-wing of the JSP led by Nishio Suehiro announced that he would vote for the revised treaty and he and his supporters bolted the JSP in October 1959 to form the Democratic Socialist Party. This meant that the main opposition to the treaty was on the Left and, most significantly, the main protests were led by students. In 1959, a group of students associated with the Bund or Communist League (Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei) joined together with the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (Nihon Kakumeiteki Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei) to take control of the branches of All-Japan Federation of Student Self-Government Associations (Zen Nihon Gakusei Jichikai Sō Rengō or Zengakuren for short) at numerous universities across Japan. This enabled radical left-wing students to control a majority of local student councils and mobilize students for protest. On November 27, 1959, Zengakuren radical students illegally forced their way into the Japanese Diet building which they

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

71

occupied for a short period. Mainstream politicians were appalled, including those on the Left opposed to the new treaty. But the students had clearly taken the lead politically. Next came a sit-in in Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in an ultimately futile attempt to block Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi from traveling to Washington, D.C. to sign the new treaty. On May 20, 1960, Kishi used physical force to end a filibuster by the opposition and was able to secure approval of the treaty. He also used groups of right-wing thugs to fight with student protesters. However, these actions worried many people as Kishi was part of the Old Right and had been involved in the wartime regime (even to the point that he was arrested as a possible class A war criminal) so his seeming disrespect for parliamentary procedure and public order was a cause for concern. Finally, in June 1960, students once again attempted to storm the parliament but were violently held back by riot police. In the hours of bloody battles between the police and protestors, one female Bund activist was killed. Nonetheless, the treaty was approved by the Japanese parliament and went into effect in June 1960. However, widespread revulsion at the handling of the events by Prime Minister Kishi led to his resignation not long afterward. There was one last drama associated with the security treaty: the assassination of Chairman of the JSP, Asanuma Inejirō by seventeen-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya, a sword-wielding right-wing extremist, at a televised rally on October 12, 1960. Although the stabbing was not shown live, the videotape of the killing caused a sensation when it was broadcast later. Asanuma was associated with the moderate wing of the party and was relatively popular, especially among students, so his death sparked a wave of sympathy for the JSP. The new prime minister, Ikeda Hayato (from 1960 to 1964), was a career bureaucrat who took a much less confrontational approach than Kishi. He put forward a plan that called for the doubling of Japanese income levels. Although there were few concrete policies to back this declaration up, it highlighted a significant difference between prewar and postwar Japan: in prewar Japan, wages were kept low to compete internationally but in postwar Japan with stronger unions this was not possible and it was a signal to employers that they were encouraged to increase wages with government support. This, in turn, led to the growth of domestic market. By making and selling cars, refrigerators, TVs and other goods to better paid Japanese workers, it supported increased wages in a virtuous cycle of increased consumption leading to more production and higher wages. Internal growth based on higher wages secured by a strong union movement can explain most of Japanese growth in this period. It is true that Japan benefited from exporting goods overseas and that most imports of manufactured goods were effectively blocked from entering Japan but Japan’s biggest trading partner, the United States, did not protest much at the time except in the high-profile cases of IBM and Coca-Cola. The US also maintained an exchange rate policy leading to a cheap yen that also encouraged Japanese exports. Average annual Japanese economic growth in the 1960s was over 10 percent and this helped to dampen ideological confrontation. By the 1960s, employers effectively made a deal with workers in the wake of the divisive battle over job cuts at the Miike Coal Mine, in which major employers in Japan effectively guaranteed lifetime employment to the core of fulltime male workers in exchange for loyalty to the firm. This means that the famous system of Japanese loyalty to their company was a product of postwar politics and the strength of the political Left. It did lead to the formation of a rigid corporate hierarchy with seniority where most workers, including salaried workers,

72

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

became interchangeable parts of the corporate mechanism, but it was the price paid by workers for job security and by employers for a stable workforce. This domestic and export-driven growth also made possible political stability based on a conservative government backed by rural areas. From this period onward, taxes began to be channeled into farm subsidies and other policies that benefited rural areas. This is the foundation of the so-called rice and steel coalition (similar to the iron and rye coalition of pre-World War I Germany) where the interests of big business were represented by steel in cars and consumer products, while the rural farmers growing rice and other agricultural products were supported with subsidies and through the protection of farm goods from imports. Even so, the lure of the cities for most of the 1950s and 1960s was still strong enough that Japan experienced mass internal migration from rural areas to major cities. This in turn supported the growth of the opposition in urban areas. However, it was not only the JSP that benefited. There were other challengers. The newest challenger was a political party called the Clean Government Party (Kōmeitō, CGP) formed under the influence of the Nichiren Shōshū Buddhist lay organization, Sōkagakkai, which put forward a program of “humanistic socialism” as opposed to Marxism but still focused on helping the poor and disadvantaged.9 The JCP also reformed itself into a more moderate and peaceful, though still tightly organized and secretive political party, aimed at gaining maximum political support.10 Since the labor movement largely supported the JSP, the CGP and JCP tended to compete for the support of the urban poor and non-unionized workers, with support from small business also being particularly important for the JCP. During the 1960s, the JSP was actually in decline though it remained the main opposition party. In 1960 the JSP had been reduced to 145 seats in the Lower House as a result of the defection of right socialists to form the Democratic Socialist Party. The JSP debated the best way to transform itself into a more competitive political party in the early 1960s, but the farleft Socialist Association (Shakaishugi Kyōkai) led by Sakisaka Itsurō attacked the reformers as “revisionists” who would weaken the party by moving away from its working-class base. Socialist Association activists joined with the faction of Kōzō Sasaki to defeat the movement toward change and, in doing so, increased Sakisaka’s influence in the party. Sakisaka had long been adamant that reaching out to farmers and small business was a distraction because a true socialist revolution would be led by the working class.11 Nonetheless, by 1969 the number of Lower House seats held by the JSP had actually fallen by half to ninety. The Left as a political force as a whole was still important, but it was fragmented between a number of parties and rival groups. The Left was most prominent in the form of the student movement. Just as tenant and labor unrest in Japan in the immediate postwar period is difficult to imagine today, student unrest was a major issue in the late 1960s. Japan shared this phenomenon with many other countries. Student protest often focused initially on local university issues, but student groups also became involved in protests against the Vietnam War. The left-wing revolutionary student groups of the US-Japan Security Treaty demonstrations of 1959–1960 continued to play a role and, within the movement, new and more radical groups began to emerge. The old Bund or Communist League split into different factions: in 1966 part of the group reformed as the Second Bund (Daini Bunto) and played a role in the Japanese student protests of 1968–1969. Two of the new major student groups, the Central Core Faction (Chūkaku-ha)12 and the Revolutionary Marxist Faction (Kakumaru-ha),13 Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

73

emerged from the same anti-Stalinist pro-Troskyite split from the JCP but despite this shared origin (or because of it), they were bitter enemies. The final key group emerged from the JSP youth group, the Japan Socialist Youth League, and was called the Liberation Faction (Kaihō-ha).14 In 1966, an alliance was formed between the Central Core Faction, the Second Bund and the Liberation Faction to take effective control of the student movement Zengakuren. This led to militant action such as the October 1967 protest at Haneda Airport attempting to stop the Japanese prime minister, Satō Eisaku, from visiting the United States to negotiate a new security treaty. The alliance also tried to blockade the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise’s visit to the Japanese port of Sasebo and protested at Tokyo’s Shinjuku Rail Station against the transportation of fuel tanker rail cars to be sent to US forces—which has been called the “Shinjuku Riot.” 15 These groups also played a role in the student protests at various university campuses in Japan. The most important group involved in the university protests was the The All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees (Zengaku Kyōtō Kaigi), known as Zenkyōtō for short. Most of the students involved in this group were not part of either the JCP or the JSP and were certainly non-sectarian. It also included graduate students and early career academics. Though many key activists were anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, they were also anti-Stalinist and skeptical of the Trotskyite groups. In fact, many of the students were non-political and only became involved through local issues involving tuition fees, university governance and poor treatment of students and junior academic staff by the universities. The heavy-handed reaction of university administrators and politicians, however, radicalized the students, though ideologically most were humanists or nihilists or followers of the literary critic, Yoshimoto Takaaki, rather than Marxists or anarchists. When riot police were sent to the campuses, the students occupied buildings and armed themselves with wooden staves and helmets, though sometimes they fought rival student groups as much as the police. They sought revolution but had no blueprint or ideology so the protests soon fizzled out.

Peak of the Left and seeds of change in the 1970s As the party in power, however, the LDP had to take responsibility for the problems that plagued Japan. Student movements were suppressed and efforts were made to deal with serious pollution problems in Japan, typified by the infamous Minamata mercury poisoning scandal. At the same time, the peaceful renewal of the new security treaty in 1970, the 1970 Osaka Exposition and the return of Okinawa from American control in 1972, all created a temporary feel-good factor along with Japan’s increasing affluence. However, the country soon faced a series of shocks that put the LDP on the defensive. First were the so-called Nixon shocks where US President Richard Nixon made moves to restore relations with the People’s Republic of China but without consulting Japan first, and then when Nixon effectively declared the end of the Bretton Woods Exchange Rate System which had hitherto made Japanese exports competitive based on a cheap yen. Next came what is known in Japan as the “Oil Shock” in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, when the price of oil skyrocketed and Japan, being heavily dependent on oil imports, was hit badly. Understandably, the LDP, as the party in charge for many years, was blamed for these problems. This situation helps explain why at this time in the 1970s Japan saw the peak of the influence of the Left. Most urban areas returned MPs from the Left, especially from the JSP

74

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and JCP. The governors of the largest cities and mayors of major cities were either socialist politicians or supported by the JSP and JCP. This included the governor of Tokyo, Minobe Ryokichi (1967–1979), governor of Kyoto, Ninagawa Torazō (1950–1978), and the mayors of Osaka, Chūma Kaoru (1963–1971) and Ōshima Yasushi (1971–1987), the mayor of Fukuoka, Shintō Kazuma (1972–1986), the mayor of Nagoya, Motoyama Masao (1973–1985), the mayor of Kawasaki, Itō Saburō (1971–1989), and the mayor of Yokohama, Asukata Ichio (1963–1978), the last of whom later became leader of the JSP. Many urban middle-class salaried workers as well as unionized workers supported the JSP. This also helps explain the success of the Left in the period. Even though the Left’s share of the vote did not increase much in the 1970s, the JSP and JCP won more seats due to the creation of additional urban districts to rectify, to a degree, the imbalance in the distribution of voters between electoral districts in urban and rural Japan. This change was forced on the LDP by the judicial system and did not completely solve the problem. The LDP still benefited from the fact that most of its Diet members came from electoral districts where the population had declined and were much less populous than the urban districts where the JSP and JCP were strongest. This imbalance helped to keep the LDP in power in this period. Table 4.4 1972 Lower House Election (held on 10 December) Party Seats Before Election

JCP 14

JSP 87

DSP 29

KMT 47

LDP 297

Seats Won in Election

38

118

19

29

271

Change in No. of Seats

▲24

▲31

▼10

▼18

▼26

Share of Total Vote

10.5%

21.9%

7.0%

8.5%

46.9%

Change in Share of Vote

▲3.7%

▲0.5%

▼0.7%

▼2.5%

▼0.8%

Left

Right

Source: Data from Ishikawa 1995, 228.

For example, in the 1972 House of Representatives election (table 4.4), the two major parties of the Left—the JSP and JCP—captured over 30 percent of the vote, and the center-left CGP and DSP another 15 percent with the LDP under half of the vote. Nonetheless, the LDP still obtained a majority of the seats in parliament. A book published in the early 1970s by the conservative US think tank, the Hoover Institution, had to acknowledge that “despite Japan’s rapid economic growth and physical modernization, Marxism remains the single most potent intellectual and political belief system in postwar Japan.” 16 Given the predominance of left voters in urban areas and Marxism in society as a whole, it is not surprising that when I first intimately encountered Japan at the end of this decade, the Left was so prominent, especially among the young people I met in Tokyo. The growing threat of the Left was also reflected in LDP desperation in the 1974 House of Councillors election when the LDP prime minister at the time, Tanaka Kakuei, put pressure on companies to supply LDP-friendly candidates and force their workers to vote for them, though with very limited success.17 The LDP was still guaranteed the support of most non-urban areas where the party had provided generous agricultural subsidies and public works projects. In fact, Prime Minister Tanaka was symbolic of widespread “pork barrel politics” to the extent Japan was structurally corrupt.18 It was alleged that he had bribed his

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

75

way into power and had been involved in various murky deals so it was not surprising that he was forced to resign and was subsequently indicted as part of a bribery scandal involving the purchase of Lockheed aircraft for the Japanese semi-governmental airline, All Nippon Airways. Even so, Tanaka had the largest faction in the LDP and the most political funds so he dominated the party from behind the scenes for many more years.19 Against this background, the LDP then lost sixteen more seats in the more important Lower House election in 1976 where their share of the vote fell to just 42 percent of the total votes (table 4.5). The JSP vote also fell slightly by a little more than one percent but they were able to gain eleven seats, and the DSP vote also fell very slightly but they gained ten seats. The biggest gain was by the CGP which rose by twenty-five seats, probably because it ran as the party of clean government. The biggest loser was the JCP. Many of the loses of the LDP can also be explained by the presence of a new conservative party, the New Liberal Club composed of former LDP members who were dissatisfied with corrupt practices of the LDP. Table 4.5 Lower House Election 1976 (held on 5 December) Party Seats Before Election

JCP 39

JSP 112

DSP 19

KMT 30

NLC 5

LDP 265

Seats Won in Election

17

123

29

55

17

249

Change in No. of Seats

▼22

▲11

▲10

▲25

▲12

▼16

Share of Total Vote

10.4%

20.7%

6.3%

10.9%

4.2%

41.8%

Change in Share of Vote

▼0.1%

▼1.2%

▼0.7%

▲2.5%

▲4.2%

▼5.0%

Left

Right

Source: Data from Ishikawa 1995, 229.

The increasing influence of the Left was also used against it, particularly the connection between the JSP and militant unionism. Strikes became more prevalent in this period and alienated the public. The most damaging was perhaps the strike by Japan National Railway (JNR) workers who from November 26 to December 3, 1975 engaged in a strike that shut down the rail network in Japan and made it difficult for others to get to work given key rail lines were not operating. It was also supported by other public employees because as JNR workers were public employees and prohibited from striking, there was widespread encouragement of this strike as a “strike for the right to strike” among public employees.20 The JSP was highly dependent on public employee unions for support so was also tainted by association. In fact, by the end of the decade, it was clear that the predominant influence of labor unions in the JSP was a problem.21 Leftist extremism in the 1970s also led to public revulsion that harmed the mainstream left parties. The 1970s saw rival left-wing groups become increasingly violent toward each other and also turn to wider violent action to achieve their goals. Left-wing terrorism was a serious problem in Japan in the 1970s. The most violent group was the Japanese Red Army (Nihon Sekigun) formed in the early 1970s and active in hijackings and violent incidents inside and outside Japan. The Alliance Red Army (Rengō Seikigunha) emerged from the Japanese Red Army (and again, originally from the Communist Bund movement) as a group of workers and students who were pro-Chinese Communists with revolutionary Maoist tendencies. In 1971, the alliance began series of attacks on the police, government buildings and

76

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

US military installations. The group achieved notoriety in the Asama-Sansō incident when it purged twelve of its own members by beating them to death, with the remaining members fleeing to a mountain villa and taking a hostage. A tense stand-off with the police continued for days with the final siege broadcast live on TV. As a result of this and other violent incidents, policing in Japan became more intrusive as police powers were strengthened based on the perceived need to suppress extreme leftwing activity in the 1970s.22 As early as 1971, the JSP severed all ties with radical left-wing groups and expelled its members from the party. The JCP also intensified its deradicalization initiative in the early 1970s. Nonetheless, the basis for a general shift of public opinion against the Left had begun. By the mid-1970s, even JSP party activists were dissatisfied with the grip of the old leftwing leadership of the party, and many joined with reformer Eda Saburō to oppose the influence of Sakisaka’s Socialism Society. It is true that the Socialism Society had been useful in helping the party fight off the challenge of infiltration from leftist student radicals of various persuasions who threatened to swamp the party, especially in urban constituencies, but by the late 1970s, all forms of “factionalism” were now considered suspect, and the Socialism Society officially refrained from overt involvement in internal JSP politics. But Sakisaka and his supporters continued to anchor the party firmly to the Left. Even though there was a growing interest in the party at moving toward European-style social democracy, the reformer Eda was verbally harassed by Socialism Society members at the 1977 JSP party conference, and this reinforced his decision to quit the JSP to form his new party, the Social Democratic League (Shaminren) the following year. At the same time that the Left was reaching its peak, there was also a noticeable shift to the Right. Perhaps the most puzzling sign was the 1970 Mishima Incident where the popular novelist Mishima Yukio attempted to lead a right-wing coup d’état that ended with him committing ritual suicide (seppuku). Mishima could not be simply dismissed as a revival of the Old Right. He represented a New Right tendency and competed with the New Left for influence. For example, he went to the University of Tokyo where Zenkyōtō students had occupied an auditorium and engaged them in open debate, gaining the respect of many of the students. His political position was somewhat nihilistic—similar to many young people in the period—but focused on Japanese identity and the central role of the Japanese emperor in it. Mishima used his fame to make a dramatic, tragic and, ultimately, aesthetic challenge to the status quo designed to shock and force others to rethink what it means to be Japanese. Many young people who had idolized Mishima as an internationally renowned writer were upset and confused by his actions. However, over time, he inspired others. This included numerous manga artists and anime makers who often cite him as an influence. Politically, his most fervent followers were concentrated in the small right-wing group the Tatenokai or Shield Society that Mishima had created but he also had an impact on mainstream politics, most prominently leading to the formation of a group of junior New Right LDP politicians called the Seirankai or Blue Storm Society. The Seirankai pushed the boundaries of political debate by discussing issues that had been taboo since Japan’s defeat in World War II.23 This was called the New Right because it had no connection to the prewar right-wing movement. The 1970s was the beginning of a general questioning of Japanese identity, the nature of Japan and Japan’s place in the world. Even Tanaka Kakuei was compelled to shift to the left and put forward policies that would later be the centerpiece of right-wing initiatives in the future.

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

77

Economic boom and socialist bust in the 1980s The demise of the Left was first signaled by the stagnant result of the 1979 election and the revival of the LDP support in 1980 “panic” election. A sudden and unexpected election was triggered when disgruntled members of factions in the LDP voted with the opposition in a no confidence motion. Even worse, the sitting LDP prime minister Ōhira Masayoshi died suddenly prior to the election but this brought a wave of sympathy that helped the LDP. More importantly, both houses of the Diet held elections on the same day, which the LDP was better able to cope with. In fact, the double election tactic looked like a clever trick, leading to more votes for the LDP due to the nature of its electoral support networks. The tactic was used again in 1986 with similar success by the LDP but, in hindsight, these election results also clearly signaled the decline of the JSP. The JSP was, as always, dependent on a relatively fixed number of unionized public employees in a way that limited its electoral support. Indeed, as affluence spread in Japan, it undermined a purely working-class focused party. The recession in the early 1980s, which was caused by US deflationary policies under President Ronald Reagan, hit Japan hard, and it can help explain the slight revival of the JSP in the 1983 House of Representatives election, though disgust with corruption in the LDP represented by the continuing influence of former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei was also a key factor. By the late 1980s, however, Japan was booming economically, and had become affluent to the point of crude displays of excessive wealth. The 1980s also saw the right-wing politician Nakasone Yasuhiro in charge as prime minister from 1982 to 1987. It is important to note that he did not gain power because he was right-wing. He was simply a compromise choice who emerged as a product of factional infighting. He was put into power with the support of the predominant Tanaka faction and was even called “Tanakasone.” He was useful to the Tanaka faction because Tanaka himself was under a cloud due to the Lockheed Scandal so could not serve as prime minister and Nakasone’s weak factional strength in the LDP meant he was not a threat to Tanaka and was in fact dependent on him. Nakasone was also useful in his role in dealing with relations to the United States, which were increasingly tense due to trade friction. Nakasone was a military hawk who took a strong position on increasing Japanese defense forces and that endeared him to President Reagan who shared his right-wing views. This led to the so-called “RonYasu” relationship because the two had a cordial first name basis relationship. By focusing on defense cooperation, Nakasone deflected US anger over trade to a degree. Nakasone also promoted neoliberal privatization politics and policies similar to Reagan, which were unusual in Japan even among conservatives who tended to accept a large role for the state in the economy. Nakasone pushed through the privatization of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), the Japanese telephone monopoly. One related impact was that the NTT union, one of the key public employee unions that backed the JSP, was weakened as a result. This privatization was followed by the break-up of the JNR with a similar impact on weakening what was perhaps the strongest union supporting the JSP.24 Despite Nakasone’s efforts, pressure from the US over trade did not abate completely. The Plaza Accord in 1985 led to a major revaluation of the yen that made it much stronger than before compared to the dollar. Ironically, the stronger yen led to an increased trade surplus with the United States as exports continued and their value increased. Nakasone’s successor, Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru, was alarmed at the pressure being put on Japan by the

78

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

United States. Takeshita—who was also the heir to Tanaka Kakuei’s old faction and following in his footsteps—put in place a set of policies to stimulate domestic growth that helped to create the so-called bubble economy in Japan as part of an attempt to wean Japan off of an export focused economy. Then Japan suddenly seemed to enter the unknown with the death of the Showa Emperor Hirohito in 1989. Businesses, organizations and individuals were under intense social pressure to be respectful of the dying emperor by canceling parties and celebrations, and to mourn the emperor when he died. The atmosphere and thinking of this time are reflected in the 1991 book In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century’s End by Norma Field. I also talked to many Japanese at the time who feared that the social pressures centered on the emperor were sinister and raised fears that Japan had shifted to the Right. In retrospect, it was the end of an era because it was the beginning of dramatic change that did ultimately benefit the political Right.

Political reform and the strange death of Japanese socialism in the 1990s In the 1990s, the Japanese economic bubble created at the end of the 1980s began to burst. The Nikkei Stock Market Index peaked at 38,951 yen on 29 December 1989 having jumped from only around 10,000 a few years earlier. By September 1992, it had steadily declined to 18,555 (eventually going as low as 8,202 by March 2003). Many ordinary Japanese had begun to invest in the stock market so there was widespread alarm as the market began to collapse. It also became apparent that stock and land prices had been manipulated and even artificially inflated, often to the benefit of LDP politicians. A series of scandals emerged often involving business and politicians, such as Recruit, Kyōwa, Sagawa, Zenecon, Japan Housing Finance Corporation (Jūsen), two credit associations, Orange Kyōsai Kumiai and Nikkō Securities. These involved various schemes for kickbacks, favorable treatment of politicians in stock options and trading and misuse of loan money in ways that inflated land prices and benefited organized crime, often with links to LDP politicians.25 The focus of the 1990s was on political reform, particularly electoral reform, and other changes including to the structure of the central government, called administrative reform.26 Due to his involvement in the Recruit scandal, Takeshita was forced to resign and his successor, Uno Sōsuke, was also forced from office, though due to a sex scandal that raised gender issues in Japan for the first time. The JSP was in the position to take full advantage of the weakness of the LDP with their new straight-talking female leader, Doi Takako.27 The JSP and allied parties supported by the new labor union federation Rengō, the successor to Sōhyō, were able to achieve the first defeat of the LDP in House of Councillors elections since the LDP had been formed in 1955.28 At the time, it appeared that the JSP was a viable contender for political power as it tried to reform itself one last time.29 Big business was so worried that the JSP might take power that the major business federation in Japan issued a publication attacking JSP economic plans to which the JSP responded effectively with its own booklet.30 However, Doi soon squandered her position by leading the party to stubbornly oppose a law that would allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to engage in UN peacekeeping operations.31

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

79

It is true the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 had undermined ideological support for the Left but these events preceded the rise of Doi and the peak of her support, so they cannot explain the demise of the JSP. The key problem was more the inability of Doi and the JSP as a whole to change with the times or, at least, become more flexible to focus on the issues that mattered to the general public. Instead, they reverted to their default position, which was to take a rigid ideological stand in support of a lost cause, though admittedly in favor of pacifism rather than socialism in this case. The key focus of politics in Japan at the time was political reform legislation, championed by the new LDP leader Kaifu Toshiki, with the bulk of his own party hoping that he would not be successful and some actively working to undermine him. However, the JSP was also opposed to substantial political reform because most proposals promised to make it difficult if not impossible for most of their Diet members to retain their seats. Instead, a number of new political parties committed to political reform on the center-right were formed, namely the Japan New Party (Nihon Shintō), the Japan Renewal Party (Shinseitō) and the Harbinger Party (Sakigake). After these parties defeated the LDP in the 1993 Lower House election, they formed a coalition government dedicated to passing political reform legislation, which was duly carried out, but the coalition collapsed soon after because they were united by little else. Instead, a new coalition government was formed of the hitherto inconceivable combination of the LDP and the JSP, with the socialist leader Murayama Tomiichi as prime minister! There was a logic to the LDP-JSP coalition in that the JSP effectively opposed the new political reforms because the proposed new electoral system meant the party would largely disappear and many LDP MPs felt threatened by the reforms as well. The LDP was also desperate to get back into power because it had depended on access to government to reward its supporters. The longer the LDP was out of power, the weaker they feared that they would become. It was a marriage of convenience. However, this coalition government had a profound impact on the LDP. Murayama and the LDP leadership cooperated in carrying out various social policy reforms but it was Murayama’s 1995 speech “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the War’s end,” in which he formally apologized for the atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese forces during World War II, that upset right-wing politicians in the LDP who had long prevented such an apology. The far Right began to fight back to promote its revisionist historical views and policies with the formation of a number of groups, the most prominent and influential of which were the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai) in 1996 and the Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi) in 1997, both of which shaped the political debate in Japan for the next two decades. Not surprisingly, the JSP was reduced to minor party status as a result of the electoral system changes brought about by political reform when implemented in the 1996 House of Representatives election. There was a center-left successor party, which included many moderate socialists, in the form of the Democratic Party of Japan (Minshutō) but it also included many conservatives. At the same time, the CGP, which had already moved to a centrist position over the years, moved toward the political Right as it increasingly cooperated with the LDP, including joining them as coalition partners in government. Thus, the center of gravity of Japanese politics had shifted because, despite the slight revival of the JCP as the recipient of former JSP left-wing voters, the Left as a political force in Japan was effectively dead.

80

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The far Right in opposition to “forces of resistance” in the 2000s Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō was without doubt the most important political figure in Japan in the first decade of the 21st century. His success was partially due to his deference to his faction leader, Mori Yoshirō, which allowed Koizumi to operate above faction and Mori to become a key power broker in Japanese politics. However, Koizumi also substantially benefited from the centralization of bureaucratic power in the Office the Prime Minister carried out by his predecessor, Hashimoto Ryūtarō.32 Effectively an outsider in Japanese politics, Koizumi used his position as LDP president and prime minister to directly attack the type of politics that had sustained the LDP up to that time. The Tanaka faction, its successors and imitators had done so much to make pork barrel politics and associated corrupt practices a central feature of Japanese political economy. Koizumi and many others argued that Japan could no longer afford such a system and the political impasse of the previous decade needed to be overcome. In doing so, Koizumi pledged to destroy the LDP to save it. Numerous times during the April 2001 contest for the presidency of the LDP, Koizumi said that he would “Destroy the old LDP and carry out structural reform of Japan’s political economy.” 33 Of course, he was confronted by those in his party who opposed change but he labelled them the “forces of resistance” (teikō seiryoku)34 and when a large number of them voted against his reforms, he called a snap election in which he denied party endorsement to the rebels and instead organized a group of so-called assassins (shikyaku)—strong pro-reform conservative LDP candidates, who ran against the rebels and effectively removed many of the old guard politicians in the LDP and neutralized those who remained. Koizumi was able to add excitement and drama to his actions by using terminology from the late-19th century in the Meiji period when Japan faced radical change in order to deal with Western imperialism. One key feature of Koizumi’s public statements was how he indiscriminately used popular portrayals of radically different groups from 19th-century Japan to create a general sense of urgency and righteousness but without any real content. This was typical of the New Right aesthetic turn led by Mishima. However, Koizumi had forged a New-New Right that was neoconservative in ways similar to US neocons and advocated more of a free market approach to political economy in a way that was true of neither the Old Right or the New Right of the Seirankai (many of whom ended up as part of the forces of resistance!) Koizumi’s right-wing tendencies during his term in office were noted mainly in relation to his visits to Yasukuni Shrine. However, he also actively fostered right-wing politicians in his party in contrast to the pragmatic but often corrupt LDP politicians of the past, ushering in a new generation of LDP politicians.35 However, the most notable feature of this new generation was a tendency to be on the far Right of the political spectrum, most notably in the case of Koizumi’s hand-picked successor Abe Shinzō. Surprisingly, Koizumi reached out to North Korea and in response the North Koreans admitted kidnapping and exploiting Japanese citizens over a number of years. However, even this was used to further the ideological goals of the Japanese Right because the North Korean account contained dubious explanations about the fate of the individuals they had abducted and some of the remains of the dead returned were clearly not from those who they claimed they were returning. Rightwing politicians used the issue to bash North Korea and promote their political careers. The

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

81

rise of China and increasing Chinese aggressiveness and nationalism in military and trade policy also aided the xenophobic rhetoric of the Japanese Right. Koizumi’s heir apparent was Abe Shinzō who represented all of the tendencies of the New-New Right, but unexpectedly Abe was forced to resign due to illness in September 2007, one year after becoming prime minister. After a series of short-lived governments, the LDP support base collapsed. Interest groups, including many that had loyally supported the LDP over a number of years, saw their relationship to the party seriously weakened by Koizumi’s policies. Japanese voters wanted a change from what appeared to be an incompetent LDP after Koizumi left office. Koizumi really had destroyed the party; at least for the time being.

The dominance of the New-New Right in the 2010s The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won the August 2009 House of Representatives election by obtaining a total of 308 seats to only 119 for the LDP, which was in disarray. The problem was that the DPJ was a confused centrist party both left-leaning and right-leaning Diet members. The support of the labor federation Rengō did give many of the policies a slightly social democratic hue but there were also politicians trained at Matsushita Institute (Matsushita Juku) who were avowed free market neoliberals. DPJ policies were ambitious, such as providing a generous child benefit to parents, eliminating school fees for many, and turning toll roads into free motorways, but the party was easily criticized as spendthrift. The main problem with the party was that it suffered from a lack of cohesion and inexperience. DPJ politicians fought among themselves and alienated the Japanese bureaucracy in ways that made it difficult for them to implement their politics. The LDP and its allies in the conservative press fiercely attacked the DPJ government, and right-wing trolls spread cynicism against the DPJ online. It was not difficult for the LDP to take advantage of the DPJ reputation for confused leadership to blame them unfairly for problems that arose after the March 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. After the next election—forced on the DPJ by the LDP—the DPJ dramatically lost support and collapsed not long afterward.36 In 2012 Abe Shinzō returned to power and the right-wing was again victorious. Initially, Abe focused on economic issues primarily, including his famous “Three Arrows” economic reform plan.37 His first action was to once again undermine workers’ rights that had been improved under the DPJ government, but his main economic success was based on fostering a cheap yen that made exports viable again and encouraged tourism in ways that boosted the economy. In the end, however, the most important of his proposed economic reforms were a failure.38 Abe succeeded much more in promoting his ideological goals. Laws were passed to strengthen the Japanese military and police powers, as well as making changes to education policy to indoctrinate the young in the New-New Right official patriotism. Abe put a lot of effort into silencing opposition to his ideologically-driven policies, especially working to suppress television news and print press criticism.39 The Abe government proposed changing the Broadcast Law in ways that seemed to undermine mainstream media in favor of the internet where the right-wing has had a stronger voice. Abe also continued earlier efforts against critics of his ideology in academia.40 In 2015, his government’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed

82

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

state-funded universities to dramatically reduce humanities and social science courses.41 Even the refusal of the government to appoint six nominated academics, who had been critical of Abe’s politics, to the Japan Science Council (Nihon Gakujitsu Kaigi) in a blatant interference in academic freedom can be attributed to Abe rather than his successor Suga Yoshihide who had only just taken up the position of prime minister when the scandal broke.42 He promoted allies who were loyal to him and shared his ideology. Under Abe, a right-wing ideological stance was the key to political success in the LDP and not faction. Even Abe’s endorsement of the far-right female Diet member Takaichi Sanae in the 2021 LDP presidential contest fits with this pattern. Not only the central government shifted to the right. As in the 1970s, the trends in national politics were reflected in the local politics of major cities in Japan. This includes a dramatic rise of the populist Japan Innovation Party (Nihon Ishin no Kai) in Osaka, supplying Osaka Governors: Hashimoto Tōru (2008–2011), Matsui Ichirō (2011–2019) and Yoshimura Hirofumi (2019–present). This shift at the local level was presaged by the election of Ishihara Shintarō as governor of Tokyo from April 1999 to October 2012, who was a former member of the Seirankai and friend of Mishima Yukio. Tokyo still has a right-wing governor in Koike Yuriko—in office from August 2016 to present—who, even though she has run against Abe Shinzō and the LDP, ideologically is as far right as they are.43 The majority of Japanese voters seem to favor stability rather than seeking to support a particular ideology but in recent years the beneficiary of the desire for stability has been the LDP. Public opinion is not entirely in sync with the New-New Right but there is no real opposition apart from minor street demonstrations and a few academics. There is no substantial left-wing opposition political force, despite the prominent history of the Left in Japan as we have seen. The main opposition political parties are just a collection of non-LDP forces, mostly centrist and conservative. The CGP plays the role of LDP enabler as a coalition partner and electoral ally, while the JCP acts as a spoiler of the center-left parties electorally because it runs candidates even where they cannot win, often preventing center-left candidates from winning. The LDP is the default party of government in Japan with no challenger on the horizon.

Conclusion It is important to be clear here. Japan has not returned to traditional conservatism. Japan has changed dramatically over the years and so the new form of right-wing conservatism that has become politically predominant by the first two decades of the 21st century was possible only due to the economic and political events of the 1990s and the severe weakening of traditional sources of opposition. There are also key social structural differences to the contemporary context. The messy diversity of prewar Japan allowed political conflict to fester but conflicting social forces constituted a source of potential change. Farmers and workers had legitimate grievances against business and the rest of the elite, though they were manipulated by the Right as well as a source of support for the Left. In the early postwar period, the socialists championed the rights of farmers and workers, and not only dramatically improved conditions for them, but also removed their sources of grievance against the status quo by helping shape the institutions and practices of a peaceful prosperous postwar Japan.

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

83

There are still sources of change in Japan. There is still significant inequality in Japan which has become worse since the rise of the Right.44 The status of women is a major source of tension, LGBTQ rights are a potential flash point and the difficult conflicts inherent in coping with the climate crisis cannot be ignored for very long. At the same time, the LDP is even more dominant now than was the case of the conservatives of the past. Before the war, business and the military were independent political forces but are much more limited politically now and must operate through the LDP and in doing so reinforce the conservatives’ hold on power. As we have seen, a strong left in the postwar period forced the LDP to be responsive to social issues but the Left is now gone. The LDP may be able to redefine itself to accept the need to respond to climate change, but it firmly maintains its social conservatism, often taking cues from foreign conservatives. In doing so, it is more likely to reinforce gender stereotypes, for example, rather than view women as equal to men or accept the need for LGBTQ rights. A case can be made that throughout its history Japan has traditionally had strong independent women and also outstanding tolerance for homosexuality but the NewNew Right in Japan relies on Western influenced versions of “traditional” values imposed on the general population of Japan in the late 19thcentury. Japanese postwar political history demonstrates dramatic change. We have seen that there is not a single traditional conservatism that has been carried forward from the past and there is not a single progressive tendency that opposes and transforms conservatism over time. Each era redefines what it means to be traditional, conservative, progressive and so on. This means that there is no fixed Japanese political dynamics or identity. The Japanese themselves, through politics, determine what Japan “is” at any given time.

Notes 1

Abe Shinzō, Utsukushii kuni e (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006). For periodizations of the postwar era see also Avenell, Oguma and Seaton in this volume. 3 Leng Yuen Choy, “The struggle for land reform in Japan: a study of the major land legislation, 1920–1943” (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1982); Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1987). 4 Joe Moore, Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945–1947 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). 5 On the Allied Occupation see also Bytheway and Choi in this volume. 6 James Babb, “Making Farmers Conservative: Japanese Farmers, Land Reform and Socialism,” Social Science Japan 8, no. 2 (2005). 7 Robert Ward, “Conclusion,” in Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation, edited by Robert E. Ward and Sakamoto Yoshikazu (Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987); Yong Wook Lee, “The Origin of One Party Domination: America’s Reverse Course and the Emergence of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan,” Journal of East Asian Affairs 18, no. 2 (2004). 8 George R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Nick Kapur, “Japan’s Streets of Rage: The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising and the Origins of Contemporary Japan,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 18, issue 11, no. 3 (2020). Online. https://apjjf.org/2020/18/Kapur.html. 9 James White, Migration in Metropolitan Japan (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1982) and The Sokagakkai and Mass Society (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1970). 10 Hong Kim, “Deradicalization of the Japanese Communist Party Under Kenji Miyamoto,” World Politics 28, no. 2 (1976): 273–99. 2

84

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

11

Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 111. The full name is the Japan Revolutionary Communist League, National Committee (Kakumeiteki Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei, Zenkoku Iinkai). 13 The full name is the Japan Revolutionary Communist League, Revolutionary Marxist Faction (Nihon Kakumeiteki Kyōsansugisha Dōmei, Kakumeiteki Marukusu Shugiha). 14 The full name in Japanese is Nihon Shakaishugi Seinen Dōmei Kaihō Ha. 15 See William Marotti, “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest,” The American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (1990): 133; and Michal Daliot-Bul, “The Formation of ‘Youth’ as a Social Category in Pre-1970s Japan: A Forgotten Chapter of Japanese Postwar Youth Countercultures,” Social Science Japan Journal 17, no. 1 (2014): 50; and for a non-academic account see Matthew Hernon, “1968 Shinjuku Riot: Dramatic Photos Show What Tokyo’s Violent Rebellion Was Like,” Tokyo Weekender, 19 October 2018, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.tokyoweekender.com/2018/10/1968-shinjuku-riot-dramatic-photos-show -what-tokyos-violent-rebellion-was-like/. 16 Paul Langer, Communism in Japan: A Case of Political Naturalization (Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972), 63. 17 James Babb, Business and Politics in Japan (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press), 28–29. 18 Chalmers Johnson, “Tanaka Kakuei, Structural Corruption, and the Advent of Machine Politics in Japan,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 12, no. 1 (1986). 19 James Babb, Tanaka: Postwar Politics in Japan (London: Longman, 2000). 20 Koshiro Kazutoshi with Charles Weathers, eds., A Fifty Year History of Industry and Labor in Postwar Japan, Tokyo: Japan Labor Institute, 2000: 120–22. 21 Sugimori Kōji and Yamaguchi Asao, Rōso giin ga Shakaitō o koroshita: “Kō” kara “tsumi” no jidai no haita rōso giin no nōryoku sōtenken (Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō, 1980). 22 Peter Katzenstein, ed., Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 23 James Babb, “The Seirankai and the Fate of its Members: The Rise and Fall of the New Right in Japanese Politics,” Japan Forum 24, no. 1 (January 2012): 75–96. 24 Charles Weathers, “Reconstruction of Labor-Management Relations in Japan’s National Railways,” Asian Survey 36, no. 7 (1994): 621–33. 25 James Babb, Business and Politics in Japan, 88–91. 26 Raymond Christensen, “Electoral Reform in Japan: How it was enacted and the changes it may bring,” Asian Survey 34, no. 7 (1994): 589–605, and Ko Mishima, “The Changing Relationship between Japan’s LDP and the Bureaucracy: Hashimoto’s Administrative Reform Effort and Its Politics,” Asian Survey 38, no. 10 (1998): 968–85. 27 Tomiaki Iwai, “‘The Madonna Boom’: Women in the Japanese Diet,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 103–20. 28 Lonny Carlile, “Party Politics and the Japanese Labor Movement: Rengo’s ‘New Political Force,’” Asian Survey 36, no. 7 (1994): 606–20. 29 J. A. A. Stockwin, “From JSP to SDPJ: The New Wave and the ‘New’ Nihon Shakaito,” Japan Forum 3, no. 2 (1991): 287–300. 30 The Japan employers association Nikkeiren publication was: Yajima Kinji. Shakaitō de Nihon wa daijōbu ka (Tokyo: Nikkeiren Publicity Bureau, 1989) and the JSP response was written by a Socialist Party Special Policy Project Team, ed., Shakaito de Nihon wa daijobu! (Tokyo: Japanese Socialist Party Publicity Bureau, 1990). 31 Kiyofuku Chuma, “The Debate over Japan’s Participation in Peace-keeping Operations,” Japan Review of International Affairs 3 (1992): 239–54. 32 Mishima, “The Changing Relationship between Japan’s LDP and the Bureaucracy.” 33 Koizumi repeated his pledge to “destroy the old LDP” many times during his campaign to become the leader of the LDP and after he became prime minister though in slightly different forms. Nonetheless, the gist of his aim was clear. See: Margarita Estévez-Abe, “Japan’s Shift Toward a Westminster System: A Structural Analysis of the 2005 Lower House Election and Its Aftermath,” Asian Survey 46, no. 4 (2006): 636; and Nobuhiro Hiwatari “Japan in 2005: Koizumi’s Finest Hour,” Asian Survey 46, no. 1 (2006): 24, 35. 34 See Margarita Estévez-Abe, “Japan’s Shift Toward a Westminster System,” 632 and 649; Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen (2010) “The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 1 (2010): 12 (although they translate the term as “resistance forces”); and Ikuo Kabashima and 12

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

85

Gill Steel (2007) “How Junichiro Koizumi seized the leadership of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 8, no. 1 (2007): 97 (“forces of resistance”) and 109 (“resistance forces”). 35 James Babb, “A New Generation of Conservatives in Japan,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 14, 3 (September 2013): 355–78. 36 Yamaguchi Jirō and Nakakita Kōji, eds. Minshutō seiken to wa nan datta no ka? Kiipāsontachi no shōgen (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014); and Yakushiji Katsuyuki ed., Shōgen—Minshutō seiken (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2012). For a critical perspective from the right-wing press see Yomiuri Shinbun Seiji-bu, Minshutō—Meisō to uragiri no 300 nichikan (Tokyo: Shinshio Sha, 2010). 37 Naoyuki Yoshino and Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary, “Three Arrows of ‘Abenomics’ and the Structural Reform of Japan: Inflation Targeting Policy of the Central Bank, Fiscal Consolidation, and Growth Strategy,” Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper Series no. 492 (August 2014). 38 Thomas Holme, “Abenomics, Seven Years In: Has It Succeeded?” Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Japan Program Expert Panel Report, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, March 13, 2019; and Matthew Lichtblau, “Japanese ‘Abenomics’: The Overlooked Third Arrow of Shinzo Abe’s Reforms,” Brown Political Review, November 16, 2020. 39 Tokuyama Yoshio, Abe kantei to shinbun—“Nikyokukasuru hōdō” no kiki (Tokyo: Shueisha, 2014); Suzuki Testuo, Abe seiken no media shihai (Tokyo: Iisuto Shinsho, 2015); Sunagawa Hiroyoshi, Abe kantei to terebi (Tokyo: Shueisha, 2016); and Martin Fackler, Abe seiken ni hirefusu media (Tokyo: Futabasha, 2016). 40 Frank Baldwin, “‘Book Burning’ in Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 17 issue 21, no. 2 (2019). Accessed February 17, 2022, https://apjjf.org/2019/21/Baldwin.html. 41 Japan Press Weekly, “Education Ministry instructs national universities to reduce humanities and social science courses,” Japan Press Weekly, 10 June 2015. 42 Mainichi shinbun, “Editorial: To not appoint the six to the Japanese Academy of Science is nothing more than political interference,” Mainichi shinbun, Tokyo edition, 3 October 2020. 43 One might note that Koike’s father was a supporter of Mishima Yukio’s far-right group Tatenokai and not surprisingly Koike’s own political positions on most issues are firmly on the Right to the extent she was indistinguishable from Abe Shinzō when she ran against him for leadership of the LDP. 44 Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison, eds., Japan: The Precarious Future (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

References Abe, Shinzō. Utsukushii kuni e. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006. Ayusawa, Isao F. A History of Labor in Modern Japan. Honolulu HI: East-West Center Press, 1966. Babb, James. Business and Politics in Japan. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. ———. “Making Farmers Conservative: Japanese Farmers, Land Reform and Socialism.” Social Science Japan 8, no. 2 (2005): 175–95. ———. “A New Generation of Conservatives in Japan.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 14, part 3 (September 2013): 355–78. ———. “The Seirankai and the Fate of its Members: The Rise and Fall of the New Right in Japanese Politics.” Japan Forum 24, no. 1 (January 2012): 75–96. ———. Tanaka: Postwar Politics in Japan. London: Longman, 2000. Baldwin, Frank. “‘Book Burning’ in Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 17, issue 21, no. 2 (2019). Online. https://apjjf.org/2019/21/Baldwin.html. Baldwin, Frank and Anne Allison, eds. Japan: The Precarious Future. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Carlile, Lonny. “Party Politics and the Japanese Labor Movement: Rengo’s ‘New Political Force.’” Asian Survey 36, no. 7 (1994): 606–20. Choy, Leng Yuen. “The struggle for land reform in Japan: a study of the major land legislation, 1920–1943.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1982. Christensen, Raymond. “Electoral Reform in Japan: How it was enacted and the changes it may bring.” Asian Survey 34, no. 7 (1994): 589–605. Chuma, Kiyofuku. “The Debate over Japan’s Participation in Peace-keeping Operations.” Japan Review of International Affairs 3 (1992): 239–54.

86

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Daliot-Bul, Michal. “The Formation of ‘Youth’ as a Social Category in Pre-1970s Japan: A Forgotten Chapter of Japanese Postwar Youth Countercultures.” Social Science Japan Journal 17, no. 1 (2014): 41–58. Estévez-Abe, Margarita. “Japan’s Shift Toward a Westminster System: A Structural Analysis of the 2005 Lower House Election and Its Aftermath.” Asian Survey 46, no. 4 (1990): 632–51. Fackler, Martin. Abe seiken ni hirefusu media. Tokyo: Futabasha, 2016. Field, Norma. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: A Portrait of Japan at Century’s End. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. Garon, Sheldon. The State and Labor in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. Hernon, Matthew. “1968 Shinjuku Riot: Dramatic Photos Show What Tokyo’s Violent Rebellion Was Like.” Tokyo Weekender, October 19, 2018. Accessed February 22, 2022. https://www.tokyoweekender.com/2018 /10/1968-shinjuku-riot-dramatic-photos-show-what-tokyos-violent-rebellion-was-like/. Hiwatari, Nobuhiro. “Japan in 2005: Koizumi’s Finest Hour.” Asian Survey 46, no. 1 (2006): 22–36. Holme, Thomas. “Abenomics, Seven Years In: Has It Succeeded?” Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Japan Program Expert Panel Report. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, March 13, 2019. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://fsi.stanford.edu/news /abenomics-seven-years-has-it-succeeded. Ishikawa, Masumi. Sengo seiji shi. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. Iwai, Tomiaki. “‘The Madonna Boom’: Women in the Japanese Diet.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 103–20. Japan Press Weekly. “Education Ministry instructs national universities to reduce humanities and social science courses.” Japan Press Weekly, June 10, 2015. Johnson, Chalmers. “Tanaka Kakuei, Structural Corruption, and the Advent of Machine Politics in Japan.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 12, no. 1 (1986): 1–28. Kabashima, Ikuo and Gill Steel. “How Junichiro Koizumi seized the leadership of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 8. no. 1 (2007): 95–114 Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. ———. “Japan’s Streets of Rage: The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising and the Origins of Contemporary Japan.” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 18, issue 11, no. 3 (2020). Online. https://apjjf.org/2020/18 /Kapur.html. Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Kim, Hong. “Deradicalization of the Japanese Communist Party Under Kenji Miyamoto.” World Politics 28, no. 2 (1976): 273–99. Koshiro, Kazutoshi with Charles Weathers, eds. A Fifty Year History of Industry and Labor in Postwar Japan. Tokyo: Japan Labor Institute, 2000. Krauss, Ellis and Robert Pekkanen. “The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party.” The Journal of Asian Studies, 69, no. 1 (2010): 5–15. Langer, Paul. Communism in Japan: A Case of Political Naturalization. Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972. Lee, Yong Wook. “The Origin of One Party Domination: America’s Reverse Course and the Emergence of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan.” Journal of East Asian Affairs 18, no. 2 (2004): 371–413. Lichtblau, Matthew. “Japanese ‘Abenomics’: The Overlooked Third Arrow of Shinzo Abe’s Reforms.” Brown Political Review, November 16, 2020. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2020 /11/japanese-abenomics-the-overlooked-third-arrow-of-shinzo-abes-reforms/. Mainichi shinbun. “Editorial: To not appoint the six to the Japanese Academy of Science is nothing more than political interference.” Mainichi shinbun, Tokyo edition, October 3, 2020. Marotti, William. “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest.” The American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (2009), 97–135. Mishima, Ko. “The Changing Relationship between Japan’s LDP and the Bureaucracy: Hashimoto’s Administrative Reform Effort and Its Politics.” Asian Survey 38, no. 10 (1998): 968–85. Moore, Joe. Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945–1947. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.

Chapter 4: Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right

87

Packard, George R. Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Przeworski, Adam and John Sprague. Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Socialist Party Special Policy Project Team, ed. Shakaito de Nihon wa daijobu! Tokyo: Japanese Socialist Party Publicity Bureau, 1990. Stockwin, J. A. A. “From JSP to SDPJ: The New Wave and the ‘New’ Nihon Shakaito.” Japan Forum 3, no. 2 (1991): 287–300. Sugimori, Kōji and Yamaguchi Asao. Rōso giin ga Shakaitō o koroshita: “Kō” kara “tsumi” no jidai no haita rōso giin no nōryoku sōtenken. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō, 1980. Sunagawa, Hiroyoshi. Abe kantei to terebi. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2016. Suzuki, Testuo. Abe seiken no media shihai. Tokyo: Iisuto Shinsho, 2015. Tokuyama, Yoshio. Abe kantei to shinbun—“Nikyokukasuru hōdō” no kiki. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2014. Yabe, Yōzō. “Sengo minshushugi no nōmin undō: Nōchikaku no shikaku kara.” Rekishi Hyōron 283 (1973): 23–48. Yajima, Kinji. Shakaito de Nihon wa daijobu ka. Tokyo: Nikkeiren Publicity Bureau, 1989. Yakushiji, Katsuyuki, ed. Shōgen—Minshutō seiken. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2012. Yamaguchi, Jirō and Nakakita Kōji, eds. Minshutō seiken to wa nan datta no ka? Kiipāsontachi no shōgen. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014. Yomiuri shinbun, Seiji-bu. Minshutō—Meisō to uragiri no 300 nichikan. Tokyo: Shinshio Sha, 2010. Yoshino, Naoyuki and Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary. “Three Arrows of ‘Abenomics’ and the Structural Reform of Japan: Inflation Targeting Policy of the Central Bank, Fiscal Consolidation, and Growth Strategy.” Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper Series no. 492 (August 2014). Ward, Robert. “Conclusion.” In Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation, edited by Robert E. Ward and Sakamoto Yoshikazu, 290–438. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987. Weathers, Charles. “Reconstruction of Labor-Management Relations in Japan’s National Railways.” Asian Survey 36, no. 7 (1994): 621–33. White, James. Migration in Metropolitan Japan. Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. ———. The Sokagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1970.

88

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 5 Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism: Japanese Atomic Bombing Sufferers’ Struggle against the State Akiko Naono War weariness based on the collective memory of war harm has long helped Japan reject direct involvement in wars and return to the prewar regime. However, the Japanese version of pacifism has been criticized as nothing more than a victim consciousness that has forgotten the country’s past colonial rule and military aggression. This chapter looks at the history of Japanese hibaksuha’s collective struggle to demand state compensation and ban nuclear weapons in light of nationalist sentiments that enabled hibakusha to stand up and pursue their mission and helped the Japanese to shut themselves off within their victim consciousness.

Introduction: “Pacifism” in postwar Japan No one would deny that pacifism is one of basic principles of postwar Japan. War weariness, rooted in the extensive harm experienced in the Asia Pacific War, has been a widely shared sentiment in the country and become the foundation of the ideal of pacifism in the constitution, which clearly states that Japan renounces war and will not maintain armed forces with war potential.1 “Embodied pacifism” (taigen heiwa shugi) is the term used by the writer and activist Oda Makoto to refer to Japan’s war weariness and desire to defend peace that are both rooted in its war experience. Oda argues that sometimes this embodied pacifism is even stronger than pacifism as a conviction.2 However, insofar as it is based on experience, as time passes, the fading of embodied pacifism is unavoidable.3 For this very reason, we should recognize the value of peace education and peace movements, that have passed on experiences of war harm, cultivating a desire to maintain peace in younger generations. Coupled with the peace consciousness of the generations that experienced the war, this pacifism has molded public opinion that has put the brakes on the nuclearization and militarization of Japan. During the 1990s, after experiencing the conclusion of the Cold War and the Gulf War, criticism of Japan’s pacifism began to emerge both inside and outside the country. One criticism was from neighboring Asian countries. It asserted that Japan’s pledge for peace was

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

89

nothing more than a victim consciousness that had forgotten the country’s past colonial rule and military aggression. Another came from the United States and pro-US conservatives in Japan. It held that Japan’s constitutionally-rooted desire to defend peace was a “one-country pacifism” and that Japan should dispatch its Self-Defense Forces overseas and contribute to international peace. There is no doubt that Japan’s embodied pacifism is based on a victim consciousness. However, precisely because of the formation of a collective memory of war harm, Japan’s pacifism has been able to reject direct involvement in wars and a return to the prewar regime.4 From the late 1940s until 1960—a period during which developments brought to mind Japan’s militaristic past and war experiences for many—large-scale protest movements arose due to the Japanese people’s intense victim consciousness vis-à-vis state power. These developments included the reverse course policies, the expansion of US military and Self-Defense Forces’ bases and the United States’ hydrogen bomb tests. They were resisted by the anti-atomic and hydrogen bomb movement (Gensuibaku Kinshi movement, below Gensuikin movement), the anti-Police Duties Law movement and the anti-US-Japan Security Treaty Revision movement. However, insofar as the desire to defend peace remained on the level of emotion, it was difficult for it to move Japanese policymaking in the direction of pacifism. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) learned from the widespread movement against the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 that heavy-handed use of power would meet resistance from the people. It therefore adopted a strategy of expanding the country’s military arsenal and effectively rendering the constitution’s pacifism powerless, not through overt constitutional revisions but changes in constitutional interpretations—all the while adopting so-called peace and prosperity policies focused on protecting the people’s daily lives. With war weariness also weakening due to the fading of war memories after the country’s period of rapid economic growth, the desire for peace in Japan transformed into a conservative stance that sought to protect the people’s “peaceful and abundant daily lives.” 5 While the anti-Vietnam War movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s helped to produce a feeling that Japan was participating in the war as a perpetrator due to the country’s provision of military bases to the US, it did not manage to foment public opinion opposed to the USJapan Security Treaty.6 The Constitution of Japan and peace consciousness Along with the experience of being harmed by the war, the Constitution of Japan—which dictates that Japan renounce war and not maintain armed forces with war potential—has helped sustain Japan’s postwar collective desire for peace.7 Its pacifism garnered wide public support from the time of its establishment, however as Wada Susumu observes, “peace” was brought about by Japan’s defeat, and therefore understood as an approval of the status quo more than as an ideal for which to strive.8 In other words, the people did not proactively choose pacifism. To begin with, the definition of pacifism draws on the principle of non-violence and opposition to any war or preparatory efforts for war—even for the purposes of self-defense.9 Considering this definition, it is impossible to call postwar Japan’s desire for peace “pacifism,” since while promoting peace, public opinion also approves of the Self-Defense Forces and the US-Japan Security Treaty, thereby violating the spirit of “not taking up arms.” Moreover,

90

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

as Sakamoto Yoshikazu points out, pacifism’s inclusion in the constitution actually impaired the potential of peace movements to critically confront state authority. In other words, by relying on a constitutional principle, the type of agency specific to people engaging in peace movements (that is, thoroughly resisting any state power that attempts to appeal to military might) has been weakened.10 The Constitution of Japan was established under the Occupation after the Allied forces disarmed the country. As Ishida Takeshi argues, without the people of Japan being driven to fight state power to realize peace and disarmament, pacifism was written into the constitution, which represents the “public stance of the state itself.” 11 As a result, movements became possible in which participants could rely on war-weariness to advocate for “pacifism” while not possessing any awareness that to be a pacifist is to put oneself in tension with state power. It is for this very reason, Sakamoto asserts, that the peace movement must first face “the fact that Japan has never been completely disarmed even once through to the present,” and, that adopting pacifism as a goal means working towards the formation of “international and domestic political conditions” that make possible disarmaments.12 Postwar Japanese peace movements Peace movements in postwar Japan reached their height in the 1950s. From 1953 to 1956, anti-US military base protests (in Uchinada, Sunagawa, and elsewhere in Japan), the movement to defend the constitution and the Gensuikin movement unfolded nationwide. These movements culminated in the movement to stop revisions to the US-Japan Security Treaty from 1959 to 1960. Among these movements, Gensuikin has been a major postwar Japanese peace movement, and its size and continuity boast a “unique scale and enduring strength that is unseen, even internationally.” 13 The atomic bombing experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have sustained wide-ranging sympathy for this movement.14 The Gensuikin petition movement began after the Lucky Dragon No. 5 Incident (the “Bikini Incident”) in 1954 when fishermen on this ill-fated boat were exposed to radiation fallout after the explosion of a hydrogen bomb by the US military at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. Thereafter the movement spread rapidly throughout the country. With its emphasis on humanism and gaining support across political party lines, even the conservative class—itself enthusiastic about rearming Japan—became involved. This political inclusivity, however, led to a split in the movement over the US-Japan Security Treaty revisions around 1959. Furthermore, in 1963, against the backdrop of conflict between China and the Soviet Union, the movement split again, this time into Japan Socialist Party (JSP) and Japan Communist Party (JCP) camps, leading many people to distance themselves from it.15 However, even after the movement lost its base of mass support, the atomic bombings continued to take root as a national experience, buttressing the people’s desire to ban atomic and hydrogen weapons. Bombed municipalities, journalists, scientists, educators and other new leaders, for example, worked to investigate the harm caused by the atomic bombs and to spread information about the harm that had actually occurred.16 Of course, the question remains as to whether these activities amounted to a peace movement or not because, although they spoke out against nuclear weapons, they did not develop an identity as a movement for resisting state power. Moreover, they tended to offer only lackluster reactions to military buildups and conflicts involving conventional weapons. Fujiwara Osamu, who sees these activities as also

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

91

being a part of the Gensuikin movement in a broad sense, argues that they were limited to educational undertakings and did not influence actual politics.17 Throughout the history of the Gensuikin movement, the presence of hibakusha—atomic bombing survivor-victims—has served as a pillar of spiritual support. However, it is also important to note that hibakusha did not only speak out about their bombing experiences and give power to this movement, they also became politically active. In 1956, hibakusha formed the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers’ Organizations (known as Hidankyō), which through to the present has engaged in contentious politics, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and demanding redress from the state that brought about harm.

Hidankyō’s beginnings Even before the formation of Hidankyō, there were (albeit, small-scale) organizations of atomic bombing victims, such as the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Victims Association, that aimed both to address the medical and daily life difficulties of victims as well as “work for peace so that this kind of tragedy is not repeated.” 18 However, the formation of a movement that organized victims around the country and adopted the banning of atomic and hydrogen bombs as its position was only possible thanks to the Gensuikin movement. In other words, without the rise of that movement, Japan’s atomic bombing victims would not have organized themselves and stood up for banning these weapons. Following the Bikini Incident in March 1954, people in Japan, who now realized that their fish and rain were contaminated by radiation, launched a signature campaign seeking to protect people’s lives and daily existence by banning atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. The campaign spread throughout the country, and the number of signatures exceeded twenty million about six months later. With the Gensuikin movement swelling, politicians, intellectuals and activists—conservatives and progressives—together spoke of Japan’s noble mission to “save humanity from destruction” as a “nation that had been thrice-harmed by the bomb.” 19 A feeling of solidarity, mediated by victim consciousness, was formed. In later years, this would come to be criticized as hibaku nationalism—roughly meaning nationalism based on a sense of national obligation to ban nuclear weapons formed via the collective memory of atomic bombing victimhood. While this sense of solidarity prompted people to mobilize to prevent further use of atomic weapons, it did not immediately focus on the suffering of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We could even say that the feeling of not wanting to share the same fate as hibakusha was stronger.20 The image of hibakusha, simply as symbols of the casualty caused by nuclear bombs, began to change after their suffering came to be more widely known. In preparation for the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, scheduled for August 1955 in the city of Hiroshima, the Hiroshima preparatory committee planned discussions with victims at both guest houses operated out of victims’ homes and at every subcommittee meeting at the World Conference. Their purpose was to increase opportunities for participants to come into direct contact with the actual voices of the victims.21 These encounters left a deep impression on participants, and the World Conference adopted a declaration that positioned “relief ” for victims as the “foundation of the movement to ban

92

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

atomic and hydrogen bombs.” In this way, the banning of these bombs and hibakusha relief were positioned as the movement’s “two cartwheels.” 22 The conference, which gave hibakusha the opportunity to speak out about their suffering in public settings for the first time, helped them find positive meaning in their survival. After the World Conference they had the courage to move towards organizing themselves. At the Hiroshima Prefecture Atomic Bombing Victims Conference on March 18, 1956, hibakusha decided to engage in a movement to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs in addition to demanding support for atomic and hydrogen bombing victims’ “self-reliance and recovery” and state compensation for the deceased.23 On March 20th, forty-one people represented by Hiroshima’s Fujii Heiichi, together with representatives from the prefectures of Nagasaki, Nagano, Saitama, Aomori and Ehime, petitioned the National Diet to ban these bombs. This petitioning was organized by the newly formed Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyō). Participants from Hiroshima got to know each other while traveling to Tokyo, and after returning home began organizing victims in their respective residential districts. Such efforts around Hiroshima bore fruit in the formation of the Hiroshima Prefectural Hidankyō on March 27, 1956.24 In Nagasaki in June 1955, the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Young Women’s Association was formed, and it thereafter sent a representative to the first World Conference in Hiroshima.25 In May 1956, the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Young Men’s Association and the Young Women’s Association merged to form the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Young Men and Women’s Association. Members of this group, as well as Nagasaki City councilmen Sugimoto Kamekichi and Osasa Hachirō among others, brought people together to form the Nagasaki Prefecture Atomic Bombing Victims’ Council in June 1956, immediately before the second World Conference against Hydrogen and Atomic Bombs was to be held in Nagasaki.26 At the inaugural meeting of the Hiroshima Hidankyō, it was decided to establish an alliance of victims centered on the victims’ groups of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nagano and Ehime prefectures, and to use this alliance as a foundation from which to call for atomic bombing victims to organize and create a national organization.27 On August 10, 1956, the second day of the second World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs held in the city of Nagasaki, the Japan Hidankyō was formed. Representatives from the four prefectures of the victims’ alliance and representatives from places such as Fukuoka, Saga, Shimane, Hyogo, Tokyo and Kanagawa, among others, participated.28 As Hidankyō’s founding declaration noted, “the World Conference last year in August is the primary reason that [we] had the courage to stand up.” 29 The feeling of solidarity between participants experienced at the World Conference and their sense of responsibility as survivors made atomic bombing victims feel determined “to save ourselves and through our experience to save humanity from its crisis.” 30 At the founding conference, Hidankyō also clarified its initial positions, which included speaking out about the damage caused by, and advancing a movement against, atomic and hydrogen bombs, and demanding a relief law and health management system for the victims of the atomic and hydrogen bombings.31

Splits in the Gensuikin movement and Hidankyō’s crisis After the World Conference, groups around Japan invited hibakusha to gatherings, leading to more widespread understanding of atomic bombing victims’ suffering and, in turn, an

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

93

expansion in the hibakusha relief movement. In the midst of these initiatives, public voices also arose calling for the government to provide relief to hibakusha. Combined with efforts by bombed municipalities and politicians, the government—which had previously refused to provide relief specifically to hibakusha out of concerns over “balance with the [other] civilian victims of war (ippan sensaisha)”—moved in the direction of establishing hibakusha relief. In April 1957, the Diet passed the Law Concerning Medical Care for the Hibakusha of the Atomic Bombings (Medical Care Law). Victims of the atomic bombings, who had been neglected for twelve years since the incidents, finally became eligible for state relief. However, the government’s policy of providing relief for ippan sensaisha within the social welfare system did not change. This new law was nothing more than a measure for addressing radiation aftereffects, which were considered a “special state of health.” 32 The Medical Care Law instituted a system for the “maintenance and improvement” of hibakusha’s health. However, the state was only responsible for twice-yearly health checkups and medical treatment for those hibakusha who were officially recognized as having radiation disease, where very few were eligible. The law did not provide the medical care necessary for the vast majority of hibakusha who were in poor health. Furthermore, it did not include a system to guarantee security in daily life for hibakusha unable to work due to illness or disability or for surviving family members who had lost their breadwinners in the bombings. Hidankyō, seeking medical care and security in daily life, responded by calling on the government to pass the Relief Law for the Victims of the Atomic Bombings.33 Being organizationally fragile in the period immediately following its founding, Hidankyō joined Gensuikyō in the fall of 1956 and received assistance as it worked to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs and pass the Relief Law. But as the 1950s drew to a close, Gensuikyō’s antagonistic position towards the government became stronger, resulting in a split in the Gensuikin movement. This split also had repercussions for Hidankyō. In March 1959, Japan Gensuikyō became the managing organization of the People’s Council for Preventing Revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty—a development that the LDP government could not overlook. Beginning with the LDP-majority Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly’s withdrawal of public funds to the Fifth World Conference to be held in Hiroshima in August 1959, LDP members and conservatives withdrew from Gensuikyō and set about creating a new anti-atomic and hydrogen bomb organization.34 In November 1961, the National Council for Peace and Against Nuclear Weapons (Kakuheiki Kinshi Heiwa Kensetsu Kokumin Kaigi; Kakkin Kaigi) was formed as a counterweight to Gensuikyō. While this organization was led by the newly-formed Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), LDP power-holders participated as officers and advisors.35 At the sites of the bombings, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki prefectural assemblies and LDP prefectural federations took the lead in launching the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Relief Measures Council and they called for hibakusha to not become wrapped up in political battles.36 While calling for relief for hibakusha, conservatives aimed to separate hibakusha from the Gensuikin movement and weaken Gensuikyō. Against this backdrop, Hidankyō members became concerned that the Relief Law might not be passed if the organization was seen as being closely aligned with the left-leaning Gensuikyō.37 It is certainly true that for hibakusha suffering from illness and poverty, the establishment of this law was an urgent issue. It is also understandable that voices would emerge within the organization calling for a distancing from Gensuikyō to ensure the

94

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

smooth enactment of the law. However, at the same time, members realized that hibakusha had been able to rise up because of the solidarity they had established with others in Gensuikin movement. With conservatives applying pressure—stating that they would only pass the Relief Law if Hidankyō’s ties with Gensuikyō were cut—and distrust surrounding Gensuikyō’s distribution of hibakusha relief money, following the escalation of socialist-communist conflict within Gensuikyō after the Soviet Union’s relaunching of nuclear testing in September 1961, calls increased for Hidankyō to cut its organizational ties with Gensuikyō. In February 1965, Hidankyō decided to withdraw from Gensuikyō. However, some members continued to believe that the organization should stay within Gensuikyō such that, at one point, Hidankyō was but a step away from splitting.38 Hidankyō, which had barely maintained unity after this period of disorder in the 1960s, subsequently ceased to rely on Gensuikyō, building its own movement independently. To make the Relief Law a reality, it energetically engaged in a movement on a scale previously unseen, pressuring the government and appealing to the public for support through sit-ins and demonstrations.

Working to pass the Relief Law: The heightening of contentious politics Despite the damage from the atomic bombings being caused by the United States, Hidankyō consistently called upon the Japanese government to take responsibility for this damage and it demanded compensation. Atomic bombing victims with Japanese citizenship had no other choice here because all opportunities to pursue America’s legal responsibility were closed off after Japan relinquished the right to seek reparations from the United States under the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Before the establishment of Hidankyō, Okamoto Shōichi, a lawyer in Osaka who had served as a member of defense counsel at the Tokyo Trial, had in fact initiated a civil case for damages against the United States government at a US court, with support from the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Victims Association. However, this effort was frustrated by legal technicalities, concerns over the possible negative impacts on US-Japan relations, and a lack of funds to cover the expensive legal fees.39 Accordingly, in March 1955, five survivor-plaintiffs, including Shimoda Ryuichi of Hiroshima, sued the Japanese government—which had renounced its right to seek reparations—for damages in the Tokyo District Court (known as the Shimoda case).40 Despite the plaintiffs losing, the court’s ruling on December 7, 1963, was a landmark decision, finding that dropping the atomic bombs had violated international law.41 Furthermore, the court found that the Japanese government ought to provide more relief to victims of the atomic bombings since it began a war “based on its own authority and responsibility,” leading many nationals to death, injuries and lives of unease. This verdict offered a legal basis for enacting the Relief Law.42 In response to the court’s ruling, in March 1964, the House of Councillors approved a resolution calling for the strengthening of relief measures for hibakusha. The House of Representatives followed suit in the following month, and the Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Measures Subcommittee was subsequently established in the LDP.43 In May 1968, the Law Regarding Special Measures for Atomic Bombing Hibakusha (Special Measures Law) was

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

95

promulgated with the aim of “promoting the welfare” of hibakusha. But while the law established various new allowances to assist hibakusha, such as a health management allowance, income restrictions were being imposed on them. In other words, the special measures contained in the law were not based on the same “spirit of state compensation” as had been the case with the Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors.44 In order to avoid a repeat of its earlier internal organizational disorder, in August 1970, Hidankyō reformed its leadership structure from control by the head of the board of directors to leadership by multiple representatives from the board of directors and a secretary general, thereby creating a more democratic organizational structure. In an attempt to work towards passing of the Relief Law in a way rooted in hibakusha’s voices, Hidankyō’s new leadership called on affiliated prefectural groups to collate the demands of hibakusha in their areas.45 These were compiled into a list of twenty-six items announced at the 15th annual meeting in September 1971 as “Our Fundamental Demands.” In response to LDP Vice President Miki Takeo’s statement in August 1972 that it would be “desirable for the Relief Law to be lawmaker-initiated legislation,” an outline for the demands to be included in the bill was prepared based on “Our Fundamental Demands.” 46 The result, in March 1973, was the “Outline of Demands for the Atomic Bombing Victims Relief Bill.” “Outline of Demands” reflected not only the voices of hibakusha but also those of surviving family members, and it presented items necessary for the Relief Law to serve as a form of state compensation. These items included the provision of medical and health management, a hibakusha pension, a surviving family member pension, a disability pension and condolence money.47 With “Outline of Demands” in hand, Hidankyō lobbied the chief cabinet secretary, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Prime Minister’s Office and ruling and opposition parties to pass a bill. In August 1973, the JCP released an outline of a bill, while the head of the LDP’s Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Issues Subcommittee indicated his positive stance regarding the Relief Law.48 In light of this, Hidankyō decided to engage in a “major action” in Tokyo to increase the momentum among political parties’ for the drafting and passing of the law.49 At this “major action” in November, approximately three thousand hibakusha and supporters gathered from around the country. They held demonstrations and engaged in overnight sit-ins with tents in front of the Ministry of Health and Welfare for five days, calling on the government to establish the Relief Law and appealing to the public for support. These actions proved successful, securing responses from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health and Welfare that they would consider the Relief Law, as well as gaining support from the various political parties. Furthermore, mass action deepened participants’ solidarity and led to the emergence of a collective identity as hibakusha who stand to demand redress from the state for the atomic bombing damages.50 In January 1974, Hidankyō representatives participated in a meeting to create a Relief Law bill with the Legislative Bureau and representatives from the four opposition parties. In March, these parties (JSP, JCP, Kōmeito, and DSP) jointly submitted a Relief Law bill to the House of Representatives. For many years, Hidankyō had sought a Relief Law bill that took the form of state compensation, and for the first time this had become the object of state deliberations. However, it was met with opposition from the LDP and was abandoned in May of the same year.51 Nonetheless, Hidankyō did not ease up on its Relief Law movement.52

96

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Struggle to overcome the “doctrine of enduring war harm” When the opposition parties’ Relief Law bill was abandoned in the House of Representatives in April 1978, revisions to the Medical Care Law and the Special Measures Law were passed, and an accompanying resolution stated that representatives would work to make state compensation a reality. A similar resolution was passed in the House of Councillors. To increase momentum towards the Relief Law’s enactment, Hidankyō launched the Hibaku Issues Citizen Groups’ Commission in November along with religious NGOs, the National Federation of Regional Women’s Organizations, the Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union and the Japan Youth Council. Aiming to collect the signatures of twenty million people, the Commission decided to launch a “national movement” seeking passage of the Relief Law. By June of the following year, four million signatures had been collected.53 In the late 1970s, the movement for the Relief Law made significant advances. Additionally, victory in a legal battle that had been launched separate to Hidankyō’s efforts provided a legal basis for the Relief Law’s enactment. This Supreme Court decision concerned the Korean hibakusha Son Jin-doo who sought the issuance of a hibakusha health certificate. Son, who had come to Japan to receive treatment for radiation sickness, was arrested in Saga on charges of violating the Immigration Control Order in December 1970.54 While in custody, Son’s health deteriorated and he applied for a hibakusha health certificate to receive medical treatment but was denied. In October 1972, Son brought a case to the Fukuoka District Court seeking revocation of this denial.55 The March 1974 verdict of the district court and the July 1975 verdict of the court of appeal did precisely that, recognizing Son as a hibakusha. His victory was upheld in the Supreme Court in March 1978, and he was issued a hibakusha certificate.56 This was a landmark Supreme Court decision. After clearly recognizing that “if one goes back” in time, damage from the atomic bombings “could be attributed to an act of the state” of Japan, the court found that the Medical Care Law is a state compensation system because through the law the state “works to relieve” the damage of the atomic bombings in its responsibility as the “actor that carried out the war.” 57 The government, which had asserted that it was providing relief to hibakusha as a form of social security and not state compensation, was forced to respond. The Supreme Court’s decision became a topic of discussion in the National Diet, and in January 1979, the Social Security System Advisory Council recommended to the Minister of Health and Welfare that measures for hibakusha be reconsidered. In May, the Committee to Discuss Basic Hibakusha Policy Issues (hereafter Basic Issues Committee) was established as a private advisory panel to the Minister of Health and Welfare. On December 11, 1980, the committee released its report, which examined how the “basic principles and basic modus operandi” of hibakusha policy fell short of hibakusha’s expectations. While recognizing that the harm from atomic bombings was “a hell beyond human imagination,” it positioned hibakusha policy as a form of social security that “seeks to promote the well-being of hibakusha,” and rejected the idea that the state is legally responsible for providing compensation for this harm. Furthermore, it laid out a “doctrine of enduring war harm” which stated that “all members of the nation are obligated to equally accept and endure” the harm of the war, including atomic bombings.58 Despite the war having been

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

97

carried out as state policy and harm having arisen as a result, the report not only rejected state compensation for those harmed but also imposed the endurance of this harm on them. Hidankyō, which had been engaging in a national signature campaign for the Relief Law’s enactment, thereafter used frustration over the Basic Issues Committee’s report as a springboard from which to strengthen its movement to transcend this doctrine of endurance and have the Relief Law enacted as a form of state compensation. While engaging in this movement, Hidankyō found that in order to counter the committee’s report, it was necessary to persuasively show that the harm from the atomic bombs is not something that can be endured and that therefore the state must compensate for it. In November 1982, Hidankyō launched its first survey of those killed by the atomic bombs and their bereaved families.59 In November of the following year, it carried out a “demands survey,” which clarified the sources of suffering for atomic bombing victims, as well as their requirements.60 Based on the results of these surveys, Hidankyō pushed forward with creating a new “Outline of Demands” to demonstrate the need for the Relief Law and build public support.61 Discussions were held around the country during which the “Outline of Demands” draft was repeatedly updated. In November 1984, Hidankyō released its “Fundamental Demands of Atomic Bombing Victims,” based on the opinions of about one thousand people.62 Stating that “Insofar as the dehumanizing harm of the atomic bombings arose as a result of war, it is only natural that the state that carried out the war must assume the responsibility to compensate for this harm,” “Fundamental Demands” took issue with the government’s war harm endurance policy and demanded the passing of the Relief Law. At the same time, it asserted that the abolition of nuclear weapons is necessary to “never again produce hibakusha.” It called on the United States to apologize and stand at the forefront of the movement to abolish nuclear weapons as a token of apology, as well as other nuclear-club countries to do away with their nuclear weapons. The pamphlet’s demands to Japanese government included investigating the harm caused by the atomic bombs in its capacity as the leadership of “a country harmed by nuclear war” as well as leaving US “nuclear umbrella.” 63 By working to break down the barrier of the endurance doctrine found in the Basic Issues Committee’s report and by bringing together the voices of hibakusha from across the nation, “Fundamental Demands” concluded that, most of all, atomic bombing victims wished for no more hibakusha, and that to this end it would be necessary to realize the two major demands Hidankyō had been pursuing since its foundation: abolishing nuclear weapons and state compensation for victims of the atomic bombings. Here, the demand to compensate for harm is clearly linked to holding the state responsible as a perpetrator and preventing the same harm from occurring again. “Fundamental Demands” continues today to serve as the foundational position of Hidankyō’s movement. However, the Relief Law has not yet been enacted because the policy principles on hibakusha outlined in the Basic Issues Committee’s report continue to set the tone for the state’s hibakusha policies. These principles were also adhered to in the 1994 Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Assistance Law, which combined the Medical Care Law and the Special Measures Law. For this very reason, the harm subject to state relief under the 1994 law is limited to “damage to health stemming from radiation.” Due to concerns about the repercussions for relief for others affected by the war, the phrase “state compensation” and compensation for the dead—both of which Hidankyō had sought—were eliminated in the process of passing the bill into law. Atomic bombing damage for which the state would provide relief was limited to “special damage different from other war harm.” 64 98

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The basis of demands for state compensation: The state’s war responsibility Ever since its founding, Hidankyō has continually sought state compensation for the damage caused by the atomic bombs. The 1956 “Outline of the Relief Law for the Atomic Bombing Victims” called on the state to responsibly oversee the medical care and daily life security of victims because their harm was the result of a “war carried out under the state’s responsibility” and “completely outside the scope of an individual’s responsibility.” 65 While war responsibility was used as the basis for this demand, it also referred to the social welfare responsibility of the state to protect the people “The Reality of the Atomic Bombings’ Damage and Victims’ Suffering” of August 1958 demanded that medical care be comprehensively guaranteed and security provided in daily life.66 While touching on the right to life expressed in Article 25 of the Constitution of Japan, this text proposes solidarity with other movements working to enhance social security benefit for others under difficult living conditions. However, rather than fighting alongside the social security movement, Hidankyō put its efforts into demanding state compensations based on war responsibility. It was the 1966 “The Characteristics of Damage from the Atomic Bombs and a Demand for a Hibakusha Relief Law” (known as the Crane Pamphlet) that called for compensation while also clearly discussing the state’s war responsibility and its obligations for social security under Article 25 of the constitution. While touching on the verdict in the 1963 Shimoda case, the pamphlet argues that the state shoulders absolute liability for war damages as a party responsible for prosecuting the war. Furthermore, it also holds the state responsible for relinquishing the right to seek reparations, thereby ignoring the wishes of hibakusha to hold the United States responsible, as well as for abandoning hibakusha by not ensuring that they receive adequate medical care and have security in daily life.67 When the Crane Pamphlet was written, veterans, former military employees and their surviving family members had been in receipt of special relief measures from the state for over ten years under the 1952 Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors and military pension payments relaunched in 1953. Atomic bombing victims, in contrast, only received limited medical care only if they were legally recognized as hibakusha. Facing this gap in relief which grew larger as the years passed, the Crane Pamphlet criticized the state for refusing to provide relief for civilian victims of the war while giving preferential treatment to those who had been employed by the state. The pamphlet further argued that there was no reason to give preferential treatment to veterans and former military employees because the entire nation had been mobilized and suffered as a result of the total war regime. On the other hand, in order to shoot down the government’s rejection of compensation for atomic bombing victims on the grounds of “balance” with other civilian victims, the pamphlet emphasized the “special nature of damage from the atomic bombings” in calling for compensation, while criticizing the lack of a compensation scheme for victims of aerial attacks.68 By doing so, Hidankyō was unable to fully criticize the government’s war victim policy, which divided civilian war victims into hibakusha, who are eligible for limited medical care for damage from radiation, and others who are compelled to endure war harm. In its demands for state compensation, Hidankyō initially tended to rely on the phrase “the spirit of state compensation” contained in the Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors.

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

99

The Crane Pamphlet was no exception. It argued that “relief laws”—a primary example of which is the aforementioned law for war victims and survivors—are instruments in which “the state, recognizing its responsibility for the people’s harm due to a war carried out under its own responsibility, takes special measures to compensate” these victims.69 Based on this interpretation, Hidankyō sought a similar relief law for hibakusha. However, from the 1980s onward, Hidankyō would shift its demands to focus on clearly establishing the state’s war responsibility and, hence, it no longer touched on the Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors. This was a result of Hidankyō having made clear the multi-layered harm experienced at the time of the atomic bombings and exacerbated during the postwar years through factfinding surveys of hibakusha around Japan, the compilation of the stories of atomic bombing experiences and counseling for atomic bombing victims. The 1973 “Outline of Demands” proposed a hibakusha pension for the first time, however the specifics of this demand would not be made clear until a revised version of this pamphlet was released in January 1980. While the Crane Pamphlet viewed the state’s war responsibility as absolute liability for having caused harm, this revised “Outline of Demands” held the state responsible for carrying out the war not only on legal grounds but also on political and moral grounds that hibakusha would not have suffered had there been no war.70 Like the Crane Pamphlet, the revised “Outline of Demands” discussed the state’s responsibility for waging the war, for having relinquished the right to seek reparations and for neglect of the victims. However, it no longer touched on the state’s responsibility for social security nor did it mention the Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors. Instead, it sought to enact an Atomic Bombing Victims Relief Law as a token of redress for harm. Hidankyō did not perceive this law as providing for state compensation in the sense of the state expressing gratitude to those it recognized as having “sacrificed for the country” (as was the case in the Relief Law for War Victims and Survivors). Rather, through the law Hidankyō was calling on the state to recognize its responsibility for bringing about harm to the victims of the atomic bombings and to redress this. Furthermore, it denounced the US government for engaging in “grave criminal acts” that violated international law by dropping the atomic bombs, and it asserted that the Japanese government’s relinquishing of atomic bombing victims’ right to seek reparations was a violation of human rights, contravening the spirit of the Constitution of Japan. The revised “Outline of Demands” further solidified the basis of its demands by clearly positioning harm from the atomic bombings as “political harm” caused by the acts of the US and Japanese governments at the time of the bombings and after the war.71 The “Fundamental Demands” of 1984 adhered to the demands and ideas regarding state’s responsibility found in the revised “Outline of Demands” of 1980. However, in addition to clearly seeking redress for people who died in the bombings for the first time, it also broadened the range of state responsibility from the past, for having caused the harm, to the present and future, for assuring life, as well as from atomic bombing victims to the Japanese people, as follows: Hibakusha are seeking state redress for the damage of the atomic bombings. Compensation for damage is the first step to preventing similar harm. The Atomic Bombing Victims Relief Law constructs a system that, by having the state compensate for the damage of the atomic bombings, does not compel the endurance of harm from nuclear war and establishes the Japanese people’s right to reject nuclear war.72 100

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

According to this pamphlet, the Relief Law not only had to incorporate redress for the harm caused by the atomic bombs, it also had to guarantee the Japanese people’s right to not be compelled to endure this harm again. On this basis Hidankyō pressed the government to formulate the Relief Law with the intention of never again creating hibakusha.

Conclusion: The (de)merits of hibaku nationalism and historical significance of the Hidankyō movement When the Gensuikin movement began, many hibakusha were suffering from illness and poverty, as well as isolation and loneliness—so much so that some wished that they had died in the bombing. As the movement spread across the nation, however, for the first time hibakusha found others willing to empathize with their suffering. In turn, hibakusha discovered a sense of mission as living witnesses of the harm from the atomic bombs, and they developed the desire to live. Unlike Gensuikyō, Hidankyō started not as a social movement organization built around participants’ shared ideology and objectives; it was an alliance of victims’ groups from around Japan in which the experience of the atomic bombings served as a nodal point. Hidankyō was comprised of people who had been harmed by the atomic bombs together with their surviving family members. They did not necessarily adhere to the principle of banning atomic and hydrogen bombs from the beginning, and for this reason, Hidankyō also fell into organizational disarray when the Gensuikin movement split. However, by engaging in the movement, Hidankyō members—who differed in political beliefs and class—discovered how atomic bombing victims, including themselves, had been made to suffer as they grasped the nature of the damage caused by the atomic bombs, which was exacerbated by postwar politics. Within this process of awakening, they established a collective identity of atomic bombing victims and solidified their resolve to ensure that never again would anyone experience the same suffering. Collective identity of hibakusha as anti-nuclear peace activists was not automatically born from the experience of having been victims of the atomic bombings but constructed through decades of struggles never to create new hibakusha. During the 1980s when Hidankyō was advocating the ideas contained in “Fundamental Demands” and the movement for the Relief Law was gathering steam, criticism of Japan for having caused harm to its neighbors in Asia during the war and not having faced its war responsibility became more widespread. Criticisms of hibakusha were also on the rise, demanding that they face this responsibility as victimizers without shutting themselves off within their victim consciousness. It is certainly true that Hidankyō movements did not consider Japan’s responsibility for colonial rule and military aggression and did not put effort into building solidarity with Korean hibakusha until the 1990s. Unlike the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association and repatriation groups, which were well-connected with the LDP and could influence millions of votes, Hidankyō could only rely on public support. For this reason, they presented the enactment of a Relief Law as a national issue while appealing to Japanese people’s identity as members of the only nation to have experienced an atomic bombing (hibaku nationalism). On the one hand, hibaku nationalism—a form of what Sakamoto Yoshikazu called “progressive nationalism”—has to a degree restrained the Japanese state as it sought to rearm, while also contributing to advancing relief measures for hibakusha.73 On the other hand,

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

101

hibaku nationalism has undoubtedly prevented people from facing war victims positioned outside of the Japanese national community, especially Japan’s former colonial subjects. However, this should not be used as a reason to censure hibakusha for appealing to hibaku nationalism. Atomic bombing victims stood up to “become a bastion for the defense of humanity’s existence and well-being” because they felt genuine empathy from the participants of the Gensuikin movement across the nation.74 A sense of comradeship and a common aspiration to ban nuclear bombs among the Japanese people, mediated by the national memory of the atomic bombing, helped hibakusha pursue their mission. While they have undoubtedly relied on hibaku nationalism as a source of moral support from the public and for political legitimacy, Hidankyō has interrogated the Japanese state’s war responsibility for over 60 years by demanding state compensation for the victims—something few other Japanese have pursued. The Japanese people, who were victims of the repressive state, became perpetrators against other nations by being complicit in war, and perhaps many hibakusha have not looked squarely at this past. However, by pursuing the state’s responsibility for driving members of the nation to fight the war and pressing the state not to create hibakusha again, hibakusha have resisted becoming both a victim and a perpetrator of state-initiated violence. By seeking to turn the so-called Three Non-Nuclear Principles into law and have the state leave the US’s nuclear umbrella, Hidankyō has tried to block not only the possibility of Japan arming itself with nuclear weapons and becoming a perpetrator but also the path towards Japan becoming a perpetrator as a country allied with the United States.75 Demanding compensation for damage does not need to be connected to a pursuit of responsibility for causing damage or preventing damage from re-occurring. However, as the hibakusha movement—which initially focused on self-reliance and recovery, with demands for medical care—exposed the damage from the atomic bombings in historical and political contexts, it transformed into a movement to investigate why this damage arose and where responsibility lay. It demanded redress from the state and sought to prevent the creation of new hibakusha. Strictly speaking, it is hard to classify the fight of hibakusha that pressed state power to redress their suffering as a pacifist movement in the same way as the activism of the Quakers, which resists any attempts for armament and military action by state power and the establishment; instead, the hibakusha’s struggle appealed to constitutional principles and popular nationalism, thereby making it possible for Japanese people to avoid looking squarely at the history of colonial and military violence inflicted upon other nations. Despite such shortcomings, however, the hibakusha’s long fight to pursue state compensation and ban nuclear weapons should be remembered as a major postwar social movement in Japan that confronted state violence and attempted to realize the constitutionally-enshrined “right to live in peace.”

Notes 1 Oda Makoto, Nanshi no shisō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 56–57; Fujiwara Osamu, “Nihon no heiwa undō (1),” Tokyo Keizai Daigaku Kaishi, 176 (1992): 15. 2 Oda, Nanshi no shisō, 72–73. 3 Oda, Nanshi no shisō, 72–73. 4 On war memory, see also chapters by Seaton and Oguma in this volume.

102

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

5

Ishida Takeshi, Nihon no seiji to kotoba ge: “Heiwa” to “kokka” (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1989), 111–15. 6 Wada Susumu, “Heiwa undō to heiwa ishiki,” in Gendai Nihon shakai ron: Sengoshi kara genzai o yomu 30 shō, edited by Watanabe Osamu (Tokyo: Rōdō Shunpō Sha, 1996), 579–80. 7 Ishida, Nihon no seiji, 121–23. On the constitution, see also Winkler in this volume. 8 Wada, “Heiwa undō,” 570. 9 Sakamoto Yoshikazu, “Heiwa undō ni okeru shinri to ronri,” Sekai 200 (August 1962): 22–34. In contrast to the absolutist position of pacifism, Martin Ceadel refers to “pacificism” to refer to a position advocating peace while allowing defense force for progressive causes, such as fighting colonial aggression. It is questionable if postwar Japan’s “pacifism” is characterized as “pacificism,” either. See Martin Ceadel, “Pacifism and pacificism,” in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought edited by Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 473–92. 10 Sakamoto, “Heiwa undō.” 11 Ishida, Nihon no seiji, 86. 12 Sakamoto, “Heiwa undō.” 13 Fujiwara, “Nihon no heiwa undō.” 14 Fujiwara, “Nihon no heiwa undō”; Sakamoto Yoshikazu, “Kenryoku seiji to heiwa undō,” Sekai 191 (November 1961): 11–23. 15 Fujiwara, “Nihon no heiwa undō”; Michiba Chikanobu, “Gensuibaku kinshi undō to reisen: Nihon ni okeru hankaku heiwa undō no kiseki,” in Nihon no gaikō 3: Gaikō shisō, edited by Sakai Tetsuya (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013), 225–56. 16 Ubuki Satoru, “Gunshuku to shimin undō: Nihon no gensuibaku kinshi undō o megutte,” Kokusai Seiji 80 (1985): 112–26. 17 Fujiwara, “Nihon no heiwa undō.” 18 Genbaku Higaisha no Kai. “Genbaku Higaisha no Kai Kaisoku.” August 10, 1952. 19 Naono Akiko, “Genbaku higaisha to ‘sengo Nihon’: Higai ishiki no keisei kara han-genbaku e,” in Shakai no kyōkai o ikiru hitobito: Sengo Nihon no fuchi, edited by Yasuda Tsuneo (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013), 224. 20 Naono, “Genbaku higaisha,” 220–47. 21 Hiroshima Daigaku Genbaku Hōshanō Igaku Kenkyūsho Fuzoku Genbaku Hisai Gakujyutsu Shiryō Sentā, ed. “Madoute kure: Fujii Heiichi kikigakisho 2, Gensuibaku Kinshi Sekai Taikai,” Shiryō Chōsa Tsūshin 6, separate volume (January 1982): 11–12; Hiroshima shi, ed. Hiroshima shinshi: Rekishi-hen (Hiroshima: Hiroshima shi, 1984), 129. 22 Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon Kyōgikai. Gensuibaku Kinshi Sekai Taikai “sengen, ketsugi, kankoku-shū” dai 1 kai 1955–dai 9 kai 1963 (Tokyo: Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon Kyōgikai, 1964), 2.; Fujiwara, “Nihon no. heiwa undō” 23 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 136. 24 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 137–41. 25 Watanabe Chieko, Nagasaki ni ikiru (Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 1973), 19–22; 69–86. 26 Nagasaki Genbaku Hisaisha Kyōgikai, ed., Asu e no isan: Nagasaki hisaikyō kessei 35 shūnen kinen shi (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Genbaku Hisaisha Kyōgikai, 1991), 9–11. 27 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 142. 28 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 143. 29 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Sekai e no aisatsu,” Handbill, August 10, 1956. 30 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Sekai e no aisatsu.” 31 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 143–44. 32 For detailed accounts of the making of the Medical Law and the category of “hibakusha” see Akiko Naono, “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor,” Japanese Studies 39, no. 3 (2019): 333–52. 33 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi hibakusha o tsukuru na: Nihon Hidankyō 50-nen shi (Tokyo: Akebi Shobō, 2009), 97–98. 34 Hiroshima shi, Hiroshima shinshi, 247–53. 35 Ikeyama Shigerō, “Seijiteki handōka tsuyomeru kakkin kaigi,” Gekkan Rōdō Mondai 103 (November 1966): 60–65. 36 “Entaikyō Hiroshima kenchō de hatsu no taikai,” Chugoku shinbun, February 1, 1960.

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

103

37

“Dai nikai Hidankyō jyōninriji-kai kettei,” Hidankyō Renraku No. 12. For detailed accounts of Hidankyō’s organizational crisis, see Naono Akiko, “Hibaku taiken to gensuibaku kinshi no aida: Gensuibaku kinshi undō bunretsu-ki ni okeru hibakusha undō,” Doujidaishi Kenkyū (2019): 40–57. 39 Matsui Yasuhiro, Genbaku saiban: Kakuheiki haizetsu to hibakusha engo no hōri (Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppan-sha, 1986), 21–22. 40 Matsui, Genbaku saiban, 24. 41 The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims on the ground that individuals have no rights under international law to claim damages. 42 Matsui, Genbaku saiban, 206–46. 43 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 107. 44 See the later section for the difference between this law and Hidankyō’s proposed Hibakusha Relief Law. 45 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 121. 46 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 125. 47 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higaisha no tame no yōkyū kosshi,” Pamphlet. 1973. 48 Saitō Yoshio, Watashi no hibakusha undō (Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppan-sha, 1986), 92. 49 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 127–29. 50 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 130–35. “Collective identity” is a sociological concept developed in the social movement theory that refers to “the shared definition of a group that derives from members’ common interests, experiences, and solidarity” (Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1992), 105. 51 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 139–41. 52 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 142–43. 53 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futabi, 175–76. Hidankyō No. 6. 54 Nakajima Tatsumi, Chōsenjin hibakusha Son Jin-doo saiban no kiroku (Tokyo: Zaikan Hibakusha Mondai Shimin Kaigi, 1998), 11–22. 55 Nakajima, Chōsenjin hibakusha, 43–70. 56 Nakajima, Chōsenjin hibakusha, 105–15; 142–45. 57 Nakajima, Chōsenjin hibakusha, 173–80. 58 Hibakusha Engo Hōrei Kenkyū-kai, ed. Genbaku hibakusha kankei hōrei tsūchi shū (Tokyo: Gyōsei, 2003), 890. 59 Hidankyō No. 46. 60 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai, Futatabi, 203. 61 Hidankyō No. 59. 62 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higaisha no kihon yōkyū: Futatabi Hibakusha o tsukuranai tameni,” Pamphlet, November 18, 1984. 63 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higaisha no kihon yōkyū.” 64 Naono Akiko, “Tsugunai naki kuni no hibakusha taisaku: Imada kanawanu hibakusha engohō,” in Nagasaki kara heiwagaku suru!, ed. Takahashi Shinji and Funakoe Kouichi (Kyoto: Hōritsu Bunka-sha, 2009), 64–76. 65 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai. “Genbaku higaisha engohō-an.” Handbill. September 1956. 66 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higai no jissō to hibakusha no kurushimi,” Pamphlet, August 1959. 67 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higai no tokushitsu to “hibakusha engohō no yōkyū,” Pamphlet, 1966. 68 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higai no tokushitsu.” 69 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higai no tokushitsu.” Emphasis in original. 70 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higaisha engohō no tame no yōkyū kosshi, kaiteiban,” Pamphlet, January 25, 1980. 71 Itō Tadashi, Hibaku no shisō to undō (Tokyo: Shin Hyōron, 1975), 303–5. 72 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Genbaku higaisha no kihon yōkyū.” 38

104

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

73

Sakamoto Yoshikazu, “Kakushin nashonarizumu shiron: Aratana kokuminzō o motomete,” Chūō Kōron 75, no. 11 (October 1960): 42–53. 74 Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai, “Sekai e no aisatsu.” 75 After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and the Japan Innovation Party urged the need to discuss introducing a “nuclear sharing” policy under the US-Japan Security Alliance regime, Hidankyō immediately released an open letter of protest.

References Ceadel, Martin. “Pacifism and pacificism.” In The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, edited by Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy, 473–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Chugoku Shinbun. “Entaikyō Hiroshima kenchō de hatsu no taikai.” February 1, 1960. Fujiwara, Osamu. “Nihon no heiwa undō (1).” Tokyo Keizai Daigaku Kaishi 176 (1992): 15–39. Genbaku Higaisha no Kai. “Genbaku Higaisha no Kai Kaisoku.” August 10, 1952. Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon Kyōgikai. Gensuibaku Kinshi Sekai Taikai “sengen, ketsugi, kankoku-shū” Dai 1 kai 1955–Dai 9 kai 1963. Tokyo: Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon Kyōgikai, 1964. Hibakusha Engo Hōrei Kenkyū-kai, ed. Genbaku hibakusha kankei hōrei tsūchi shū. Tokyo: Gyōsei, 2003. Hiroshima Daigaku Genbaku Hōshanō Igaku Kenkyūsho Fuzoku Genbaku Hisai Gakujyutsu Shiryō Sentā, ed. “Madoute kure: Fujii Heiichi kikigakisho 2, Gensuibaku Kinshi Sekai Taikai.” Shiryō Chōsa Tsūshin 6, separate volume (January 1982): 1–12. Hiroshima-shi, ed. Hiroshima shinshi: Rekishi-hen. Hiroshima: Hiroshima shi, 1984. Ikeyama, Shigerō. “Seijiteki handōka tsuyomeru kakkin kaigi.” Gekkan Rōdō Mondai 103 (November 1966): 60–65. Ishida, Takeshi. Nihon no seiji to kotoba ge: “Heiwa” to “kokka.” Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1989. Itō, Tadashi. Hibaku no shisō to undō. Tokyo: Shin Hyōron, 1975. Matsui, Yasuhiro. Genbaku saiban: Kakuheiki haizetsu to hibakusha engo no hōri. Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppan-sha, 1986. Michiba, Chikanobu. “Gensuibaku Kinshi undō to reisen: Nihon ni okeru hankaku heiwa undō no kiseki.” In Nihon no gaikō 3: Gaikō shisō, edited by Sakai Tetsuya, 225–56. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013. Nagasaki Genbaku Hisaisha Kyōgikai, ed. Asu e no isan: Nagasaki hisaikyō kessei 35 shūnen kinen shi. Nagasaki: Nagasaki Genbaku Hisaisha Kyōgikai, 1991. Nakajima, Tatsumi. Chōsenjin hibakusha Son Jin-doo saiban no kiroku. Tokyo: Zaikan Hibakusha Mondai Shimin Kaigi, 1998. Naono, Akiko. “Genbaku higaisha to ‘sengo Nihon’: Higai ishiki no keisei kara han-genbaku e.” In Shakai no kyōkai o ikiru hitobito: Sengo Nihon no fuchi, edited by Yasuda Tsuneo, 220–47. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013. _____. “Hibaku taiken to Gensuibaku Kinshi no aida: Gensuibaku Kinshi undō bunretsu-ki ni okeru hibakusha undō.” Doujidaishi Kenkyū 12 (2019): 40–57. _____. “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor.” Japanese Studies 39, no. 3 (2019): 333–52. _____. “Tsugunai naki kuni no hibakusha taisaku: Imada kanawanu hibakusha engohō.” In Nagasaki kara heiwagaku suru!, edited by Takahashi Shinji and Funakoe Kouichi, 64–76. Kyoto: Hōritsu Bunka-sha, 2009. Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai. “Genbaku higai no jissō to hibakusha no kurushimi.” Pamphlet. August 1959. _____. “Genbaku higai no tokushitsu to “hibakusha engohō no yōkyū.” Pamphlet. 1966. _____. “Genbaku higaisha engohō-an.” Handbill. September 1956. _____. “Genbaku higaisha engohō no tame no yōkyū kosshi.” Pamphlet. 1973. _____. “Genbaku higaisha engohō no tame no yōkyū kosshi, kaitei-ban.” Pamphlet. January 25, 1980. _____. “Genbaku higaisha no kihon yōkyū: Futatabi hibakusha o tsukuranai tameni.” Pamphlet. November 18, 1984. _____. Hidankyō. Newsletter. No. 6. June 6, 1979. _____. Hidankyō. Newsletter. No. 46. November 6, 1982. _____. Hidankyō. Newsletter. No. 59. December 6, 1983.

Chapter 5: Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism

105

_____. Hidankyō renraku. Newsletter. No. 12. May 10, 1959. _____. “Sekai e no aisatsu.” Handbill. August 10, 1956. Nihon Gensuibaku Higaisha Dantai Kyōgikai Nihon Hidankyō-shi Henshū Iin-kai. Futatabi hibakusha o tsukuru na: Nihon Hidankyō 50-nen shi. Tokyo: Akebi Shobō, 2009. Oda, Makoto. Nanshi no shisō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991. Saitō, Yoshio. Watashi no hibakusha undō. Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppan-sha, 1986. Sakamoto, Yoshikazu. “Heiwa undō ni okeru shinri to ronri.” Sekai 200 (August 1962): 22–34. _____. “Kakushin nashonarizumu shiron: Aratana kokuminzō o motomete.” Chūō Kōron 75, no. 11 (October 1960): 42–53. _____. “Kenryoku seiji to heiwa undō.” Sekai 191 (November 1961): 11–23. Taylor, Verta and Nancy Whittier “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization.” In Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller, 104–129. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1992. Ubuki, Satoru. “Gunshuku to shimin undō: Nihon no gensuibaku kinshi undō o megutte.” Kokusai Seiji 80 (1985): 112–26. Wada, Susumu. “Heiwa undō to heiwa ishiki.” In Gendai Nihon shakai ron: Sengoshi kara genzai o yomu 30 shō, edited by Watanabe Osamu, 570–91. Tokyo: Rōdō Shunpō sha, 1996. Watanabe, Chieko. Nagasaki ni ikiru. Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 1973.

106

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 6 Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime: Conservatism and Constitution in Postwar Japan Christian G. Winkler The Constitution of Japan has been the focus of controversial ideological battles throughout the postwar era. This chapter traces the protracted and often-heated debates and discussions over potential amendments to Japan’s constitution among elites, against the backdrop of historical change. The focus of these debates has traditionally been on Article 9 and national defense. In contrast, this chapter also examines the discussions surrounding the Imperial system, fundamental human rights and institutions of the Japanese state. These debates and the amendment proposals put forth by mostly center-right elites reflect changes in socio-economic conditions and intellectual debates from the 1950s to the present.

Introduction: Constitution and conservatism May 3, 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of the Constitution of Japan (CoJ) coming into effect. The CoJ has been a remarkable document in a number of ways. First, it has—quite literally—stood the test of time, for better or worse, remaining character for character, the very same document that became postwar Japan’s supreme law in 1947. This is no small feat, considering that conservative elites have for decades tried and failed to amend what many of them regard as a naïve, idealistic and outdated constitution with a highly questionable legitimacy. To students and teachers of Japanese politics and history, the CoJ’s endurance may seem quite natural given the political realities of postwar Japan; yet, a brief look abroad reveals how unique the CoJ is. The Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) is the most comprehensive database of historic and active constitutions available today. Studying this large body of data highlights one simple fact: constitutions that are not amended do not last long. In fact, they are replaced within a matter of three years on average.1 The CoJ’s extraordinary longevity is due not merely to relatively strong public support and progressive resistance against attempts to revise the supreme law, but also to its contents. While often accused of only seeking to weaken Japan by destroying the links to its proud past, the American authors

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

107

of the draft which served as the basis of what would become the CoJ, were conscious of the fact that they were not “we, the Japanese people,” but the occupiers of said people.2 Thus, they deliberately left a lot of leeway to future Japanese governments to design the institutions of the then nascent postwar Japan. Arguably, no one has benefitted more from this relative freedom to mold institutions than the long-running Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in spite of its often highly critical stance toward the supreme law.3 The desire to revise the CoJ and have it re-written by Japanese themselves thus, first, ironically ignores the constitution’s role in enabling the LDP’s long-term government and, second, makes for a curious reversal of conservative-progressive agendas. After all, elsewhere it has been progressives who have often successfully demanded constitutional change, such as the addition of new social rights or protection for minorities—at times against considerable conservative pushback. In Japan, the roles are, curiously enough, reversed.4 However, this role reversal is curious only at first glance. For one, what the CoJ lacks in institutional detail, it makes up for in a detailed enumeration of many fundamental human rights and freedoms. This very robust human rights regime—especially by the standards of 1947—has mitigated progressive pressures calling for amendments in Japan.5 As mentioned above, LDP governments have shared an often-ambiguous relationship with the constitution. On one hand, the party has called for the supreme law’s revision ever since its foundation in 1955, but at the same time, many party leaders (and thus prime ministers) have shown little inclination to put an amendment on the agenda, be it out of support for the CoJ or out of pragmatic recognition that the opposition parties would thwart any attempts at revision in parliament. On the other hand, some of the staunchest proponents of revising the CoJ, such as the first LDP prime minister, Hatoyama Ichirō, Kishi Nobusuke, prime minister from 1957 to 1960, or his grandson Abe Shinzō, prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020, have led the party at various times. To them and many conservative intellectuals, the CoJ was an ideologically-tainted import, forced on a defeated and occupied nation unable to resist swallowing this bitter, liberal pill which some even viewed as a poison.6 As I discuss below, proponents of revision share two consistent bones of contention: one is related to the US-led drafting of the CoJ and the other to its “excessively” liberal and thus “antiquated” content.

Controversial beginnings The seeds of discontent were sown during the creation of the CoJ. While the Japanese government knew that the Allied Occupation forces would demand amendments to the Meiji Constitution of 1889, senior government figures operated under the assumption that negotiations with the US would allow the salvaging of key pillars of the prewar constitution.7 They underestimated the uncompromising determination of the US Occupation authorities to change Japan for good as well as the scope of their designs. The minister in charge of the constitutional issue, Matsumoto Jōji, learned this hard truth when the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Allied command brushed aside his amendment proposal which it described as “tokenistic.” 8 Unhappy with the limited changes proposed by the Japanese side, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, ordered the staff of GHQ’s Government Section in early 1946 to produce a draft.9 Matsumoto was shocked when shown the American proposal. An expert in Japanese law and former head of the

108

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Cabinet Legislation Bureau, Matsumoto had little sympathy for the clean break with the Meiji constitutional regime that the Americans were aiming for in their attempts to remake Japan in the image of a Western democratic nation.10 Considering the power balance during the Occupation period, this was a fight Matsumoto and the Japanese Cabinet could not win. This history forms the backdrop of the longstanding argument questioning the legitimacy of the CoJ as a document that was unethically and illegally forced upon a defeated nation by its occupiers. However, this history represents only half the story. Many key elements of what would eventually become the CoJ were revised in subsequent negotiations between GHQ and the Japanese Cabinet as well as in Diet deliberations. These include the retention of a bicameral system (as opposed to a unicameral system in the GHQ draft), limitations on foreign residents’ fundamental human rights, and the Ashida amendments made to Article 9—the clause outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes.11 There is therefore no denying that GHQ exerted considerable pressure on the Japanese government to accept key elements of the American draft, including popular sovereignty and the protection of fundamental human rights. At the same time, it is hardly accurate to paint the creation as an entirely American operation considering the changes incorporated due to Japanese lobbying. It is also fact, that GHQ’s control over public opinion meant that certain topics—such as the atomic bombings—were not discussed and were not considered during the creation of the constitution.12

The reverse course By the end of the 1940s, however, the Occupation authorities and center-right politicians realized that whatever ideological differences they may have had over the content of the then new constitution, there was a growing mutual understanding that they also faced a common enemy on the (far) left. This mutual understanding was reflective of substantial geopolitical and domestic changes that had occurred since the constitution had come into effect. The shadows of the nascent Cold War led to a significant readjustment of occupation policies. Demilitarization and democratization through decentralization and empowerment of trade unions took a backseat to the struggle against a newly emboldened enemy in Japan and abroad: socialism and its agents. The subsequent curtailment of the right to strike, the partial re-centralization of Japan’s police forces, and the crackdown on communist party members and (alleged and real) sympathizers—known as the Red Purge—marked the beginning of the reverse course (gyaku kōsu).13 This readjustment and at times partial repudiation of early Occupation-era policies forms the backdrop of the first decade of the discussion about the CoJ and its potential revision. Officially, the formation of the LDP represented a commitment among the finally-united conservative parties to revise the 1947 constitution, which the party at the time of its foundation dismissed for “wrongly suppressing respect for the state and patriotism and unduly fragmenting and weakening the power of the state.” 14 But this bold language masked a fundamental cleavage within the LDP. While the party’s first president, Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō, and his allies sought to revise the CoJ and, through revision of Article 9, create the legal framework for a rearmed Japan less dependent on the US, this position was not universally shared even within the LDP. The disciples of Hatoyama’s old rival, former Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, had in mind a different defense strategy and general outlook for

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

109

postwar Japan and the constitution. Hatoyama’s ascension to the party leadership and prime ministership ensured Yoshida’s initial refusal to join the LDP, but his mode of operation and many of his policy preferences would continue to shape the party’s stance during the post-reverse course decades. Yoshida may not have been a supporter of the CoJ, but he concluded that for the time being it was more effective to deal with the discrepancies between the language of Article 9 paragraph 2 and the reality of rearmament during the Korean War by re-interpretating rather than revising that Article.15 The Yoshida Doctrine, which focused on economic recovery and growth while outsourcing Japan’s defense to the United States, would eventually become Japan’s grand strategy.16 Aligning Japan with the United States coupled with support for capitalism (as opposed to a socialist planned economy) has long been identified as a core concept of “conservatism” in Japan. These guiding principles served as pillars of the LDP’s policy platform against the backdrop of the Cold War. At times, the wisdom of maintaining these pillars was criticized or challenged, but upholding and strengthening them was a key priority for LDP leaders beginning in the late 1950s. However, there was far less consensus about the constitution and its potential amendment. As mentioned above, the pledge made in 1955 to revise the CoJ remained an integral part of the party line, yet the early LDP’s enthusiasm toward a formal amendment quickly gave way to acceptance or even endorsement of the law. What ended the first major push to amend the constitution against the backdrop of the reverse course were the violent clashes that erupted during and as a result of the revision of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (the Anpo Treaty) in 1960 and the political consequences of what is known as the Anpo Struggle (Anpo Tōsō). The LDP government under Kishi Nobusuke aimed at replacing the old, very one-sided security treaty with a more balanced document that strengthened Japan’s position vis-à-vis the United States.17 Meanwhile, the Left wanted to dispense with the Anpo Treaty altogether. To many on the Left the treaty was a symptom and a symbol of the LDP’s complicity in what the then-leader of the Japan Socialist Party, Asanuma Inejirō, famously disparaged as “American imperialism … [and] the common enemy of the people of Japan and China.” 18 More oil was poured onto the fires of confrontation during the first Cold War decade when Kishi Nobusuke became prime minister in 1957. Kishi had risen through the ranks of the prewar bureaucracy to become a cabinet member during the war and, as a result, would spend three years in Sugamo prison. His replacement of Ishibashi Tanzan as prime minister meant that a mere twelve years after the end of the war a man previously under suspicion of war crimes had now become the head of government. This tainted background distinguished Kishi from earlier postwar prime ministers and LDP leaders like Yoshida or Hatoyama.19 Moreover, these differences were not limited to the pre-1945 political activities of such individuals. LDP leaders saw eye to eye with Kishi regarding the necessity to ratify the new security treaty, yet some questioned Kishi’s methods long before the clashes turned violent and University of Tokyo student Kanba Michiko was killed during protests inside the National Diet compound. Two years before the conflict over the Anpo Treaty came to a bloodied climax in and around the seat of Japan’s legislature, Kishi had unsuccessfully attempted to preempt such demonstrations by revising the Police Execution of Duties Law (Keisatsukan Shokumu Shikkō Hō).20 Successful revision of this law would have enabled police to search property and arrest suspects without warrants.21 But after massive protests and resistance from within the LDP, the bill was not put up for vote. Without this powerful tool, the government could do little to prevent the gathering of up to three-hundred thousand 110

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

protesters in the streets of Nagata-chō in central Tokyo in mid-1960. When police forces and far right-wing activists and mobsters brought in to assault the leftist demonstrators found themselves outnumbered, Kishi turned to the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to crush what he considered a communist uprising. However, the then head of the Defense Agency (the predecessor of the Ministry of Defense) refused to issue deployment orders. Amidst the chaos, a vote in the House of Councilors was impossible and thus the Anpo Treaty was automatically ratified thirty days after the controversial vote in the House of Representatives had taken place, as per Article 61 of the constitution. In the aftermath, Kishi eventually stepped down as prime minister, having achieved one major goal (Anpo Treaty revision), while failing to accomplish another (amending the CoJ).22 Many demonstrators of 1960 watched the following leadership transition from Kishi to another former bureaucrat Ikeda Hayato with despair.23 They had failed in their quest to free Japan from Washington’s grip and, thereafter, their fears about US bases in Japan being used for military campaigns against comrades in East Asia became reality when B-52 bombers took off from Kadena Air Base to drop their deadly loads during the Vietnam War. Unbeknownst to the leftist activists, 1960 turned out to be a major watershed moment in postwar history, as it marked the end of the reverse course era, and with it, at least temporarily, the aggressive LDP-led push for revising the CoJ.24 The government’s Commission on the Constitution, established under the Hatoyama Cabinet to draw up the framework for a future amendment proposal, would take until 1964 to submit its final report to Prime Minister Ikeda. It did not lead to any further governmentsponsored attempts to amend the constitution. Moreover, the actual document did not contain a blueprint or road map for how to proceed with amending the CoJ, even though the commission was made up exclusively of supporters of the cause after the opposition parties had refused to participate. Nonetheless, members of the commission failed to reach a consensus on how to revise it.25 This lack of consensus was a sign of things to come because, although supporters of constitutional amendment may have agreed on their common goal, the divisive devil remained in the detail. That being said, amendment proposals published during the early postwar years were not without commonalities. They shared a more or less deep distrust in the substantial political freedom offered by the CoJ. The Kenpō Kenkyūkai (Constitutional Study Group)26 in the commentary to its 1955 proposal noted that that the combination of an exclusive emphasis on rights and the lack of genuine duties inscribed in the CoJ had led to people losing their sense of duty. This was only made worse by Japan’s long experience with feudalism, which meant that the Japanese lacked the civic responsibility, which was of vital importance for a democracy.27 It is thus hardly surprising, that many constitutional drafts published in the 1950s and early 1960s pushed for a reduction of fundamental human rights, while increasing the number of duties. The Liberal Party’s 1954 draft outline, for instance, called for the reinstatement of the crime of treason, while complaining that the right to silence was unnecessarily prolonging trials.28 The authors of the Kenpō Kenkyūkai draft stressed that civil servants should serve all people, and thus be banned from “striking for the rights of one class.” 29 Here, we see an obvious reflection and extension of the reverse course, which had already brought about the dismissal of thousands of civil servants and private company employees during the Red Purge as well as the curtailment of rights for workers in key industries and the public service. The tough stance on political freedom was ironically augmented with calls for a greater emphasis of social equality. For instance, the 1958 proposal by the Youth Alliance for an Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

111

Independent Constitution (Jishu Kenpō Kisei Seinen Dōmei) advocated limitations on “excessive” property rights, by emphasizing the social function of property.30 Ōnishi Kunitoshi, a constitutional law scholar and member of the aforementioned government committee on the constitution, advocated for “same pay for the same amount of work.” 31 To contemporary readers, such arguably progressive stipulations may sound strangely out of place in a conservative context. After all, conservatism especially in the Anglo-Saxon world has been associated with (neoliberal) small government since the days of Reagan and Thatcher.32 In the 1950–60s, however, the emphasis on social equality in Japanese policymaking was not unique: Keynesian economic policy had become a norm accepted by center-right governments in many advanced capitalist democratic countries. To mention but two prominent examples as evidence for this development: For British One-Nation “conservatives, still imbued with a paternalistic sense of responsibility for national order, unity and quiescence, Keynesianism had become the new orthodoxy which could be fashioned to preserve traditional values.” 33 In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) led by chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his economics minister Ludwig Ehrhardt championed what has become known as the social market economy. Initially proposed by representatives of the Freiburg School like Wilhelm Roepke or Ludwig Mueller-Armack, the goal of social market economy was, in Roepke’s words, to prevent the rise of that “dangerous,” “discredited collectivist principle” (i.e., Soviet-style socialism).34

The conservative mainstream and the constitution The support for those Keynesian economic policies would outlast the first wave of CoJ amendment proposals by a decade or two as the LDP made strategic use of Japan’s economic miracle to redistribute the growing pie to a growing coalition of traditional, rural and newly won urban supporters. At the same time, LDP leaders succeeding Kishi stayed clear of the very issue that was supposedly a key reason for their party’s very existence. Moore and Robinson suggest that Ikeda, Satō, Tanaka and later LDP leaders of the Yoshida School, simply “lacked the stomach for engaging the left on this issue.” 35 Strategically shelving the issue certainly made sense, as the opposition parties at any time held the necessary one third of seats in either or both houses of the parliament to block an amendment bill from passing the Diet.36 However, this argument ignores substantial ideological changes within the higher echelons of LDP leadership circles. From the 1960s onwards, Ikeda’s successors Ōhira Masayoshi, Maeo Shigesaburō, Suzuki Zenkō and Miyazawa Kiichi rose to prominence within the party, with Ōhira, Suzuki and Miyazawa going on to become party leaders and prime ministers. They sought to uphold and evolve a distinctively liberal status quo.37 Thus, they were not interested in turning back the clock or cutting back on human rights. Indeed, shortly after the end of the war Ōhira called the CoJ “a glimpse of blue sky during the bad weather of the war’s aftermath” and “a piece of art.” 38 The conservatism of Ikeda’s successors, therefore, was a situational one—to use Huntington’s famous terminology—in that they sought to uphold and evolve a distinctively liberal status quo.39 Maeo argued that the job of a conservative party was to explain what it seeks to conserve, and what it seeks to reform.40 For Maeo the answer is obvious: the job of modern conservative parties was the conservation of liberalism and parliamentarism.41 In the 1980s, later-to-be Prime Minister Miyazawa praised the CoJ as working so well that he could not understand why the supreme law should be altered.42

112

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Later, Miyazawa slightly changed his position, noting that he was not necessarily against any constitutional amendments per se. However, rather than revising Article 9, Miyazawa supported the addition of new rights to the supreme law such as environmental rights to the supreme law.43 This support for the CoJ explains the lack of substantial amendment initiatives by the LDP from the second half of the 1960s through the 1970s. It should not be taken to mean that the LDP in its entirety had abandoned the quest for revising or amending the CoJ. Some individuals like Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro or groups like the Seirankai continued to emphasize the importance of the matter.44 As we have seen above, the ambitions and interests of political elites were the main driving force behind the early amendment debate in Japan, just like constitutional referenda have served as means to an end for political elites elsewhere.45 Constitutions should become entrenched, but Versteeg and Zackin have found that, in fact, constitutions have become more unentrenched as framers have in many cases proceeded to draft specific constitutional texts that would be updated to address changing conditions. After all, socio-economic conditions and public values may change from what they were at the time of a constitution’s birth.46 Environmental protection or diversity, for instance, were not yet on the agenda at the time the CoJ was written in 1946. Changes in social strata and attitudes in postwar Japan often mirrored those in other advanced industrialized democracies. One key driving force of the postwar economic miracle was domestic consumption, epitomized by the famous 3C’s (Color TV, Cooler [air conditioner] and Car). As anachronistic as it may sound by today’s standards, consuming the latest electric appliances made in Japan or newly introduced food was both a lifestyle and a government policy during the 1960s.47 However, by the end of the decade the cost associated with this quest for ever greater material prosperity on the national and private level, had become all too apparent. The adverse effects of industrial pollution on the natural environment and human health started taking their toll.48 In Japan, victims took industry to court in the Big Four Pollution cases and in many urban areas voters expressed their anger over smog and polluted rivers by voting into office opposition candidates who promised to bring back smog-less skies to Japanese cities.49 This demand for non-material things, such as a clean environment or greater political participation, provided the socio-economic backdrop for Inglehart’s famous post-materialism thesis.50 Defeats in local elections level stirred the LDP into action. Together with its allies in the central government bureaucracy and industry it used its political enemies’ initiatives as a blueprint to remake Japan as an ecologically friendly economic superpower. This ability to effectively adjust to change has earned the LDP the moniker “creative conservative.” 51

The revival of the amendment debate in the 1990s It took some time for post-materialism to manifest itself in the constitutional amendment debate, however, due to changes in public opinion coupled with the continued focus on Article 9. Unfortunately for proponents of an amendment, resistance to a change in the constitutional status quo—particularly as it pertains Article 9—had risen throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, even when Nakasone Yasuhiro—a long-standing supporter of an amendment—became Prime Minister in 1982, he had to concede that amending the CoJ

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

113

in the short-term was unrealistic.52 This anti-amendment allergy led to a small number of minimalist amendment proposals appearing in the early 1980s. Ironically, one of these drafts was the first to propose the addition of a third paragraph to Article 9—an idea which 30 years later has been revisited by the LDP.53 The end of the Cold War, the outbreak of the Gulf War, the massive criticism of the Kaifu government’s initial refusal to send military cargo aircraft to the Gulf and the bursting of the bubble economy provided the impetus for a new wave of more ambitious, wholesale amendment proposals. Their focus obviously was Article 9 and the changes they proposed to the peace clause were far bolder than the addition of a third paragraph which had been suggested a decade earlier. Most proposals either deleted or substantially altered paragraph 2 of Article 9. In addition to an explicit reference to Japan’s right to maintain an army for national self-defense, most drafts include stipulations pertaining to the dispatch of those armed forces abroad, for example, to participate in peace keeping operations.54 The arguments in favor of these changes have remained the same since the 1950s. Draft authors have throughout the decades been quick to remind their audiences that aiming for peace on earth was all well and good, but not in tune with reality—as the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990 or the abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents had demonstrated.55 The realist view of international relations and the perceived need for armed forces based upon this view, thus, have remained the same. What changed during the post-Cold War era was the addition of stipulations allowing for SDF deployment outside of Japan. Those stipulations had become necessary because of Japan’s transformation into one of the world’s largest economies. This economic prosperity brought with it responsibilities to protect peace, which also benefited Japan’s external trade, as well as the lives and assets of Japanese citizens and corporations abroad.56 Needless to say, in absence of a formal amendment, Article 9 has seen numerous revisions in its interpretation since the early 1990s, including the enabling of SDF deployments abroad and the limited use of the right to collective self-defense.57 International cooperation and overseas deployments of the SDF were not the only innovations the 1990s brought to the amendment debate. Another noteworthy entry in the growing list of proposed amendments included environmental rights. The constitutional law scholar, Kobayashi Setsu, in his influential 1992 draft added a paragraph to Article 25 which stated that the people had a right to enjoy a fair environment.58 Kobayashi argued that to live a happy life inevitably required health and that a precondition for health was a clean environment. Yet, in our quest for an ever more convenient lifestyle, our modern civilization continued to push the boundaries of technological progress resulting in environmental destruction. Hence, Kobayashi suggested that the Japanese owed it to themselves and future generations to embed environmental rights in the constitution.59 Kobayashi’s 1992 draft and his inclusion of environmental rights proved timely. In fact, it was published only a few months before the United Nations held its Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the Rio Earth Summit) in Brazil.60 Since then, Kobayashi’s draft has become the standard rather than the exception. In fact, 84 percent of the amendment proposals authored by right and center-right elites since 1990 include references to environmental rights.61 In other words, the post-materialist trends that Inglehart observed in the 1970s eventually made their way into nominally-conservative amendment proposals two decades later. Many authors have followed Kobayashi’s argument for including environmental rights in the constitution, noting they are simply too important to be left to statutory law.62 Another potential reason for the inclusion of environmental rights as well as privacy and transparency 114

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

rights is their popularity. Recent research has shown that if given a choice, people are more likely to value rights over institutions in a constitution.63 Correspondingly, environmental rights rank among the most popular potential additions to a revised CoJ.64 Critics have long suspected that authors of proposed amendments were simply trying to abuse environmental rights as a means to make it easier for the electorate to swallow the bitter pill of revising Article 9.65 Irrespective of whether their inclusion was the result of strategy or ideology, these post-materialist influences can be interpreted as an extension of the liberal, democratic postwar regime. In this sense, they do amount to situational conservatism—in other words, an “affirmation of the value of existing institutions.” 66 This is not to say that post-materialism was the sole or most significant influence on the amendment debate. Arguably, there have been several far stronger influences. One, which first gained significance in Japan during the 1980s, is neoliberalism. After Japan’s bubble economy burst in 1993, the country entered a period of economic stagnation known as the Lost Decade(s). This period, and particularly the late 1990s and early 2000s, have been characterized by corporations unable to repay loans, financial institutions defaulting over bad loans, companies hiring irregular instead of regular workers and the government rethinking its emphasis of spending on public infrastructure. One reply, most forcefully articulated under the Hashimoto and Koizumi administrations, was neoliberalism. Neoliberalism most prominently manifested itself in deregulation, privatization of state-owned corporations, decentralization and encouragement of regional competition.67 Neoliberalism also had a profound effect on the constitutional reform debate.68 Traditionally, the focus of the constitutional amendment discourse has been on Article 9, rights and duties, or the Emperor system, as opposed to institutions. However, in no small part thanks to neoliberal influences, institutional stipulations have received increased interest in the context of the post-1990s amendment debate. These influences manifest themselves in calls for the replacement of the existing prefectures with states (Dōshūsei), the abolishment of the present bicameral parliamentary system in favor of a unicameral counterpart and the direct election of the Prime Minister. Such proposals were missing from earlier drafts published during the 1950s and 1960s, which is understandable given that during this earlier period the influences of the reverse course and later Keynesianism were strong. The full influence of the thought formulated by Austrian School scholars like Hayek and van Mises or representatives of the Chicago School like Milton Friedman on national politics would only become obvious from the late 1970s, most notably during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. In Japan, the Nakasone administration also emphasized small, efficient government and the privatization of major state-owned enterprises like Japan National Rail, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation and Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation.69 Yet, as mentioned above, the strong public skepticism toward constitutional amendments—especially Article 9—prevented neoliberal amendment proposals from appearing during the 1980s. One classic example of a neoliberal amendment proposal is the 2016 draft authored by the Japan Innovation Party (Nihon Ishin no Kai/Osaka Ishin no Kai, JIP). The JIP’s founder Hashimoto Tōru initially ran for and won the governorship of Osaka on an LDP ticket. However, the honeymoon between the LDP and the former lawyer and TV celebrity did not last long. Hashimoto, critical of the inefficient administrative structure of Osaka City and the prefecture of Osaka, proposed a merger of the two entities into a new structure akin to the Tokyo Metropolitan area with its special wards. Known as “Osaka Tokōsō” in Japanese, the plan put Hashimoto on a collision course with the LDP and most other parties. To realize Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

115

his project, he eventually created his own regional and later national party, which is the JIP.70 After a slim majority voted against the merger plan in a local referendum, Hashimoto retired from politics in 2015. However, his party’s ideas remain an instructive example of how neoliberal forces have sought to reform Japanese local self-government via constitutional amendment. The draft seeks, among other things, to enshrine local sovereignty (as opposed to local self-government) through the establishment of states equipped with considerable authority over legislation and taxes in the CoJ’s Chapter VIII, Local Self-Government.71 The JIP proposal makes no mention of changes to Japan’s parliamentary structure, but similar drafts featuring local sovereignty seek to replace the House of Councilors with a chamber made up of state representatives or suggest the creation of a unicameral system instead.72 The general thrust behind these proposals is most boldly articulated in the commentary to the 2004 draft by publishing house PHP Kenkyūsho. Its authors identify centralized institutional structures as being unfit to address the changing needs of a diversifying 21st-century society. Central government bureaucracy, they argue, had become bloated, ineffective and sectionalized, fighting over resources and authority. What is more, individuals, corporations and local municipalities spend considerable efforts squeezing money out of the central government’s tax coffers without any regard for the costs involved. To break away from this sorry state of affairs, the authors of the PHP proposals call for a “destruction” of the unitary institutional state design and a subsequent transition to a system that “enable[s] individuals, corporations and local municipalities to operate based on their skills and ingenuity.” 73 A key means to this end would be the creation of states equipped with fiscal independence.74 At the time the aforementioned draft was published in 2004, this neoliberal emphasis on a slim, efficient and decentralized government coupled with self-help was still influential. Indeed, the 2008 bankruptcy of the financial services firm, Lehman Brothers Holdings, and the subsequent global financial crisis which would dent the enthusiasm for neoliberalism was yet to come. In the early years of the new millennium, neoliberalism had become a strong part of the LDP’s agenda under Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō (2001–2006) as well as the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In its 2004 election platform, the LDP admitted that local self-governments had existed “in name only,” unable to raise the necessary tax revenue to fund their expenditures.75 Hence, substantial reforms (the so-called trinity reforms) were required. The DPJ too made the case for “healthy competition.” 76 In the context of the amendment debate, these institutional changes have received considerably less attention than Article 9, yet if enacted, they would alter the very foundations of postwar Japan in a substantial way. After all, the modern Japanese nation state has been unitary since its birth in the late-19th century. Even after the postwar reforms and the CoJ introduced the present dual-layered system of local self-government (prefectures and municipalities), the power balance between central and sub-national governments remained strongly tilted in favor of the former. The latter could only act within the confines of the law set by the national parliament. What is more, sub-national governments rely heavily on transfers from the central government to fund their expenditures.77 The establishment of states equipped with substantial authority and means to finance themselves would end Japan’s unitary institutional history and bring it closer to federal states like the United States, Australia, Canada or Germany.

116

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Blast from the past? Recent trends in the amendment debate I should note here, though, that the number of amendment proposals emphasizing institutional change, not large to begin with, has declined substantially during the second decade of the 21st century. There are two reasons for this. The early years of the 2010s saw the rise of many so-called third force parties, which advocated neoliberal reforms. Most of them failed in their goals of competing with the LDP and DPJ, and eventually dissolved.78 At present, only the JIP has survived. More broadly speaking, in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 world financial crisis, neoliberalism has lost some of its luster. Arguably, the most powerful influencing factor since the 1990s has been the rise of the LDP’s former side-stream. As I noted above, opposition to the conservative mainstream’s situational conservatism never quite disappeared, but its influence had declined after Kishi’s resignation in 1960. It would take four decades and substantial change to regain this lost clout. As the former mainstream began to dry out amidst an exodus of many future leaders like Ozawa or Hata, power struggles over succession and the deaths of Prime Minister Obuchi Keizō and his mentor, former Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru, in 2000, the old sidestream factions came roaring back.79 Since 2000, a total of seven LDP MPs have occupied the prime minister’s chair. Four (Mori Yoshirō, Koizumi, Abe (twice), and Fukuda Yasuo) are members of the old Kishi-Fukuda (the present Abe) faction, which has since become the LDP’s largest. While Mori and Fukuda only served one year as head of government, Abe, despite his short-lived first tenure, managed to become the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history. Ever since succeeding his father, the former foreign minister Abe Shintarō, Abe Shinzō has been a strong believer in the need for constitutional reform.80 Abe’s unprecedented reign led some to declare the birth of a 2012 system, the rise of a new Japan “more controlled, less democratic, less oriented toward peace, more internationally assertive, more inclined to confront neighboring countries, more unequal … [and] more concerned to flaunt national traditions.” 81 The last three tendencies are no doubt culminations of post-Cold War and post-bubble developments. The first three, however, as we have seen above, are not new, and at least in the context of the amendment debate have been around since the 1950s. Therefore, the present amendment debate amounts in many—if not all—ways to a return to the earlier period. Given the addition of further rights to most amendment proposals since the 1990s—including the LDP’s 2005 and 2012 drafts—this statement may seem counterintuitive. However, closer inspection of these drafts reveals that rights are not the only thing they seek to add to the CoJ’s chapter 3. In addition to new rights, amendment authors have also proposed new duties and new, more concrete restrictions on existing rights.82 The LDP in its 2012 draft, for instance, notes that rights should be restricted not only in cases when the rights of two individuals collide but also for the greater good.83 Hence, the LDP has replaced the current “ambiguous” phrase “public welfare” with the more specific “public interest and order.” Furthermore, the draft includes a provision that would restrict freedom of expression by banning associations that conduct activities which harm or plan on obstructing the public interest and public order.84 According to the LDP, rights have to reflect Japanese history, culture and traditions and thus provisions based on Western natural rights theory needed to be revised.85 Similar critiques of the supposedly excessive and antiquated emphasis on political rights and the resulting egocentrism can be found in many amendment proposals, old and

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

117

new. The Sankei shinbun’s 2013 draft, for instance, strongly criticizes the CoJ’s rights regime as “an overemphasis of chaotic freedom” that has resulted in a “loss of public spirit and normative consciousness” and it aims to address this problem by adding rights restrictions and duties, such as the duties to obey the law, defend the nation and serve the public welfare.86 The criticism of excessive individualism has also led many recent drafts to replace Article 13’s provision stipulating respect for the individual. In both the LDP’s 2012 draft and the Sankei 2013 draft this phrase has been replaced by “respected as humans” as opposed to “respected as individuals.” 87 We see here a classic rejection of liberal individualism which has been a mainstay of many conservative publications in Japan and abroad.88 As mentioned above, this critique of liberal individualism had never really gone away, rather its influence had subsided temporarily. After the decline of the conservative mainstream and the weakening of neoliberal influence, this critique has regained its former strength. This is reflected in many amendment proposals published after 2006, when one of the critique’s proponents became prime minister: Abe Shinzō. At the same time, it is noteworthy that even recent proposals highly critical of the postwar status quo uphold the addition of the three new rights.89 The LDP itself has since backtracked and opted to put forth a far less comprehensive and less bold outline in 2018. It suggests a minimalist revision of Article 9 (by adding a third paragraph that mentions Japan’s right to self-defense and the existence of the SDF), the addition of state of emergency provisions, revisions to the Upper House electoral system and more equal educational opportunities. These proposals partially owe their existence to an attempt to broaden support within the Diet for a potential amendment, yet, at the same time, they also signify a more modest approach to constitutional reform in that the proposed changes would merely write into the constitution initiatives that have or could be realized via changes to statutory law.90

Conclusion The debate about an amendment of the CoJ has been influenced by changing socio-economic and political conditions as well as ideological currents since the 1950s. This includes postmaterialist influences since the 1990s or neoliberal influences during the early years of the 2000s. More than anything, the debate over the desirability and necessity of amending or revising the 1947 constitution reflects the nature of postwar conservatism. Postwar conservatism has always had two distinctive sides to it: one that pragmatically accepted or embraced the postwar status quo centered on the CoJ, and another that has rejected or attacked this status quo as an “ideological import forced upon Japan by the US.” 91 Set against the backdrops of the reverse course and the beginning of the economic miracle, early amendment proposals published during the 1950s and early 1960s attempted to curb political rights and undo some of the allegedly gone-too-far postwar reforms, thereby reflecting the latter type of conservatism. Meanwhile, the lack of substantive government-sponsored initiatives to amend the CoJ under the leadership of the conservative mainstream and the widespread of acceptance of many key ingredients of the CoJ in many later amendment proposals put forth between the 1980s and the early 2000s reflect the former. The most recent batch of proposals, including the LDP’s 2012 draft, share many similarities with their predecessors of the 1950s, while retaining elements that can be considered extensions of the postwar status quo such as new rights. Considering these developments, it may be fitting that the LDP’s most recent

118

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

amendment proposals published in 2018, in many ways are the epitomes of cementing the status quo. Given how an influential part of Japan’s conservative camp has struggled to revise the dreaded CoJ for decades, this can be seen as an interesting irony.

Notes 1

Shusei Eshima, Kenneth Mori McElwain, Christian G. Winkler and Ai Takahashi, “Preferences over Constitutional Detail vs. Flexibility: An Experimental Approach” (unpublished manuscript). 2 Dale M. Hellegers, We the People: World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 619. 3 Kenneth Mori McElwain and Christian G. Winkler, “What’s Unique about the Japanese Constitution? A Comparative and Historical Analysis,” Journal of Japanese Studies 41, no. 2 (2015): 249–80. 4 Christian G. Winkler, “Everything is Going to Be Alright? An Analysis of Rights in Constitutional Amendment Proposals,” in Japanese Constitutional Revisionism and Civic Activism, ed. Helen Hardacre, Timothy S. George, Keigo Komamura and Franziska Seraphim (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021), 291. 5 Mori McElwain and Winkler, “What’s Unique about.” 6 Christian G. Winkler, “Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times: An Analysis of Japanese Conservative Intellectuals’ Thought,” Social Science Japan Journal 15, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 104. 7 John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 351. 8 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 354. 9 These include drafts by former Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaru (submitted to the Emperor in November 1945), the scholar and member of the Office of the Privy Seal Sasaki Sōichi (also sent to the Emperor in November 1945) and Matsumoto himself (submitted in January 1946). 10 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 358–77 11 Shōichi Amemiya, Senryō to kaikaku. 11th ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2020), 88–89. 12 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 412–19. 13 Masumi Ishikawa and Jirō Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2010), 58–61, 68. 14 LDP, “Tō no Shimei.” 1955. 15 Paragraph 2 of Article 9 states that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” (quoted in Kenneth Mori McElwain, Shusei Eshima and Christian G. Winkler, “The Proposer or the Proposal? An Experimental Analysis of Constitutional Beliefs,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 22 (2021): 18; Christian G. Winkler. “The Evolution of the Conservative Mainstream in Japan,” Japan Forum 24, no. 1 (2012), 60–64. 16 Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 29–37. 17 Ishikawa and Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi, 85. 18 Quoted in Ishikawa and Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi, 87. 19 Amemiya, Senryō to kaikaku, 107, 159 20 Winkler, “The Evolution,” 64. 21 Ishikawa and Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi, 83. 22 Ishikawa and Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi, 85–90. 23 Hashikawa Bunzō, Hoshu no shisō (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1968), 176. 24 Osamu Watanabe, Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten: Shiryō de yomu kaikenron no rekishi (Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2002), 434–36; Winkler, ‘The Evolution,” 64 25 Watanabe, Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten, 549, 665. 26 The Kenpō Kenkyūkai was led by the influential former Tokyo University professor Yabe Teiji. Watanabe, Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten, 521. 27 Quoted in Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39: Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei shoan (Tokyo: Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, 1959), 222–23 28 Watanabe, Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten, 511, 513 29 Quoted in Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39, 221. 30 Quoted in Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39, 556.

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

119

31

Quoted in Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39, 408. Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin, “Analytic Conservatism,” British Journal of Political Science 34 (2004): 676. 33 Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 386. 34 Wilhelm Roepke, The Moral Foundations of Civil Society, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 26–27. For a detailed account of the thought of the Freiburg School and other streams of neoliberalism, see Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 35 Ray A. Moore and Donald L. Robinson, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 324. 36 Arthur Stockwin and Kweku Ampiah, Rethinking Japan: The Politics of Contested Nationalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 25. 37 Winkler, “The Evolution,” 64–66. 38 Quoted in Winkler, “The Evolution,” 61. 39 Samuel Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” American Political Science Review 51 (1957): 454–73. 40 Maeo Shigesaburō, Matsurigoto no kokoro (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1974), 92. 41 Maeo, Matsurigoto no kokoro, 92. 42 Quoted in Winkler, “The Evolution,” 61. 43 Mikuriya Takashi, Miyazawa Kiichi to Takeshita Noboru: Sengo hoshu no eikō to zasetsu (Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, 2016), 266–67. 44 The Seirankai was established in 1973 by LDP members who “opposed the normalization of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, called for Constitutional reform, making the emperor head of state, and even for the development of a nuclear weapons force.” Christian G. Winkler, The Quest for Japan’s New Constitution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 50, 195. 45 Liubomir Topaloff, “The Rise of Referendums: Elite Strategy or Populist Weapon?” Journal of Democracy 28, no.3 (2017): 127–39. 46 Mila Versteeg and Emily Zackin, “Constitutions Unentrenched: Toward an Alternative Theory of Constitutional Design,” American Political Science Review 110 (2016): 657–74. 47 Takeda Haruhito, Kōdo seichō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2019), 104–8. 48 Ishikawa and Yamaguchi, Sengo seijishi, 106. 49 Christian G. Winkler, “Between Pork and People: An Analysis of the Policy Balance in the LDP’s Election Platforms,” Journal of East Asian Studies 14 (2014): 417. 50 Ronald, Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 51 T.J. Pempel, Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982). 52 Winkler, The Quest, 12. 53 Christian G. Winkler, “Mission Moderation? A Historical Analysis of the LDP’s 2018 Constitutional Amendment Proposals,” Asian Survey 60, no. 5 (2020): 890–92. 54 Winkler, The Quest, 15, 51, 61, 153. 55 See also Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku. Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39, 472; Kobayashi Setsu, Kenpō mamotte kuni horobu: Watashitachi no kenpō wo naze kaisei shite ha ikenai no ka (Tokyo: KK Bestsellers, 1992), 24–27; Tamura Shigenobu, Shinkenpō ha kō naru (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2006), 36–37. 56 Kobayashi, Kenpō mamotte, 29–30, 39–40. 57 Komamura Keigo and Machidori Satoshi, Tōchi no dezain: Nihon no kenpō kaisei o kangaeru tame ni (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 2020), 2–5. 58 Kobayashi, Kenpō mamotte, 53. 59 Kobayashi, Kenpō mamotte, 140. 60 As noted by Nishi, 90% of new constitutions that came in effect between 1990 and 2012 featured provisions pertaining to environmental rights or protection. Nishi Osamu, Kenpō kaisei no ronten (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2013), 150. 61 Winkler, “Everything is Going to be Alright?” 295. 62 See for example Eguchi Katsuhiko and Nagahisa Toshio, 21seiki Nihon koku kenpō shian (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūsho, 2004), 65–66, or Nishi, Kenpō kaisei no ronten, 150–51. 32

120

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

63

Eshima, Mori McElwain, Winkler and Takahashi, “Preferences over Constitutional.” Mori McElwain, Eshima and Winkler, “The Proposer,” 26. 65 Winkler, The Quest, 168. 66 Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” 455. 67 Alisa Gaudner, Japanese Politics and Government (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 98–104. 68 Watanabe, Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten, 45, 48–50. 69 Gaunder, Japanese Politics, 142–43. 70 Robert Pekkanen and Steven Reed, “From Third Force to Third Party: Duverger’s Revenge?” in Japan Decides 2014, ed. Robert Pekkanen, Steven Reed and Ethan Scheiner (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 61–69. 71 JIP, “Osaka Ishin no Kai kenpō kaisei genan Heisei 28 nen 3 gatsu 24 nichi.” 2016. 72 On the former see, e.g., Eguchi and Nagahisa, 21seiki Nihon, 90, and on the latter, see the Your Party’s 2012 proposal in NDL, “Saikin no omo na kenpō kaisei teigen,” Issue Brief 774. March 14, 2013, 6. 73 Eguchi and Nagahisa, 21seiki Nihon, 20–1. 74 Eguchi and Nagahisa, 21seiki Nihon, 20–1. 75 Quoted in Christian G. Winkler and Ken Victor Hijino, “Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan,” Asian Studies Review 42, no. 4 (2018): 597. 76 Quoted in Winkler and Hijino, “Party Ideologies,” 599. Koizumi’s lack of interest in the topic of constitutional reform (as evidenced by the fact that the then vice–president of the LDP Yamazaki Taku had to talk him into ordering the drafting of an official party proposal) and the large drafting committee whose members shared diverging ideas about how to revise the CoJ are two main reasons why these neoliberal ideas never made it into the 2005 LDP amendment proposal (Winkler, The Quest, 18–19). 77 Mori McElwain and Winkler, “What’s Unique,” 258, 272. 78 Pekkanen and Reed, “From Third Force,” 62–67. 79 Winkler, “The evolution of the conservative mainstream in Japan,” 53, 70 80 Abe Shinzō, Utsukushii kuni e (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006), 39. 81 Stockwin and Ampiah. Rethinking Japan, 268. 82 Winkler, “Everything is going to be alright?” 83 LDP, “Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei sōan Q&A zōhoban,” 2013, 13–14. 84 LDP, “Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei sōan Q&A zōhoban,” 15–16. 85 LDP, “Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei sōan Q&A zōhoban,” 13. 86 Sankei shinbun, Kokumin no kenpō (Tokyo: Sankei Shimbun Shuppansha, 2013), 226–27. 87 LDP, “Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei sōan Q&A zōhoban,” 46; Sankei shinbun, Kokumin no kenpō, 228. 88 See also Winkler, “Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times,” 94, 99–101. 89 See also cf. JCI, Nihonkoku kenpō sōan, 5–6 or Sankei shinbun, Kokumin no kenpō, 230–31, 234 90 Winkler, “Mission Moderation,” 899–900. 91 Winkler, “Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times,” 103; see also Uno Shigeki. Hoshu shugi to ha nani ka. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016), 190–91. 64

References Abe, Shinzō. Utsukushii kuni e. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006. Amemiya, Shōichi. Senryō to kaikaku. 11th ed. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2020. Brennan, Geoffrey and Alan Hamlin. “Analytic Conservatism.” British Journal of Political Science 34 (2004): 675–91. Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Eguchi, Katsuhiko and Toshio Nagahisa. 21seiki Nihon koku kenpō shian. Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūsho, 2004. Eshima, Shusei, Mori McElwain, Christian G. Winkler and Ai Takahashi. “Preferences over Constitutional Detail vs. Flexibility: An Experimental Approach” (unpublished manuscript). Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Gaudner, Alisa. Japanese Politics and Government. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Hashikawa, Bunzō. Hoshu no shisō. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1968. Huntington, Samuel. “Conservatism as an ideology.” American Political Science Review 51 (1957): 454–73.

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

121

Hellegers, Dale M. We the People: World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Inglehart, Ronald. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Ishikawa, Masumi and Jirō Yamaguchi. Sengo seijishi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2010. JCI. “Nihonkoku kenpō sōan.” 2012. Accessed July 19, 2021. http://www.jaycee.or.jp/2018/org/kenpoukaisei /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/日本国憲法草案2012年版.pdf. JIP. “Osaka Ishin no Kai kenpō kaisei genan Heisei 28 nen 3 gatsu 24 nichi.” 2016. Accessed August 17, 2021. https://o-ishin.jp/news/2017/images/90da581ba24723f77027257436ab13c1cec1a1ed.pdf. Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku. Kenpō Chōsakai shiryō sō 39: Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei shoan. Tokyo: Kenpō Chōsakai Jimukyoku, 1959. Komamura, Keigo and Machidori Satoshi. Tōchi no dezain: Nihon no kenpō kaisei o kangaeru tame ni. Tokyo: Kōbundō, 2020. Kobayashi, Setsu. Kenpō mamotte kuni horobu: Watashitachi no kenpō wo naze kaisei shite ha ikenai no ka. Tokyo: KK Bestsellers, 1992. LDP. “Tō no shimei.” 1955. Accessed 31 July 2021. https://www.jimin.jp/aboutus/declaration/#sec01. ———. “Nihonkoku kenpō kaisei sōan Q&A zōhoban.” 2013. Accessed 31 July 2021. https://jimin.jp-east-2 .storage.api.nifcloud.com/pdf/pamphlet/kenpou_qa.pdf. Maeo, Shigesaburō. Matsurigoto no kokoro. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1974. McElwain, Kenneth Mori, and Christian G. Winkler. “What’s Unique about the Japanese Constitution? A Comparative and Historical Analysis.” Journal of Japanese Studies 41, no. 2 (2015): 249–80. McElwain, Kenneth, Shusei Eshima, and Christian G. Winkler. “The Proposer or the Proposal? An Experimental Analysis of Constitutional Beliefs.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 22 (2021): 15–39. Mikuriya, Takashi. Miyazawa Kiichi to Takeshita Noboru: Sengo hoshu no eikō to zasetsu. Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, 2016. Moore, Ray A. and Donald L. Robinson. Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. NDL. “Saikin no omo na kenpō kaisei teigen.” Issue Brief 774. March 14, 2013. accessed on December 1 2021. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/view/download/digidepo_8091643_po_0774.pdf?contentNo=1&itemId=info:ndljp /pid/8091643&__lang=en. Nishi, Osamu. Kenpō kaisei no ronten. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2013. Pekkanen, Robert, and Steven Reed. “From Third Force to Third Party: Duverger’s Revenge?” In Japan Decides 2014, edited by Robert Pekkanen, Steven Reed and Ethan Scheiner, 62–71. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pempel, T.J. Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Roepke, Wilhelm. The Moral Foundations of Civil Society. Second edition. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Samuels, Richard J. Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Sankei shinbun. Kokumin no kenpō. Tokyo: Sankei Shinbun Shuppansha, 2013. Slobodian, Quinn. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Stockwin, Arthur and Kweku Ampiah. Rethinking Japan: The Politics of Contested Nationalism. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017. Takeda, Haruhito. Kōdo seichō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2019. Tamura, Shigenobu. Shinkenpō ha kō naru. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2006. Topaloff, Liubomir. “The Rise of Referendums: Elite strategy or populist weapon?” Journal of Democracy 28, no. 3 (2017): 127–39. Uno, Shigeki. Hoshu shugi to ha nani ka. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016. Versteeg, Mila and Emily Zackin. “Constitutions unentrenched: toward an alternative theory of constitutional design.” American Political Science Review 110 (2016): 657–74. Watanabe, Osamu. Kenpō “kaisei” no sōten: Shiryō de yomu kaikenron no rekishi. Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2002. Winkler, Christian G. The Quest for Japan’s New Constitution. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. ———. “The Evolution of the Conservative Mainstream in Japan.” Japan Forum 24, no. 1 (2012): 51–73.

122

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

———. “Consistent Conservatism in Changing Times: An Analysis of Japanese Conservative Intellectuals’ Thought.” Social Science Japan Journal 15, no.1 (Winter 2012): 93–110. ———. “Between Pork and People: An Analysis of the Policy Balance in the LDP’s Election Platforms.” Journal of East Asian Studies 14, no. 3 (2014): 405–28. ———. “Mission Moderation? A Historical Analysis of the LDP’s 2018 Constitutional Amendment Proposals.” Asian Survey 60, no. 5 (2020): 882–904. ———. “Everything is Going to Be Alright? An Analysis of Rights in Constitutional Amendment Proposals.” in Japanese Constitutional Revisionism and Civic Activism, edited by Helen Hardacre, Timothy S. George, Keigo Komamura and Franziska Seraphim, 291–306. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. Winkler, Christian G. and Ken Victor Hijino. “Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan.” Asian Studies Review 42, no. 4 (2018): 586–606.

Chapter 6: Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime

123

Part 3 Postwar Culture and Society

Chapter 7 Gendering Postwar Japan Emily Barrass Chapman and Helen Macnaughtan This chapter critically analyzes the gendering of work in postwar Japan, through the lens of understanding work as a broad experience of both paid and unpaid labor. It explores the creation of postwar gendered ideology and roles through the rhetoric of separate spheres—the male breadwinner and the stay-at-home wife. The chapter analyzes to what extent this template continues to influence legislation, employment and gender relations in contemporary Japan. We reflect on why it appears difficult to move away from economic and social gender norms for men and women in Japan, thereby limiting progress in gender equality by international standards.

Introduction: The durability of gender roles in postwar Japan In Japan today, 79 percent of women aged 25–54 are in some form of paid employment. This labor force participation rate is now higher than the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average and that of the USA. Back in 2000, Japan’s prime age female labor force participation rate was just 66 percent, below the OECD average and a full 10 percentage points below the USA level.1 This would appear to signal progress. However, Japan’s gender gap remains, in the words of the World Economic Forum (WEF), “by far the largest among all advanced economies.” 2 This verdict posits an expectation that an advanced nation such as Japan should be operating differently when it comes to gender and work. So, what is it that continues to hold Japan back from satisfying the gradations of the WEF, but also meeting the needs of its men and women to better their personal and professional lives? In Japan as elsewhere, women’s participation in the workforce is not a byword for opportunity or progression. Instead, the mechanics of a woman navigating her professional life are mired in spatial hangovers from the interwar and postwar periods during which work and home were not only cleaved apart but assigned genders. There is, of course a “great unsaid” in the discussion of working and not working in Japan and elsewhere in that not all work is paid. The unequal division of care work between men and women—often done alongside paid work—is subsumed into the identity category of woman rather than given its own accounting. Unpaid care work remains statistically and spatially silent but sits at the heart of gender equality globally. Even in countries where the female/male ratio is lowest (e.g.

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

127

Norway and the USA) women spend almost twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work, but in Japan women spend five times that of men.3 Japanese women spend on average 3 hours and 44 minutes on unpaid labor per day compared to an average of only 41 minutes for men.4 In this sense, time spent surveys are perhaps a better although less comparatively productive way of seeing how men and women in Japan appear in the world they live in (discussed later in this chapter). This chapter seeks first to understand the historical background of the relationship between gender and work in Japan. It does so by first exploring the two parts of the most durable template for family life that emerged after 1945—the male breadwinner and the stay-at-home “professional” housewife. We seek to pay equal attention to the ramifications of the status quo for both men and women, arguing that it is the myth of a gender balance in running a nuclear family and the rhetoric of the family as the nation writ small, that has created and crucially reified the prevailing status quo so critiqued by the WEF. The second half of the chapter looks at what this template looks like within the workplace, with a particular focus on the optimistic legislation and its mismatch with reality. The gender gap in Japan, we conclude, is not just a gap in attainment, but a gap between seemingly equal gender legislation and a decidedly unequal reality. In August 1945, Japan surrendered. Japan’s men returned from war’s edges and centers and in this moment of mass movement and political upheaval, it was the model of a male breadwinner absent from his nuclear family that would come to serve as the most durable template of Japanese masculinity. To survive and thrive it has relied on the counterpart of a home-making and home-made woman. In the 1950s, this template grew in symbiosis with a booming consumer economy, an organic-seeming process that obscured the historic sites of family and home as constituent parts of male identity, and of paid work as part of female identity. This template of domesticity did and does more than just advise—or prescribe—bodily locations. It “freights” virtue to particular combinations of space and gender. It also restricts the spatial imagination by limiting economic and emotional production to specific spaces, “bleach[ing] the family of its multiple meanings and functions.” 5 This spatial configuration has shaped the historiography of gender and work in and beyond Japan, echoing Joan Wallach Scott’s observation and warning that history operates “not exclusively as the record of changes in the social organization of the sexes but also crucially as a participant in the production of knowledge about sexual difference” 6 and fundamentally for this chapter, has forestalled any significant or sustained attempt to try and understand how men and women moved across this divide.

Professionalizing the home: The roles of breadwinner and homemaker In postwar Japan, the home and its incumbent women worker(s) has and have been professionalized over the decades since 1945 in order to keep men working in a rigorous system where the home as rest—that is, devoid of labor—has come to prevail. This began in earnest in 1947 when, under the auspices of the Allied Occupying forces, the revised Constitution of Japan established the equality of the sexes before the law and the revised civil code abolished male primogeniture as the foundational pulse of the family system. The formerly “central

128

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

pillar” of the household (daikoku bashira) as the father was commonly known was thus legally “depriv[ed] … of decision-making power over marriage and other family matters” and, as a result, as many would go on to argue, masculinity was irrevocably removed from the home.7 Men’s status sought a new proving ground and as the 1940s gave way to the surging era of high-speed growth in the 1950s a successful man came to be forged through the combination of material wellbeing—where financial provision kept families fed, but also entered them at varying levels into the circus of consumption and competition associated with the burgeoning belt of Japan’s postwar middle-class—and his absence from the family home. The ideology of the male-breadwinner has origins in the development of industrial capitalism, when growing employment in manufacturing and other non-agricultural sectors led to a spatial separation between work and home. This separation became institutionalized in Japan in the 1950s, shaped by the combined processes of rapid economic growth, urbanization and an accompanying move to a mass consumer society and the nuclear family. The new model of stuff plus absence produced new geographies of shopping, eating away from the home, socializing and the undersides of competition and comparison. While the advertisements for fridge-freezers or curry roux pictured glowing family scenes of ease and aimed to commodify the Japanese woman at home alone with the children and the housework, police logbooks and tabloid headlines warned of the risks of increasing social isolation, maternal anxiety and in extremis, the deaths of children caused by parents concerned that their offspring weren’t “keeping up.” 8 This shade of crime and social concern was labelled as “women’s crime” (josei no hanzai).9 That the deaths of children and women were presented as a gendered phenomenon rather than a problem for wider society illustrates the ease and apparent permanence achieved by a relatively new way of living in which paid work and home were separate and the unpaid care work of home and childcare was subsumed into a woman’s social and cultural identity. The term sengyo shufu or “professional housewife” ironically describes the complete potential of the work of home and children to occupy a woman’s capacity for professional meaning—a backhand effort to pitch home against work as spheres of equal identity creation. But not, crucially, spheres of equal remuneration. The sexed division of labor reaches deep into our shared global pasts, structured by the biological reality of gestation, birth and breastmilk. Japan’s postwar legal shift in placing men’s social and legal realization outside the household and its bodies and work meant that the role of the woman was reduced to that of ballast rather than co-worker despite the label of professional housewife. The glorification of a workplace as a place of identity realization was an idea that was closely connected to the path carved out for national economic recovery after 1945, and the commodification of woman and home would come to be enshrined in the late 1950s by the term “my-home-ism” (mai hōmushugi). These pulses of belonging were not entirely new in the postwar. As Ueno Chizuko has emphasized, these legislative changes engaged with the existing trajectory of family change; by the 1920s many households had already shed the multi-generational family model for work—and perhaps freedom—away from their family villages (furusato).10 Instead, 1945 marked an acceleration of processes that, starting in the early 20th century, scaffolded the ideology of a middle-class and successful home around the bond of mother and child and made parenting exclusively mothers’ work.11 The ideology of “maternal ascendance” marginalized men as fathers and limited their relationship to the family as “breadwinner,” while also responding to the decreasing time men had for their children given the growth of employment opportunities (and constraints) outside the home.12 Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

129

In practice, the separation of home and work demanded both “historical forgetfulness” of the extended family and ironically, the support of one sphere for the other.13 From 1945 onwards, through legislation, corporate initiatives, women’s groups and higher taxes on second incomes, the home and workplace were rationalized in concert, foremost in relation to the management of male labor, and from the early 1960s, to consolidate the hegemony of the corporation “as the unquestioned normative institution of society,” which came to largely conceal the labor still located at home.14 Corporations also played a key role. Japanese companies intensified their focus on longterm male employment—a patriarchal refuge safe from the unpredictability of pregnancy and care—and the establishment of Japanese style management practices focused on male loyalty and commitment.15 The male breadwinner model is particularly strong in an economy where there are insufficient market resources in childcare and healthcare, and when the level of male earnings allows women to focus on household activities.16 The model has substantially eroded in most advanced countries since the 1970s,17 but Japan is a notable exception, where it remains distinctly embedded within the core employment system, continuing to undermine seemingly gender-equal employment reforms. What does a corporate focus on male lifetime employment look like? The establishment of lifetime employment in the 1950s offering stability of employment for male workers acted to protect them as core workers. As a counterpoint, women were encouraged into paid work in the 1960s within the context of their role as household dependents.18 This established a model designed to reap the social and economic benefits of a gender separation that harnessed the strong commitment of a core male workforce while effectively making use of a growing female workforce as an economic buffer via temporary and non-regular modes of employment. In the 1960s, with a burgeoning labor shortage in an environment of rapid economic take-off and faced with the prospect of potentially having to import labor from abroad to cope with demand, Japan’s political and business leaders turned to women. Their assimilation into employment was viewed as temporary or “non-regular,” set up to reap an economic dividend from their labor participation rather than challenge traditional constructs of gender roles. This has permeated through the postwar decades. In the current environment, particularly the last two decades of the 21st century, women are again encouraged to expand their employment participation within broader efforts to revitalize the Japanese economy, address the declining supply of labor under depopulation and the economic burden of an increasingly aging population. But, what has not changed since the 1960s is the acknowledgement, or even acceptance, that women are persistently under-utilized in the Japanese economy, and remain a pool of labor that can repeatedly be called upon to “save” Japan when deemed necessary, particularly when the alternative pool might be immigrant labor.19 The under-utilization of female human capital goes hand in hand with a strong affective ideological attachment to the male breadwinner, female home-maker model. This continues to underpin policy in Japan, works to undermine the implementation of gender equality legislation and results in a persistent gender gap by international standards. In societies like Japan where the male breadwinner model is strong, it is common for women to contribute high levels of unpaid domestic labor, have broken career paths and work part-time.20 The outcome is the persistent segregation of men and women into distinct life paths through adulthood. The retreat of labor from the home was—and is—also part of the reduction of the home “to its most basic function in an industrial society: a space of rest.” 21 This was an inherently problematic idea that gave the home the unachievable status 130

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of a “utopian retreat,” which only existed, as Tamara Hareven argues, “in the imagination of social reformers and social scientists,” most of whom were men.22 There is, Hareven hints, a distinct gender imbalance in the idea of the home as rest; men were imagined as the returning workers in need of rest, while the unsalaried work of women enabled their relaxation. Meanwhile, the only systematic records of the removal of women’s labor appears in the rapid decline of homebirths. This was part of a wider global trend towards more medicalized childbirth: in 1950, Japanese women labored in the baby boom and 95 percent of all recorded births took place at home, by 1960 this had dropped to 50 percent, plummeting to just 4 percent in 1970.23 The long-term ramifications of labor’s disassociation from the home for men and masculinity have been most acutely observed by Robin LeBlanc in her essay on “the global costs of the breadwinner imaginary.” 24 LeBlanc argues that Japan’s post-1945 journey to economic affluence relied not only on the bodies of battalions of “breadwinner-soldiers,” but also on the engagement of men, and their families, with “an insufficiently discussed notion of manly self-sacrifice” in which men become “metaphors for the nation state,” thus eliding their subjectivity into frameworks of competition and success. LeBlanc calls for a critical engagement with who the breadwinners are, the systems that constrain them and how the maintenance of these systems limit conceptions of the relationships between space and production. The 19th-century construction of a natural division between home and work across the industrial world has been a been a largely middle-class project, populated and influenced by “an elite who shaped public culture through their roles in policymaking, education, and the media.” 25 A key contention of this chapter is that the reification of the work/home divide, regardless of its grounding in reality, has determined how gender is experienced between work and home. In the historiography of women and the home, the division between workplace and home-place as “separate spheres” has been useful in this regard, helping to “establish the importance of women’s lives, of family and reproduction as formative of female identities and worthy of historical research.” 26 In the study of Japan, as for other regions, this focus on separation, while productive, has been critiqued as “an overworked trope that is too static and unwieldy for the complex history of gender relations,” which is to say, that the divide does not “hold up when confronted with evidence on lived experience” but that the concept of separation still plays a significant role in guiding behaviors.27 A great deal of work has been done to explore how the home has inscribed gender power relations for women, but this scholarship has rarely told a male story that goes beyond the idea of men’s increasing irrelevance, or at worst, their exclusion. Jordan Sand charts 19thcentury changes in academic and popular conceptions of where family life happened. He recounts the political projects of Meiji Era (1868–1912) thinkers, architects and oligarchs and their “modern imagining[s] of domestic space” in particular the ways in which “the milieu of the dwelling” and the “flourishing of discourse around the home” were integral to the production of a bourgeois culture that was deemed fitting for Japan as a globally competitive, hygienic and healthy nation.28 As implicated as men are in this story of reproduction and production, for Sand, men are the slogan writers, the town planners and the historians; they do not experience or embody home. For the interwar period, David Ambaras has shown how the home was emphatically not a place for young men, especially those who fell foul of patriarchal authority.29 Meanwhile, scholarship on the postwar period has focused on the housewife and the domestication of child-rearing, mothers’ increased oversight of their children’s education (kyōiku mama), and women’s political activism as household consumers.30 Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

131

The peripheral ways in which men feature in these histories of the home and family demonstrates a general reluctance to explore how the home is, as the geographer Gorman Murray argues, “also a key site for masculine identity work.” 31 Much of the postwar scholarship has been produced around the nexus of the salaryman. Romit Dasgupta observes how surprising this continued dominance of the salaryman is; scholarship on men and masculinity in Japan was first forged in the wake of the Lost Decade of the 1990s, where labor uncertainty and financial slump connected to the “apparent unravelling” of occupational masculinity, yet what has been known as “salaryman masculinity” continues to be “ideologically hegemonic in Japan.” 32 This is perhaps because, when connected to occupation, the worker as the global “metonym” for Japanese men, does not transgress the work/home divide, and offers a spatial configuration of masculinity where the corporation remains forefront, and the home is articulated through its distance and men’s absence from it. Statistics collected on self-identity have reinforced scholarship’s focus on the bond between masculinity and occupation. In 1975, 70 percent of household heads identified as a sarariiman breadwinner, underscoring, as Anne Allison has described, “the ideological centrality of the middleclass, heterosexual citizen-worker in postwar Japan.” 33 Yet this ideological centrality did not correlate to family reality. Indeed, as Mari Osawa suggests, “the model nuclear family of ‘salaryman’ husband plus stay-at-home wife (plus children) peaked, statistically, at [just] 38 percent of married couples in the late 1970s, but otherwise has averaged a mere 30 percent of the Japanese married population.” 34 Both Osawa and Allison’s observations suggest that the aspirational status of a family, consisting of a man at work with a woman at home, ignored a reality in which women were also working for wages, and the identity of an absent father-worker was something which moved in the realms of desire, dreams, and play. So what explains the remarkable sticking power of what Grayson Perry might describe as the “default man” 35 and arguably where Japan is concerned, the default gap? Perhaps it is a matter of Japan in global view, where the salaryman-as-breadwinner has been deployed as a racialized talisman of Japanese economic recovery, and which, in the longer term, has also functioned as the basis for a toxic ethnocentrism of being a man in Japan.36 This aspirational template—and the communal values attributed to this imagined division of gender and space—has significantly impaired the visibility and viability of bridging a “gap” between the sexes because the very act of separation has given the postwar family its ideological and commercial stability.

Legislating employment: The mismatch between policy and reality Part 1 has outlined an odd template, one in which the ideological status quo has sponsored and continued to reify separate spheres for men and women, marginalizing both women’s work outside the home and men’s work inside the home, despite a legislative environment declaring equality. We explore this mismatch, beginning with the Labor Standards Law of 1947. The Law included the principle of equal pay in Article 4 but contained no other clauses relating to discrimination against women in employment, and indeed contained protective clauses that served to exclude women from many of the types of jobs held by men. With the United Nations’ proclamation of the “Decade for Women” (1976–1985) and adoption

132

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) requiring member states to enact legislation to eliminate discrimination against women including in employment, the Japanese government began to plan and promote policies relating to women in order to meet conditions for ratifying the CEDAW. This led to the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) in 1986 and subsequent legislation aimed at advancing gender equality in the workplace, most recently the Act of Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace of 2016. A policy movement for employment equality has therefore developed in Japan for some three and a half decades, but the legislation’s implementation has not always produced expected outcomes of gender equality. Rather it continues to reproduce traditional gender norms. The passing of the EEOL was deemed important in the development of Japan as an advancing economy in postwar Japan and was ostensibly intended to be a piece of legislation acknowledging that increasing numbers of women had entered modes of paid employment outside of the home during the high growth era, that their employment experiences had been unequal compared to men’s and that women needed special treatment in the workplace beyond the provisions of the 1947 Labor Standards Law. The remit of the EEOL was to eliminate discrimination against women in all stages of employment: recruitment, job assignment, promotion, training and termination of employment (dismissal and retirement). The EEOL was controversial because, first, it referred only to women, second it did not “prohibit” discriminatory practices but rather encouraged employers to “make efforts,” and third it gave the government no powers to sanction organizations not in compliance.37 Of much greater long-term significance has been that the EEOL ironically enabled companies to segregate male and female regular employees into general (sōgoshoku) and clerical (ippanshoku) career tracks, on the normative gendered assumption that women’s domestic responsibilities required protection from the typically strenuous demands of regular employment. This offering of a protective status of employment to women was viewed as “preferential treatment” for women and therefore was not a violation of the EEOL.38 Discrimination against women was consequently legitimized, as organizations on the whole restricted the job tasks of predominantly female ippanshoku employees to clerical and support roles, separated from the predominantly male sōgoshoku general tracks which focused on long-term career development. Hence, female regular employees’ advancement into managerial positions was severely restricted, creating a solid and opaque ceiling, and leaving prime income and prestige roles for men to occupy. In this way, the EEOL, whose stated intention was the removal of genderbased discrimination in the workplace, gained considerable notoriety for enabling the institutionalization of segregated and gendered employment tracks in Japanese organizations. The 1997 revision of the EEOL acknowledged the inherent weakness described and transformed the “obligation to make efforts” into a “prohibition” of discriminatory treatment against women (Article 6). The revision also established protection for pregnant employees, guidelines on sexual harassment and introduced the concept of positive action, albeit as an encouragement rather than a requirement.39 In a further revision in 2006, the EEOL was extended to prohibit discrimination against both women and men, expanded the scope of discrimination against women relating to pregnancy and childbirth (Article 9), and included some forms of indirect discrimination (Article 7). This revision prohibited recruitment based on criteria of physical appearance and academic qualifications, as well as recruitment or promotion based on a requirement of job transfer, but it is interesting to note that some proposed forms of indirect discrimination were not incorporated into the final revision. Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

133

These included the requirement to be household head (e.g. for compensation packages), treating full-time workers more favorably than part-time workers and excluding part-time workers from eligibility of practices.40 This decision to restrict the criteria for indirect discrimination in the EEOL sends a clear signal to employers: that predominantly male heads of household and full-time employees can be treated favorably over predominantly female part-time employees and dependents within the Japanese household system. This perpetuated the male breadwinner model as a basis for employment practice and institutionalized it within the parameters of Japanese law. In addition, the EEOL does not adequately recognize marital status as grounds for discrimination. Although “dismissal due to marriage” is now prohibited, companies could continue the practice of offering regular positions of employment to unmarried women and non-regular positions to married women within the parameters of the EEOL.41 Alongside these developments, concern for Japan’s declining birth-rate led to the enactment of the Child Care Leave Law (1991), which was expanded in 1995 to incorporate the Family Care Leave Law. This legislation grants workers of both sexes the right to leave for up to one year following the birth of a child, guarantees reduced-hours and exemption from overtime for those with a child aged under three, and the right to take leave to care for a sick child until the child commences elementary school.42 Non-regular employees are also entitled to childcare leave, provided they have been in the organization for one year prior to leave and will continue for one year post-leave, which creates a disincentive for firms to commit to their continuous employment. The subsequent 2003 Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children obliges employers with 100 or more employees to publicly detail their actions to support combining work and child-rearing.43 While there has been a rise over time in the proportion of women taking childcare leave, the rate of male take-up has remained low, and the legislation did not directly lead to a significant increase in the proportion of women in continuous employment, or a decline in the high rate of women resigning upon childbirth.44 The 2016 Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace specifically targets private sector organizations with 300 or more employees, obliging them to collect and analyze key data showing the status of female employees in their firm (such as on numerical targets relating to recruitment and promotion) as well as disclose action plans identifying and providing solutions for issues blocking women’s employment within their organization. Organizations with 300 or fewer employees are encouraged to “make efforts.” 45 This is an acknowledgement that to a large extent it is workplace practices that are impeding gender equality in employment, rather than a lack of legislation, though our analysis has shown that equal employment legislation still requires strengthening in key areas, for example with respect to marital status. Equality legislation in postwar Japan has also excluded non-regular categories of work from equal employment opportunities46 and is weak on enforcement, thereby allowing a corporate response of symbolic or negative compliance.47 The provision for a government agency to promote gender equality was put in place with the establishment of the Office for Gender Equality within government in 1994; the precursor to the current Gender Equality Bureau, established 2001 and located institutionally within the Cabinet Office. The Bureau takes the lead in formulating and revising the “Basic Plan for Gender Equality,” first implemented in 2000 and revised every five years since. While the term “gender equality” (danjo byōdō) is now commonly used in policy documentation, Mari Osawa noted that feminist advisors were battling with conservative male 134

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Figure 7.1 Female Labor Force Participation Rate, 1960–2021 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 1960

1985

2021

10% 0% 15–19

20–24

25–29

30–34

35–39

40–44

45–49

50–54

55–59

60–64

65–

Age Source: Statistics Bureau of Japan, Labor Force Survey, https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/lngindex .html (Accessed July 2022)

Japanese bureaucrats and politicians who were wary of using a term that might lead to an “equality of outcome.” 48 She also commented that detailed “vision” documents—that went even further advocating a “gender-free” society—ultimately struggled to compete with traditional, normative gender discourse or indeed be allocated funding, as money continued to be allocated to conservative public works projects. Key areas of inequality highlighted in these vision documents of the 1990s—including workplace inequality and the burden of caring responsibilities for women—still persist as key tensions in Japan today. A strategy promoted by the Gender Equality Bureau since 2003 has been “to expand women’s participation in every field so that women will have at least 30 percent of the leadership positions in all fields of society by 2020,” with targets set for key indicators ranging from rates of female managerial positions across sectors to male take-up rates for childcare leave. These targets arguably gained little political support until they were picked up in 2013 to help promote the third arrow of Abenomics policy, but targets were unrealistic and largely unattainable by 2020.49 The movement for gender equality tends to focus on the barriers and challenges for women in paid work, with less focus on the incompatibility of two sides of the same life highlighted in this chapter. In Japan, policy makers and institutional leaders face ongoing difficulties in untangling and renegotiating what are now considered normative concepts relating to employment practice, family formation and gender roles in society. There may

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

135

also be some degree of intention to maintain the status quo of gender segregation. Government policy continues to focus on how to enable women to work within the expectations of their caring roles, rather than enabling men to contribute more domestic responsibility. This intensifies the double burden of paid work and domestic labor for Japanese women and disincentivizes male roles in family formation. The focus of the GEB 2020 targets and the 2016 Act is on increasing the visibility of women in positions of leadership but achieving this requires the dismantling of structural constraints that combine to obstruct the progress of women long before they can reach for leadership. We posit there are four key factors that serve to sustain the gendered status quo in paid vs unpaid work in Japan: non-regular work, taxation, childcare and policy on male employment. The first issue is the status of women’s paid work and the categories of employment within which they predominate. Literature on the employment of Japanese women throughout the postwar decades has documented their increased presence in the workplace but noted a persistence of an M-curve pattern of labor force participation and their increasingly visible role as non-regular workers.50 The existence of an M-curve in itself indicates that a significant portion of women continue to opt out of employment in the prime child-rearing years of life. Figure 7.1 shows movement in the M-curve of female labor participation over time. The M-curve began to take shape in the 1960s when women were encouraged into work as a demand for labor increased under high-speed growth. By 1985—the year the EEOL was passed and the height of the bubble economy era—the M-curve was established in shape, but has significantly flattened since then, as might be expected under a movement for equality of employment. By 2021 a higher proportion of Japanese women are working compared to previous decades due to a growing economic demand for their labor, an increased social acceptance of working women (particularly older women), better availability of maternity and childcare leave, changing social desire and/or financial need for women to work and lower fertility leading to a shortening of the average number of years required for early childcare. While these changes could be said to broadly indicate “progress” for working women in Japan, progress cannot be assumed. The rising proportion of older women working and the decline in the proportion opting out in the peak reproductive years does not necessarily correlate to enhanced career opportunities or indeed progress in closing the gender gap. As we can see from Figure 7.1, some 20 percent of adult women in the peak reproductive age cohorts are not participating in the labor force at all. The flattening of the dip in the M-curve is also in part attributable to fertility decline, with fewer women opting for parenthood, and we know that both marriage rates and birth rates have declined during the postwar decades. We know also that the proportion of women resigning from their organizations upon childbirth remains high. Despite the implementation and strengthening of the EEOL over thirty-five years, there has been only a small increase in the rates of regular employment of women for all age cohorts and, in contrast to the USA for example, no significant increase in the participation of married women with young children.51 We also know that the proportion of older women (those in the second peak of the M-curve) has increased over time but that the rising female labor participation rate in Japan is predominantly driven by non-regular categories of paid work. During the eight years of the Abe government touting its Womenomics policy, the female labor force participation did increase across all age groups, but of the 3.3 million women who entered the labor force during Abe’s second term, two thirds entered as non-regular workers.52 In 2019, 44.2 percent of employed women were part-time and temporary workers, 136

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

compared to only 11.7 percent of employed men.53 The rapid aging of the population in Japan is also a main driver of the increase in female labor force participation, as there has been a striking increase in the number of women working in the healthcare services industry. Women’s employment in healthcare services increased sharply, by some 2.7 million workers, between 2002 and 2018. Consequently, about 21.3 percent (more than one in five) of all female workers are now employed in the healthcare services industry.54 Employment in sectors such as healthcare and childcare are dominated by women globally, but in Japan their dominance in such sectors indicates an attachment to the idea of women being primarily responsible for caring roles in Japanese society and can be viewed as an extension of their unpaid labor into the domain of paid labor. The second issue is spousal taxation, a piece of legislation which acts to constrain the income of married female labor within the family unit and correlates to the fact that nonregular categories of work are dominated by women. The system encourages the registration of a dependent spouse (primarily female) to reduce the taxable annual income of the main household earner (primarily male). A dependent spouse who caps her annual income at 1.03 million yen does not have to pay income tax and her husband can claim a tax deduction of 380 thousand yen on annual income below 10 million yen. The amount of the husband’s deduction decreases on a sliding scale to zero for wives earning above 1.03 million yen to 1.41 million yen. Within Japan’s national pension system, dependent spouses are category III status giving them entitlement to their own pension even if they never work or make pension contributions. Earning above a 1.03 million yen triggers the requirement to pay nominal income tax and pension contributions and above 1.5 million yen the sliding loss of the tax deduction for the main earner.55 These tax thresholds also encourage employers to pay low wages to part-time workers, allowing women to claim dependent status. Married couples in Japan therefore have to calculate whether it is beneficial for women to work outside of this framework over the long-term, given the tax and social security advantages on offer. The combination of legal structures that incentivize women to be “dependent” and men to be the “breadwinner” at the same time reinforce the gendering of employment. Married women opt to restrict their income and work fewer hours in non-regular employment, usually as part-time workers, which in turn means men must shoulder the burden of being the main breadwinner, inevitably restricting them to higher paid regular work which in Japanese corporations tends to lock them into a workplace culture of long working hours and normative assumptions of unlimited commitment. This further reinforces their absence from the home and requires women to shoulder the burden of domestic work within the household unit. The spousal tax was established in 1961 when there was an increased labor demand for housewives to work part-time, while still protecting their domestic role. It is now arguably out of date, not only from the perspective of the demographic and financial pressures currently facing the Japanese tax and social security systems, but also from the perspective of encouraging gender equality in the workplace and within the family unit. The tax policy provides employers a legitimate excuse to pay lower salaries and offer non-regular jobs to married female employees, effectively disincentivizing women to pursue full-time work, and reducing their total lifetime potential economic contribution as well as the opportunity to pursue careers that could lead to leadership positions. The outcome is a “psychological ceiling” on women’s income in the minds of both employers and employees.56 There appears to be little political impetus to revise this taxation policy. The proposed dissolution of the Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

137

system hit the media headlines in March 2014 and in August 2016, with announcements that the government was “rethinking” the spousal tax.57 However, since implementation in 1961 there have only been adjustments made to the thresholds in 1986 and in 2018. So long as the spousal tax exists, it will continue to incentivize married women to restrict their economic activity.58 The labor force participation rates of women in Japan may be rising but are not changing the status quo, because more women are just being asked to do what women in Japan are already doing—which is non-regular work supporting the full-time employment of men, while assuming primary responsibility for caring roles. The third issue is childcare expectations and provision. While the proportion of women who remain in continuous employment after the birth of their first child has risen to 53.1 percent due to the provision of childcare leave legislation, a significant proportion of women (46.9 percent) still resign from their jobs upon childbirth,59 indicating that motherhood poses a strong opportunity cost to paid work for women, one that equality legislation on paper is not alleviating. There is insufficient capacity of early childcare places for working mothers, resulting in a problem of wait-listed children.60 This is particularly acute in key urban areas such as Tokyo, where nuclear households, commuting times and geographical distance from wider family members such as grandparents increases the inability of women to combine work and childcare.61 The number of children on childcare waitlists was 19,895 in April 2018.62 Lack of access to childcare and the inflexible hours of childcare centers actively discourage women’s prospects of attaining employment.63 The system of nursery (hoikuen) places is not flexible enough to accommodate the needs of women who wish to work fulltime and companies have to verify a woman’s full-time employment as part of the registration process for childcare centers. In addition, there is a shortage of childcare workers, with the government only nominally raising wage levels in the sector and reluctant to meet the shortfall of care workers via immigration,64 pointing to a clear lack of policy seeking to marketize the unpaid care labor done by Japanese women. Women are therefore encouraged, particularly once they are married and have children, to work in non-regular categories of paid work which are more flexible in work hours that can accommodate their primary caring responsibilities. This simultaneously encourages men in prime age cohorts to commit to the breadwinner role within a corporate culture that restricts their presence in the home. The fourth issue is policy on male employment. The focus of gender equality policy in Japan (and elsewhere) is predominantly limited to a discussion of women and how to encourage more women into the labor force but tends to give limited attention to the issue of the gendering of unpaid work and largely ignores how men are expected to work in society. To really reduce the gender gap, men need to be the target of equality opportunities too, and so far there have been limited attempts to rebalance and change the pressures of work for men in Japan. One example is the government’s promotion of the ikumen project since 2010, encouraging men to be more involved in childcare, which has had mixed reception.65 While the media embraced the concept, the impact in employment was less than evident. Despite childcare leave legislation available to both parents, the proportion of male take-up remains low, though is slowly rising, from 2.3 percent in 2015 to a record high of 5.14 percent in 2017.66 Work commitments and concerns are cited as key barriers to take-up, and Japanese fathers continue to rank lowest among OECD nations in time spent on unpaid childcare and housework. A longitudinal study showed a sliding scale correlation between the number of hours men contributed to domestic labor and the decision of Japanese couples to have a second (or more) child. In households where fathers contributed 6 hours or more a week to 138

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

housework and childcare, 87 percent went on to have a second child, while in households where fathers did not contribute any hours, only 10 percent had a second child.67 To simply criticize Japanese men for not doing more in the home neglects an examination of the relationship between paid work and domestic labor. An analysis of the time-use data of Japanese women and men in the 30s and 40s age cohorts (the key reproductive years for family formation and childcare) provides an explanation as to why equality policy is not contributing to equality outcomes. In 2015, average hours of work per day for job-holders was 9.3 hours for men in their 30s and 9.22 hours for men in their 40s. For women, it was 6.14 hours for those in their 30s and 6.33 hours for those in their 40s. In addition, 33 percent of all male job-holders worked 10 or more hours per day and 19 per cent of men in their 30s and 40s worked 60 or more hours per week.68 If we compare this with data on domestic labor, men spend on average 54 minutes per week-day on housework (including childcare) compared to women who spend 4.18 hours per day. This creates a clear gender division. The culture of long working hours for men is not changing, and the average working hours for Japanese men in their thirties and forties has actually increased since 1995 when it stood at 9.0 and 8.36 hours respectively.69 The average working hours for women have slightly increased since 1995 as well, but the gender gap remains. Working women spend on average three hours less at paid work compared with men, but instead spend more than four hours daily performing domestic labor compared to under one hour performed by men. The average six-hour working day for employed women is indicative of their high levels of employment in part-time work and reflective of the time required for domestic labor including childcare. Men, on the other hand, arguably have little time for domestic labor when paid work takes up more than nine hours per day. Although the labor force participation rate of women has risen, there has been no significant change in the sharing of domestic work by married couples.70 The tension is clear. Asking men to do more at home if they are employed in the long-hours culture of regular employment is impossible. And asking women to work more in that workplace culture in the same modes as men do if they shoulder the burden of care is equally impossible. The only way to dismantle the status quo would be to redesign corporate management practices to allow for a greater work-life balance for men, and this does not appear to have a strong enough impetus within the corporate and political agenda. Hence, so long as standard expectations of workplace commitment for Japanese men persist, no amount of policy and legislation ostensibly aimed at advancing gender equality will budge the inertia of the gendered normative relationship between paid vs unpaid work.

Conclusion: The inertia of postwar gender roles Despite the achievement of internationally advanced levels of economic and human development in the postwar decades, Japanese society remains deeply divided along the fault lines of gender, particularly in the interacting spheres of domestic and economic labor. A system that was designed in the early postwar years to assign gender roles for work and home within an environment of burgeoning economic growth, urbanization and rise of the nuclear family has remained as an ideological status quo despite a very changed economic, demographic and global environment. Frequent governmental legislative intervention, ostensibly intended to promote gender equality and reduce gender disparities in employment, has instead ended up maintaining and entrenching a status quo that is now decades’ old, and means

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

139

Japan now lags behind other nations, ranking 120 out of 156 nations in the WEF global gender gap index.71 The mismatch between the promotion of equality and the reality of inequality in daily life has resulted in a gendering of paid employment that then contributes to the reproduction of gendered social relations beyond the workplace. Despite the increased presence of women in paid employment during the postwar decades, immense structural boundaries remain in terms of gendered categories of employment status, childcare provision, taxation and a corporate culture of long working hours and commitment. These combine to produce incredible inertia when it comes to issuing a fundamental challenge to the prevailing template of male breadwinner and female homemaker, even in a society where the ideology of a stay-at-home woman is increasingly removed from the reality of work. This chapter has argued that the principles and practices that underpin the gendering of both paid and unpaid work in Japan show little erosion over time. The structural framework within which both women and men work and live has not significantly changed since the 1960s meaning that the opportunity to combine family and career formation remains limited and the ability to renegotiate gender norms appears stagnant.

Notes 1

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Labour Force Statistics, 2019 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), Data set, accessed February 17, 2022, https://stats .oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757. 2 World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2020, 31 (World Economic Forum), accessed February 17, 2022, https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality. 3 World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap Report 2020, 11, 202. 4 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Employment: Time Spent in Paid and Unpaid Work, by Sex, 2020 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)), Data set, accessed February 17, 2022, https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757. 5 Indrani Chatterjee, “Introduction,” in Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, edited by Indrani Chatterjee (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 35. 6 Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 2. 7 Laura Neitzel, The Life We Longed For: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2016), 71. 8 “Ima no haha-oya wa dokoka ga kurutteiru!” Shufu to Seikatsu, January 1967. 9 Sasaki Yasuyuki, “‘Kogoroshi’ no shinrigakuteki kōsatsu,” Jidō Shinri 29, no. 8 (August 1975): 166–72. 10 Chizuko Ueno, The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2009). 11 Mark Jones, Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 12 Kathleen Uno, “Death of a Good Wife, Wise Mother” in Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). 13 Neitzel, The Life We Longed For, 13. 14 Andrew Gordon, “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan.” Social Politics, Summer (1997): 245–83. 15 Mari Osawa, “Twelve Million Full-time Housewives: The Gender Consequences of Japan’s Postwar Social Contract,” in Social Contract under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe and Japan at the Turn of the Century, edited by Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa and Nobuhiro Hiwatari (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).

140

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

16

Osamu Saito, “Historical Origins of the Male Breadwinner Households Model: Britain, Sweden and Japan,” Japan Labor Review 11, no. 4 (2014): 5–20. 17 Jane Lewis. “The Decline of the Male Breadwinner Model: The Implications for Work and Care,” Social Politics 8, no. 2 (2001): 152–70. 18 Helen Macnaughtan, Women, Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle: The Case of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1945–1975 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005). 19 Toshimitsu Shinkawa, “Substitutes for Immigrants? Social Policy Responses to Population Decreases in Japan,” American Behavioral Scientist 56, no. 8 (2012): 1123–38. 20 Gillian Pascall, “Male Breadwinner Model,” in International Encyclopedia of Social Policy, edited by Tony Fitzpatrick, Huck-ju Kwon, Nick Manning, James Midgley and Gillian Pascall (London: Routledge, 2010). 21 Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space and Bourgeois Culture 1880–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 22 Tamara K. Hareven, “Family Time and Historical Time,” Daedalus 106, no. 2 (Spring 1977): 57–70. 23 JICA Research Institute, “Furoku: Hoken Iryō Kanren Tōkei,” Part 2, JICA, March 2004, accessed February 2019, https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/IFIC_and_JBICI-Studies/jica-ri/publication/archives/jica/field/pdf /200403_02_03.pdf. 24 Robin LeBlanc, “Lessons from the Ghost of Salaryman Past: The Global Costs of the Breadwinner Imaginary.” Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 4 (2012): 857–71. 25 Uno, “Death of a Good Wife, Wise Mother,” 293–322. 26 Katherine Canning cited in Beat Kümin and Cornelie Usborne, “At Home and in the Workplace: A Historical Introduction to the ‘Spatial Turn.’” History and Theory 52 (October 2013): 312. 27 Danielle van den Heuvel, “Gender in the Streets of the Premodern City,” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 4 (2019): 701. 28 Sand, House and Home. 3. 29 David Ambaras, Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). 30 Uno, “Death of a Good Wife”; Anne Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); Robin LeBlanc, Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 31 Andrew Gorman-Murray, “Masculinity and the Home: A Critical Review and Conceptual Framework,” Australian Geographer 39, no. 3 (August 2008): 371. 32 Romit Dasgupta, Re-Reading the Salaryman in Japan: Crafting Masculinities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). 33 Anne Allison and Frank Baldwin, eds., Japan: The Precarious Future (New York: NYU Press, 2015). 34 Osawa Mari “Twelve Million Full-time Housewives,” 73. 35 Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man (London: Penguin Press, 2017). 36 LeBlanc, “Lessons from the Ghost.” 37 Shozo Yamada, “Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Having Passed the Quarter-Century Milestone,” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 6–19. 38 Yamada, “Equal Employment Opportunity,” 9. 39 Yamada, “Equal Employment Opportunity,” 11. 40 Yamada, “Equal Employment Opportunity,” 14. 41 Yamada, “Equal Employment Opportunity,” 16. 42 Akira Kawaguchi, “Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Work-Life Balance: Do Work-Family Balance Policies Contribute to Achieving Gender Equality,” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 35–56. 43 Kawaguchi, “Equal Employment Opportunity Act,” 38. 44 Yukiko Abe, “Long-Term Impacts of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in Japan,” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 20–34; Kawaguchi, “Equal Employment Opportunity Act,” 38. 45 The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training. Labor Situation in Japan and its Analysis, 2016 (Tokyo: The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training (JILPT), 2016). 46 Heidi Gottfried, “Precarious Work in Japan: Old Forms, New Risks?” Journal of Contemporary Asia 44, no. 3 (2014): 464–78. 47 Eunmi Mun, “Negative Compliance as an Organizational Response to Legal Pressures: The Case of Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law,” Social Forces 94, no. 4 (2016): 1409–37.

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

141

48

Mari Osawa, “Government Approaches to Gender Equality in the mid-1990s,” Social Science Japan Journal 3, no. 1 (2000): 3–19. 49 Mark Crawford, “Abe’s Womenomics Policy, 2013–2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?” The Asia Pacific Journal—Japan Focus, volume 19, issue 4, no. 4 (2021): 1–16; Helen Macnaughtan, “Womenomics for Japan: Is the Abe Policy for Gendered Employment Viable in an Era of Precarity?” The Asia-Pacific Journal—Japan Focus, volume 13, issue 13, no. 1 (2015): 1–19. 50 For example, see: Mary Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Kaye Broadbent, Women’s Employment in Japan: The Experience of Part-time Workers (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Osawa Machiko, Josei wa naze katsuyaku dekinai no ka (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinposha, 2015); Helen Macnaughtan, “From ‘Post-war’ to ‘Post-Bubble’: Contemporary Issues for Japanese Working Women,” in Perspectives on Work, Employment and Society in Japan, edited by Peter Matanle and Wim Lunsing (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006), 31–57. 51 Abe, “Long-Term Impacts,” 31. 52 Marika Katanuma, “Japanese Women Face a Future of Poverty,” Bloomberg News, January 11, 2020, accessed February 17, 2022, https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/japan-s-population-crisis-ispushing-more-women-into-poverty. Crawford, “Abe’s Womenomics Policy,” 1–16. 53 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Labor Force Survey, 2020. Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Data set. Accessed February 2022. 54 Daiji Kawaguchi and Hiroaki Mori “The Labor Market in Japan, 2000–2018,” IZA World of Labor (July 2019): 1–12, accessed February 2019, https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/499/pdfs/the-labor-market-in-japan .pdf. 55 Yanfei Zhou, “Poverty and Income Polarization of Married Stay-At-Home Mothers in Japan,” Japan Labor Issues 3, no. 16 (2019): 6–11. 56 Shigeki Morinobu, “Rethinking Personal Tax Exemptions to Mobilize Women’s Power,” Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, August 7, 2014, accessed February 17, 2022, https://www.tkfd.or.jp/en/research/detail.php ?id=535. 57 “Spousal Tax Deduction System up for Review,” Mainichi shinbun, August 31, 2016, accessed February 17, 2022, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160831/p2a/00m/0na/009000c. 58 Izumi Yokoyama and Naomi Kodama, “Women’s Labor Supply and Taxation: Analysis of the Current Situation using Data,” Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, Public Policy Review 14, no. 2 (2018): 267–300. 59 Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office. Women and Men in Japan, 2020 (Tokyo: Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, 2020). 60 Grace H.Y. Lee and Sing Ping Lee, “Childcare Availability, Fertility and Female Labor Force Participation in Japan,” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 32 (2014): 71–85. 61 Yukiko Abe, “Family Labor Supply, Commuting Time, and Residential Decisions: The Case of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area,” Journal of Housing Economics 20, no. 1 (2011): 49–63. 62 Gender Equality Bureau. Women and Men in Japan, 2020, 12. 63 Mizuki Kawabata, “Childcare Access and Employment: the case of women with preschool-aged children in Tokyo,” Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies 26, no. 1 (2014): 40–56. 64 Jiyeoun Song, “Development of Public-Funded Social Care in Japan and Korea: Policy Linkage between Social Care Programs and Labor Market Policies,” Korea Observer 46, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 265–94. 65 Kosuke Mizukoshi, Florian Kohlbacher and Christoph Schimkowsky, “Japan’s Ikumen Discourse: Macro and Micro Perspectives on Modern Fatherhood,” Japan Forum 28, no. 2 (2016): 212–32. 66 Nippon.Com, “Japan’s Daycare Waiting Lists Below 20,000 for First Time in 10 Years,” September 19, 2018, accessed February 17, 2022, https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00289/. 67 Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office. Women and Men in Japan, 12. 68 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa 2015 (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2015). 69 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa 2015. 70 Junya Tsutsui, “Female Labor Participation and the Sexual Division of Labor: A Consideration on the Persistent Male-Breadwinner Model,” Japan Labor Review 13, no. 3 (2016): 80–100. 71 World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap Report 2021 (World Economic Forum (WEF)), access February 17, 2022, https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2021.

142

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

References Abe, Yukiko. “Family Labor Supply, Commuting Time, and Residential Decisions: The Case of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.” Journal of Housing Economics, 20, no. 1 (2011): 49–63. ———. “Long-Term Impacts of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in Japan.” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 20–34. Allison, Anne. Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Allison, Anne, and Frank Baldwin, eds. Japan: The Precarious Future. New York: NYU Press, 2015. Ambaras, David. Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Brinton, Mary. Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Broadbent, Kaye. Women’s Employment in Japan: The Experience of Part-time Workers. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Chatterjee, Indrani. “Introduction.” In Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, edited by Indrani Chatterjee, 3–45. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Crawford, Mark. “Abe’s Womenomics Policy, 2013–2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?” The Asia Pacific Journal—Japan Focus, Volume 19, Issue 4, no. 4 (2021): 1–16. Dasgupta, Romit. Re-Reading the Salaryman in Japan: Crafting Masculinities. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office. Women and Men in Japan 2020. Tokyo: Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2020. Gordon, Andrew. “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan.” Social Politics 4, no. 2 (1997): 245–83. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Masculinity and the Home: A Critical Review and Conceptual Framework.” Australian Geographer 39, no. 3 (August 2008): 367–79. Gottfried, Heidi. “Precarious Work in Japan: Old Forms, New Risks?” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44, no. 3 (2014): 464–78. Hareven, Tamara K. “Family Time and Historical Time.” Daedalus 106, no. 2 (Spring 1977): 57–70. “Ima no haha-oya wa dokoka ga kurutteiru!.” Shufu to Seikatsu, January 1967. The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training (JILPT). Labor Situation in Japan and its Analysis, Tokyo: The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, 2016. JICA Research Institute. “Furoku: Hoken iryō kanren tōkei.” Part 2. JICA. March 2004. Accessed February 2019. https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/IFIC_and_JBICI-Studies/jica-ri/publication/archives/jica/field /pdf/200403_02_03.pdf. Jones, Mark. Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Katanuma, Marika. “Japanese Women Face a Future of Poverty,” Bloomberg News, January 11, 2020. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/japan-s-population-crisis-ispushing-more-women-into-poverty. Kawabata, Mizuki. “Childcare Access and Employment: the case of women with preschool-aged children in Tokyo.” Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies 26 no. 1 (2014): 40–56. Kawaguchi, Daiji, and Hiroaki Mori. “The Labor Market in Japan, 2000–2018.” IZA World of Labor. (July 2019): 1–12. Accessed February 2019. https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/499/pdfs/the-labor-market-injapan.pdf. Kawaguchi, Akira. “Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Work-Life Balance: Do Work-Family Balance Policies Contribute to Achieving Gender Equality.” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 35–56. Kümin, Beat, and Cornelie Usborne. “At Home and in the Workplace: A Historical Introduction to the ‘Spatial Turn.’” History and Theory 52 (October 2013): 305–18. LeBlanc, Robin. Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. ———. “Lessons from the Ghost of Salaryman Past: The Global Costs of the Breadwinner Imaginary.” Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 4 (2012): 857–71. Lee, Grace H.Y., and Sing Ping Lee. “Childcare Availability, Fertility and Female Labor Force Participation in Japan.” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 32 (2014): 71–85.

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

143

Lewis, Jane. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sp/8.2.152 “The Decline of the Male Breadwinner Model: The Implications for Work and Care.” Social Politics 8, no. 2 (2001): 152–70. Macnaughtan, Helen. “From ‘Post-war’ to ‘Post-Bubble’: Contemporary Issues for Japanese Working Women.” In Perspectives on Work, Employment and Society in Japan, edited by Peter Matanle and Wim Lunsing, 31–57. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006. ———. Women, Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle: The Case of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1945–1975. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/3380. ———. “Womenomics for Japan: Is the Abe Policy for Gendered Employment Viable in an Era of Precarity?” The Asia-Pacific Journal—Japan Focus, Volume 13, Issue 13, no. 1 (2015): 1–19. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Labour Force Survey, Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2020. Data set [Accessed February 2022]. Mizukoshi, Kosuke, Florian Kohlbacher & Christoph Schimkowsky. “Japan’s Ikumen Discourse: Macro and Micro Perspectives on Modern Fatherhood, Japan Forum 28, no. 2 (2016): 212–32. Morinobu, Shigeki. “Rethinking Personal Tax Exemptions to Mobilize Women’s Power.” Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research. August 7, 2014. Mun, Eunmi. “Negative Compliance as an Organizational Response to Legal Pressures: The Case of Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law.” Social Forces 94, no. 4 (2016): 1409–37. Neitzel, Laura. The Life We Longed For: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan. Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2016. Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai. Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa 2015. Tokyo: NHK Hōsō Bunka Kenkyū jo, 2015. Nippon.Com. “Japan’s Daycare Waiting Lists Below 20,000 for First Time in 10 Years.” September 19, 2018. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00289/. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Employment: Time Spent in Paid and Unpaid Work, by Sex, 2020. Data Set. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx ?queryid=54757. ———. Labour Force Statistics, 2019. Data Set [Accessed February 2022]. Osawa, Machiko. Josei wa naze katsuyaku dekinai no ka. Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 2015. Osawa, Mari. “Government Approaches to Gender Equality in the mid-1990s.” Social Science Japan Journal 3, no. 1 (2000): 3–19. ———. “Twelve Million Full-time Housewives: The Gender Consequences of Japan’s Postwar Social Contract.” In Social Contract under Stress: The Middles Classes of America, Europe and Japan at the Turn of the Century, edited by Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa and Nobuhiro Hiwatari, 255–78. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002. Pascall, Gillian. “Male Breadwinner Model.” In International Encyclopedia of Social Policy, edited by Tony Fitzpatrick, Huck-ju Kwon, Nick Manning, James Midgley and Gillian Pascall. London: Routledge, 2010. Perry, Grayson. The Descent of Man. London: Penguin Press, 2017. Saito, Osamu. “Historical Origins of the Male Breadwinner Households Model: Britain, Sweden and Japan.” Japan Labor Review 11, no. 4 (2014): 5–20. Sand, Jordan. House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space and Bourgeois Culture 1880– 1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Sasaki, Yasuyuki. “‘Kogoroshi’ no shinrigakuteki kōsatsu” Jidō Shinri 29, no. 8 (August 1975): 166–72. Scott, Joan Wallach. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Shinkawa, Toshimitsu. “Substitutes for Immigrants? Social Policy Responses to Population Decreases in Japan.” American Behavioral Scientist 56, no. 8 (2012): 1123–38. “Spousal Tax Deduction System up for Review.” Mainichi shinbun, August 31, 2016. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160831/p2a/00m/0na/009000c. Song, Jiyeoun. “Development of Public-Funded Social Care in Japan and Korea: Policy Linkage between Social Care Programs and Labor Market Policies.” Korea Observer 46, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 265–94. Tsutsui, Junya. “Female Labor Participation and the Sexual Division of Labor: A Consideration on the Persistent Male-Breadwinner Model.” Japan Labor Review 13, no. 3 (2016): 80–100. Ueno, Chizuko. The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2009. Uno, Kathleen, “Death of a Good Wife, Wise Mother.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 293–322. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

144

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

van den Heuvel, Danielle. “Gender in the Streets of the Premodern City.” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 4 (2019): 693–710. World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap Report 2020. World Economic Forum (WEF). Accessed February 17, 2022. https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality. ———. Global Gender Gap Report 2021. World Economic Forum (WEF). Accessed February 17, 2022. https:// www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2021. Yamada, Shozo. “Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Having Passed the Quarter-Century Milestone.” Japan Labor Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 6–19. Yokoyama, Izumi, and Naomi Kodama. “Women’s Labor Supply and Taxation: Analysis of the Current Situation using Data.” Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, Public Policy Review 14, no. 2 (2018): 267–300. Zhou, Yanfei. “Poverty and Income Polarization of Married Stay-At-Home Mothers in Japan.” Japan Labor Issues 3, no. 16 (2019): 6–11.

Chapter 7: Gendering Postwar Japan

145

Chapter 8 Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams Eiko Maruko Siniawer In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of financial and environmental shocks provoked anxiety, insecurity and uncertainty. For the first time in the postwar period, hope for a brighter future was shaken. But even as there were fears of loss and retrogression, there was also doubt about what to defend and preserve. Postwar dreams of economic growth, mass consumerism and middle-classness seemed to be in crisis. This chapter explores ideas of value and waste, comfort and panic, strength and fragility, to argue that the early 1970s were an inflection point in the longer arc of the postwar period.

Introduction In October 1974, the Economic Planning Agency issued a diagnosis of contemporary ills. The nation, it determined, was suffering the lingering discontents of an “era of anxiety,” or fuan no jidai. In its annual white paper on people’s lifestyles, the agency identified a litany of problems that had been eroding feelings of stability. Prime among them were environmental pollution, impending resource shortages and price inflation. To convey a sense of the scale of these challenges, the agency noted that these were global phenomena, especially resonant among the economically advanced countries of the world. In the face of such difficulties, the stated purpose of the report was to help the nation overcome the pervasive unease that had come to characterize the early 1970s.1 The Economic Planning Agency’s white paper described and exemplified the uncertainties and insecurities of these years. Cracks in the foundation of economic growth seemed to be widening, sheared open by the humanitarian and environmental damage wrought by industrial pollution, worries about finite natural resources and rising prices. As people realized the severity of these strains and felt them in their day-to-day lives, some raised questions about the costs and consequences of the nation’s rapid economic growth. At the same time, many grasped more tightly onto middle-class lifestyles. In the Economic Planning Agency’s view, people were dissatisfied because of the gap between expanding desires, stoked by economic expansion, and their lagging and unequal realization.2 But perhaps the most immediate and acute sentiment of these years was fear of the deterioration, or even the loss, of middle-class lifestyles that attested to individual and national achievement.

146

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The particular pressures and shocks that buffeted everyday life in the late 1960s and early 1970s not only unsettled assumptions about the durability of middle-class attainment, but also altered notions of the future. For the first time in the postwar era, since the darkest years just after the war, the future no longer seemed brighter than the present. To the contrary, the coming years promised to be somehow bleaker—environmental degradation shortened time horizons, natural resource depletion presaged the end of economic growth and inflation threatened the continued affordability of daily necessities and comforts. The Economic Planning Agency surmised that people’s anxieties, especially those intensified by ever higher prices, were fundamentally an uneasiness about the future.3 Indeed, at both the level of individuals and the nation, the optimistic belief in an arc of progress dimmed. While some people sounded the alarm about looming crises, others also proposed changes in ways of thinking and acting to stave off the worst possible outcomes and recapture the sense of a stable future. For its part, the Economic Planning Agency’s recommendations were rather vague and relatively modest. The white paper called for new lifestyles that were “truly affluent,” meaning materially, environmentally and psychologically sustainable. More specific suggestions included reducing waste and reorganizing the structure of production and consumption.4 Others, from local officials to activists and artists, also heeded the warning signs of the present and tried to imagine and realize different ways forward. In this sense, the early 1970s were a kind of inflection point in which the threat of a grim future instigated reflection and reform of lifestyles forged in the high-growth economy.

Middle-class dreams Ambitions for high growth and aspirations for middle-class lifestyles took firm hold as the country’s economy gradually recovered from the war. By the mid-1950s, the food shortages and housing insecurity of wartime and the immediate postwar years had abated. In 1955, gross national product was higher than it had ever been in the prewar era. And in 1956, the Economic Planning Agency offered the most positive assessment on the state of the Japanese economy since the end of the war. National income grew by over 10 percent, industrial production was up, the international balance of payments had improved and the economy expanded without inflation.5 The idea of not just economic growth, but high growth, was catapulted to the center of national attention in 1960, when Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato announced his now famous National Income Doubling Plan which pledged to double gross national product by 1970. From its inception, the plan was intended as a national salve to ensure stability and orient people toward the future. In the words of Itō Masaya, secretary to Ikeda, the commitment to income doubling was meant to heal the political animosities stemming from the contentious renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty, or Anpo: “When Ikeda became prime minister, the hard feelings left over from the savage Anpo struggle had not yet dissipated. Something had to be done, and not a moment too soon, to repair the shattered and broken spirits of the people and turn their energies in a constructive direction.” 6 With the unveiling of the Income Doubling Plan, Ikeda managed to distract people from political contention, pivot interest away from military strength to economic attainment, and build a national consensus around the desirability of wealth. Even though gross national product had already more than doubled between 1951 and 1960, the much-touted slogan of “income doubling” ushered in an

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

147

era of “economic growthism”—high growth was enshrined as a shared object of individual and national ambition, and a defining element of national identity.7 As suggested by the sociologist Yoshimi Shun’ya, Ikeda cleverly drew people to his dream of income doubling and cultivated trust in affluent lifestyles as a form of security for the future.8 High economic growth fueled the expansion of the middle class and diffusion of middleclass lifestyles. Starting in the late 1950s, a middle-class life was increasingly a majority experience. Household incomes rose, the number of nuclear families grew, urban and suburban areas expanded and high school graduation rates ticked higher. More people came to identify themselves as part of the middle class.9 In an oft-cited national survey of people’s lives conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office, the number of respondents who identified themselves as belonging to some stratum of the middle class was over 70 percent from the late 1950s, and over 85 percent by the mid-1960s.10 In the era of high growth, as income inequality narrowed and more people experienced the fruits of income doubling, there emerged a shared sense of belonging to a national, middle-class community with dreams of an even brighter future.11 Central to this national, middle-class community was the ability and opportunity to consume—to buy exciting new products from instant ramen to black-and-white televisions. In 1960, the Economic Planning Agency described a “consumption revolution” and “lifestyle revolution” beginning to sweep across the country.12 Purchase of electric goods became an especially attractive marker of economic attainment, as manufacturers marketed their products from rice cookers to washing machines as emblems of a middle-class life. And consumer desires expanded along with incomes. The dream in the late 1950s to own the “three treasures” (washing machine, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator) or the “three Ss” (Senpuki, Sentakki, Suihanki—electric fan, washing machine, electric rice cooker) extended by the mid-1960s to the “three Cs” (Color TV, Cooler [air conditioner] and Car).13 Such household appliances were, as put by historian Yoshikuni Igarashi, “proof of membership in a national community in pursuit of a better future.” 14 To purchase goods was to create a middle-class home, validating high growth and stoking hopes for ever more comfortable daily lives.

Environmental costs and consequences The bright sheen of high growth started to dull as the dangers of environmental pollution encroached on the daily lives of a wider swath of the nation. That industrialism and economic expansion could have negative consequences for the environment and human health was not a new realization in the early 1970s. Modern pollution disasters dated back to the late 19th century, with the Ashio copper mine’s contamination of the Watarase River basin as one infamous case.15 In the postwar era, debilitating and fatal diseases were traced back to chemical poisoning by corporations. In Minamata, on the western coast of Kyūshū, the neurological disorder that came to be known as Minamata disease was discovered in 1956, and its causes then tied to methylmercury in the wastewater dumped by the chemical factory of the Shin Nihon Chisso Corporation.16 Over the 1950s and 1960s, there were similar findings with three other illnesses: Niigata Minamata disease from methylmercury released by the chemical engineering company Shōwa Denkō, itai-itai disease from cadmium discarded by mining companies in Toyama prefecture, and Yokkaichi asthma from the sulfur oxide emitted by petrochemical processing facilities in Mie prefecture.

148

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

What changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the national visibility of, and sympathy for, the victims of pollution diseases. Victims brought legal suits against the corporations, culminating in a series of court verdicts reached between 1971 and 1973 which found for the plaintiffs. In the trial against Chisso, the court held the corporation legally responsible for Minamata disease, deciding in March 1973 that it was guilty of negligence in discharging methylmercury in its wastewater. Victims rejoiced in the verdict, with some appreciating the recognition and compensation for having been “sacrifice[d] … on the altar of growth.” 17 Beyond the plaintiffs and their activist supporters, the broader Japanese public could follow all of the developments related to the pollution diseases through coverage in mass-circulation daily newspapers. They could read the work of environmental activist and engineer Ui Jun, like his influential book on Minamata disease published in 1968.18 And they could see photographs of disease patients taken by documentarians such as Kuwabara Shisei; Shiota Takeshi, who published a compilation of his work in 1973; and the husband and wife duo, W. Eugene and Aileen Mioko Smith, whose Life magazine article in 1972 and book in 1975 moved an international audience.19 As it became established knowledge that Minamata disease could be contracted by eating mercury-laden fish, concern grew about the safety of this staple food in people’s diets. Worries about mercury poisoning were then compounded by revelations about contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs—of rice oil in the late 1960s, and then water and fish in the early 1970s.20 In June 1973, the Ministry of Health and Welfare provoked anxieties further by issuing unclear guidance about how much fish people could consume. The ministry initially set strict and detailed standards, prompting what one observer dubbed a “fish panic”: housewives refrained from buying fish from fishmongers and supermarkets, and customers did not frequent sushi shops. Then, just days later, the ministry went back on its advice, stating that the restrictions only applied to fish from polluted waters and that what was sold in stores was perfectly safe. Skeptical of this claim and suspicious of pressures exerted by politicians who represented the fishing industry, consumers were left unsure about what food they could put on their dining room tables and how much trust they should place in the government. According to an article in the economics magazine Keizai ōrai, such uncertainty only contributed to prevailing feelings of frustration and anxiety.21 Just as potentially contaminated food intersected with people’s everyday lives, so too did the dawning realization that high growth and middle-class living were generating an overwhelming amount of garbage. In 1971, when the Tokyo governor Minobe Ryōkichi launched a “war against garbage,” he highlighted the alarmingly rapid rate at which trash was being discarded, explaining that the amount of garbage thrown away in the 23 wards of Tokyo had more than doubled over the past decade. Minobe also laid out the difficulties posed by the changing composition of garbage, namely the increase in plastic, industrial waste, and large refuse such as cars and home electric appliances.22 For their part, residents of Tokyo expressed awareness and at least some concern about the proliferation of garbage. In a survey of over one thousand Tokyoites conducted in late 1971, over half (62.3 percent) believed that the streets of their city would become “mountains of garbage” some years hence.23 In declaring the garbage war, Minobe did more than outline a sanitation challenge; he explicitly identified the cause of the garbage problem as high economic growth. Echoing this view, a Mainichi shinbun editorial argued that rapid economic growth along with relatively affluent and mass consuming lifestyles had created the dilemma of unmanageable waste.24 As was

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

149

encapsulated in one pithy phrase: GNP is both gross national product and “garbage (gomi) national product.” 25 At a time when there was increasing attention to various forms of environmental pollution, household waste came to be viewed not just as a product of high growth but also as a pollutant. Already, in 1964, the engineer Shōji Hikaru and economist Miyamoto Ken’ichi had published their bestseller Osorubeki kōgai (Fearsome pollution) which had a revelatory impact akin to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.26 In 1970, environmental activism spurred by the four major pollution diseases put pressure on the so-called “pollution Diet” to pass over a dozen laws with antipollution regulations. And in 1971, Prime Minister Satō Eisaku established the Environmental Agency.27 This environmental awakening of the late 1960s and 1970s was part of a global phenomenon—the United States held its first Earth Day in 1970; the British government created the cabinet-level Environment Department and the US established the Environmental Protection Agency in that same year; the nongovernmental organization Friends of the Earth was founded in 1969, and Greenpeace in 1971; and the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) was held in 1972. In this international context, Japan’s struggles with severe pollution—the industrial diseases and infamous Tokyo smog—were held up as warnings to other industrialized, wealthy nations about what their future would look like without corrective action. At UNCHE, protestors leveraged the cautionary example provided by Japan, marching with signs exclaiming, “No More Tokyos!” and “No More Minamatas!” 28 That the environmental degradation in Japan foretold a bleak future for all was expressed succinctly by the activist-engineer Ui Jun: “I’ve often said that the problems of pollution in Japan, though regarded as a trifling matter by some, portend the destiny of the whole world.” 29 At the crest of public concern about pollution, sanitation professionals began to frame their work in environmental terms, if somewhat vaguely. In the early 1970s, the Tokyo Sanitation Bureau started to speak of waste as “the third kōgai,” or third kind of pollution after that of air and water. The bureau warned that the sheer amount and types of waste generated by economic activity had exceeded the capacities of the environment to tolerate it, and had thrown off the balance between waste and the environment. The job of sanitation professionals was thus redefined; rather than disposing of filth in order to beautify or even clean, their primary purpose was to restore the balance between waste and the environment, and to create a comprehensive system for preserving the environment. To this end, the bureau called on Tokyoites to adopt a new philosophy for throwing things away or, rather, a new philosophy of not throwing things away. And it urged people to think about what was being sacrificed for the “immense profits of businesses” and an “affluent, consuming lifestyle,” suggesting that high growth, mass production and mass consumption were eroding the health of the environment.30 Concerns about environmental degradation and a potentially noxious future were put on full view for movie-going audiences in the 1971 film, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (Gojira tai Hedora). This latest, and rather trippy, installment of the monster franchise foregrounded the grunge and stubborn toxicity of air pollution, water pollution and garbage. The opening shot of the film was of Mount Fuji, a symbol of the nation, framed by smokestacks that were spewing grayish exhaust. As the title track “Return the Sun!” (“Kaese! Taiyō o”) was sung, viewers listened to lyrics about a polluted and potentially barren earth, and watched as the camera panned over sea water covered by sludge, dead fish, and a discarded empty can. On the bay floor was a glass bottle here and an unwanted television there, and on the surface, there 150

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

was sewage and garbage—rubber tires, cardboard cartons, metal tins, and plastic bottles. Society’s detritus fed the smog monster of the film’s title, which was an ever growing, vaguely octopus-shaped creature that oozed poisonous slime. While the smog monster itself was eventually incinerated by Godzilla, the film was thoroughly dystopian, refusing to envision a pristine future with a restored natural environment. To the very end, even after Godzilla’s heroism, the pollution remained.31

Limits to natural resources The gospel of high economic growth was undermined in the late 1960s and early 1970s not only by the problems of and worries about environmental pollution, but also by deepening awareness that natural resources were finite. Understandings of the connection between economic expansion and natural resource depletion became firmly established, with some people concerned that a resource shortage would soon dampen growth, and others more focused on the exhaustion of resources by growth. In 1966, the economist Kenneth Boulding wrote his well-known essay, “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in which he called for a shift from an economy driven by unfettered consumption to one predicated on respect for limited resources.32 Boulding’s scholarship was regularly translated into Japanese, informing discussions about economic futures. But perhaps the seminal work on economic development and resource constraints was The Limits to Growth, published in 1972. The bestseller was written by a research team at MIT for the Club of Rome, a group of seventy individuals of twenty-five nationalities with an initiative modestly titled, the Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Representing Japan on the Club of Rome’s executive committee was the economist and government official Ōkita Saburō, who also supervised the translation of the report into Japanese. The Limits to Growth criticized the contemporary tendency “toward continual, often accelerated, growth—of population, land occupancy, production, consumption, waste, etc.” and “[to] blindly assuming that his [man’s] environment will permit such expansion.” Using computer modeling to link various factors to developmental trends, the researchers concluded that growth on earth would hit its limit and reach its end within the next hundred years. Their negative forecast was not unalterable, the report pointed out, but averting the predicted outcome would require “a fundamental revision of human behavior and, by implication, of the entire fabric of present-day society.” When it came to resources in particular, a decrease in their extraction and use was advised. But, the authors warned, continued industrial and population growth would overwhelm such efforts and result in the utter depletion of nonrenewable natural resources.33 Uneasiness about the continued availability of resources spiked in October 1973, when the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instituted an oil embargo against countries, including Japan, that supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli War. The Japanese government quickly backed away from Israel in order to regain access to much needed oil, but still staggered under the weight of skyrocketing prices. Between October 1973 and January 1974, the price of oil almost quadrupled from $3 to more than $11 a barrel. The oil crisis had global repercussions, but it lashed Japan with particular force. At the time, Japan was the world’s largest petroleum importer, relying on foreign countries for 99.7 percent, and the Middle East for 80 percent, of its oil. And petroleum was crucial for meeting three-quarters of the country’s energy needs.34 The oil shock, as it was known in Japan, made

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

151

immediate and concrete the long-held insecurities of a “resource poor Japan” as well as the more recent concerns about the eventual exhaustion of natural resources.35 As a stunning reminder that high growth had been fueled by a ready supply of cheap oil, the oil crisis made economic achievement and middle-class lifestyles feel exceedingly fragile. While criticisms of rapid economic growth and consumerism intensified, there emerged, at the same time, a desire to preserve the hard-won, middle-class life. This tension between discomfort with the costs of growth and attachment to the affluence it created ran through the pervasive rhetoric about valuing resources and energy. Various and sometimes contradictory anxieties underpinned the language and practices of “saving resources” and “saving energy” which proliferated in the post-oil shock years. Considered antithetical to the preservation of resources and energy, the “throwaway society” that Japan had become in the era of high growth became one target of criticism. To those interested in reducing the extraction of natural resources, people’s casual discard of material things reflected an indifference toward the resources required for their creation. And if the discarded things could still be used, those resources had been squandered. When residents of Tokyo were asked their opinions on garbage in 1974, a large majority (88.8 percent) of the almost one thousand respondents agreed to at least some degree that “the reuse of garbage must be advanced for the sake of conserving resources.” 36 Shining a light on the wasted resources languishing in landfills was one aim of the nationwide Campaign to Value Resources, organized by the New Life Movement Association and the Yomiuri newspaper. As part of the campaign, there was an essay contest on the theme of identifying and eliminating waste from daily life. One of the prizes bestowed on the winners, fifty pairs of mothers and children, was a visit to the Island of Dreams landfill where they were reportedly shocked by the number of perfectly fine items (like televisions, desks, and sofas) sitting on the trash heap. One fifth grader remarked that the pet phrase of adults had suddenly shifted from “consumption is a virtue” to “value things,” but they were still throwing away usable things as garbage.37 Concern about limited resources was also implicit in disapproval of the “culture of disposability” expressed in more vague and ethical terms—as not valuing things, fetishizing convenience and encouraging wastefulness. In the view of the fifty-year-old housewife Inoue Yayoi of Nagoya, the lack of respect for things shown in their easy and unthinking discard had been punished in the fall of 1973; the strains on daily life exacerbated by the oil shock were retaliation for embracing a throwaway culture.38 Similar in its ethical stance but more deliberate in its critique was the Association for Thinking about the Throwaway Age, founded in 1973 by citizens concerned about daily lives of consumption and disposability. The group conceived of disposability in a broad and multi-faceted way, as the disposal of: things (disregarding objects and creating garbage); people (making judgments about how to treat people based on their utility); and the earth (foreclosing the future through environmental harm). In 1973, the nascent group encapsulated its commitments in a poem: “For convenience, disposability even throws away the heart; if affluent, the future is severed for the extravagant heart; convenient, affluent disposability consumes the future.” 39 The multiple mentions of affluence pointed to the association’s firm contention that mass production and mass consumption fueled high economic growth and affluent lifestyles which encouraged disposability in all of its damaging forms. The Association for Thinking about the Throwaway Age was but one voice that drew connections between economic growth, disposability, and resource depletion. As the argument 152

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

went, the extraction of resources perpetuated high growth and mass consumption which in turn created a culture of disposability that wasted resources as garbage.40 Or put another way, the cycle of mass production, mass consumption, and mass waste created by and for the high growth economy was predicated on the depletion and waste of natural resources. In an editorial published in September 1974, the Yomiuri shinbun asserted that in a post-oil shock era of limited resources and energy, it was simply not conceivable that double-digit economic growth could be maintained. Nor should Japan have ever pursued the lifestyles of a large and wealthy United States. The editorial went on to articulate values for the future, arguing that new ways of life had to be created based on stability, deceleration, durability, and quality rather than convenience, efficiency, speed, things, money, and quantity.41 The deepening realization that resources were being throw away as garbage, and that they still had value if separated out from the truly useless rubbish, inspired citizens and then municipalities to develop recycling programs. Initially, social groups spearheaded the establishment of recycling practices. In a common arrangement for the private management of recycling, neighborhood or women’s associations designated set days and places for people to drop off such recyclables as newspapers and magazines, cardboard, cans, scrap metal and glass, which was then picked up by a collection company.42 In Tokyo, this system started to become more structured in 1973, with the good will if not formal administrative support of the government, and was fairly well established by the following year. Reports vary, but in 1974, anywhere between some seven hundred and a thousand groups, and roughly 380,000 households, were participating in these recycling efforts.43 Over the course of the 1970s, municipalities themselves began to institute what was called “separate collection,” or the collection of garbage by category. The most basic form of separate collection divided waste into two categories: combustible and noncombustible. Tokyo instituted this system in 1973, which took out of the main waste stream those materials, like plastic and rubber, that could not be incinerated.44 A more evolved form of separate collection added a third category, for recyclables. The model of separate collection admired at the time, and still mentioned today, was developed in the city of Numazu in Shizuoka prefecture. Called the “Numazu method,” its rationale and slogan was: “If you separate waste it is a resource, if you mix it together it is garbage.” In 1975, the entire city began separate collection by which waste was collected in three categories: combustible, noncombustible, and recyclables or “resource garbage.” 45 Along with resources, energy was also much discussed as something to be valued because of the insecurity of its supply. Indeed, “saving resources” and “saving energy” were often combined into one phrase as “shōshigen, shōenerugī.” In the throes of the oil shock, governments made very specific recommendations to mitigate the waste of energy. The target of a 10 percent reduction in energy use was set; and in November 1973, the government requested that stores lower the heat to at least 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), shut off neon and show window lights at closing, refrain from using elevators and escalators, dim inside lights and push back opening time by half an hour on all days except Sundays and holidays. Many of the stores that belonged to the Japan Department Store Association agreed to open later, and some of them took many or all of the suggested measures. The seventy-five companies, with nearly three thousand stores, in the Japan Chain Store Association also decided to comply. The government also advised shortened hours for gasoline stations and discouraged the driving of personal cars.46 Corporate and government offices as well as factories took similar steps to meet the 10 percent target, dimming lights and turning them off during lunch breaks. At Hitachi, for example, desks were moved closer to the windows to Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

153

take advantage of sunlight. And at Tōshiba, a poster urged employees to “Use natural light, don’t waste lighting.” 47 Efforts to encourage the preservation of resources and energy stemmed from some combination of environmental and economic interests. One particular blend was put forth by the Committee on Resource Conserving Lifestyles, a group created by the Economic Planning Agency which included academics, journalists, and representatives from housewives and consumer organizations, the main business federation, agriculture and various other industries. The committee articulated the importance of conserving resources and energy to lighten the load placed on the environment, and underscored the need to curb garbage output and air pollution for the sake of environmental protection. But conserving resources and energy was also considered crucial for navigating the transition from high economic growth to stable economic growth. Like many commentators of the time, the committee members did not eschew growth altogether, but acknowledged the particular problems of the high-speed variety. Acknowledging and adjusting to resource constraints was seen as vital to ensuring continued economic growth and improvement in people’s quality of life well into the future.48

Financial shocks Together with the oil shock, another tremor that impinged upon middle-class life was financial instability. In the early 1970s, global economic turbulence roiled Japan. Trade frictions and political strains with the United States intensified as President Richard Nixon, unhappy about his country’s growing trade imbalance with Japan, pressured the Japanese government to revalue the yen. Then, in 1971, in one of the so-called Nixon shocks, he ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold and let it float, which destabilized the value of currencies around the world and precipitated the rapid appreciation of the yen. Financial uncertainty whipped up by currency fluctuations was felt acutely in the context of heightened concerns about environmental degradation and the looming exhaustion of natural resources. The financial jolt that struck Japanese households most directly and forcefully was inflation. Rising commodity prices and land values drove the cost of clothing, food and housing ever upward. People felt their power to consume weakening, and worried about the sacrifices they would have to make to ward off the sting on household pocketbooks. As an “inflationary mood” settled over the country, middle-class lifestyles and dreams seemed to be in jeopardy.49 In 1973, these anxieties were exacerbated by an especially acute uptick in prices. Between April and September, prices were 10 to almost 13 percent higher than the previous year. Clothing costs hit household finances hard, as textile prices increased by over 20 percent. And consumers also faced rising costs for food. The increasing price of soybeans, spiked by Nixon’s embargo on their export, was particularly noticeable in the cost of staples like soy sauce, miso, nattō, tofu and cooking oil.50 At a time when prices seemed to rise with every passing day, the future was envisioned as worse than the present—key components of daily life would only become more expensive and the middle-class life more difficult to attain or preserve. One mass-market weekly magazine warned readers in March 1973 that if inflationary trends continued, in three years’ time, land prices could triple and the value of money could be halved.51 In November 1974, the monthly publication Zaikai nippon forecasted a gloomy winter based on economists’ fears

154

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

about global inflation and possible financial depression. Readers were told not to have high hopes for the upcoming year-end bonus season, and those with thin wallets were warned of coming “icy winds” that would “pierce them to the bone.” 52 In the face of a dreary future, households were instructed to assume a defensive posture to protect their livelihoods and lifestyles. One magazine article doled out advice to white-collar salarymen about what “selfdefense measures” they could adopt for their financial affairs.53 And women’s magazines offered strategies for managing the “era of inflation” by, for example, researching which store was selling a good most inexpensively so as to control household expenditures on food, clothing and consumer durables.54 Much media commentary of the early 1970s defined the challenge of the era as figuring out how to survive amidst inflation. Anxiety about rising prices contributed to, and was exacerbated by, a consumer scare that came to epitomize the insecurities of the era: the so-called toilet paper “panic.” 55 In early November 1973, concerns about inflation and nervousness about the oil crisis provided fodder for runs on daily necessities like toilet paper as well as sugar, salt, kerosene and soy sauce. As people, mainly housewives, started lining up to secure toilet paper and other household essentials, prices of these goods shot up. As one thirty-year-old housewife in Kobe reported to her local consumer affairs center, the cost of toilet paper at her neighborhood store had skyrocketed in one day, on November 1, from 140 yen per pack in the morning to 400 yen by mid-afternoon. And a forty-eight-year-old woman in Nara warned that if toilet paper continued to be so hard to procure, there would be an uproar reminiscent of the rice riots, the protests in 1918 that were triggered by the increasing cost of a staple good.56 Toilet paper became an object and icon of the scare in part because of attention to both prices and resource conservation earlier in the year. Starting around February 1973, a shortage of paper had pushed prices so high that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) eventually stepped in to prevent excessive hikes on many types of paper used for products like posters and pamphlets, wrapping paper and cardboard.57 As the tight situation continued, and was worsened by the oil crisis, MITI launched a widely publicized, nationwide Campaign to Rationalize the Use of Paper that urged the public to conserve paper.58 And the media called on people to recycle newspapers, using the language of recycling movements to value resources. The Osaka nichinichi shinbun, for example, published in late October 1973 a photograph of old newspapers placed at the curb for pickup with the caption, “Paper Shortage!! Let’s Value Old Newspapers.” The accompanying article reported that anxieties about the paper shortage had extended to toilet paper, and informed readers that the price of toilet paper was up over the previous year and had almost doubled since the spring.59 Squeezed by rising prices, consumers protested in large numbers to demand that the government do more to rein in inflation and regulate corporations seen as manipulating prices. In mid-September, consumer associations argued that the inept government would be to blame if this “pernicious inflation” continued and middle-class life was “utterly destroyed.” 60 Protesters also took to the streets, as in mid-November 1973, when thousands of housewives, labor union members, elderly citizens and others participated in a Price May Day that was reported in the Osaka edition of the Asahi shinbun with the headline: “Down With Inflation.” 61 About a month later, protesters in Osaka waved placards with messages such as, “Release Kerosene, Sugar, and Toilet Paper at Cost” and “Now Is the Time to Stand Up and Defend our Lifestyles.” 62 Consumer ire was also directed at major trading firms that were suspected of hoarding commodities in order to drive up prices. In mid-April 1973, the National Liaison Committee of Consumer Organizations, consisting of twenty consumer Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

155

groups, summoned the division chiefs of major trading firms to a public “inquiry” where they were grilled about their practices for several hours.63 Public protests against the companies included one in early May, in which about 350 members of the New Japan Women’s Association assembled at a park in Tokyo to criticize trading firms, using slogans such as, “We Can’t Afford Tofu and Fermented Soybeans” and “Release Hoarded Goods at Cost.” 64 Understanding that issues plaguing consumers were issues about how to live and how to make a living, Inoue Motoi of the National Consumer Affairs Center expressed the prevailing characterization of his time as one of anxiety, or fuan. But he also placed the current moment in the broader arc of the postwar, implicitly drawing a parallel between the contemporary era of insecurity and the late 1940s and early 1950s, when there was uncertainty about not knowing when the poverty of everyday life would cease or even about one’s very survival. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, people’s “mood of insecurity” was rooted in the problems of environmental pollution and inflation, particularly the realization that the rise in consumer prices was not temporary but structural and long-term. This, said Inoue, created anxiety for people of every class. Unlike the late 1950s and 1960s, consumers could not be optimistic about the future or have a bright mood of hope. Despite Inoue’s relatively grim assessment of the early 1970s, he did not foreclose the possibility of improvement. He placed some faith in various consumer movements as the drivers of progress. If consumers were listened to and respected, Inoue insisted, then the “era of anxiety” would end and there would be a basis for another era in which people would have hope and a raison d’être.65

Conclusion It is almost obligatory when writing about the early 1970s to mention Nihon chinbotsu (Japan Sinks), the best-selling novel and popular film of 1973 in which the archipelago does indeed meet the fate trumpeted by the spoiler of a title.66 Released at the apogee of disaster films, including The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), Nihon chinbotsu ended with the Japanese islands violently consumed by the sea and its surviving people scattered about the world. Both the novel and the film posed the question of what would happen to this nation under siege, no longer rooted to land and without a natural or built environment to call its own. The final scene does not seem hopeful—the protagonist finds himself on a train in frigid Siberia in the novel, and in a desolate desert in the film. In the interpretation of the film critic Ishiko Jun, the ending does not inspire a will to survive, but conveys the feeling of being knocked down by overwhelming difficulties.67 Indeed, in the most obvious ways, Nihon chinbotsu exemplified the sense of fragility, insecurity and pessimism of the early 1970s. As arduous and barren as the future seemed to be in Nihon chinbotsu, it was still undetermined. This was presumably by narrative design, to invite reflection and mirror the uncertainties of the time. But decades out from the early 1970s, we might begin to consider how the death of the high growth economy, destabilization of middle-class life, and insecurity about the future fit into the longer arc of the postwar era. Much seemed to change in these years, with greater attention to environmental protection and resource conservation. At the same time, criticisms of high growth and consumerism did not overturn the desire for the quality of life afforded by continued economic expansion. While the experiences of the early 1970s cannot be encapsulated in one feeling alone, the extent to which these years

156

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

were characterized by uncertainty and instability should provoke further exploration of what was transient and what endured, of what pivoted and fundamentally shifted, from this “era of anxiety.”

Notes 1

Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 49 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho: Fuan no jidai no kokufuku no tame ni (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1974), i, 1, 152–54, 207–9. 2 Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 49 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho, 152–55. 3 Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 49 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho, i, 63, 208. That inflation was creating uncertainty about livelihoods was echoed by the Kyoto University economist Aoki Masahiko in a roundtable discussion about the white paper. See Aoki Masahiko et al., “Fuan no jidai o norikoeru ni wa: Fuman o motarasu fubyōdō no honshitsu o kangaeru,” ESP 3, no. 5 (August 1974): 9–10. 4 Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 49 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho, i, 1–2, 209–11. 5 The 1956 report is famous for declaring that the “‘postwar’ is now over.” But this determination was made cautiously, with no anticipation of the two subsequent decades of economic growth. Keizai Kikakuchō, ed., Shōwa 31 nendo keizai hakusho (Tokyo: Shiseidō, 1956), 1–4, 42. 6 Itō Masaya quoted in Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 101. 7 On income doubling, see Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 98–107. 8 Yoshimi Shun’ya, Banpaku gensō: Sengo seiji no jubaku (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2005), 12, 17–19. 9 Andrew Gordon, “The Short Happy Life of the Japanese Middle Class,” in Social Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the Century, ed. Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), 117–21. 10 Naikaku Sōri Daijin Kanbō Kōhōshitsu, Kokumin seikatsu ni kansuru seron chōsa (Tokyo: Sōrifu Naikaku Sōri Daijin Kanbō Kōhōshitsu, 2000), https://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h11/kokumin/images/zu25.gif (accessed August 23, 2021). 11 Yoshikuni Igarashi, Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), 23–26. 12 Keizai Kikakuchō, ed., Keizai hakusho: Nihon keizai no seichōryoku to kyōsōryoku (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1960), 27. 13 Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 58–65. 14 Igarashi, Japan, 1972, 38. 15 On the Ashio copper mine disaster, see Chapter Three of Brett L. Walker, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). 16 On Minamata disease, see the Introduction of Timothy S. George, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 17 George, Minamata, 241–49. 18 See Ui Jun, Kōgai no seijigaku: Minamatabyō o otte (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1968). 19 See Shiota Takeshi, Minamata: ’68–’72 Fukaki fuchi yori: Shiota Takeshi shashin hōkoku (Fukuoka: Nishinippon Shinbunsha, 1973); W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Mioko Smith, Minamata (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975); George, Minamata, 212–14. 20 Kentaro Higuchi, ed., PCB Poisoning and Pollution (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1976), 3–7, 158–64, 167–71. 21 Maeda Hitoshi, “‘Fuan’ ga senkō suru shakai: Iya na koto ga ōsugiru ‘yameru Nihon,’” Keizai ōrai 25, no. 8 (August 1973): 31–33. On consumer anxiety about the safety of food and medicines, see Tanaka Yōnosuke, et al., “Ōki na shinpuku o shimeshita 1973 nen: Oiru shokku ni itaru made,” Kasen geppō 26, no. 12 (December 1973): 19. 22 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, ed., Tokyo no gomi (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, 1971), 1, 3, 17. 23 The survey had 1,080 respondents. Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, ed., Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, 1971), 7.

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

157

24

“‘Gomi sensō’ ni kansuru chiji hatsugen,” Tosei 18, no. 8 (August 1973): 19; Mainichi shinbun, April 6, 1970. Oshida Isao, “‘Suteru’ to wa (2),” Gomi sensō shūhō 80 (July 13, 1973): 4. 26 See Shōji Hikaru and Miyamoto Ken’ichi, Osorubeki kōgai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1964). 27 Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 120–28. 28 Simon Avenell, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 1–3. 29 Ui Jun quoted in Avenell, Transnational Japan, 1. 30 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, Tokyo no gomi, 44–46. 31 Banno Yoshimitsu, Gojira tai hedora (Tōhō, 1971). 32 For various takes on the idea of limits to growth, see Chapter Three of Avenell, Transnational Japan. 33 Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972), 23, 68, 185, 190. 34 Keizai taikoku to sekiyu shokku: Shōwa 46–52 nen, vol. 12 of Shōwa shi (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1985), 114; Zen Chifuren 30 nen no ayumi (Tokyo: Zenkoku Chiiki Fujin Dantai Renraku Kyōgikai, 1986), 122; Nakamura Takafusa, “An Economy in Search of Stable Growth: Japan Since the Oil Crisis,” Journal of Japanese Studies 6, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 156. 35 On the idea of a “resource poor Japan,” see Eric Gordon Dinmore, “A Small Island Nation Poor in Resources: Natural and Human Resource Anxieties in Trans-World War II Japan,” (PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 2006). 36 The survey had 973 respondents. “Tomin wa gomi mondai o dō miru ka (sono 6): Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa,” Gomi sensō shūhō 111 (March 1, 1974): 8. 37 Yomiuri shinbun, “Achikochi ni muda medatsu,” (December 16, 1974); Yomiuri shinbun, “Setsuyaku mada kuchisaki dake,” (February 13, 1975). 38 “Gonin no shufu ga jikkō shiteiru taikenteki kechikechi seikatsu,” Fujin seikatsu (June 1974): 190. 39 “Tsukaisute jidai o kangaenaosu (July 14, 1973),” in Korekara dō suru shakai to kurashi: “Tsukaisute jidai o kangaeru kai” sōritsu jūshūnen kinen shinpojiumu, ed. “Tsukaisute Jidai o Kangaeru Kai” Jūshūnen Shinpo Jikkō Iinkai (Tokyo: Hakujusha, 1984), 200–2; Zukeran Kaoru, “Tsukaisute Jidai o Kangaeru Kai,” Gendai no me 16, no. 1 (November 1975): 198; Tsuchida Takashi and Yamada Harumi in discussion with author, October 11 and 13, 2015. 40 For an explanation, but not support, of this argument, see Ishimaru Yoshitomi, “‘Zero seichō’ no higenjitsusei,” Asahi jānaru 15, no. 47 (November 30, 1973): 13. 41 Yomiuri shinbun, “Setsuyaku jidai no ikikata o kangaeru,” (September 22, 1974). 42 For examples of such initiatives, see Honda Atsuhiro, Gomi monogatari: Gomi nashi shakai no sōzō (Tokyo: Shōenerugī Sentā, 1978), 44–45; Ōkubo Motosaburō, “Gomi to toshi to ningen to,” Keizai hyōron 23, no. 2 (February 1974): 111. 43 Yanagisawa Takashi, “Gomi no sairiyō,” Jurisuto 571 (October 1, 1974): 48; Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, ed., Tokyo-to seisō jigyō hyakunen shi (Tokyo: Tokyo-to, 2000), 276–78. 44 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 262, 266. 45 Mano Morihiro, “‘Wakereba shigen, mazereba gomi’ o aikotoba ni hajimatta san bunbetsu shūshū ‘Numazu hōshiki’ no kaishi kara 40 nen no ayumi,” Toshi seisō 68, no. 325 (May 2015): 26–27. 46 Asahi shinbun, “Setsuyaku keizai, nattokuzuku ni,” (November 16, 1973); Asahi shinbun, “Depāto kaiten 30-pun okurasu,” (November 18, 1973); Asahi shinbun, “Setsuyaku icchō no 30-pun,” (November 20, 1973). 47 Yomiuri shinbun, “Kechikechi undō aidea sakusen,” (October 21, 1973); Nagasaki shinbun, “Kechikechi yatte imasu,” (January 9, 1974). 48 Keizai Kikakuchō Kokumin Seikatsukyoku and Kokumin Seikatsu Seisakuka, eds., Shōshigen, shōenerugī to korekara no kurashi (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1979), i, 1, 7, 9–10, 13–14, 38. 49 On the “inflationary mood,” see Shishido Toshio, “Kowai infure mūdo,” Gekkan kokumin seikatsu 3, no. 2 (February 1973): 1; Kada Jun’ichi, “Infure to kaishime,” Shokuseikatsu (June 1973): 132. 50 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Economic Surveys: Japan (Paris: OECD Publishing, 1974), 5–11; Keizai Kikakuchō, Shōwa 48 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho: Nihonjin no kurashi to sono shitsu (Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1973), 107, 113–17, 119. 51 “Bukka to kahei kachi wa sannen go ni kōnaru: Osorubeki infure no yukue o gakusha to hyōronka ga suiri suru to,” Shūkan gendai 15, no. 11 (March 1973): 46–50. 25

158

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

52

“‘Donzoko’ ni kita shōhi katsudō: Fuan no jidai wa itsu owaru?” Zaikai nippon 6, no. 11 (November 1974): 49. 53 “Ikura chokin shite mo dōnimo naranai sararīman no kurashikata: Infure bukka bōtō o tomerarenai Tanaka naikaku o seikatsu no ura tsuke!” Shūkan gendai 15, no. 3 (September 1973): 182–85. 54 “Rishoku, jitsueki minoue sōdan: Misesu no tame no infure jidai o norikiru anote konote,” Fujin kurabu 54, no. 4 (April 1973): 361–69; Sasabuchi Kinji, “En kiriage, infure no naka no kakei sakusen 5 kajō,” Fujin seikatsu 27, no. 4 (April 1973): 298–99. 55 On the toilet paper “panic,” see Eiko Maruko Siniawer, “‘Toilet Paper Panic’: Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan,” American Historical Review 126, no. 2 (June 2021): 530–54. 56 Yomiuri shinbun, “Chirigami panikku,” (November 2, 1973). 57 Uematsu Tatsuya, “1973 (Shōwa 48) nen no ‘kami busoku’,” Hyakumantō 110 (October 2001): 77–78, 82–84. 58 Uematsu, “1973 (Shōwa 48) nen no ‘kami busoku’,” 97; Asahi shinbun, (October 19, 1973); Mainichi shinbun, (October 19, 1973); Yomiuri shinbun, (October 19, 1973). 59 Osaka nichinichi shinbun, “Gomi kaishō to issekinichō,” (October 24, 1973). 60 Mainichi shinbun, “Bukkadaka sara ni kasoku,” (September 18, 1973). 61 Asahi shinbun, “Kutabare infure,” (November 12, 1973). 62 Yomiuri shinbun, “Seikatsu o mamore,” (December 16, 1973). 63 Asahi shinbun, “Shōsha yobi tsuikyū shūkai,” (April 14, 1973); Yomiuri shinbun, “Shōsha inaoru,” (April 14, 1973). 64 Yomiuri shinbun, “‘Marubeni’ e shujin pawā,” (May 9, 1973). 65 Inoue Motoi, “Fuan no jidai no shōhisha,” ESP: Economy, Society, Policy 2, no. 1 (April 1973): 109–10, 113. 66 Komatsu Sakyō, Nihon chinbotsu (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1973); Moritani Shirō, Nihon chinbotsu (Tōhō, 1974). 67 Ishiko Jun, “‘Nihon chinbotsu’ to ‘Kuroi sabaku’ ni miru gendai no shidōsha zō,” Bunka hyōron 152 (March 1974): 150.

References Aoki, Masahiko, Itō Mitsuharu, Murakami Masako and Moriya Yūichi. “Fuan no jidai o norikoeru ni wa: Fuman o motarasu fubyōdō no honshitsu o kangaeru.” ESP 3, no. 5 (August 1974): 8–23. Asahi shinbun. “Depāto kaiten 30-pun okurasu.” November 18, 1973. ———. “Kami: Kanmin de setsuyaku undō.” October 19, 1973. ———. “Kutabare infure.” November 12, 1973. ———. “Setsuyaku icchō no 30-pun.” November 20, 1973. ———. “Setsuyaku keizai, nattokuzuku ni.” November 16, 1973. ———. “Shōsha yobi tsuikyū shūkai.” April 14, 1973. Avenell, Simon. Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. Banno, Yoshimitsu. Gojira tai hedora. Tōhō, 1971. Broadbent, Jeffrey. Environmental Politics in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. “Bukka to kahei kachi wa sannen go ni kōnaru: Osorubeki infure no yukue o gakusha to hyōronka ga suiri suru to.” Shūkan gendai 15, no. 11 (March 1973): 46–50. Dinmore, Eric Gordon. “A Small Island Nation Poor in Resources: Natural and Human Resource Anxieties in Trans-World War II Japan.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Princeton University, 2006. “‘Donzoko’ ni kita shōhi katsudō: Fuan no jidai wa itsu owaru?” Zaikai nippon 6, no. 11 (November 1974): 49. George, Timothy S. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. “‘Gomi sensō’ ni kansuru chiji hatsugen.” Tosei 18, no. 8 (August 1973): 18–34. “Gonin no shufu ga jikkō shiteiru taikenteki kechikechi seikatsu.” Fujin seikatsu (June 1974): 186–91. Gordon, Andrew. “The Short Happy Life of the Japanese Middle Class.” In Social Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the Century, edited by Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002. Higuchi, Kentaro, ed. PCB Poisoning and Pollution. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1976. Honda, Atsuhiro. Gomi monogatari: Gomi nashi shakai no sōzō. Tokyo: Shōenerugī Sentā, 1978.

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

159

Igarashi, Yoshikuni. Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. “Ikura chokin shite mo dōnimo naranai sararīman no kurashikata: Infure bukka bōtō o tomerarenai Tanaka naikaku o seikatsu no ura tsuke!” Shūkan gendai 15, no. 3 (September 1973): 182–85. Inoue, Motoi. “Fuan no jidai no shōhisha,” ESP: Economy, Society, Policy 2, no. 1 (April 1973): 108–13. Ishiko, Jun. “‘Nihon chinbotsu’ to ‘Kuroi sabaku’ ni miru gendai no shidōsha zō.” Bunka hyōron 152 (March 1974): 148–51. Ishimaru, Yoshitomi. “‘Zero seichō’ no higenjitsusei.” Asahi jānaru 15, no. 47 (November 30, 1973): 13–17. Kada, Jun’ichi. “Infure to kaishime.” Shokuseikatsu 67, no. 6 (June 1973): 132–35. Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Keizai Kikakuchō, ed. Keizai hakusho: Nihon keizai no seichōryoku to kyōsōryoku. Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1960. ———. ed. Shōwa 31 nendo keizai hakusho. Tokyo: Shiseidō, 1956. ———. Shōwa 48 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho: Nihonjin no kurashi to sono shitsu. Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1973. ———. Shōwa 49 nendo kokumin seikatsu hakusho: Fuan no jidai no kokufuku no tame ni. Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1974. Keizai Kikakuchō Kokumin Seikatsukyoku and Kokumin Seikatsu Seisakuka, eds. Shōshigen, shōenerugī to korekara no kurashi. Tokyo: Ōkurashō Insatsukyoku, 1979. Keizai taikoku to sekiyu shokku: Shōwa 46–52 nen. Vol. 17 of Shōwa shi. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1985. Komatsu, Sakyō. Nihon chinbotsu. Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1973. Maeda, Hitoshi. “‘Fuan’ ga senkō suru shakai: Iya na koto ga ōsugiru ‘yameru Nihon.’” Keizai ōrai 25, no. 8 (August 1973): 30–33. Mainichi shinbun. “Bukkadaka sara ni kasoku.” September 18, 1973. ———. “Gomi de umaru ‘yutaka na shakai.’” April 6, 1970. ———. “Kami: Kechikechi undō, daidaiteki ni.” October 19, 1973. Mano, Morihiro. “‘Wakereba shigen, mazereba gomi’ o aikotoba ni hajimatta san bunbetsu shūshū ‘Numazu hōshiki’ no kaishi kara 40 nen no ayumi.” Toshi seisō 68, no. 325 (May 2015): 26–29. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books, 1972. Moritani, Shirō. Nihon chinbotsu. Tōhō, 1974. Nakamura, Takafusa. “An Economy in Search of Stable Growth: Japan Since the Oil Crisis.” Journal of Japanese Studies 6, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 155–78. Naikaku Sōri Daijin Kanbō Kōhōshitsu. Kokumin seikatsu ni kansuru seron chōsa. Tokyo: Sōrifu Naikaku Sōri Daijin Kanbō Kōhōshitsu, 2000. Ōkubo, Motosaburō. “Gomi to toshi to ningen to.” Keizai hyōron 23, no. 2 (February 1974): 104–12. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD Economic Surveys: Japan. Paris: OECD Publishing, 1974. Osaka nichinichi shinbun. “Gomi kaishō to issekinichō.” October 24, 1973. Oshida, Isao. “‘Suteru’ to wa (2).” Gomi sensō shūhō 80 (July 13, 1973): 4–8. “Rishoku, jitsueki minoue sōdan: Misesu no tame no infure jidai o norikiru anote konote.” Fujin kurabu 54, no. 4 (April 1973): 361–69. Sasabuchi, Kinji. “En kiriage, infure no naka no kakei sakusen 5 kajō.” Fujin seikatsu 27, no. 4 (April 1973): 298–99. Shiota, Takeshi. Minamata: ’68–’72 Fukaki fuchi yori: Shiota Takeshi shashin hōkoku. Fukuoka: Nishinippon Shinbunsha, 1973. Shishido, Toshio. “Kowai infure mūdo.” Gekkan kokumin seikatsu 3, no. 2 (February 1973): 1. Shōji Hikaru and Miyamoto Ken’ichi. Osorubeki kōgai. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1964. Siniawer, Eiko Maruko. “‘Toilet Paper Panic’: Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan.” American Historical Review 126, no. 2 (June 2021): 530–54. ———. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Smith, W. Eugene and Aileen Mioko. Minamata. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975.

160

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Tanaka, Yōnosuke, Kobayashi Setsuo, Sakaguchi Akira, Fukaya Yoshinori and Senba Tarō. “Ōki na shinpuku o shimeshita 1973 nen: Oiru shokku ni itaru made.” Kasen geppō 26, no. 12 (December 1973): 8–22. Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, ed. Tokyo no gomi. Tokyo: Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, 1971. Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, ed. Tokyo-to seisō jigyō hyakunen shi. Tokyo: Tokyo-to, 2000. Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, ed. Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho. Tokyo: Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, 1971. “Tomin wa gomi mondai o dō miru ka (sono 6): Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa.” Gomi sensō shūhō 111 (March 1, 1974): 8–12. Tsuchida, Takashi and Yamada Harumi. Interview by author. Kyoto, October 11 and 13, 2015. “Tsukaisute jidai o kangaenaosu (July 14, 1973).” In Korekara dō suru shakai to kurashi: “Tsukaisute jidai o kangaeru kai” sōritsu jūshūnen kinen shinpojiumu, edited by “Tsukaisute Jidai o Kangaeru Kai” Jūshūnen Shinpo Jikkō Iinkai. Tokyo: Hakujusha, 1984. Uematsu, Tatsuya. “1973 (Shōwa 48) nen no ‘kami busoku’.” Hyakumantō 110 (October 2001): 76–99. Ui, Jun. Kōgai no seijigaku: Minamatabyō o otte. Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1968. Walker, Brett L. Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. Yanagisawa, Takashi. “Gomi no sairiyō.” Jurisuto 571 (October 1, 1974): 46–49. Yomiuri shinbun. “Achikochi ni muda medatsu.” December 16, 1974. ———. “Chirigami panikku.” November 2, 1973. ———. “‘Kami setsuyaku undō’ mukigen ni.” October 19, 1973. ———. “Kechikechi undō aidea sakusen.” October 21, 1973. ———. “‘Marubeni’ e shujin pawā.” May 9, 1973. ———. “Seikatsu o mamore.” December 16, 1973. ———. “Setsuyaku jidai no ikikata o kangaeru.” September 22, 1974. ———. “Setsuyaku mada kuchisaki dake.” February 13, 1975. ———. “Shōsha inaoru.” April 14, 1973. Yoshimi, Shun’ya. Banpaku gensō: Sengo seiji no jubaku. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2005. Zen Chifuren 30 nen no ayumi. Tokyo: Zenkoku Chiiki Fujin Dantai Renraku Kyōgikai, 1986. Zukeran, Kaoru. “Tsukaisute Jidai o Kangaeru Kai.” Gendai no me 16, no. 1 (November 1975): 198–203.

Chapter 8: Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams

161

Chapter 9 Education in Japan since 1945: Equality, Hierarchy, and Competition Peter Cave Educational reforms after the Asia-Pacific War brought a strong emphasis on equality into Japanese compulsory education, in terms of provision, pedagogy and participation. The effects upon post-war Japanese society have been profound, ranging from a dramatic levelling of differences in academic attainment to a sense of national identity as a broadly homogenous society. In contrast, educational structures and policies in post-compulsory education have emphasized differentiation over equality, resulting in fierce competition for educational credentials. This tension between equality during compulsory education and competition in post-compulsory education has been crucial in the shaping of post-war Japanese society.

Introduction Education has been a powerful shaping force in post-1945 Japan, as well as a battleground for competing ideas. Particularly notable have been the striking contrasts between compulsory and post-compulsory education. The nine years of compulsory education at elementary and junior high school have been marked by attempts to approach equality of provision, instruction and treatment of pupils. However, post-compulsory education is a different and more complex story. The high school system has been the arena for competing visions of what education should be: comprehensive, universal and equal, or differentiated, hierarchized and competitive. Meanwhile, the proportion of young people receiving university education has soared, yet without a fundamental change in the system’s hierarchical character. Education can thus be understood as reflecting some of the strongest competing sets of ideas in postwar Japan—the idealization of equality of opportunity and treatment on the one hand, and the (enthusiastic or reluctant) acceptance of differentiation and competition on the other. In turn, experience of these materialized ideals has shaped successive generations of postwar Japanese. Examining education helps us understand how and why Japanese society as a whole has continued to embrace ideas and practices that may seem in tension, if not downright contradictory.

162

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Many features of Japan’s postwar education system have roots in the decades before 1945, which have continued to exert powerful influences, as noted below. However, the starting point for any account must be the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), which saw the greatest reshaping of Japan’s education system since the Meiji period (1868–1912). The most notable reforms concerned education from age twelve onward. Before 1947, there were diverse options for elementary school graduates. For those who could pass the entrance exams and had the money for fees and expenses, there were four-year single-sex secondary schools for boys and girls respectively, or a variety of vocational secondary schools.1 For others, there was the free two-year higher elementary school. From 1947, however, all these tracks were replaced by a single three-year junior high school, which was free, coeducational and compulsory for all. The Occupation reforms thus substantially extended educational equality. All children could now receive nine years of education free of charge. Post-compulsory education began at age fifteen, instead of twelve as before 1947. The selective secondary schools of the pre-1947 system were transformed into three-year high schools. High school graduates could attempt the entrance exams for universities, whose undergraduate programs now lasted four years instead of three. The two-year higher schools, which had prepared students for university, were abolished, and their buildings incorporated into university campuses.

Compulsory education The second half of the 20th century witnessed strong trends toward equality in compulsory education, whether in terms of provision of finance, facilities and personnel, or instruction, pedagogy and treatment of students. Regional disparities in academic attainment were also much reduced. The 21st century has seen moves to allow greater diversity, and changes in the educational finance system that may increase inequalities. Nonetheless, standardization and equal treatment continue to be strongly emphasized. Finance, personnel, school facilities and materials Financial inequalities resulted in serious regional disparities in personnel and facilities in prewar Japan. However, during the postwar period a series of laws brought about substantial equalization, benefiting poorer parts of the country. Until the 1920s, over 85 percent of finance for compulsory education was local, resulting in severe regional inequalities.2 In response, increased national subsidies were gradually introduced, culminating in the 1940 Law Concerning the National Treasury’s Share of Compulsory Expense (Gimu kyōikuhi kokka futanhō), whereby half of the salary of teachers in compulsory education was paid by the national government.3 This law was promulgated again after the Occupation in 1952. The 1958 Law Concerning Class Size and the Standardization of School Personnel Ratios in Public Compulsory Education (Kōritsu gimu kyōiku shogakkō no gakkyū hensei oyobi kyōshokuin teisū no hyōjun ni kan suru hōritsu) imposed a standard maximum class size—initially fifty, gradually reduced to forty by the 1980s.4 As Kariya and Rappleye have shown, over time the 1940/1952 and 1958 laws’ combined (though probably unintended) effect was to increase educational expenditure per pupil in poorer prefectures relative to richer Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

163

prefectures. During the 1950s and early 1960s, richer prefectures spent most per pupil, but from the 1970s onward, poorer prefectures spent most.5 In effect, richer prefectures subsidized poorer ones, promoting equalization. These changes were probably the result of larger schools (and therefore class sizes) in richer, urban prefectures, against smaller schools and class sizes in poorer, rural prefectures. Other laws also promoted standardization and equalization. The 1956 Law Concerning the Organization and Management of Local Educational Administration (Chihō kyōiku kyōsei no soshiki oyobi un’ei ni kan suru hōritsu, hereinafter LEA Law) transferred the authority to allocate teachers to schools from local to prefectural boards of education, making it easier to place teachers in postings that were remote or otherwise less popular.6 In 1955, the Science Education Promotion Law (Rika kyōiku shinkō-hō) and the School Library Law (Gakkō toshokan-hō) provided state subsidies for these aspects of school facilities. Furthermore, in 1967, 50 percent central government subsidies were also made available to increase the provision of over two hundred listed educational materials (from maps and slide projectors to record players and a broadcast facility) over an initial ten-year period.7 Fiscal decentralization reforms under the Koizumi administration (2001–2006) rolled back these equalizing measures to some extent; specifically, the proportion of teachers’ salaries paid by central government was reduced from 50 to 33 percent from 2005. This was justified on the basis of giving local governments more discretion over spending decisions, but may have resulted in poorer prefectures hiring more non-permanent teachers.8 Further research is needed to explore whether these reforms may be widening regional inequality. Curriculum and instruction In 1947, the Ministry of Education issued curriculum guidelines for elementary and junior high schools. These were explicitly termed “a tentative plan” (shian), and it was stressed that their intent was not standardization; rather, they were suggestions that schools and their teachers should develop for themselves, taking into account their local situations. Nor were hours of instruction mandated.9 Considerable experimentation in curriculum design and instructional innovation took place as a result, especially at elementary level.10 The mid-1950s saw central government move to reassert standardization and control. The 1956 LEA Law made members of boards of education appointed rather than elected, to reduce teachers’ power in local educational administration. Subsequently, in 1958, the curriculum was revised and made mandatory, including instructional hours for each subject. These moves were undoubtedly part of a political struggle to increase the control of central government conservatives over education, in opposition to the locally-based power of the left-wing Japan Teachers’ Union (JTU).11 However, the curriculum revision was also a powerful force for standardization and equalization, ensuring that children across Japan were being taught similar content over roughly the same number of hours. This has continued over the six subsequent curriculum revisions (once every decade), most recently in 2017. The 1998 revision introduced Integrated Studies, which schools are free to use for non-subject teaching adapted to local needs, but most curricular content remains standardized nationally.12 Even in 1950, 42.5 percent of junior high school graduates continued to high school, a relatively large proportion for a country recently subject to wartime devastation. Many junior high schools therefore divided third year pupils into an exam preparation track and

164

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

a vocational track. However, JTU members voiced disquiet at this differential treatment, which was seen as leading to feelings of inferiority on the part of vocational-track pupils. As the proportion of graduates progressing to high school rose, so did opposition to junior high tracking in the JTU; by 1958, it was being widely labelled “discriminatory education” (sabetsu kyōiku).13 The combination of JTU opposition and the rising proportion of graduates progressing to high school gradually ended tracking at junior high school; since the 1970s, studies across Japan have noted its absence. After 2001, the Ministry of Education and Science encouraged use of smaller classes taught according to proficiency (shūjukudobetsu shidō), but uptake seems to have been limited, and largely confined to the subjects of mathematics and English.14 As a result of standardization from government, and opposition to differentiation from teachers, curriculum and instruction at any one time has been remarkably similar for the vast majority of Japanese children since the 1960s. The major source of differentiation has resulted from children attending selective private schools. Although this has been significant in its impact, as discussed below, the proportions of children in private compulsory education nationally have remained very low.15 Participation and involvement Elementary and junior high schools in Japan have been notable for their efforts to create class and other groups that involve all children, generating a sense of interdependence, community and shared endeavor. The roots of these efforts go back to prewar educational movements, but they developed further after 1945, probably encouraged both by the stress on democratic education that stemmed from the Occupation, and by the emphasis on equality and the collective that resulted from the strong left-wing influences on many teachers, especially in the earlier postwar decades.16 The most important group at elementary schools is the class (gakkyū), taught by a class teacher (gakkyū tannin) who teaches almost all subjects. As ethnographic studies since the 1970s have documented, teachers use a range of activities to create a sense of motivated community within the class. Pupils run regular class meetings to discuss concerns, and each child has particular responsibilities for some aspect of class life. The role of (two) daily pupils-in-charge (nitchoku tōban) rotates around all pupils. Children are also responsible for cleaning the school and serving school lunch. Class slogans and singing can also be used to encourage shared feeling, as can major school events, such as annual sports days, where individual performances contribute points to the team, and where events that involve the entire class, such as tug-of-war, are especially popular. Sports day activities for older pupils, such as human pyramids (kumi taisō) and marching bands, can similarly be used to generate a sense of shared, interdependent endeavor.17 Similar activities continue at junior high school, where the class group continues to be seen as a vital community for involving and motivating pupils. Not only sports days, but also other annual school events such as cultural festivals and choral contests become key aspects of this enterprise. Such events are organized to make group activities central and to involve every single pupil, not least through large-scale gymnastic and dance routines (masu gēmu) and artworks to which each child in a year group or the whole school contributes. A

Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

165

student council, elected by pupils, and including a range of committees, is also important for children’s involvement in the running of school life.18 At this stage of education, extra-curricular clubs (bukatsudō) become a second key group for children. Schools have sometimes required all pupils to join a club, but even when this is not so, club participation tends to be strongly encouraged. Many sports club activities in particular involve a substantial commitment of pupils’ time and energy, as they often meet five or six days a week for an hour or more each day. Bukatsudō are notable for incorporating both egalitarian and competitive aspects. There is competition to be selected for the school team in a particular sport, but clubs are also equalizing in being open to all pupils, regardless of ability. Moreover, as each pupil can usually join only one club, there are no opportunities for the emergence of a select few all-round sports stars who represent a variety of school teams. This allows more children the chance to undertake challenges and shine.19 Throughout compulsory education, therefore, remarkable emphasis has been placed on giving every pupil not only opportunities for involvement in various aspects of school life, but also responsibilities that they are expected to fulfill. The underlying assumptions are that all children have important parts to play in the running of their own school communities, including leadership at some level, and that the voices of all children matter. In these ways, principles of equal treatment are extended beyond financing and academic instruction into informal learning and socialization in daily life. Equalization and its consequences The major efforts toward equalization in provision, instruction and treatment of pupils that took place before 1970 can be understood in the context of broader political and social movements of the period, including campaigns to reduce differentials in pay and status at work,20 and politics focused on economic growth to benefit the “hardworking everyman.” 21 It seems highly likely that this equalization has contributed to the reduction of regional academic attainment disparities, observable by comparing national test results from the 1960s with those since 2007.22 A common educational experience stressing equal treatment and involvement has probably been important in fostering a social ethos where wide participation is encouraged in various contexts, notably workplaces that involve employees in productivity improvement.23 This nine years in early life may have become even more important in maintaining a sense of common experience as income disparities have widened over recent decades.24

Post-compulsory education The history of post-compulsory education in Japan has contrasted starkly with that of compulsory education. Initial efforts to establish an equalized system of comprehensive high schools quickly foundered, and pre-1947 school hierarchies reasserted themselves. Subsequent attempts to flatten these hierarchies have had only limited success. Competition to enter the most prestigious high schools and universities has been a continuing feature of the postwar decades, and can be viewed as a path dependent legacy of the credentialism established in the early 20th century.

166

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

High schools Initial plans for the post-1947 high schools were undertaken according to what were later referred to as the “three principles” (sangensoku): that is, high schools should be comprehensive, co-educational and only admit entrants from their own school district. It was also envisaged that they should admit all who wished to attend. However, prefectures had some discretion in implementing these reforms.25 A “comprehensive” high school was one that incorporated more than one program— either an academic program (futsū katei) preparing pupils for tertiary education, plus at least one vocational program, or else two or more vocational programs. This was generally achieved by merging two or more pre-1947 secondary schools. An initial Ministry of Education survey in 1947 found that 593 of the former and 192 of the latter types of comprehensive high school had been established across Japan.26 A school district system (gakkusei) with one high school per district was considered ideal. The Ministry’s 1947 survey found that nineteen of Japan’s forty-six prefectures were adopting such a system; twenty-five prefectures were adopting a system with between one and six high schools per district, while two (Saitama and Gunma) were not adopting a school district system. The survey also found that 55 percent of the new high schools had become co-educational, while 45 percent remained to do so.27 However, before long there were criticisms of comprehensive secondary education, especially from business and from traditional conservatives, who favored differentiation of children into a multi-track system. Such criticisms were encapsulated in a 1951 report on education system reform issued by the Advisory Committee for Ordinance Revision (Seirei Kaisei Shimon Iinkai) appointed by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s Liberal Party government. The report recommended replacing comprehensive high schools with academically or vocationally focused high schools, abolishing the high school district system, and considering the reintroduction of entrance exams, either at age twelve or age fifteen. This activated a lively debate.28 The establishment of a comprehensive, non-selective high school system faced other difficulties besides opposition from those favoring a return to selection and differentiation. Particularly problematic were disparities between the facilities and staff that the new high schools had inherited from their predecessors, which ranged from exam-preparatory powerhouses with storied traditions, to second-rank (otsu) vocational schools. Tackling these inequalities required significant investment, as well as overcoming teachers’ objections to moving from preferred schools.29 Consequently, the early 1950s saw more and more prefectures move away from the comprehensive school and small school district model. In 1952, twenty-three prefectures used a system of one high school per district, but the next year, this fell to thirteen; by 1956, it had been reduced to seven, and by 1962, to three.30 Shiga Prefecture may be taken as an example. The prefecture’s initial plan was for nine small high school districts, each of a similar population and with its own comprehensive school. To achieve this, each comprehensive high school needed to use more than one preexisting building; for example, Hikone High School was housed in the three buildings that had previously belonged to Hikone Middle School, Hikone Girls’ High School, and Hikone Technical School. Besides these practical issues, socioeconomic conditions caused variations between districts in demand for high school entrance, with higher demand in more urbanized districts such as Hikone. Even in 1950, the first year of high school entrance, there were Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

167

fifty-five more applicants to Hikone High School than places available, causing complaints. A prefectural review of the initial plan’s outworking resulted in the abandonment of the comprehensive high school and small district systems over the 1951 and 1952 school years. From 1953, the prefecture was divided into four high school districts; pupils living in each district could apply to any one of the high schools within it. Vocational programs were open to pupils throughout the prefecture.31 In 1963, the Ministry of Education stated that high schools must in principle conduct entrance examinations.32 In practice, an excess of applicants over places had often necessitated this anyway, and the need was reinforced by the move toward larger high school districts and increasing numbers of high school applicants, driven by demographics and economic growth. Competition to enter high school rose, especially in the case of schools with an outstanding reputation for sending graduates to Japan’s leading universities—usually the same schools that had been academic powerhouses in their previous incarnation as pre1947 middle schools, such as Hibiya in Tokyo. The resulting hierarchization of high schools caused increasing unease, not only among progressives but also many educational administrators, because of the demoralization at lower-end high schools and exam study pressure that resulted.33 As a result, several measures were taken to try to tackle the problems. Most prefectures reduced the number of subjects assessed in entrance exams from nine to five, or sometimes even fewer.34 An increasing number of prefectures and cities also adopted a high school entrance system known as integrated selection (sōgō senbatsu), which linked high schools to local residence and thus sought to flatten the high school hierarchy.35 However, such attempts to reduce high school hierarchies and dampen competition were not necessarily successful. Their main weakness was that parents who were dissatisfied with the public high school system could opt for private schools, particularly in urban areas. The most spectacular example of this resulted from the reform of high school entrance in Tokyo from 1967 onward. This required pupils to apply to a group of two or three high schools in their district of residence; successful applicants were then allotted to one of the schools in such a way that each school in the district had a similar range of pupil ability. The resulting uncertainty about ultimate destination led many parents with ambitions for their children to opt for one of Tokyo’s many high-performing private schools instead; this then became a self-reinforcing cycle, as the academic performance of Tokyo’s public high schools declined. Competition and hierarchies remained, but now with private schools at the top.36 In 1967, six of the ten high schools sending most graduates to Tokyo University were public, headed by Hibiya; by 1976 only one was a public school.37 Similar processes took place in other areas where parents worried that public high school entrance systems were holding back their children’s aspirations, including Kyoto, Hyōgo, and Kōchi.38 Adoption of the integrated selection system peaked around 1980, but declined later in the decade; by 1996 it was used by only nine prefectures.39 Ogawa argues that the fundamental reasons for its abandonment lay in prefectures’ need to respond both to changes in population distribution and to demographically driven decline in pupil numbers, as well as the inherent problems caused by the perennial popularity of some schools over others. From the late 1980s, government advisory committees also advocated more stress on “individuality” and “diversity” in education, language taken up by prefectures in justifying the move from integrated selection to larger high school districts with greater choice of schools.40 In 2001, the LEA Law was revised, removing the requirement for prefectures to set high school districts. This followed the recommendations of government advisory committees 168

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

that more school choice was desirable and that deregulation of school districts would motivate teachers (implicitly, through the pressure of competition).41 Though decisions about high school districts remained with prefectures, subsequent changes were all towards larger districts and more school choice. The last two prefectures to keep integrated selection (Hyōgo and Kyoto) abandoned the system in 2010 and 2013 respectively. By 2011, twenty-one prefectures had abolished high school districts, meaning that pupils could apply to any high school in the prefecture, and a further four planned to do so. Once Hyōgo decided to reduce its high school districts from 16 to five from 2015, the only prefectures with more than nine districts were Hokkaido and Fukuoka.42 Studies of Okayama, Oita and Nagasaki Prefectures have shown that in urban areas, abandoning the integrated selection system has resulted in hierarchization of high schools.43 Furthermore, a higher proportion of entrants to high schools atop the pyramid has come from particular junior high schools, such as national laboratory schools attached to a university education faculty (whose pupils tend to come from educationally motivated families), or schools located in more middle-class areas.44 Similar tendencies were noted in Tokyo before the introduction of the integrated selection system in 1967.45 Ogawa has argued convincingly that it was fundamentally misguided ever to imagine that school choice would encourage a diversity of high schools, each with their own individual characteristics, given that for pupils applying to academic high schools, the main criterion for choosing a school is simply its graduates’ record of success in university entrance exams.46 Mabuchi suggests, equally persuasively, that though usually voiced quietly, the desire to resurrect renowned public high schools to the top of the academic pyramid in place of their private rivals has likely been one key driver of high school entrance reforms.47 If so, the changes may be working, given that 2020 saw two Osaka public schools become the most successful in sending graduates to Kyoto University (Kyodai), and 2021 saw Hibiya high school ninth in the list of schools sending graduates to Tokyo University (Todai), with several other public high schools also sending much increased numbers. Even so, half of the ten schools sending the most graduates to Kyodai in 2020 were private, and Hibiya was the only public school among the ten schools with most Todai success.48 The popularity of private schools with longstanding exam success records is unlikely to fade quickly. Since the 1990s, the nationwide trend has been toward larger high school districts and more choice of public high schools, resulting in hierarchization. To date, this does not seem to have resulted in widespread public concern about possible negative consequences such as exam study pressure, unbalanced education, or demoralization at lower-ranking schools, unlike in the 1960s and 1970s. This may be because exam competition and study pressure are in fact lower, whether for good or bad reasons. Not only are almost all children now attending high schools, but as noted below, about 65 percent of high school graduates are entering university. This may have weakened the felt imperative to enter higher-ranking institutions. However, declining study pressure may also result from lowered aspiration among poorer families, who may be less convinced of the possibility or importance of educational and career success for their children, compared to their counterparts in the 1960s or 1970s. This may in turn be the result of thirty years of economic plateauing in Japan. A further reason for diminished concern about study pressure may be heightened awareness in Japan of educational and economic competition from east Asian neighbors such as China and South Korea, partly through the well-publicized results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Rather than worrying about Japanese children Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

169

studying too hard, concerns may now be that they are not studying hard enough to compete with counterparts more consumed with “education fever.” University and college education Like high schools, Japanese universities and colleges are hierarchized, and again like high schools, the roots of this hierarchization date to well before World War II. Universities and colleges were established by the national government from the late-19th century to educate national leaders. In the same period, many private colleges were set up, both to satisfy strong educational demand and to fulfill their founders’ particular missions; after 1918, the best-resourced of these colleges were able to achieve university status, and by 1938, about two-thirds of university students were enrolled at the twenty-five private universities then existing.49 Perceptions of the relative rankings of different institutions were affected by prestige and resources (public universities and colleges had more of both), as well as by the pay that graduates could command; in 1919, for example, the starting salary at Mitsui Mining for graduates of Imperial universities was forty to fifty yen, for graduates of the Tokyo Higher Commercial School (now Hitotsubashi University), thirty-five to forty yen, and for graduates of the leading private universities, Keio and Waseda, thirty to thirty-five yen.50 Most private institutions ranked lower than their public counterparts. As Breaden and Goodman observe, controlled expansion of private higher education “provided the government with a market-based solution to the growing demand for higher education … without requiring large-scale government investment,” an approach that persisted in the postwar decades.51 Demand for higher education grew steadily throughout most of the 20th century. The proportion of young people enrolled doubled between 1935 and 1950, and rose again from 6 percent of the college age population in 1950 to 10 percent in 1960.52 However, the most rapid growth in numbers came in the 1960s, from 626,000 university students in 1960 to 1,407,000 in 1970.53 This was enabled by a huge expansion of the private sector, often at the expense of quality. According to James and Benjamin, the Japanese government approval rate for new private universities rose from 50 percent in 1960 to 90 percent in 1966: “regulations regarding student-faculty ratios, library size, minimum capital requirements, maximum size, etc., were all overlooked, in the haste to get institutions started to meet the popular demand.” 54 As a result, “by 1980, 38 per cent of all 18-year-olds were entering junior colleges and universities, over 80 per cent of them entering the private sector,” yet at relatively little cost to the Japanese government, which “in 1973 … spent 5.5 per cent of its national income on education” compared to seven to nine percent in the USA, the UK and the USSR.55 Despite the expansion, competition to enter higher education remained stiff: only about 60 percent of applicants were successful in the 1960s, rising to about 70 percent in the 1970s.56 Competition was fueled by intense media coverage, which led Rohlen to call university entrance exams “a national obsession.” 57 Media regularly published evidence of the link between credentials and career, showing that top executives and civil servants came overwhelmingly from top universities.58 Investing in a university degree seemed a highly rational choice. By century’s end, however, Japan’s changing demographics had significantly altered the university entrance situation. After growing rapidly during the 1980s, Japan’s youth population peaked just above two million in 1993, and then precipitously declined to 1.2 million

170

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

in 2009. As the number of university places remained similar, entry became much easier, at least to less-demanding institutions. By the end of the 1990s, 80 percent of applicants were successful, and by 2008, almost half of Japan’s universities were failing to fill their places. However, ease of entry differed dramatically according to university prestige: whereas less demanding institutions were effectively open to almost all applicants, higher-ranked universities saw more applications and became even harder to enter.59 By 2020, 95 percent of applicants to university were successful.60 According to government figures, 56 percent of high school graduates advanced to university or junior college in 2020, though this figure does not take into account the significant number of graduates who do not immediately advance to higher education, but reapply to their preferred institution in a later year; if that is considered, the figure probably rises to about 65 percent.61 Meanwhile, universities have so far adapted remarkably well to the shrinkage in student numbers, managing to cut costs, cross-subsidise and in the case of many private institutions, exploit the advantages of being family-run organizations. As a result, very few have closed.62 Government statistics indicate a continuing pay premium for university graduates, despite their expanding numbers and evidence that almost half are overqualified for their jobs.63 Earnings prospects clearly improve with the rank of the graduated university, though the precise relationship is unfortunately unclear from the limited data.64 As Breaden and Goodman observe, it is likely that a university degree has become viewed more as a defensive shield against the risk of precarious non-permanent employment, than as a means to get ahead.65 High university enrollment and a continuing pay premium for graduates might suggest the success of the longstanding government policy of limiting expansion of public expenditure on higher education, while allowing private institutions to meet market demand. However, problems have also resulted from this approach, which has meant shifting much of the costs of higher education on to household budgets. International comparisons show that university tuition fees are relatively high in Japan, a situation that probably dates from increases from the mid-1970s onward.66 There are very few countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) where a smaller proportion of the costs of higher education is met by government, or where a higher proportion comes from household expenditure.67 Furthermore, the costs of private university education in particular have become less affordable for the average household over time. Breaden and Goodman observe that “the average private university tuition fee doubled between 1990 and 2010, while the average wage in Japan declined by close to onefifth,” and Kobayashi and Armstrong point out that one year’s tuition at a private university rose from about 1.75 times family disposable income in 1975 to just over 3 times in 2011 (compared to from about 0.4 times to just under 2 times for national universities).68 This is particularly significant given that since 1965, over 70 percent of undergraduates have been enrolled at private universities.69 The rising costs of higher education for households have been partly alleviated by a large expansion of Japan’s student loan system, after eligibility criteria were relaxed in 1999. The number of university students receiving a four-year loan rose from almost four hundred thousand in 1998 to just over one million in 2012; by 2015, almost 40 percent of students were accessing loans. The maximum monthly amount payable in 2016 was sixty-four thousand yen, covering only a fraction of tuition and living expenses.70 Breaden and Goodman suggest

Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

171

that expanded access to loans may have been instrumental in maintaining university enrolments and preventing closures of some institutions.71 Cost burdens may well have contributed both to socioeconomic and gender inequality and to demographic problems in Japan. Research in 2006 and 2016 showed that high school graduates from the highest income bracket were approaching twice as likely to enter university as those from the lowest income bracket, with the disparity especially marked in the case of private universities.72 Furthermore, the heavy cost burden on households means that parents can exert considerable influence over their children’s study options. This may result in curtailed ambitions, especially those of girls.73 Additionally, studies have repeatedly indicated that high educational costs deter parents from having more children.74 While the causes of Japan’s declining fertility rate since the 1970s are complex, it is highly plausible that the cost of education has played a significant role. In response, the Japanese government has explored the possibility of introducing a student loan system similar to those operating in Australia and the United Kingdom, whereby loans to cover tuition and living expenses are made in full and then repaid dependent on income after graduation. The idea has not been taken further, but instead, a new program of tuition waivers and maintenance grants for students from low-income households was announced in 2017.75 Though the effects of the program are still to be assessed, it is limited in both scope (twenty thousand eligible students) and generosity (up to forty thousand yen per month towards living expenses).76

Conclusion This chapter has examined the postwar history of Japanese education through the lens of the sharp differences between compulsory and post-compulsory education. Compulsory education has been the subject of sustained efforts to equalize provision of resources, instruction, and treatment of pupils—efforts which were undertaken especially between 1947 and 1970, but whose success has continued to mold elementary and junior high school education to this day. In contrast, post-compulsory education has largely adhered to a model whereby institutions are hierarchized, and students compete to enter, becoming differentiated by credentials in the process. There have been efforts to eliminate or reduce hierarchization of high schools at times in the postwar period, but with limited success. Looking at the history of postwar education in this way helps us better to understand postwar Japan as a whole, as well as education in particular. In Japan since 1945, equal opportunity and equitable provision and treatment for all have been among the most important principles generally upheld for approval, if not necessarily realized in practice. Such principles have been seen as important for national strength and unity, as well as for equity. This helps to explain how movements toward equalization and standardization in compulsory education, and attacks on differentiation, have been able to command such widespread support across the political spectrum, despite disagreements about their particular formulations. Furthermore, decades of experiencing this equalized education have surely shaped the population of Japan profoundly, not least in helping to maintain support for the principles it embodies. At the same time, those who favor extending equalization and reducing differentiation and hierarchization in post-compulsory education have had only limited success. This may

172

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

be partly because of the path dependence brought about by the institutionalization of hierarchies of prestige in the university sector, dating back over a century. Regardless of their principles or views, Japanese parents and children have continued to see the hierarchy of credentials as an inescapable fact to be accommodated in making educational choices. This has limited the effectiveness of attempts to reduce competition by equalizing high schools, since such attempts have generally ended up merely reshaping the hierarchy, and placing the private sector at the top. Many Japanese may too have been convinced that educational hierarchies at post-compulsory level are a perhaps regrettable necessity because of differences in children’s efforts and abilities. And a significant number may feel that while the resulting competition may be painful for children, it nonetheless has beneficial effects in developing perseverance and drive. The upshot has been perhaps ambivalent consent to an education system that follows an initial period of common egalitarian experience with sharp differentiation, forcing competitive effort. This system is consonant with observations of Japanese workplaces, where hierarchy and competition co-exist with a sense of common membership and interdependence.77 It seems highly likely that acceptance of these co-existent features in each major social arena is reinforced by their presence in the other. There are questions to be asked about problems that may have arisen as a result of these contrasting emphases. In compulsory education, has the overwhelming stress on equality resulted in discouragement of diversity in children? Have schools provided sufficient opportunities for pupils to develop particular talents and enthusiasms? Meanwhile, has the post-compulsory education system done enough to enable children to attain their potential regardless of their socioeconomic situation? How truly meritocratic can Japan claim to be, given that so much of the financial burden for university education has been borne by households—and how much human talent may have been unrealized as a result? How much real benefit has accrued to individuals and the nation from Japan’s high levels of university enrollment, given questions over quality assurance and the acceptance of almost all applicants in recent years? And could the longstanding policy of market-led expansion of higher education be considered a short-term success but long-term failure, contributing to plunging fertility rates and demographic disaster? Whatever the answers to such questions, there can be no doubt of the enormous significance of education to the history of postwar Japan.

Notes 1 The Secondary School Ordinance (Chūtō gakkō-rei) 1943 made four years standard for all secondary schools. Previously, all boys’ and some girls’ secondary schools had five-year programs. The standard program for higher schools was also shortened from three to two years in 1943. See Monbushō, Gakusei hyakunenshi (Tokyo: Teikoku Chihō Gyōsei Gakkai, 1972), 585, 593. 2 Ministry of Education, Government of Japan, Japan’s Growth and Education (Tokyo: Ministry of Education, Government of Japan, 1963), 125. 3 Takehiko Kariya and Jeremy Rappleye, Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age: The Japanese Approach (New York: Teachers College Press, 2020), 59; Monbushō, Gakusei, 626, 1000. 4 Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 86–88, 117; Monbushō, Gakusei, 815–16, 856–57. 5 Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 102–18 6 Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 126; Monbushō, Gakusei, 854–55. 7 Monbushō, Gakusei, 865–866; Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 149–52.

Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

173

8

Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 179–80. Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 23–26. 10 Kimura Hajime, Gakkō no sengoshi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2015), 83–86. 11 Benjamin C. Duke, Japan’s Militant Teachers (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1973), 129–133, 143– 144; Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 24–47. 12 Peter Cave, Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 143–90. 13 Akito Okada, Education Policy and Equal Opportunity in Japan (New York: Berghahn Books), 69–72, 93. 14 Cave, Schooling Selves, 172–77. 15 In 2020, 1 percent of elementary pupils and 7.5 percent of junior high pupils attended private schools. Monbukagaku tōkei yōran (Reiwa 3 nen-ban), Monbukagakushō, accessed October 9, 2021, https://www .mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/002/002b/1417059_00006.htm. 16 William K. Cummings, Education and Equality in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). For works by some practitioners who contributed significantly, see Nakano Akira and Oguma Shin’ichi, eds., Nihon no kyōshi 3: gakkyū-zukuri (Tokyo: Gyōsei, 1993). 17 Catherine C. Lewis, Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, The Japanese Model of Schooling (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001); Peter Cave, Primary School in Japan (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007). 18 Cave, Schooling Selves. 19 Cave, Schooling Selves. 20 Cummings, Education, 242–45. 21 Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 84–88, 98–107. 22 Kariya and Rappleye, Education, 153–62. 23 Cummings, Education, 243–44; Thomas P. Rohlen, “Order in Japanese Society: Attachment, Authority, and Routine,” Journal of Japanese Studies 15, no. 1 (Winter, 1989): 11–12, 28–30. 24 Sawako Shirahase, Social Inequality in Japan (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 18–42. 25 Kokuritsu Kyōiku Kenkyūjo, Nihon kindai kyōiku hyakunenshi 6: Gakkō kyōiku (4) (Tokyo: Kyōiku Kenkyū Shinkōkai, 1974), 319, 360. 26 Kokuritsu Kyōiku Kenkyūjo, Nihon kindai kyōiku, 323. 27 Kokuritsu Kyōiku Kenkyūjo, Nihon kindai kyōiku, 323–26. In 2020, eight percent of high schools were non-coeducational; Gakkō kihon chōsa (Reiwa 2 nendo), Monbukagakushō, accessed October 13, 2021, https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/chousa01/kihon/1267995.htm. 28 Okada, Education Policy, 56–64; Kokuritsu kyōiku kenkyūjo, Nihon kindai kyōiku, 361. 29 Motoyama Masao, “Kōkō daigakkusei to seito/oya/kyōshi e no eikyō: Aichi-ken no baai,” Kyōiku 72 (May 1957): 46–47; Thomas P. Rohlen, “Is Japanese Education Becoming Less Egalitarian? Notes on High School Stratification and Reform,” Journal of Japanese Studies 3, no. 1 (Winter, 1977): 57–58. 30 Sasaki Susumu, Kōkō kyōikuron (Tokyo: Ōtsuki Shoten, 1976), 58. 31 Hikone Higashi Kōtō Gakkō Kōshi Henshū Iinkai, Hikone Higashi-kō Hyakunijūnenshi (Hikone: Sōritsu Hyakunijūshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jikkō Iinkai, 1996), 660–65, 737–42, 756–59. 32 Sasaki, Kōkō kyōikuron, 55. 33 Rohlen, “Is Japanese Education,” 58–59. 34 Sasaki, Kōkō kyōikuron, 56–57. 35 Rohlen, “Is Japanese Education,” 57–62; Hosogane Tsuneo, “Kōkō nyūshi kaikaku to sōgō senbatsu-sei,” Kikan Kokumin Kyōiku 59 (1984): 148–49; Ogawa Yō, “Tsūgaku kuiki no minaoshi to kōkō no tokushokuzukuri: sōgō senbatsusei o chūshin ni,” Kokuritsu Kyōiku Seisaku Kenkyūjo Kiyō 138 (2009): 77. 36 Rohlen, “Is Japanese Education,” 62–68. 37 Kobayashi Tetsuo, Tōdai gōkaku kōkō seisuishi (Tokyo: Kōbunsha Shinsho, 2009), 55, 91. 38 Rohlen, “Is Japanese Education,” 61, 68; Takehiko Kariya, Education Reform and Social Class in Japan (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 82–83. 39 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 77. 40 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 77–80. 41 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 76. 9

174

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

42

Mabuchi Yasutaka, “Kōkō nyūshi ni okeru gakku saihen ni tomonau shingaku idō no hendō,” Kobe Shinwa Joshi Daigaku Jidō Kyōikugaku Kenkyū 39 (2020): 226–27. 43 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 82; Matsumori Taketsugu, “Tandoku senbatsu seido ikō ni yoru kyū-sōgō senbatsu kōkōkan kakusa no yōin,” Beppu Daigaku Kiyō 50 (2009): 27–29. 44 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 82. 45 Kariya, Education Reform, 81. 46 Ogawa, “Tsūgaku kuiki,” 83. 47 Mabuchi, “Kōkō nyūshi,” 234. 48 Yasuda Kenji, “Kyōdai dewa kōritsu meimonkō ga fukkatsu, Kitano-Tennōji no wan-tsū wa 43-nen-buri,” Asahi shinbun EduA, April 13, 2020, https://www.asahi.com/edua/article/13287922; Yasuda Kenji, “Tōdai wa Kaisei ga 40-nen renzoku shui, Nishiyamato Gakuen ga yakushin shi rokui ni,”Asahi shinbun EduA, April 6, 2021, https://www.asahi.com/edua/article/14322971. 49 Jeremy Breaden and Roger Goodman, Family-Run Universities in Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 58–62. 50 Takeuchi Yō, Risshin-shusse-shugi (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1997), 204. 51 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 62. 52 Ministry of Education, Japan’s Growth, 48. 53 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 65. 54 Estelle James and Gail Benjamin, Public Policy and Private Education in Japan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 59. 55 James and Benjamin, Public Policy, 55. 56 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 69. 57 Thomas P. Rohlen, Japan’s High Schools (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), 77–110. 58 Rohlen, Japan’s High Schools, 88–93. 59 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 14, 22, 80, 167. 60 Calculated from figures in Monbukagaku tōkei yōran (Reiwa 3 nen-ban), according to which there were 668,390 applicants to four-year universities in 2019 (594,622 applying in the year of graduation, and 73,768 rōnin applying in a later year), and 635,003 students admitted as undergraduates to four-year universities in 2020. 61 Calculating the number of entrants to university and junior college in 2020 (684,498) as a percentage of the number of high school graduates in 2019 (1,050,559) gives a figure of 65 percent. Figures from Monbukagaku tōkei yōran (Reiwa 3 nen-ban). 62 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 151–223. 63 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 172–73. According to the 2019 issue of the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (Chingin kōzō kihon tōkei chōsa), starting salaries for university graduates were ¥2,128,000 (men) or ¥2,069,000 (women), whereas starting salaries for high school graduates were ¥1,689,000 (men) or ¥1,646,000 (women). Table 1, Kigyō kibobetsu shinki gakusotsusha no shoninkyū no idō (Shōwa 51 nen–Reiwa gannen) in Kōsei Rōdōshō, Chingin kōzō kihon tōkei chōsa, 2019, accessed September 28, 2021, https://www .e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/files?page=1&toukei=00450091&tstat=000001011429 64 Hiroshi Ono, “Training the Nation’s Elites: National-Private Sector Differences in Japanese University Education,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 26 (2008): 341–56; Kenta Ikeuchi, Kyoji Fukao and Cristiano Perugini, “Establishment Size, Workforce Composition, and the College Wage Gap in Japan,” RIETI Discussion Paper Series 21-E-022 (March 2021), accessed September 28, 2021, https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp /publications/dp/21e022.pdf. 65 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 173. 66 OECD, Education at a Glance 2021 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2021), https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org /education/education-at-a-glance-2021_b35a14e5-en,283; Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 72. 67 OECD, Education, 247, 259. 68 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 82; Masayuki Kobayashi and Shiro Armstrong, “Financing Higher Education in Japan and the Need for Reform,” AJRC Working Paper No. 2 (June 2017), AustraliaJapan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, accessed September 29, 2021, https://ajrc.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/ajrc_crawford_anu_edu_au/2017-10 /financing_higher_educatio_in_japan_and_the_need_for_reform.pdf, 6.

Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

175

69

Monbukagaku tōkei yōran (Reiwa 3 nen-ban). Kobayashi and Armstrong, “Financing,” 8–10. The average monthly cost of tuition in the first year at a private university was just over ¥100,000 in 2014; Masayuki Kobayashi, “International Comparison of Higher Education Cost Sharing and Japanese Challenges,” Japan Labor Issues 4, no. 20 (December 2019–January 2020): 37. 71 Breaden and Goodman, Family-Run Universities, 180. 72 Kobayashi and Armstrong, “Financing,” 11–14. 73 Susan D. Holloway, Women and Family in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 180–85. 74 Kobayashi, “International,” 37. 75 Kobayashi, “International,” 38. 76 Kobayashi and Armstrong, “Financing,” 18. 77 Rohlen, “Order,’ 11–12, 28–30; Thomas P. Rohlen, “The Company Work Group,” in Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making, ed. Ezra F. Vogel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975), 186–95. 70

References Breaden, Jeremy, and Roger Goodman. Family-Run Universities in Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Cave, Peter. Primary School in Japan. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. ———. Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Cummings, William K. Education and Equality in Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Duke, Benjamin C. Japan’s Militant Teachers. Honolulu; University of Hawai’i Press, 1973. Hikone Higashi Kōtō Gakkō Kōshi Henshū Iinkai. Hikone higashi-kō hyakunijūnenshi. Hikone: Sōritsu Hyakunijūshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jikkō Iinkai, 1996. Holloway, Susan D. Women and Family in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Hosogane, Tsuneo. “Kōkō nyūshi kaikaku to sōgō senbatsu-sei.” Kikan kokumin kyōiku 59 (1984): 145–57. Ikeuchi, Kenta, Kyoji Fukao and Cristiano Perugini. “Establishment Size, Workforce Composition, and the College Wage Gap in Japan.” RIETI Discussion Paper Series 21-E-022 (March 2021). Accessed September 28, 2021. https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/21e022.pdf. James, Estelle, and Gail Benjamin. Public Policy and Private Education in Japan. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Kariya, Takehiko. Education and Social Class in Japan. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Kariya, Takehiko and Jeremy Rappleye. Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age: The Japanese Approach. New York: Teachers College Press, 2020. Kimura, Hajime. Gakkō no sengoshi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2015. Kobayashi, Masayuki. “International Comparison of Higher Education Cost Sharing and Japanese Challenges.” Japan Labor Issues 4, no. 20 (December 2019–January 2020): 29–44. Kobayashi, Masayuki, and Shiro Armstrong. “Financing Higher Education in Japan and the Need for Reform.” AJRC Working Paper No.2 (June 2017), Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. Accessed September 29, 2021. https://ajrc.crawford.anu .edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/ajrc_crawford_anu_edu_au/2017-10/financing_higher_educatio _in_japan_and_the_need_for_reform.pdf. Kobayashi, Tetsuo. Tōdai gōkaku kōkō seisuishi. Tokyo: Kōbunsha Shinsho, 2009. Kokuritsu Kyōiku Kenkyūjo. Nihon kindai kyōiku hyakunenshi 6: Gakkō kyōiku (4). Tokyo: Kyōiku Kenkyū Shinkōkai, 1974. Kōsei Rōdōshō. Chingin kōzō kihon tōkei chōsa, Accessed September 28, 2021. https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat -search/files?page=1&toukei=00450091&tstat=000001011429. Lewis, Catherine C. Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

176

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Mabuchi, Yasutaka. “Kōkō nyūshi ni okeru gakku saihen ni tomonau shingaku idō no hendō.” Kobe Shinwa Joshi Daigaku Jidō Kyōikugaku Kenkyū 39 (2020): 223–35. Matsumori, Taketsugu. “Tandoku senbatsu seido ikō ni yoru kyū-sōgō senbatsu kōkōkan kakusa no yōin.” Beppu Daigaku Kiyō 50 (2009): 25–36. Ministry of Education, Government of Japan. Japan’s Growth and Education. Tokyo: Ministry of Education, Government of Japan, 1963. Monbukagakushō. Gakkō kihon chōsa (Reiwa 2 nendo). Accessed October 13, 2021. https://www.mext.go.jp /b_menu/toukei/chousa01/kihon/1267995.htm. Monbukagakushō. Monbukagaku tōkei yōran (Reiwa 3 nen-ban). Accessed October 9, 2021. https://www .mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/002/002b/1417059_00006.htm. Monbushō. Gakusei hyakunenshi. Tokyo: Teikoku Chihō Gyōsei Gakkai, 1972. Motoyama, Masao. “Kōkō daigakkusei to seito/oya/kyōshi e no eikyō: Aichi-ken no baai.” Kyōiku 72 (May 1957): 45–57. Nakano, Akira and Oguma Shin’ichi, eds. Nihon no kyōshi 3: gakkyū-zukuri. Tokyo: Gyōsei, 1993. OECD. Education at a Glance 2021. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2021. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education /education-at-a-glance-2021_b35a14e5-en. Ogawa, Yō. “Tsūgaku kuiki no minaoshi to kōkō no tokushoku-zukuri: sōgō senbatsusei o chūshin ni.” Kokuritsu Kyōiku Seisaku Kenkyūjo Kiyō 138 (2009): 75–85. Okada, Akito. Education Policy and Equal Opportunity in Japan. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Ono, Hiroshi. “Training the Nation’s Elites: National-Private Sector Differences in Japanese University Education.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 26 (2008): 341–56. Rohlen, Thomas P. “The Company Work Group.” In Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making, edited by Ezra F. Vogel, 185–209. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975. ———. “Is Japanese Education Becoming Less Egalitarian? Notes on High School Stratification and Reform.” Journal of Japanese Studies 3, no. 1 (Winter, 1977): 37–70. ———. Japan’s High Schools. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983. ———. “Order in Japanese Society: Attachment, Authority, and Routine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 15, no. 1 (Winter, 1989): 5–40. Sasaki, Susumu. Kōkō kyōikuron. Tokyo: Ōtsuki Shoten, 1976. Shirahase, Sawako. Social Inequality in Japan. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Takeuchi, Yō. Risshin-shusse-shugi. Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1997. Tsuneyoshi, Ryoko. The Japanese Model of Schooling. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001. Yasuda, Kenji. “Kyōdai dewa kōritsu meimonkō ga fukkatsu, Kitano-Tennōji no wan-tsū wa 43-nen-buri.” Asahi shinbun EduA, April 13, 2020. https://www.asahi.com/edua/article/13287922. ———. “Tōdai wa Kaisei ga 40-nen renzoku shui, Nishiyamato Gakuen ga yakushin shi rokui ni.”Asahi shinbun EduA, April 6, 2021. https://www.asahi.com/edua/article/14322971.

Chapter 9: Education in Japan since 1945

177

Chapter 10 From Raincoats to Ketchup: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era (1955–1973) Katarzyna J. Cwiertka The rise of the petrochemical industry was among the major economic transformations of postwar Japan. Small-scale production made Japanese synthetic resins uncompetitive on the world market, which meant that the rapidly growing volume of plastics had to find a consumer market at home. This chapter identifies the main avenues through which consumer products made of plastics permeated Japanese daily life, from electrical appliances and automobile parts to textiles and food packaging. The shift of routines and conventions facilitated by plastic consumption during the high-growth era lies at the root of Japan’s current plastic waste problems.

Introduction The city of Minamata made history as the site of one of the most disastrous environmental pollution cases in Japan, giving its name to Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by methylmercury poisoning from the industrial wastewater released by the Chisso Corporation’s chemical factory.1 Minamata has become a definitive symbol of both the dark side of postwar Japan’s high growth and the rise of its citizens’ movement. But one detail that has fallen into obscurity is the pivotal role played in Japan’s postwar history of the product to which the citizens of the Minamata Bay succumbed. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was the first of many types of plastic material that began to infiltrate daily life from the 1950s onward. Their applications ranged from sewage and cable insulation to no-iron shirts and cling wrap. Though largely invisible, plastics have been instrumental for the construction of akarui seikatsu, usually translated as “bright Japan” or “bright new life”—the dream of an affluent future inspired by the ideal of the American middle-class lifestyle.2 Bakelite was the first man-made polymer derived from fossil-fuel chemicals commonly known as “plastic.” The use of a singular form, though notorious, is misleading, since dozens of different polymers have been synthetized ever since. Bakelite was “discovered” in the United States in 1907 and within less than two decades became a household name worldwide.

178

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

It was propagated as “material of a thousand uses” found in such diverse applications as machine parts and sockets for light bulbs, musical instruments (oboe, clarinet, accordion), saucepan handles, telephone handsets, sunglasses, combs, buttons and jewelry.3 However, from the 1930s onward, its success was gradually overshadowed by the novel plastic materials that came to dominate our life today: PVC, polyamide (PA), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS). Due to their ubiquitous nature, they are often referred to as “standard plastics” or “commodity plastics,” and all belong to the category of thermoplastics, which can melt under heat after curing, while thermosetting plastics like Bakelite can neither be reshaped nor remolded once cured.4 A spectacular global spread of thermoplastics during the second half of the 20th century—a two hundred times increase since 19505—is attributed to their unparalleled design versatility, durability, a high strength-to-weight ratio, stiffness and toughness, ductility, corrosion resistance, high thermal/electrical insulation and a relatively low cost of production.6 The Japanese petrochemical industry (of which plastics constituted the lion’s share) began to develop during the 1950s. While a relative latecomer on the global stage, it grew at a spectacular tempo: between 1957 and 1969 the volume of production increased 500 times. By 1961, Japan surpassed Great Britain as the third largest global manufacturer of plastics, following the US and West Germany.7 It is noteworthy that the entire output of this burgeoning industry was destined primarily for the domestic market. In 1971, for example, the exports of the country’s six major chemical groups accounted for merely 12 percent of their sales.8 As was the case with other sectors of the Japanese postwar economy,9 the domestic mass market was for the petrochemical industry a critical factor in achieving high-speed growth. The following questions thus come to mind: What was the destination of those new materials? Through which channels did they spread and why? What impact did they have on Japanese society? As this chapter will demonstrate, plastics have quickly become omnipresent in the landscape of postwar Japan. They were not merely indispensable for economic growth, but also functioned as a critical fabric of the newly emerging postwar life. It is, therefore, surprising that their role is largely missing from the existing historical accounts of the era. This study seeks to fill in this gap and, in addition, aims to assess the long-term consequences of the developments of the 1950s and 1960s.

The rise of Japanese petrochemical industry Inventors of early plastics like Bakelite were pioneers searching for cheap substitutes for precious materials like ivory, tortoise shell and silk. By the late 1920s, however, these individualists were being replaced by large chemical enterprises, such as Union Carbide, Dow Chemicals and DuPont in the United States; IG Farben in Germany; and Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain. These firms had sufficient capital to operate sophisticated laboratories and engage in the quest for novel materials with high potential for commercialization far beyond the mere replacement of natural substances.10 One of the first was PVC, launched in the early 1930s under different trademarks: Geon by the leading American tire manufacturer BF Goodrich,11 Igelit by IG Farben in Germany,12 and Vinylite by the Union Carbide Corporation, which in time became the standard material of long-playing phonograph records.13 The commercial possibilities of PVC inspired Chisso Corporation to begin

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

179

experiments in its synthesis at the Minamata factory. Regular production began in 1941 and output grew from a modest 0.3 tons that year to 255 tons in 1944, but aerial bombing of the Minamata chemical complex in May 1945 put an end to the endeavor.14 Like many other chemical factories with ties to military production, the complex was designated for removal under the reparations program introduced during the first year of the Occupation.15 A sign of potential reversal of this policy appeared in 1949, when a veteran chemical industry executive, Colonel Frederick Pope (1877–1961), was sent by Washington to survey the state of Japanese chemical plants.16 Pope had extensive knowledge of the industry and rich experience in introducing American technologies abroad, including China, Japan, the Soviet Union, Mexico and Egypt.17 After three months of surveying the situation, he presented his recommendations to General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). On April 20, 1949, the New York Times reported on the matter as follows: Gen. Douglas MacArthur today released a controversial report on Japan’s chemical industry by Frederick Pope, former president of the Chemical Construction Company of New York. Read without its background, it constitutes a simple set of recommendations for improving production. Against the background of what has been done it is a sharp criticism of United States policy in purging top plant executives, in allocating materials, in tightening credit, in reparations seizures and in economic deconcentration. … Mr. Pope’s principal recommendations are, first, that chemical companies be encouraged to find top-flight men; second, that funds be made available over long periods at interest rates not exceeding 4.5 per cent; third, that moving of chemical plants for reparations be stopped; fourth, that all Fischertropsch plants be razed; fifth, that limitation of output of potential war products be re-examined so that legitimate industries will not be handicapped by unnecessary restrictions; sixth, that the deconcentration board be “encouraged” in a policy not breaking up organizations except in urgent and very clear cases; seventh, that an executive engineering board be organized on a temporary basis.18 The report had immediate effect. The same year Minamata chemical complex was granted permission to reopen and Chisso Corporation quickly regained a leading position in Japan’s chemical sector.19 The concern of policy makers during the immediate post-Occupation years was to increase Japanese economic self-sufficiency, while moving into high-addedvalue economy through infusion of sophisticated technology,20 of which petrochemicals were definitely a prime example. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) issued a five-year plan for the manufacture of PVC, with a target of 5400 tons by 1953, but output reached 5086 tons in 1951 and within the next four years increased sixfold.21 On the one hand, the existing chemical firms, such as Tekkōsha, Mitsui Kasei and Mitsubishi Kasei were becoming engaged in the manufacture of plastics, primarily PVC.22 On the other hand, powerful new joint-ventures with foreign capital and new technologies emerged in the early 1950s under the watchful eye of MITI, which strictly managed the import of foreign technology. For example, the government did not allow technology imports that were accompanied by foreign managerial control.23 This was the case with Nihon Zeon which cooperated with BF Goodrich, Nippon Chemical’s links with Monsanto and Asahi Kasei’s 180

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

with Dow; none of those American companies were allowed to hold the majority of shares.24 In addition, protective tariffs on foreign imports of plastics were established to give an advantage to domestic producers. Other tools, such as tax benefits, preferential lending by the Japan Development Bank, sale of land on which to build installations at nominal cost and exemption from customs duties on imported machinery were included in the Petrochemical Industry Nurturing Policy, adopted by MITI in 1955.25 In addition, the ministry used cartels to regulate investment, and thus prevent overcapacity and excess competition. This system of “industrial cooperation” was pioneered by the PVC industry and became a blueprint for later adoption by manufacturers of polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene and other plastic resins. Mark Tilton argues that these policies allowed a large number of firms to survive, all producing in plants that were small by North American and European standards. 26 Thus, the industrial structure was internationally uncompetitive and the rapidly growing volume of plastics had to find a consumer market at home. In the following three sections, I will explore the most important channels through which plastics infiltrated Japanese life.

“Bright New Life” and vegetables out of season A logical point to start is PVC, which was the first thermoplastic manufactured in Japan and the one which was produced in the largest quantities. In 1960 it accounted for approximately half of all plastic resins made in Japan and approximately one third five years later. By 1970 PVC was overtaken by polyethylene (PE) as the leader within the industry but remained one of the big three, along with polypropylene (PP) extensively used in the automotive industry.27 Generally speaking, PVC comes in two forms: 1) the rigid one used primarily in the production of pipes and other construction material, such as window frames; and, 2) the flexible form, with a wide range of applications, such as flexible tube containers, vinyl flooring and insulation for electrical cables.28 Both forms of PVC were critical for the development of the two most potent symbols of Japan’s post-war affluence—government-sponsored multifamily housing projects, commonly known as danchi, and the myriad of electric appliances that filled them. Collectively, they epitomized the dream of the middle-class lifestyle modelled after the American example, a lifestyle that stood in total contradiction to what was seen as the unsanitary and feudal daily life of the prewar era.29 Since the actual danchi life was not something most Japanese were able to experience (by 1960 no more than 140 thousand of 20 million households were living in one),30 electrical appliances functioned as symbolic incarnations of the danchi lifestyle, which could potentially bring the dream of akarui seikatsu to every Japanese home. The spread of katei denka, or domestic electrical appliances, was spectacular. According to a 1951 survey, the three electrical appliances most prevalent in Japanese homes at the time were radios (67 percent), irons (38 percent) and cooking stoves (23.5 percent). Only nine years later, 54 percent of Japanese households owned a television set, 45 percent had a washing machine and 15 percent a refrigerator.31 These appliances were collectively called sanshu no jingi (“three sacred treasures”), an expression reflecting their symbolic function of authenticating their owners as modern, similar to the way the original three sacred treasures (a sword, a jewel and a mirror) from Japanese mythology functioned as authenticators of the emperor as the ruler of the Japanese archipelago.32 The demand for electrical appliances for the home, as symbolic representations of the lifestyle most Japanese aspired to, not

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

181

only provided the foundation for the growth of the Japanese electric goods industry,33 but also proved critical as the sales market for the Japanese manufacturers of plastic resins. The emerging mass market for electrical appliances went hand in hand with the skyrocketing plastic production. By 1960, the output of PVC reached 260 thousand tons, an 800 percent increase in five years.34 PVC-lining of metal tanks to prevent their corrosion and PVC-coating on textiles to make them water resistant were among the first applications of this polymer during the 1930s.35 The latter quality was vital for the popularity of the very first two consumer items made from PVC in Japan: raincoats and furoshiki (Figure 10.1). The former was a foreign invention replicated by Japanese manufacturers, but the latter is an early example of the infiltration of plastic into long-standing local routines. The word furoshiki (from furo, “bath,” and shiki, “spread”) derives from cotton wrappers used in public bathhouses for spreading on the floor while undressing and for wrapping bathing articles, but the functionality of a square piece of cloth extended to wrapping, storing and carrying a great variety of objects.36 Furoshiki made of PVC appeared in 1951 and were an immediate hit; in Tokyo they sold for three-hundred yen a piece, but were worth double the amount in the countryside. The trend proved rather short lived and by the end of the following year the price dropped to fifty yen a piece. However, the overproduction of PVC foil brought about by the declining furoshiki boom is reported to have prompted the early application of vinyl tunnels for horticulture.37 Greenhouses in the form of vinyl tunnels (biniru hausu) instead of traditional oiled paper (aburagami), began on an experimental basis in 1951 over an area of forty hectares using thirty-two tons of foil. By the early 1960s, over three thousand hectares of vinyl tunnels were scattered across Japan, with the greatest concentration on the islands Figure 10.1 PVC furoshiki

Source: Photo by the author

182

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of Shikoku and Kyushu, and the highly populated Kantō and Tōkai areas (Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi and Mie prefectures).38 By 1969, the acreage more than tripled to over eleven thousand hectares. Cucumbers, strawberries and tomatoes were the most popular crops, followed by eggplants, melons and chrysanthemums.39 At a time when the import of fruit and vegetables was practically nonexistent, vinyl tunnel agriculture played an important role in expanding their availability beyond the growing season. As the standard of living continued to rise and the consumption of rice declined in favor of a greater variety of side dishes, vinyl tunnels were yet another building block of lifestyle transformation.40 American-style sandwiches and salads flavored with mayonnaise directly squeezable from a polyethylene tube would soon become a mainstay of Japanese diet.

Wearing plastics Although the Japanese petrochemical industry was practically nonexistent before the 1950s, it built up on prewar developments in many respects. As was the case with other sectors of heavy industry, petrochemicals benefited from structural changes in the Japanese economy brought about by the total war mobilization, such as economic centralization through bureaucratic control, subcontracting, product standardization and technical training.41 As mentioned above, several of the existing chemical firms that had been active before the war were ready to quickly switch to the production of plastic resins, often in joint-ventures with foreign capital and technologies. The prewar legacy was also beneficial as far as the end-markets for those new products are concerned, and this was particularly evident in the domain of textiles. To be sure, the textile industry, which enjoyed the status of a pillar of the prewar economy, was a victim of the strategic move towards heavy industry and commitment to sophisticated technological development during the postwar era. However, it was successfully integrated in the newly-emerging petrochemical sector. By the 1970s, Japan was the world’s second largest producer (behind the United States) of synthetic yarn.42 This growth was made possible thanks to existing relationships that the producers of natural fibers (mainly cotton and silk)—who moved into the synthetic fiber business—had with sub-industries, such as spinners, weavers, dyers and garment manufacturers. This infrastructure was critical for the spectacular growth of domestic consumption of synthetic fibers during the 1950s and 1960s. The leadership role in the transition from natural to synthetic textile production was played by prewar manufacturers of rayon (viscose)—a synthetic yarn made from cellulose and marketed as “artificial silk.” The Meiji government (1868–1912) began to set up chemical factories with two practical objectives in mind: the production of sulfuric acid required for printing paper money and to refine metal and soda, which was used in the textile industry as a bleach. As the industry developed, chemical fertilizers assumed a central position, and were by the 1930s gradually replaced by explosives and fuels needed for the war effort.43 A relatively unknown branch of the industry was cellulose-based plastics. Celluloid was developed during the second half of the 19th century, and was comparable in most of its applications to Bakelite.44 Unlike the latter, however, it was not made from fossil fuel chemicals, but from cellulose, which would put it in a bioplastics category according to today’s nomenclature. The manufacture of celluloid in Japan began in 1889, but the industry consolidated during World War I, when production in Germany, France and Italy was interrupted.45 After 1919, it was no longer imported and

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

183

fourteen years later Japan became its leading producer, accounting for 35.6 percent of global production. While the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom were clearly moving into plastic resins, such as PVC, the production of celluloid in Japan continued to grow, reaching 43.2 percent of the world’s production in 1939.46 A similar path can be observed in the case of rayon (viscose). Its production began in Japan in 1918, when several manufacturers abandoned production of gun-cotton (nitrocellulose) for the Japanese Imperial Army for more commercially viable viscose.47 Rayon and viscose have been used interchangeably to refer to the fabric, but the latter can also denote the chemical compound that can be spun into a yarn as well as extruded into a film known as cellophane (see the next section). The Japanese production of rayon skyrocketed from 100,000 pounds in 1918 to 70,389,600 pounds fourteen years later, turning the country into a leading global producer. During the 1920s roughly half of the output was sold domestically and half exported to China, Germany and the United States. During the 1930s, due to the Chinese boycott of Japanese products and the introduction of protective tariffs by Germany and the US, exports of Japanese rayon were shifted to new markets, such as India, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Congo, Persia and Egypt.48 One of the nine principal rayon-manufacturing companies in prewar Japan was Tōyō Rayon (from 1970 Toray Industries Inc.), set up in 1926 by the trading firm Mitsui & Co., a member of the Mitsui conglomerate, which had been the major Japanese importer of British rayon.49 In 1952, through a technical tie-up with the American inventor of nylon (polyamide) DuPont in the previous year, Toray began production of nylon stockings in Japan.50 In 1957, together with Teikoku Rayon (since 1962 Teijin Limited), the firm signed a license agreement for the production technologies for polyester fibers and films from Britain’s ICI. The two firms jointly marketed this under the trademark Tetoron.51 In 1959, the chemical giant Asahi Kasei, launched its own brand of acrylic fiber under the name Cashmilon.52 In 1962, Toray and Nippon Rayon accounted for all the nylon production in Japan, while Toray and Teijin produced all the polyester, but due to the expiration of original patents, soon other firms also began to move into the nylon and polyester field.53 Between 1960 and 1970, the production of synthetic textiles in Japan increased tenfold, and the share of synthetic fibers within the Japanese textile industry nearly doubled, from 16 to 30 percent.54 This transformation occurred at the expense of natural fibers, such as cotton, linen and silk. In 1955, these materials accounted for 73 percent of the Japanese textile industry, but within the next fifteen years their share declined to 49 percent. In fact, many prewar cotton-spinning giants themselves—Tōyōbō, Nisshinbō, Kanebō and Nichibō—moved into the synthetic fiber industry.55 This growth was made possible by two factors. First, owing to the central position of the textile industry within the prewar economy, most firms that moved into the synthetic fiber business already had well-established relationships with textile producers and distributors. For example, by 1964 Toray cooperated with three hundred small textile processors. Second, due to MITI’s protective policies for the petrochemical industry, synthetic fiber producers had to rely exclusively on the domestic supply of plastic resins. By gaining direct control over the suppliers—either through mergers or by establishment of their own subsidiaries—they managed to increase the cost competitiveness of final consumer products.56 Synthetic textiles functioned, like electrical appliances, as potent symbols of affluence and the American lifestyle and, in addition, were more accessible to the Japanese public. Buying nylon stockings or acryl sweaters did not require the same degree of investment or complex decision-making as the purchase of a television set or a refrigerator. Textiles 184

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

manufactured from synthetic fibers, or blends with cotton or linen, had several advantages: they were light and thin, yet strong, did not wrinkle and stain as easily as natural fibers, dried quickly and often did not require ironing.57 As disposable income increased during the highgrowth period, an ever expanding share of the Japanese population exchanged kimono for Western-style clothing and followed global fashion supplied by the apparel industry, which in turn relied heavily on synthetic fibers. According to data from the Household Expenditure Survey, in 1967 Western-style garments represented on average 76.3 percent of workers’ monthly clothing expenses.58 Spending on Western-style clothing increased more rapidly than for Japanese-style clothing, roughly doubling between 1967 and 1973. The growing demand for ready-to-wear clothing is reflected in the rising number of apparel manufacturers and wholesalers and their sales. For example, in the second half of the 1960s, the sales of one of the largest clothing companies, Renown, doubled, while that of Kashiyama and San’yō Shōkai tripled. 59 Atsugi Nylon, the leading manufacturer of stockings and pantyhose in Japan, set up two additional subsidiaries in order to meet the skyrocketing demand, in 1966 in Mutsu (Aomori prefecture) and in 1968 in Shiraishi (Miyagi prefecture).60

Food packaging Obtained by whipping yolks with olive oil with the addition of vinegar, mayonnaise is one of the five classic sauces of French cuisine that spread around the world during the 19th century and became a symbol of culinary refinement and elegance.61 Ready-to-eat mayonnaise was first launched in 1909 by a Philadelphia grocer named Schlorer, adding preservatives to his wife’s handmade product. Following the success of Mrs. Schlorer Mayonnaise, other brands, such as Richard Hellmann from New York and the Gold Medal Mayonnaise Company from California, quickly gained popularity on the American market.62 These products caught the attention of Nakajima Tōichirō (1883–1973), who at that time traveled across Europe and the United States on a four-year scholarship to gain knowledge about canning.63 Fish processing was an emergent sector of the Japanese economy at the time that enjoyed direct government support.64 In 1919, Nakajima set up a food processing business (Shokuhin Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha, in 1957 renamed into Kyūpī Kabushiki Kaisha), but apparently remained fascinated enough with mayonnaise to begin its manufacture. Kewpie Brand Mayonnaise Sauce—the very first, and for decades the only domestically-produced version of the product—was launched in 1925.65 The brand was named after the Kewpie dolls created by the American cartoonist Rose Cecil O’Neill (1874–1944), which were an international sensation at the time, also in Japan. Leaving aside the issue of possible copyright infringement of using an image of the doll on the label of the glass jar for the product at the time, it is worth noting that the brand name and all other information on the label was written entirely in English. During the 1920s and 1930s, Kewpie brand mayonnaise was a rarity affordable only to the elite. It was sold in glass jars of 128 grams at the horrendous price of seventeen hundred yen in today’s money.66 Information brochures and advertising texts informed potential consumers that mayonnaise should be served cold with fish, meat and asparagus, or in vegetable salads, just as it appeared on the tables of wealthy European and American families.67 The exclusive nature of Kewpie mayonnaise is also evident from the extremely low production volumes, which in the first years after the launch did not exceed six hundred kilograms per year. The prewar sales record

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

185

was achieved in 1941 when five hundred tons of mayonnaise, or seven grams per capita, was sold. Four decades later, more than two hundred thousand tons of mayonnaise was produced annually in Japan, or about 1.7 kilograms per capita.68 The high-growth period was for mayonnaise a time of transformation from an exotic condiment for the elite to an everyday product for the masses. After production resumed in 1948, demand remained modest for another decade, but during the 1960s sales increased tenfold and doubled again during the 1970s. A change of the brand name in 1960 from Kewpie Mayonnaise, written in the Latin alphabet, into Kyūpī Mayonēzu, written in katakana, was indicative of the dawn of the new era. Two years earlier the glass jar that had been used since the 1920s was replaced by a transparent polyethylene tube.69 This was one of the earliest examples of the Japanese food-processing industry utilizing plastic containers, but the next decade brought spectacular growth. Between 1961 and 1969, the use of plastic resins in packaging increased twentyfold, from 42.1 thousand tons to 822 thousand tons.70 The 1960s was a truly transformative period for plastic packaging—the share of plastic in terms of value doubled.71 In 1958, the year mayonnaise in polyethylene tubes was launched, plastics comprised just 4.6 percent of the total packaging value, nearly the same share as cellophane, which had been produced in Japan since 1926, and the moisture-proof version since 1939. Cellophane belongs to the category of biopolymers manufactured from viscose, which can also be formed into a fiber (see rayon in the previous section). During the wartime period, the use of moistureproof cellophane was restricted to the military rations but it reappeared on the consumer market in 1951. After 1955 the production method shifted slightly, with PVC coating and later polyethylene coating replacing the earlier method of applying a coating of nitrocellulose lacquer.72 The new product was utilized in the packaging of a variety of goods, including cigarettes, textiles and medicines, but food packaging was by far the most important category; cellophane was used in the packaging of candy, bread and pastry, tsukemono, instant ramen and a quickly developing new category of frozen foods. During the 1960s, so-called porisero (a polyethylene-cellophane laminate) became the dominant form of cellophane in Japan, 73 but a decade later it would be replaced by the new kid on the block—packaging films made entirely from fossil fuel resins: polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon and polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC).74 This development was presaged by the launch in 1960 of cling wrap by two competing brands, Kurerappu and Saranrappu, both made of PVDC. Kurerappu went on sale in July and relied on domestic technology developed by Kureha Chemical Industry (after 2005 Kureha Corporation).75 The prewar origins of the company go back to cotton spinning. Kureha was among the ten largest companies, but in 1939 began to expand, through mergers, into the manufacture of rayon, and later fertilizers and other chemicals.76 During the 1950s, it moved into the synthetic fiber industry and developed PVDC resin with the primary of objective of utilizing it as a textile. The trademark for Kureharon was registered in 1951 but proved much more suited for application in the food industry. The principal advantage of PVDC, when compared to other plastics, was its ability to adhere to itself along with a very low permeability to water vapor, flavor and aroma molecules. In 1956, Kuraharon film was applied in the manufacture of fish sausage, and four years later went on sale as cling film for home use.77 At the time of the launch, only 15 percent of Japanese households owned a refrigerator, but within a decade the share surpassed 90 percent,78 leading to a spectacular growth in sales of

186

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

cling wrap. In 1972, fifty million rolls were sold, which translated to approximately 1.5 per household.79 Saranrappu was an identical product to Kurerappu but manufactured with foreign technology acquired from the American firm Dow Chemicals. The original Saran Wrap appeared on the American market in 1949 and went into history as the very first cling wrap designed for commercial use, but in Japan it came second. It was manufactured by Asahi-Dow Co., a fifty-fifty joint venture between Dow Chemicals and Asahi Chemicals, which was set up in 1952 with the primary goal of facilitating the entry of Asahi into the petrochemical business.80 The competition between Kurerappu and Saranrappu continues until the present day, with the latter clearly ahead in terms of market share.81 However, the distinction of being the first falls on the former, as does the honor of developing the world’s first plastic ketchup container. Kureha worked on the project for Kagome (before 1963 Aichi Tomato Co.), the leader in Japan’s tomato sauce and tomato ketchup market, and its oldest brand.82 The business was set up by pioneer farmer-entrepreneur Kanie Ichitarō (1875–1971), who embarked on commercial production of tomatoes on his family farm in 1899.83 In 1963, the name of the company was changed into that of the brand and investments were made in preparation for the market expansion. Like Kewpie, the company benefited from the Americanization of Japanese lifestyle. However, the chemical composition of ketchup made the polyethylene tube unsuitable to replace the classic glass container. A squeezable PVDC ketchup bottle launched by Kagome in 1966 was the result of multiple experiments and extensive tweaking, and various problems were encountered in its manufacture. Seven years after the initial market introduction, Kagome’s ketchup bottle was replaced by a new generation container made of multiple layers of different types of plastic. 84

Conclusions Among a variety of developments that are considered to be characteristic of the high-growth period, the infiltration of plastic resins into daily life is a relatively neglected domain. The evidence presented in this chapter allows me to make a couple of observations. First, the Japanese petrochemical industry grew at a phenomenal rate, relying largely on the import of foreign technologies, but resting on the foundations of the chemical industry that had developed during the prewar and wartime period, and with the support of a Japanese government committed to nurturing high-added-value sectors of the economy. Second, while Japanese manufacturers of plastic resins were successfully catching up with their counterparts in Europe and the United States, relatively small-scale production made them uncompetitive on the world market. Thus, domestic consumption constituted the primary target of the expanding output of Japanese petrochemicals. Third, the middle-class lifestyle modelled after the American example, to which the Japanese masses largely aspired to, leaned heavily on petrochemicals. Like the rest of the world, the Japanese became infatuated with the promise of comfort and convenience, eagerly embracing the plastic dream. This chapter identified the main avenues through which consumer products made of plastics permeated Japanese daily life and facilitated a shift of routines of conventions. I have discussed electrical appliances, which functioned as symbols of an affluent future and a break with the feudal past. Plastic resins were indispensable in the production of these appliances,

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

187

just as they were for the automotive industry, which developed slightly later. The domestic manufacture of synthetic fibers allowed the Japanese public to engage in imitating world fashions at a time when imports of American and European apparel were not yet affordable for the majority of the population. And, finally, the expansion of Japanese food processing and the new self-service retailing formats—the supermarket and later konbini—would not have been possible without the phenomenal growth of the packaging industry. Today Japan ranks second globally in terms of plastic packaging waste generation per capita and this situation can be directly linked with the frantic expansion of end markets for plastic resins during the high-growth era.85 As Laura Hein astutely observed thirty years ago, domestic consumption was not only “the final key to Japan’s economic growth,” but also generated a shift in “the ethics of economic behavior,” a shift that has never faded away.86 The strategy of constantly developing new products was crucial for the success of the highgrowth policies, but the tenacious continuation of the dizzying cycle has had harmful consequences. The problem of plastic waste is perhaps one of the most visible legacies of the high-growth era.

Notes 1

Norie Huddle, Michael Reich and Nahum Stiskin, eds. Island of Dreams. Environmental Crisis in Japan (New York: Autumn Press, 1975); Simon Avenell Transnational Japan and The Global Environmental Movement (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 27–28. 2 Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 44–89. 3 Jeffrey L. Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 31–63. 4 Osborne Industries, “The Difference Between Thermoplastic and Thermosetting Plastic,” accessed December 31, 2022, https://www.osborneindustries.com/news/difference-between-thermoplastic-thermosetting -plastic/. 5 Plastic Soup Foundation, “Plastic Facts and Figures,” accessed December 31, 2022, https://www.plastic soupfoundation.org/en/plastic-facts-and-figures/. 6 Anthony L. Andrady and Mike A. Neal, “Applications and Societal Benefits of Plastics.” Philosophical Transactions of The Rolad Society B, no. 364: 1977–84. 7 “The Plastics Industry: A Comparative Study of Research and Innovation.” National Institute Economic Review 26, no. 1 (1963): 24–25, accessed February 18, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1177/002795016302600103. 8 Fred Aftalion, A History of International Chemical Industry: From the “Early Days” to 2000 (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Press, 2001), 314–15. 9 Laura E. Hein, “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 112–15; Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 247–51; Charles Yuji Horioka, “Consuming and Saving,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). 10 Meikle, American Plastic, 82–83. 11 Aftalion, A History, 258. 12 Tan Ky Mineral Processing Joint Stock Company, “History of PVC and PVC Pipes. How to Make PVC Pipe,” accessed December 31, 2022, https://www.tankymineral.com.vn/history-of-pvc-and-pvc-pipes-how-to -make-pvc-pipe-342578; Second Wiki, “Igelit,” accessed December 31, 2022, https://second.wiki/wiki/igelit. 13 Encyclopedia Britannica online, accessed January 4, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial -polymers-468698/Polyvinyl-chloride-PVC#ref608648. 14 Koyama Hisashi, Nihon purasuchikku kōgyō shi (Tokyo: Kōgyō Chōsakai, 1967), 289–90.

188

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

15

Joseph Z. Ready, “Reparations from Japan,” Far Eastern Survey 18, no. 13 (1949): 147. Yoshiro Miwa and J. Mark Ramseyer, “The Good Occupation,” Discussion Paper Series, no. 51 (2005): 31–32. 17 Anthony S. Travis, “First Steps: Synthetic Ammonia in the United States,” Substantia 5, no. 2 (2021): 63–66; Man Bun Kwan, Patriots’ Game: Yongli Chemical Industries 1917–1953 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 85–86. 18 “Freer Chemical Plan in Japan Now Urged,” New York Times, April 20, 1949, 4. The full report is available at Frederick Pope, “Report on the Japanese Chemical Industry,” Far Eastern Survey 18, no. 25 (1949): 295–98. 19 Ui Jun, Industrial Pollution in Japan (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1992), accessed January 2, 2023, https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu35ie/uu35ie0c.htm. 20 Hein, “Growth Versus Success,” 108–10. 21 Koyama, Nihon purasuchikku, 305–6, 319. 22 Aftalion, A History, 315. 23 Leonard H. Lynn, “MITI’s Successes and Failures in Controlling Japan’s Technology Imports,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Commerce and Management 29 (1994): 21–23. 24 Zeon Corporation, “History,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.zeon.co.jp/en/company/history/; Mitsubishi Chemical Agri Dream Co., Ltd., “Corporate History,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.mc-agri .co.jp/en/company-info/corporate-history/; Asahi Kasei Corporation, “History of Asahi Kasei,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.asahi-kasei.com/company/history/; Reference for Business, “Mitsubishi Chemical Industries Ltd.,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/24/MITSUBISHI -CHEMICAL-INDUSTRIES-LTD.html. 25 Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 236. 26 Mark Tilton, Restrained Trade: Cartels in Japan’s Basic Materials Industries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 127–28. 27 Kaneko Isao, “Sūji de miru purasuchikku sangyō no genjō,” Kōbunshi 56, no. 1 (2007): 28. 28 Karol Mulder and Marjolijn Knot, “PVC Plastic: A History of Systems Development and Entrenchment,” Technology in Society 23 (2001): 265–86. 29 Laura Neitzel, The Life We Longed For: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (Portland, ME: MerwinAsia, 2016). 30 Simon Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods Industry and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 177. 31 Shunya Yoshimi, “‘Made in Japan’: The Cultural Politics of ‘Home electrification’ in Postwar Japan,” Media, Culture and Society 21 (1999): 154–56. 32 There are some inconsistencies as to which appliances were considered “the three treasures.” See Partner, Assembled in Japan, 262. 33 Partner, Assembled in Japan, 89–190. 34 Kaneko, “Sūji de miru,” 28. 35 Mulder and Knot, “PVC Plastic,” 271. 36 Itasaka Gen, ed., Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1983), vol. 2, p. 371. 37 Koyama, Nihon purasuchikku, 311–13. 38 Hashida Shigekazu, “Biniru hausu saibai dojō hiryōgakuteki mondaiten,” Nihon Dojō Hiryōgaku Zasshi 36, no. 9 (1965): 274. 39 Yamazaki Kōya, “Saibai kankyō kara mita biniru hausu no genjō to mondaiten,” Nōgyō Shisetsu 2, no. 2 (1972): 40. 40 Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, “Culinary Culture and the Making of a National Cuisine,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 19–20. 41 Hein, “Growth Versus Success,” 104–5. 42 Helen Macnaughtan, Women Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle: The Case of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1945–1975 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 14. 43 Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 19, 301–2. 44 Meikle, American Plastic, 10–30. 45 Koyama, Nihon purasuchikku, 25–26, 610. 46 Koyama, Nihon purasuchikku, 116, 134. 16

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

189

47

Shinichi Suzuki, “The Rayon Industry in Japan,” Economic Geography 11, no 1 (1935): 105. Suzuki, “The Rayon Industry,” 106. 49 Toray, ed., Creating a Brighter Future: Toray’s 90-Years History (Nagoya: Shuppan Bunka Sha Corporation, 2016), 9–12. 50 Lynn, “MITI’s Successes,” 23. 51 Toray, Creating, 30–31; https://www.teijin.com/about/history/index01.html. 52 Asahi Kasei Corporation, “My Personal History, Kagayaki Miyazaki, 10. Expanding to Acrylic Fiber,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.asahi-kasei.com/100th/en/pathfinder/miyazaki/10/. 53 Robert M. Uriu, Troubled Industries: Confronting Economic Change in Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 151. 54 Kōdō Seichōki o Kangaeru Kai, ed., Kōdō seichō to Nihonjin. 2 katei hen. Kazoku no seikatsu (Tokyo: Nihon Editā Sukūru Shuppanbu, 2005), 147. 55 Macnaughtan, Women Work, 9–10, 14. 56 Uriu, Troubled Industries, 156. 57 Kōdō, Kōdō seichō, 148. 58 Pierre-Yves Donzé and Rika Fujioka, “The Formation of a Technology-Based Fashion System, 1945–1990: The Sources of the Lost Competitiveness of Japanese Apparel Companies,” Enterprise & Society 22, no. 2 (2021): 449. 59 Donzé and Fujioka, “The Formation,” 451. 60 Atsugi Co. Ltd., “Rekishi, enkaku,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.atsugi.co.jp/company/history .html. 61 Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 486. 62 Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 370. 63 Shimazu Atsuko, “Arata na chōmiryō o taishū shokubunka to shite teichaku saseta kigyōka: Nidai Suzuki Saburōsuke (Ajinomoto) to Nakashima Tōichirō (Kyūpī),” in Kigyōka katsudō de tadoru Nihon no shokuhin sangyōshi: Waga kuni shokuhin sangyō no kakumeisha ni manabu, eds. Udagawa Masaru and Hosei University Research Institute for Innovation Management (Tokyo: Bunshindō, 2014), 55–63. 64 Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 61–63. 65 Shimazu Atsuko, “Seiren keiei o jissen shita suisan kōshūjo shusshin no kigyōka: Takasaki Tatsunosuke to Nakajima Tōichirō (Nihon no Kigyōka Katsudō Shiriizu 49),” Working Paper Series 116 (2011): 17–18. 66 Nikkei Dezain, ed., Ronguserā pakkēji taizen (Tokyo: Nikkei BP Sha, 2016), 90. 67 Shinsei Shuppansha Henshūbu, ed., Ronguserā shōhin pakkēji dezain (Tokyo: Shinsei Shuppansha, 2010), 36–37. 68 Nikkei, Ronguserā pakkēji, 90; Kihara Megumi and Iwatsubo Tomoyoshi, “Shōhisha hyōka kara mita mayonēzu seizō kigyō no ichizuke,” Fūdo Shisutemu Kenkyū 13, no. 3 (2007): 12–13. 69 Nikkei, Ronguserā pakkēji, 88–91. 70 Takatsuki Hiroshi, “Yōki hōsōzai to katei gomi ni kan suru kenkyū,” Kankyō Gijutsu 12, no. 7 (1983): 428. 71 Nihon Hōsō Gijutsu Kyōkai, ed., “Shōwa 46 nen hōsō shizai, hōsō kankei kikai shukka (seisan) tōkei,” JPI Journal 10, no. 3 (1972): 209. 72 Ōsuga Hiroshi, “Hōsōyō firumu no rekishi 1,” Nihon Hōsō Gakkaishi 22, no. 3 (2013): 257. 73 Ōsuga, “Hōsōyō firumu no rekishi 1,” 258–60. 74 Ōsuga Hiroshi, “Hōsōyō firumu no rekishi 2,” Nihon Hōsō Gakkaishi 22, no. 5 (2013): 366–74. 75 https://www.kureha.co.jp/about/history.html. 76 Macnaughtan, Women Work, 9–10; Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation, “Kureha Kagaku Kōgyō (kabu) ‘Kureha Kagaku gojū-nen shi (1995.04),” accessed January 2, 2023, https://shashi.shibusawa.or.jp/ details_nenpyo.php?sid=3260&query=&class=&d=all&page=2. 77 Kureha Corporation, “Kureharon Firumu,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.kureha.co.jp/business/ polymer/krehalon_film.html. 78 Yoshimi, “‘Made in Japan’,” 155. 79 Kureha Corporation, “New Kurerappu sutōrī,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.kureha.co.jp/devel opment/story/newkurewrap.html; Shīniasu Kabushiki Kaisha, “Nihon no kōrei tanshinsha setaisū 573-man 48

190

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

setai: Kazoku to setai no henbō o oū,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.seniorkatsuyou.com/column/ hiramatsu20150310/. 80 https://www.asahi-kasei.com/100th/en/pathfinder/miyazaki/08/. 81 Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, “Nihon no shokutaku sasaeru kateiyō rappu, 60-nenme no chōsen,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://newswitch.jp/p/12907. 82 Kagome Co. Ltd., “History of Kagome,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.kagome.co.jp/english/company/ir/ourbusiness/history/#:~:text=Kagome’s%20History%20of%20Creating%20Value,to%20deliver%20 them%20to%20consumers. 83 Cwiertka, Modern Japanese, 58–61. 84 Nihon Shokuhin Hōsō Kyōkai, “Dai-8-shō tomato kechappu yō chūbu yōki no kaihatsu,” accessed January 2, 2023, http://shokuhou.jp/about_syokuhou/archives/detail/1083/; NTT Comware Corporation, “Nippon rongu serā ikkō: tomato kechappu,” Comzine 43 (December 2006), accessed January 2, 2023, https://www .nttcom.co.jp/comzine/no043/long_seller/index.html; Nihon Shokuhin Hōsō Kyōkai, “Dai-7-shō tomato kechappu yō bariā botoru no kaihatsu,” accessed January 2, 2023, http://shokuhou.jp/about_syokuhou /archives/detail/1080/. 85 United Nations Environment Programme, Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability (Nairobi: UNEP, 2018), 5, accessed February 18, 2022, https://www.unep.org/resources/report/single-use-plasticsroadmap-sustainability; Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, “Japanese Packaging: From Straw to Plastic,” in Too Pretty to Throw Away: Packaging Design from Japan, eds. Ewa Machotka and Katarzyna J. Cwiertka (Kraków: Manggha Museum of Japanese and Technology, 2016), 84. 86 Hein, “Growth Versus Success,” 114, 120.

References Aftalion, Fred. A History of International Chemical Industry: From the “Early Days” to 2000. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Press, 2001. Andrady, Anthony L. and Mike A. Neal. “Applications and Societal Benefits of Plastics.” Philosophical Transactions of The Rolad Society B, no. 364 (2009): 1977–84. Asahi Kasei Corporation. “History of Asahi Kasei.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.asahi-kasei.com /company/history/. ———. “My Personal History, Kagayaki Miyazaki, 10. Expanding to Acrylic Fiber,” accessed January 2, 2023, https://www.asahi-kasei.com/100th/en/pathfinder/miyazaki/10/. Atsugi Co. Ltd. “Rekishi, enkaku.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.atsugi.co.jp/company/history.html. Avenell, Simon. Transnational Japan and The Global Environmental Movement. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. Cwiertka, Katarzyna J. “Culinary Culture and the Making of a National Cuisine.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, edited by Jennifer Robertson, 415–28. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. ———. Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. ———. “Japanese Packaging: From Straw to Plastic.” In Too Pretty to Throw Away: Packaging Design from Japan, edited by Ewa Machotka and Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, 74–107. Kraków: Manggha Museum of Japanese and Technology, 2016. Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.cwiertka.com/wp-content/uploads /2017/09/Too-Pretty-to-Throw-Away-2016-v2.pdf. Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Donzé, Pierre-Yves, and Rika Fujioka. “The Formation of a Technology-Based Fashion System, 1945–1990: The Sources of the Lost Competitiveness of Japanese Apparel Companies.” Enterprise & Society 22, no. 2 (2021): 438–74. “Freer Chemical Plan in Japan Now Urged.” New York Times, 20 April 1949, 4. Hashida, Shigekazu. “Biniru hausu saibai dojō hiryō gakuteki mondaiten.” Nihon Dojō Hiryōgaku Zasshi 36, no. 9 (1965): 274–83. Hein, Laura E. “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 99–12. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Horioka, Charles Yuji. “Consuming and Saving.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 259–92. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

191

Huddle, Norie, Michael Reich and Nahum Stiskin, eds. Island of Dreams. Environmental Crisis in Japan. New York: Autumn Press, 1975. Itasaka, Gen, ed. Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International, vol. 2, p. 371, 1983. Ivy, Marilyn. “Formations of Mass Culture.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 239–58. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982. Kagome Co., Ltd. “History of Kagome.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.kagome.co.jp/english /company/ir/ourbusiness/history/#:~:text=Kagome’s%20History%20of%20Creating%20Value,to%20 deliver%20them%20to%20consumers. Kaneko, Isao. “Sūji de miru purasuchikku sangyō no genjō.” Kōbunshi 56, no. 1 (2007): 28–33. Kihara, Megumi and Iwatsubo Tomoyoshi. Shōhisha hyōka kara mita mayonēzu seizō kigyō no ichizuke. Fūdo Shisutemu Kenkyū 13, no. 3 (2007): 12–21. Accessed February 12, 2022. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp /article/jfsr1994/13/3/13_3_12/_pdf. Koyama, Hisashi. Nihon purasuchikku kōgyō shi. Tokyo: Kōgyō Chōsakai, 1967. Kōdō Seichōki o Kangaeru Kai, ed. Kōkdō seichō to Nihonjin. 2 Katei hen. Kazoku no seikatsu. Second edition. Tokyo: Nihon Editā Sukūru Shuppanbu, 2005. Kureha Corporation. “Kureharon Firumu.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.kureha.co.jp/business /polymer/krehalon_film.html. ———. “New Kurerappu sutōrī.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.kureha.co.jp/development/story /newkurewrap.html. Kwan, Man Bun. Patriots’ Game: Yongli Chemical Industries 1917–1953. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Lynn, Leonard H. “MITI’s Successes and Failures in Controlling Japan’s Technology Imports.” Hitotsubashi Journal of Commerce and Management 29 (1994): 15–33. Macnaughtan, Helen. Women Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle: The Case of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1945–1975. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005. Meikle, Jeffrey L. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Mitsubishi Chemical Agri Dream Co., Ltd. “Corporate History.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www .mc-agri.co.jp/en/company-info/corporate-history/. Miwa, Yoshiro and J. Mark Ramseyer. “The Good Occupation.” Discussion Paper Series no. 51 (2005), John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business, Harvard Law School. Molony, Barbara. Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Mulder, Karol and Marjolijn Knot. “PVC plastic: A History of Systems Development and Entrenchment.” Technology in Society 23 (2001): 265–86. Neitzel, Laura. The Life We Longed For: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan. Portland, ME: MerwinAsia, 2016. Nihon Hōsō Gijutsu Kyōkai, ed. Shōwa 46 nen hōsō shizai, hōsō kankei kikai shukka (seisan) tōkei. JPI Journal 10, no. 3 (1972): 208–19. Nihon Shokuhin Hōsō Kyōkai. “Dai-7-shō tomato kechappu yō bariā botoru no kaihatsu.” Accessed January 2, 2023. http://shokuhou.jp/about_syokuhou/archives/detail/1080/. ———. “Dai-8-shō tomato kechappu yō chūbu yōki no kaihatsu.” Accessed January 2, 2023. http://shokuhou .jp/about_syokuhou/archives/detail/1083/. Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun. “Nihon no shokutaku sasaeru kateiyō rappu, 60-nenme no chōsen.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://newswitch.jp/p/12907. Nikkei Dezain, ed. Ronguserā pakkēji taizen, Tokyo: Nikkei BP Sha, 2016. NTT Comware Corporation. “Nippon rongu serā ikkō: tomato kechappu.” Comzine 43 (December 2006). Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.nttcom.co.jp/comzine/no043/long_seller/index.html. Osborne Industries. “The Difference Between Thermoplastic and Thermosetting Plastic.” Accessed December 31, 2022. https://www.osborneindustries.com/news/difference-between-thermoplastic-thermosetting-plastic/. Ōsuga, Hiroshi. “Hōsōyō firumu no rekishi 1.” Nihon Hōsō Gakkaishi 22, no. 3 (2013): 254–26. ———. “Hōsōyō firumu no rekishi 2.” Nihon Hōsō Gakkaishi 22, no. 5 (2013): 366–74. Partner, Simon. Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods Industry and the Making of the Japanese Consumer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

192

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Plastic Soup Foundation. “Plastic Facts and Figures.” Accessed December 31, 2022. https://www.plasticsoup foundation.org/en/plastic-facts-and-figures/. Pope, Frederick. “Report on the Japanese Chemical Industry.” Far Eastern Survey 18, no. 25 (1949): 295–29. Ready, Joseph Z. “Reparations from Japan.” Far Eastern Survey 18, no. 13 (1949): 145–51. Reference for Business. “Mitsubishi Chemical Industries Ltd.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.refer enceforbusiness.com/history2/24/MITSUBISHI-CHEMICAL-INDUSTRIES-LTD.html. Second Wiki. “Igelit.” Accessed December 31, 2022. https://second.wiki/wiki/igelit. Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation. “Kureha Kagaku Kōgyō (kabu) ‘Kureha Kagaku gojū-nen shi (1995.04).” Accessed January 2, 2023, https://shashi.shibusawa.or.jp/details_nenpyo.php?sid=3260 &query=&class=&d=all&page=2. Shimazu, Atsuko. “Seiren keiei o jissen shita suisan kōshūjo shusshin no kigyōka: Takasaki Tatsunosuke to Nakajima Tōichirō (Nihon no Kigyōka Katsudō Shiriizu 49).” Working Paper Series 116 (2011): 1–24. The Research Institute for Innovation Management, Hosei University. Accessed February 18, 2022. http:// riim.ws.hosei.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WPNo.116_Shimazu.pdf. ———. “Arata na chōmiryō o taishū shokubunka to shite teichaku saseta kigyōka: Nidai Suzuki Saburōsuke (Ajinomoto) to Nakashima Tōichirō (Kyūpī).” In Kigyōka katsudō de tadoru Nihon no shokuhin sangyōshi: Waga kuni shokuhin sangyō no kakumeisha ni manabu, edited by Udagawa Masaru and Hosei University Research Institute for Innovation Management, 43–70. Tokyo: Bunshindō, 2014. Shīniasu Kabushiki Kaisha. “Nihon no kōrei tanshinsha setaisū 573-man setai: Kazoku to setai no henbō o oū.” Accessed January 2, 2023. https://www.seniorkatsuyou.com/column/hiramatsu20150310/. Shinsei Shuppansha Henshūbu, ed. Ronguserā shōhin pakkēji dezain. Tokyo: Shinsei Shuppansha, 2010. Siniawer, Eiko Maruko. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Smith, Andrew F. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. Suzuki, Shinichi. “The Rayon Industry in Japan.” Economic Geography 11, no. 1 (1935): 105–10. Takatsuki, Hiroshi. “Yōki hōsōzai to katei gomi ni kan suru kenkyū.” Kankyō Gijutsu 12, no. 7 (1983): 425–32. Tan Ky Mineral Processing Joint Stock Company. “History of PVC and PVC Pipes. How to Make PVC Pipe.” Accessed December 31, 2022. https://www.tankymineral.com.vn/history-of-pvc-and-pvc-pipes-how-to -make-pvc-pipe-342578. “The Plastics Industry: A Comparative Study of Research and Innovation.” National Institute Economic Review 26, no. 1 (1963): 22–49. Tilton, Mark. Restrained Trade: Cartels in Japan’s Basic Materials Industries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Toray, ed. Creating a Brighter Future: Toray’s 90-Years History. Nagoya: Shuppan Bunka Sha Corporation, 2016. Travis, Anthony S. “First Steps: Synthetic Ammonia in the United States.” Substantia 5, no. 2 (2021): 55–77. Ui, Jun. Industrial Pollution in Japan. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1992. Accessed January 2, 2022. https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu35ie/uu35ie0c.htm. United Nations Environment Programme. Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability. (Nairobi: UNEP, 2018). Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.unep.org/resources/report/single-use-plastics -roadmap-sustainability. Uriu, Robert M. Troubled Industries: Confronting Economic Change in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Yamazaki, Kōya. Saibai kankyō kara mita biniru hausu no genjō to mondaiten. Nōgyō Shisetsu 2, no. 2 (1972): 40–47. Yoshimi, Shunya. “‘Made in Japan’: The Cultural Politics of ‘Home Electrification’ in Postwar Japan.” Media, Culture and Society 21 (1999): 149–71. Zeon Corporation. “History.” Accessed December 2, 2023. https://www.zeon.co.jp/en/company/history/.

Chapter 10: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era

193

Chapter 11 Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History Janet Borland The profound environmental devastation resulting from the Asia-Pacific War lasted long after Japan’s surrender in 1945. War not only denuded the landscape of wildlife, trees and other natural resources, but also disrupted entire ecosystems. In addressing the environmental casualties of war, government officials also recognized an opportunity to educate the human casualties of war: they launched an annual Bird Day and targeted schoolchildren. Within two decades, children were leading national efforts to save threatened bird species such as the crested ibis and red-crowned crane. This chapter explores Japan’s developing environmental awareness, activism and growing use of children as charismatic conservationists.

Introduction The song of the wild bird is the barometer of nature’s health. Hoshino Akira, Director, Japanese Association for the Preservation of Birds1 In late 1946, reports of an alarming environmental phenomenon sweeping across the nation began to attract widespread attention. From the Imperial Palace and Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, to Kyushu in the south and Hokkaido in the north, Japan’s famous pine trees were dying. Many considered the pine to be a symbol of Japan as iconic as the cherry tree and Mt Fuji. Aside from its natural beauty and cultural significance, the loss of the pine trees would also be detrimental to the economy. Japan’s postwar recovery depended on the health and abundance of its domestic timber supply, most importantly for the building and paper industries.2 By 1947, more than two million pine trees were estimated to have died already, or enough to build a hundred thousand houses for war sufferers in Tokyo.3 On October 15, 1946, the Nippon Times revealed that the “silent death of these grand old trees [was] being caused by noxious insects … feeding upon the tree and sapping out its life.” 4 In the absence of effective prevention measures, how could the trees be saved? Experts from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) considered stripping bark and burning trees to destroy

194

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the insects, but this risked causing irreparable damage to Japan’s famed scenic spots and budding tourism industry. Desperate to save the trees, and in the years before insecticides were widely deployed, the Forestry Section proposed a sustainable solution: birds. Journalist Murayama Tamotsu described birds as “the only hope to prevent insects killing pine trees.” Birds, however, needed help too.5 War left Japan bereft of birds. Many had been killed and eaten as a source of protein, while others perished as a result of habitat loss and deforestation.6 The profound environmental devastation resulting from the Asia-Pacific War lasted long after Japan’s surrender in 1945. War not only denuded the landscape of wildlife, trees and other natural resources, but also disrupted entire ecosystems. In addressing the environmental casualties of war, officials from the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) and Japanese government officials also recognized an opportunity to educate the human casualties of war, by teaching people to protect the forests and save the birds. Within one year of the war’s end, MAF officials teamed up with Ministry of Education officials to address these environmental issues and simultaneously inculcate Japan’s next generation with a newfound sense of environmental awareness. To save the pine trees, increase the wild bird population, and restore the environmental balance, Kajimoto Jirō announced plans to install two hundred thousand nest boxes throughout the affected area, and he planned to enlist the help of schoolchildren.7 While postwar Japan’s environmental pollution, resulting protests and eventual legislation has been well documented by historians, children and their role as charismatic conservationists has only recently begun to attract attention.8 This chapter sheds new light on environmental movements in postwar Japan by focusing on schoolchildren and their bird conservation activities. Beginning with an annual Bird Day designed to instill in children a love and understanding of birds, expanding to bird-related competitions and extracurricular activities such as bird clubs and culminating in targeted rescue campaigns, I explore how and why children emerged as key environmental activists. By the 1960s, children were inspiring national efforts to save threatened bird species such as the crested ibis (Niigata Prefecture), oriental white stork (Hyōgo Prefecture), whooper swan (Aomori Prefecture) and red-crowned crane (Hokkaido Prefecture). Just as a barometer is used as an instrument to measure atmospheric change, this study of children and their evolving bird conservation activities, I suggest, measures and reflects changes in Japan’s developing environmental awareness, activism and growing use of children as charismatic conservationists.

“Let’s be Friends with Birds!” In the years immediately following the Asia-Pacific War, Oliver L. Austin Jr., head of the Wildlife Branch of the Natural Resources Section for SCAP, played a key role advising the Japanese government and ornithologists on how to restore Japan’s bird population.9 He recommended that Japan should prohibit the sale of wild birds either as foodstuff or as cage birds; abolish hunting by nets or mist netting; shorten the hunting season and suspend hunting in spring; create reserves; and, most importantly, improve national education and “the inculcation of the spirit of protection for wild birds on the public mind.” 10 Japanese ornithologists and wildlife experts agreed that education was necessary to cultivate knowledge about birds, and even more importantly, to teach people to value, protect and love birds. Kuroda Nagamichi, President of the Ornithological Society of Japan and Chief of the Game

Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

195

Management Division of the MAF, was especially critical, suggesting that Japanese people were unkind and even malicious to birds. He traced the roots of this perceived unkindness to old customs dating from the Tokugawa period. “In my opinion,” wrote Kuroda, “most Japanese look on wild birds just as their forefathers did and see nothing wrong about catching and disposing of them as they like.” In a newspaper article titled “Protect Our Feathered Friends,” he described how Japan was once rich in wild birds, with cranes, storks, ibises and swans found in many rural districts. By the middle of the Meiji period, however, such birds had become scarce, and by the Taishō era, almost extinct. “Particularly reckless and promiscuous was the catching or slaughter of birds after the war when everything was in confusion,” Kuroda lamented. “Only a few of their kind are now to be found at all—cranes in three out of the way localities, storks in one and ibises in one remote location.” The only place left for children to see these large birds was in zoos or museums. Kuroda argued that birds were necessary for human life and he painted a bleak picture of a future without them. “All forests will be bared of their trees,” warned Kuroda, “which would die off with their leaves eaten up by the larvae.” Japan would be left without the timber it needs to build houses and the pulp to make paper. “Floods will occur more frequently,” he predicted, “and the crops will suffer disastrously from the ravages of injurious insects.” 11 Kuroda echoed Austin’s belief that Japanese people needed to be taught to love birds. “Although the Western people are well aware of the importance of protecting wild birds,” he argued, “most Japanese are ignorant of this necessity.” Not surprisingly, comparisons were often made between Japanese and American attitudes toward birds, especially children. “American people are cautioned from childhood not to do harm to birds, the love of birds is ingrained in them,” Kuroda suggested. “In Japan, on the contrary, children take malicious pleasure in tormenting small birds, throwing stones or shooting at them.” 12 In fact, since the early-20th-century nature study movement, American children had been trained to love birds—not ingrained with the love of birds—through education programs and activities such as Bird Day.13 Biologist Makino Sajirō also praised Americans for their love of birds and suggested that Japan must become more like America. When he visited the United States, he claimed that every house had a nest box, bird bath and bird feeder in their garden, and even wild ducks did not fly away when he walked past them in the fields. “The reason they are so familiar with people,” he suggested, “is because [Americans] do not throw stones at birds or try to catch them, unlike the Japanese.” In order to achieve this in Japan, Makino agreed that children must be trained to care for wild birds from the time they are young.14 On April 10, 1947, the government launched Japan’s inaugural Bird Day. The slogan was “Let’s be friends with birds!” The nationwide program included lectures, radio broadcasts and exhibitions designed to increase public interest in bird conservation and foster an awareness of birds and their importance in nature. “The killing of birds must be stopped,” declared MAF official Kajiki Jirō. “We must protect the birds as they are beneficial in eating insects infesting pine trees and farm products.” 15 The Ministry also distributed posters illustrating birds eating insects (Figure 11.1), which were designed to “inculcate on the public mind a stronger sense of love and protection for wild birds by making known their merits and usefulness.” 16 Even though it was adults who hunted birds, practiced mist netting and depleted Japan’s birdlife in recent years, many of the Bird Day activities targeted children. In Tokyo, a pageant was held at the Hibiya Park Public Hall with moving pictures and songs and dances by children. Oliver Austin gave a speech to an audience including children, which opened 196

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

with the words, “Children can do a great deal to Figure 11.1 “Let’s protect wild birds!” Bird Week help the birds in Japan. And the birds need your poster issued by the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture, and Ministry of Education. help.” 17 By teaching children about birds and why it was necessary to protect them, experts hoped to eliminate bad behavior toward birds and cultivate feelings of kindness and humanity. Various media reinforced the theme of friendship with birds using visually provocative images and film. One example is the 1949 film Cranes and Children (Tsuru to kodomotachi) directed by noted wild bird photographer Shimomura Kenji. Filmed on location in Arasaki, Kagoshima, the wintering grounds of hooded cranes and white-naped cranes, the story begins with a group of troublemaking boys who take pleasure in tormenting birds, throwing stones at chickens and scaring wild cranes in the fields of Kyushu. When two children—a boy and a girl—rescue an injured crane from the field, they not only succeed in nurturing the crane back to health, but also teaching their classmates Source: Private collection, n.d. (used with about the importance of being kind to birds. The permission). film concludes with joyful scenes of the children releasing the recovered crane back into the wild.18 Children were also taught the importance of nurturing birds by providing a safe environment Figure 11.2 Children from Nagata Primary for them. Building nest boxes became one of the School install nest boxes in trees outside the most popular Bird Day activities conducted by National Diet during Bird Week. schoolchildren. Newspapers and magazines featured photographs of children building the boxes in classrooms or installing them in trees (Figure 11.2).19 This schooltime practice, in fact, predated the war. A 1933 book edited by the MAF, and published by the Ornithological Society of Japan, contains two photographs of children crafting wooden bird houses at primary schools in Mie and Wakayama prefectures.20 The thirty-fourpage book provided detailed instructions on how to build nest boxes for different birds. As Ministry official Kajimoto Jirō pointed out in 1946, however, “No bird boxes were placed in forests during the war and … no attention was paid for the ruthless killing of wild game.” 21 Ministry of Education official Koba Kazuo considered nest boxes to be one of the most efSource: Yachō, vol. 22, no. 4, July–August 1957 fective means to cultivate friendship between (used with permission). Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

197

children and birds. To coincide with Bird Day 1949, Koba encouraged young readers of a science magazine to build a nest box and provide a home for small birds. The article included instructions and a diagram illustrating how simple it was to build a nest box using just a thin piece of board and a bamboo pole.22 Koba also sought to educate children about birds and their usefulness. According to Koba, few people in Japan understood birds. Sparrows, he suggested, were a bird that many people considered to be harmful, but in fact they were beneficial to daily life because they caught insects to feed their chicks. As evidence he cited an experiment conducted by primary school girls in Tochigi which found that sparrows caught 658 insects in a twelve-hour period. Koba also pointed out that birds were useful to farmers because they caught harmful insects that destroyed trees and grains and vegetable crops. Moreover, he wrote, birds brought pleasure. People could enjoy the beautiful sight and sound of birds living freely in nature. Echoing the words of Oliver Austin who espoused the features of a democratic society whereby wild birds are the property of everybody, Koba reminded young readers, “The birds in the wild do not belong to me alone, but to all of us.” 23 But, Koba warned, the number of wild birds in Japan has been greatly reduced due to the killing and stockpiling of birds. He estimated that about 2.5 million migratory thrushes were caught in nets every year and used for food. “No other civilization in the world seems to do such a terrible thing,” he exclaimed. In the United States, Koba pointed out that Bird Day was a long-established tradition and 8.5 million boys and girls had joined the Junior Audubon Club to help protect birds and wildlife. “Please study birds,” he urged Japanese children, “and take good care of them.” 24 While efforts to teach Japanese children to love and care for birds in the early postwar years initially drew inspiration from the United States and was directed by the national government, in the years ahead bird conservation activities evolved and diversified in response to local conditions and challenges. Growing participation from children and teachers at the grassroots level was motivated by genuine curiosity and a desire to learn about birds and protect the natural environment.

Nationwide Bird Week activities, competitions and clubs Within three years of being launched, Japan’s annual Bird Day had become a week-long celebration held from 10–16 May known as Bird Week (Aichō shūkan). It continues to this day. In Tokyo, the Metropolitan Government sponsored bird-themed events ranging from bird house and nest box exhibitions to motion pictures.25 In addition to venues such as the Ueno Zoo and Hibiya Park, the newly opened “Paradise of the Birds” enclosure at the Toshima-en Amusement Park became a popular site for bird sketching and bird house making activities. Newspapers published photographs of smiling children releasing small birds from handheld wicker cages.26 In 1955, the Wild Bird Club Society of Japan (Yachō no kai) sponsored activities, and an unnamed camera company provided two hundred kindergarten children with “baby” film cameras to photograph the release of five hundred small birds including canaries, wagtails and white-eyes at Toshima-en.27 Media coverage reveals that children quickly went from being portrayed as tormenters of birds, to being celebrated as their friends and saviors. By 1957, the Tōkyō asahi shinbun reported that “Little bird fever was sweeping across the city as schoolchildren seek nature.” 28 According to the newspaper, even though city children could rarely even see a sparrow in Tokyo, they were now crazy about keeping small birds as pets. Children from Tōka Primary

198

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

School in Nihonbashi, for example, bred all kinds Figure 11.3 Award-winning poster by middle of birds including society finches (jūshimatsu), ca- school student Osakabe Chizuko, 1952. naries, Java sparrows (junchō) and tree sparrows. In the neighboring streets of Ningyō-chō it was estimated that as many as 150 children hung bird cages in their homes. The school’s “bird breeding group” organized presentations on how to breed small birds, and the topic of birds often appeared in children’s essays. The newspaper quoted fourthgrade student Kodaira Hitomi who wrote: “I woke to the song of a Japanese bush warbler (uguisu). As I inhaled, it felt like the song of the bird also flowed through my body.” In addition to Bird Week activities at bird parks and zoos in cities, government officials organized bird-themed competitions designed to encourage older children nationwide to observe birds in their natural environment. In September 1951, the Forestry Agency launched a Bird Week poster competition for middle school students and received over two thousand entries. The Source: Private collection (1952) (used with names of seven winners were announced in the permission). Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s magazine Publicity Bulletin (Kōhō dayori.) First place was awarded to Osakabe Chizuko from Bunka Girls’ Middle School in Tokyo. Her poster of a bird feeding a bug to a chick inside a nest box was printed and distributed nationwide to celebrate Bird Week (Figure 11.3).29 High school students joined the Bird Week poster competition from 1952, and that year a total of 2,908 entries were received from 413 schools.30 Bird Week competitions were also held for nest boxes. Tokyo’s National Nature Education Park (Kokuritsu shizen kyōikuen) in Shiba, for example, held an outdoor exhibition of nest boxes made by primary and middle school children for the annual bird house competition. In 1954, the Nippon Times featured a photograph on the front page of smiling girls surrounded by some of the 260 nest boxes of all different shapes and sizes selected as finalists.31 Recognizing the educational value of competitions and the positive publicity they attracted, the Ministry of Education also launched a birdwatching competition in conjunction with the MAF. Students submitted entries in the form of a diary based on observing birds in their handcrafted nest boxes. According to ornithologist Ishizawa Jizō, students not only made increasingly new and innovative nest box designs, he was equally impressed with their detailed records of the breeding habits of birds using the nest boxes and many other previously unknown facts about birds for the first time.32 In his 1953 children’s book, Study of Wild Birds (Yachō no kenkyū), the noted bird and insect researcher from the Ministry of Agriculture featured excerpts from children’s award-winning diaries. Third grade boy Naitō Mutsumi from Kyōwa Middle School in Yamanashi Prefecture won the Minister of Education Prize for his diary titled “Observations of a varied tit (yamagara) in its nest box.” Naitō’s diary began on March 28:

Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

199

In early March, our teacher Mr. Watanabe taught us how to make nest boxes and told us to hang them on a tree near our house. I finished making my birdhouse today, so I hung it on a conifer tree (kaya no ki) in the mountains behind my house. The material I used was a 0.6mm-thick cedar board, and I made it in the shape of a box with a roof for a small bird. The conifer tree is surrounded by a bamboo grove, and there are large zelkova trees and Chinese hackberry trees nearby. The height of the nest box was about four meters, and it faced northeast. After daily visits to check inside, Naitō finally found evidence that a bird had entered the nest box when he discovered moss covering the bottom and a ball of rabbit fur in the center. The next day on April 18 he reported: “I wondered how it would be today, so I went in the morning and found that an egg had been laid. I felt happy because now I can start making observations of the egg.” He returned two more times that day: once after school to mark the egg with yellow, and again at night to check if the parents were perching inside. “I shone a torch inside,” he wrote, “but the parents were not there.” Naitō visited the nest box multiple times each day over a two-month period, sometimes as early as five o’clock in the morning and even on days when it rained. He described how the parent bird used its tail feathers to cover the eggs. One day when he peered inside the box, the bird stretched its neck, bobbed its head from left to right, and made loud chirping sounds—jū jū and guju guju. Naitō concluded that this must be how brooding birds try to frighten away humans and other animals. On a sunny May morning, thirteen days after the first egg had been laid, Naitō discovered that three eggs had hatched. He wondered what had happened to the empty egg shells, whether the parent bird had eaten the shell or taken it away. “The newly hatched chicks had tiny hairs on their head and back and wings,” he wrote, “but they were still wet and clumped together.” Within a week, the needle-like hairs had broken off and feathers had begun to grow. Naitō wanted to find out what the parents fed the chicks. “I looked around for a while and found the parent bird perched on a zelkova tree nearby,” he wrote on May 20 in an entry that surely pleased Ministry officials reading his diary. “It was holding a large green insect in its mouth.” Two days later the nest was empty.33 Although many bird conservation activities were concentrated in Bird Week during the 1950s, by the end of the decade more children were engaged in year-long extracurricular conservation activities thanks to the proliferation of bird clubs. In 1955 the Tōkyō asahi shinbun reported that two schools in Tokyo had established bird clubs inspired by the Junior Audubon Clubs of America, and with the support of the Japanese Society for the Preservation of Birds and the Ministry of Education’s Institute for Nature Study. Alongside a photograph of two American children filling a birdbath, the newspaper claimed that Japan was catching up to the United States and there were hopes to establish more clubs nationwide.34 In fact, the two schools in Tokyo were not the first bird clubs in Japan. Four years earlier, for example, Noda Middle School in Kagoshima established a crane club in 1951, and Gōiwa Middle School in Fukuoka organized a bird protection club in 1952.35 Within a decade of the Forestry Section’s campaign to save pine trees from insects by installing nest boxes, both the government’s response to insect management and the emphasis of children’s bird conservation activities began to shift focus. While schoolchildren continued building nest boxes in the belief that they were helping to promote bird life and eradicate harmful insects, in reality the government had begun using more potent methods to protect crops and pine trees from insect damage. A page published in the Tōkyō asahi shinbun on 200

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

May 7, 1955 encapsulated this. To promote the forthcoming Bird Week the newspaper featured a special column for children titled “Insect-eating birds.” Once again, the contents reminded young readers that birds were important because they ate “bad insects” that killed trees and destroyed forests. A few columns below this article, three big, bold capital letters catch the eye: DDT. This advertisement by manufacturer Ajinomoto described DDT as a “powerful insecticide” (kyōroku sacchūzai) for cleaning.36 DDT was first introduced to Japan in 1945 by US Occupation forces to control a typhus epidemic in Osaka.37 Soon after domestic production began in February 1946, Japanese entomologists began spraying DDT on principal crops such as rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, hemp and fruit trees to kill insects.38 By 1950, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government was spraying DDT and BHC on deciduous trees including cherry, willow, dogwood and plum trees in parks, boulevards and private gardens.39 Chemicals were also sprayed on pine trees throughout Japan. Over three days in August 1954, for example, a specially equipped US Airforce C-46 Commando sprayed nearly 12,000 acres of pine trees in Hokkaido, using unnamed “insect killing chemicals” supplied by the Japanese government.40 In Tokyo, the battle to protect pine trees in the outer gardens of the Imperial Palace continued throughout the 1960s with the use of BHC.41 It was not until May 1971, however, that the Japanese government prohibited the sale of DDT and restricted BHC.42 Meanwhile, Japanese ornithologists and environmental conservationists had begun to express concern about the dangers posed by insecticides to humans and animals, as well as their unknown aftereffects. At the 12th International Council for Bird Preservation Congress held in Tokyo in 1960, delegates resolved to oppose the use of insecticides without thorough research into their biological effects on the environment. They had good reason to be concerned. According to Yamashina Yoshimaro, a number of birds on the International Union for Conservation of Nature List of Birds in Danger of Extinction were in Japan.43 Newspaper articles about the dwindling bird numbers and threats to their habitat cited causes ranging from hunters and airport construction, to pollution, mercury poisoning, heavy snow and food shortages.44 By the late 1950s, media reports also reveal that schoolchildren’s bird conservation activities had progressed well beyond saving pine trees to saving birds themselves.

Children lead campaigns to save endangered birds Bitter cold temperatures and heavy snow in the winter of 1956 resulted in poor crops and food shortages throughout Hokkaido. Newspapers reported that the unprecedented weather not only affected local farmers and residents, but also Kushiro’s “world famous and rare” redcrowned cranes. When two boys from Shiba High School in Tokyo learned that the cranes would likely die if they did not get food, they decided to organize a fundraising campaign. The students were also inspired by a newspaper article about the activities of local schoolchildren in the town of Akan who, feeling sorry for the hungry cranes, had begun feeding them corn three years earlier. The boys collected 1,321 yen from their classmates, which they gave to the Tōkyō asahi shinbun headquarters who sent the money to Hokkaido.45 In the absence of sufficient government funding and support, media praised the children as role models. This was not the first time that children helping birds on the brink of extinction made headlines, nor was it the last.

Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

201

During Bird Week 1959, the Forestry Agency announced that the government would begin collecting vital statistics on wild birds in Japan. Aimed at preserving wildlife, the decision was prompted by decreasing numbers due to what the government attributed to “an increase in hunters and the construction of huge power dams in mountainous sections.” 46 Among Japan’s most threatened birds were the crested ibis (toki) found on Sado Island in Niigata and the oriental white stork (kōnotori) found in Hyōgo. Numbers had reportedly dwindled to “only a dozen or so.” By the early 1960s, the plight of these endangered birds and their fate at the hands of hunters, land developers, farmers or other adults, featured regularly in newspaper articles and television documentaries, often starkly juxtaposed with honorable stories about the conservation activities of schoolchildren.47 In 1961, The Japan Times reported a “deplorable” incident that brought the crested ibis one step closer to extinction: an unidentified hunter had shot down a bird in Niigata. Four days later another ibis was found dead due to starvation. The newspaper described the deaths as “another instance to show what human civilization does to harm feathered creatures by felling trees, drying up marshes and sprinkling poisonous chemicals such as insecticides and fertilizers.” A “hurried recount” revealed that only eight birds remained and experts warned that urgent measures were needed “not only from the local governments but from the entire Japanese nation.” The story concluded with a heartwarming account of schoolchildren from a primary school in Tokyo’s western suburbs who had already taken quick action to rescue the ibis by saving “their own spending money” and donating a sum of 5,660 yen to the Japan Bird Protection League.48 But conservation efforts were too little too late. Designated a protected species in 1952, wild crested ibis were extinct by 1981 and only two remained in captivity. When the 21-year-old male bird died in 1995 and left behind a 28-year-old female no longer able to reproduce, the noted conservationist and Wild Watch columnist Mark Brazil declared, “In biological terms, the toki (Nipponia nippon to the ornithologist), is now extinct in Nippon.” 49 According to Kodansha’s Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, the crested ibis “has become a symbol of the destruction of Japan’s natural environment.” 50 The oriental white stork suffered a similar fate as the crested ibis. As media reports on the bird’s imminent risk of extinction proliferated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so too did stories about children and their efforts to save the stork. In response to “a raging blizzard” that buried the small hamlet of Yuruji in thick snow in 1963, The Japan Times reported that schoolchildren volunteered to send cases of loaches, described as “perhaps the best gift to the hungry storks.” 51 The following year, a 1964 television documentary featured a group of primary school children who established a “Kōnotori Club.” According to the synopsis, the film introduced viewers to children’s bird-preservation activities such as a winter-feeding program, as well as glimpses of the big bird themselves.52 Following the death of two storks from agrochemical poisoning in 1966, numbers decreased to around ten birds and authorities agreed that the best way to preserve the rare bird and protect it from deadly chemicals was to put them into captivity.53 Three years later the last remaining native male stork died in captivity in Kobe.54 Unlike the ill-fated crested ibis and oriental white stork, two other endangered bird species which were closely monitored by Japanese schoolchildren recovered from their threatened status. In 1956, children from Asadokoro Primary School in Aomori began observing and recording the arrival and departure dates of migrating whooper swans (Cygnus cygnus).55 They continued the annual swan survey until 2010 when the school closed. In addition to counting the number of birds and differentiating between adults and juveniles, children also 202

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

began a full-scale feeding program in 1960 following the death of more than fifty birds from starvation one winter. In 1962, a television documentary featured children’s endeavors to save the birds: it focused not on their work to feed the swans, but on children’s daily patrols around the lake to protect swans from hunters.56 Part of the lake area was eventually designated a no-hunting zone as a result of the children’s movement. On a national level, reports of widespread illegal swan hunting in northern Japan led to revisions of the Hunting Law in 1964 and the government also established forty new sanctuaries designed to give birds and animals greater protection.57 By 1973, the number of government-designated national bird sanctuaries reached close to five hundred.58 The most successful bird conservation campaign led by children in postwar Japan is undoubtedly the campaign to save the red-crowned crane. When postwar reports on Hokkaido’s non-migratory crane population first appeared in 1946, there were only about thirty birds left and experts feared their “complete extermination.” 59 Dire newspaper headlines reappeared in 1953 suggesting that the “sacred cranes may be dying out” due to food shortages.60 As their numbers fluctuated and the threat of extinction loomed large, the plight of cranes attracted extensive media coverage. Counting cranes became an important activity to determine whether or not the population was increasing. Volunteers of all ages participated in the annual survey, but typically it was schoolchildren who accompanied cranes in the headlines. In 1959, for example, the Tōkyō asahi shinbun reported that a total of eight thousand students from 76 schools in the Kushiro region helped count cranes.61 Not surprisingly, these praiseworthy activities of children helping to save birds once again juxtaposed the cruel and careless actions of hunters. When locals found a crane shot dead in November 1961, the newspaper headline reported that the death of this bird “trampled on the hearts of children.” 62 The loss was magnified by the fact that the incident occurred just weeks before primary and middle school children conducted the annual survey. Although numbers had increased to 182 birds, the endangered crane population remained vulnerable. In 1964, when heavy snowfall and food shortages again threatened the crane population children fronted the media. A documentary broadcast on Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) featuring the activities of the Akan Middle School Crane Club captivated the nation and compelled people to send donations of food and money to help the endangered bird.63 People were likely motivated not only by images of the majestic cranes in snow covered fields, but also the emotional confessions of local children who fed the cranes and felt sorry for the wintering birds because they were hungry. Akan Middle School—one of a handful of schools located in the midst of the red-crowned crane’s wintering grounds and within twenty kilometers of the summer breeding grounds in the Kushiro Wetland—played a key role in helping to save the crane from the brink of extinction. The Akan Middle School Crane Club, established in 1957, was first recognized by the Ministry of Education in 1958 when it was awarded a prize for its “Crane Diary.” In the early phase, the Crane Club focused on three important activities designed to learn about, protect, and keep the endangered crane alive: feeding, counting, and observing cranes. By the mid-1960s, the Crane Club began to cultivate food for cranes in order to reduce the school’s reliance on external sources. They built a fish pond and stocked it with loaches, and also tilled a plot of land to grow corn. In December 1964, the Akan Middle School Crane Club published an 82-page booklet titled The Japanese Crane (Nihon no tsuru).64 It was designed to serve two purposes. First, children wanted to send it as a gift to thank people for their donations following the NHK Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

203

television program. Second, they wanted to educate people and promote awareness about cranes. This collection of essays, photographs, sketches and maps, describes the life cycle and habitat of cranes, as well as children’s evocative firsthand observations. It is one of the most comprehensive surveys of the red-crowned crane published in the postwar period and written especially for a popular audience. In the space of less than two decades, children went from being the target of campaigns designed to teach kindness to birds, to authoring a book and educating the nation themselves. Akan Middle School’s impressive crane conservation activities and accomplishments received the ultimate accolade in 1970 when they were awarded the Fourth Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for praiseworthy achievements dedicated to promoting Japanese culture.65

Conclusion Although largely overlooked in environmental history, this case study suggests that Japanese children played an important role in postwar conservation as the nation developed a greater awareness of the need to protect birds and their habitat. Children represent the future. In 1949, when Kuroda Nagamichi described a future without trees as one where Japan would suffer from frequent floods and be ravaged by injurious insects, he placed great emphasis on teaching children to love and care for birds so as to avoid this dire scenario. By the 1960s Japanese children were the ones reminding adults about the consequences of a future without birds and birdsong. Media attention also helped their cause, especially against the backdrop of Japan’s rapid economic growth and resulting urban pollution. When children fronted the television cameras to tell the nation how sorry they felt for the starving cranes, or patrolled a lake to protect swans from unscrupulous hunters, or sent their pocket money to save the doomed ibis, they not only cast a shadow on failed government conservation measures, they inspired other adults to act. They succeeded as charismatic conservationists, I suggest, not because they were loud or disruptive or confrontational, but because they embodied hope and their messages stirred emotion. Environmental activism has often been associated with radical groups staging antigovernment or anti-corporation fights, typically led by adults and characterized by anger, violence and disobedience. If invited to describe examples of children or youth and environmental activism, most people would likely mention Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and the School Strike for Climate movement she led from 2018. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine activists who are not protesting or making headlines, especially when they are children skipping school. Perhaps, however, environmental activists today can also find inspiration in the activities of children who have worked consistently with teachers, local stakeholders and even governments and corporations, to achieve positive environmental outcomes.

204

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Notes 1

Hoshino Akira, “Karuizawa sparkles with nature and wildlife,” The Japan Times, 26 July 1985, 6. “Save the trees!” Nippon Times, 24 October 1946, 4. 3 “Bird day program revealed in Tokyo,” Nippon Times, 9 April 1947, 3. 4 “Nation’s pine trees are gradually dying,” Nippon Times, 15 October 1946, 3. 5 Maruyama Tamotsu, “Japan’s pine trees are gradually dying,” Nippon Times, 22 November 1946, 3. 6 William M. Tsutsui, “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan,” Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 301–2; Christopher Aldous, “A tale of Two Occupations: Hunting Wildlife in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 22, no. 2 (2015): 127–28. 7 Maruyama Tamotsu, “Japan’s pine trees are gradually dying.” 8 See for example, Timothy S. George, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001); Brett L. Walker, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011); Simon Avenell, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017); Margaret A. McKean, Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981); Ian Jared Miller, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Brett Walker, eds., Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013); Janet Borland, “Saving Red-Crowned Cranes: Children as Charismatic Conservationists in 1960s Japan,” Environmental History 27, no. 1 (2022): 30–57. 9 On the work of Austin during the Allied Occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952, see Annika A. Culver, Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), especially chapter 7. 10 Kuroda Nagamichi, “Protect our feathered friends,” Nippon Times, 10 April 1949, 4. 11 Kuroda, “Protect our feathered friends,” 4. 12 Kuroda, “Protect our feathered friends,” 4. 13 Kevin C. Armitage, “Bird Day for Kids: Progressive Conservation in Theory and Practice,” Environmental History 12, no. 3 (2007): 531–32. On prewar “nature study” (shizen gakushū) at a private school in Tokyo, see Iinuma Keiichi, “Seijō shōgakkō no shizen to asobika no rekishiteki igi ni kansuru kenkyū,” Kankyō kyōiku 29, no. 3 (2020): 12–20. 14 Ishizawa Jichō, Yachō no kenkyū (Tokyo: Kaneko Shobō, 1953), 253. 15 “Nation to observe bird day April 10,” Nippon Times, 1 March 1947, 3. 16 Kuroda, “Protect our feathered friends,” 4. 17 Quoted in Annika A. Culver, Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), 190. 18 “Tsuru to kodomotachi,” film directed by Shimomura Kenji, Tōhō kyōiku eiga, 1949. 41 minutes. “Shōwa kodomo kinema,” vol. 3 DVD (Tokyo: Kē shī wākusu, 2013). 19 In 1957, children from Tokyo’s Nagata Primary School installed nest boxes in trees surrounding the Diet Building. Photographs were featured in the magazine Yachō (July–August 1957, vol. 22, no. 4) and The Japan Times (11 May 1957, 3). 20 Nōrinshō chinsankyoku (ed.), Yachō subako no kakekata zukai (Tokyo: Nihonchō gakkai, 1933). 21 Maruyama, “Japan’s pine trees are gradually dying.” 22 Koba Kazuo, “Bādo dei ni chinande,” Chūgakkō no kagaku, no. 4 (1949): 2–3. 23 Quoted in Culver, Japan’s Empire of Birds, 190. 24 Koba, “Bādo dei ni chinande,” 2–3. 25 “‘Bird Week’ planned,” Nippon Times, 5 May 1951, 7. 26 “Bird week opens,” Nippon Times, 11 May 1953, 2; “Children observe bird week,” Nippon Times, 14 May 1956, 3. 27 “Aichō kamera taikai,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 8 May 1955, evening, 3. 28 “Toshin ni hirogaru kotori netsu,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 23 November 1957, 10. 29 “Bādo uiiku no posutā zuan nyūsensha kimaru,” Kōhō dayori no. 6 (1952): 4–5. 30 “Bādo uiiku yō posutā zuan nyūsensha kimaru,” Kōhō dayori no. 6 (1953): 17. 31 “Bird Week,” Nippon Times, 11 May 1954, 1; “Yachō kansatsu nado,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 30 April 1956, 8. 32 Ishizawa, Yachō no kenkyū, 255–256. 33 Ishizawa, Yachō no kenkyū, 257–262. 34 “Nihon ni mo yachō aigo kurabu,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 20 November 1955, evening, 3. 2

Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

205

35

Akan Chūgakkō Tsuru Kurabu, ed. Nihon no tsuru (Akan: Hokkaidō Akan chōritsu Akan chūgakkō, 1964), 46. Gōiwa chūgakkō aichōkai, “Waga kō no aichō kyōiku,” Japanese Journal of Ornithology 13, no. 64 (1954): 78–89. Gōiwa won a national prize for their conservation activities in 1957. See “Hyōshō sareru aichō no gakuen,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 22 April 1957, 7. 36 “Konchū taberu tori,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 7 May 1955, evening, 2. 37 On the use of DDT in response to the typhus epidemic, see Christopher Aldous, “Typhus in Occupied Japan (1945–1946): An Epidemiological Study,” Japanese Studies 26, no. 3 (2006): 317–33. 38 “Japan manufacturing its own DDT powder,” Nippon Times, 6 March 1946, 3; “Facts and figures,” Nippon Times, 5 February 1948, 4. 39 “Japan day by day,” Nippon Times, 18 May 1950, 4. 40 “Japan thanks USAF for spraying trees,” Nippon Times, 29 October 1954, 3. 41 Hani Gyo, “Pine trees in palace outer gardens sprayed,” The Japan Times, 21 July 1963, 3; “New insecticide developed to fight pine-bark beetles,” The Japan Times, 24 February 1964, 4. 42 Walker, Toxic Archipelago, 66. 43 Yamashina Yoshimaro, “Dai jūnikai kokusai chōrui hogo kaigi (I.C.B.P) Tokyo ni hirakareru,” Yamashina chō kenpo vol. 2, no. 15 (1960): 67–70. 44 “Tanchōzuru ka hikōjō ka, Kushiro hikōjō bakuon de idō no osore,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 5 December 1953, 7; “Protection of birds,” The Japan Times, 19 February 1961, 8; “Esa fusoku no tsuru ni kanpa,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 1 February 1965, evening, 6; “Bird’s death seen caused by chemicals,” The Japan Times, 4 August 1971, 3. 45 “Hokkaidō no tsuru ni mo esa o, Tōkyō Shiba kōkōsei ga ai no te,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 24 December 1956, 3. 46 “Gov’t will collect wild bird data,” The Japan Times, 11 May 1959, 3. 47 On human-wildlife relationships in contemporary Japan, especially the attitudes of farmers, hunters, conservationists and other stakeholders toward the problem of wildlife pestilence, see John Knight, Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006). 48 “Protection of birds,” The Japan Times, 19 February 1961, 8. 49 Mark Brazil, “The sad passing of Midori: Protection plan failed the crested ibis,” The Japan Times, 24 August 1995, 16. 50 Kodansha, Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 1574, cited in Brazil. 51 “Hyogo hamlet aids birds,” The Japan Times, 31 December 1963, 4. 52 “Today’s TV Choice,” The Japan Times, 21 November 1964, 5. 53 “Chemicals kill 2 Japan storks,” The Japan Times, 17 March 1966, 2. 54 “Last native male stork dies in Kobe,” The Japan Times, 27 March 1969, 3. 55 Ogata Masaki, Takeshi Mitsuya, and Yoshiyuki Tanaka, “Data on swan arrival, departure, and population size on the Asadokoro tidal flat, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, from 1956 to 2010,” Data in Brief 35 (2021): 106825. 56 “Today’s TV Choice,” The Japan Times, 29 March 1962, 4. 57 “Bird Week,” The Japan Times, 11 May 1964, 12. 58 “Gov’t to designate 30 new national bird sanctuaries,” The Japan Times, 24 October 1973, 2. 59 “To protect cranes,” Nippon Times, 6 August 1946, 3. 60 “Akan sacred cranes may be dying out,” Nippon Times, 28 January 1953, 3. 61 “Shōgakusei hassennin o dōin, Hokkaidō de tanchōzuru shirabe,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 9 December 1959, 10. 62 “Tanchōzuru utaru, Kushiro jidō no kokoro fuminijiri,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 25 November 1961, 14. 63 Akan chūgakkō, “Tanchōzuru ni tsuite: Bādo uiiku ni yosete,” Hoppō ringyō 22, no. 5 (1970): 136. 64 Akan Chūgakkō Tsuru Kurabu, ed. Nihon no tsuru. 65 For details on the Akan Middle School Crane Club and their conservation activities, see Borland, “Saving Red-Crowned Cranes.”

206

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

References Akan Chūgakkō. “Tanchōzuru ni tsuite: Bādo uiiku ni yosete.” Hoppō ringyō 22, no. 5 (1970): 135–37. Akan Chūgakkō Tsuru Kurabu, ed. Nihon no tsuru. Akan: Hokkaidō Akan Chōritsu Akan Chūgakkō, 1964. Aldous, Christopher. “Typhus in Occupied Japan (1945–1946): An Epidemiological Study.” Japanese Studies 26, no. 3 (2006): 317–33. ———. “A tale of Two Occupations: Hunting Wildlife in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952.” Journal of AmericanEast Asian Relations 22, no. 2 (2015): 120–46. Armitage, Kevin C. “Bird Day for Kids: Progressive Conservation in Theory and Practice.” Environmental History 12, no. 3 (2007): 528–51. Avenell, Simon. Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. “Bādo uiiku no posutā zuan nyūsensha kimaru.” Kōhō dayori no. 6 (1952): 4–5. “Bādo uiiku yō posutā zuan nyūsensha kimaru.” Kōhō dayori no. 6 (1953): 17. Borland, Janet. “Saving Red-Crowned Cranes: Children as Charismatic Conservationists in 1960s Japan.” Environmental History 27, no. 1 (2022): 30–57. Culver, Annika A. Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. George, Timothy S. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. Hani, Gyo. “Pine trees in palace outer gardens sprayed.” The Japan Times, July 21, 1963, 3. Hoshino, Akira. “Karuizawa sparkles with nature and wildlife.” The Japan Times, July 26, 1985, 6. Iinuma, Keiichi. “Seijō shōgakkō no shizen to asobika no rekishiteki igi ni kansuru kenkyū.” Kankyō kyōiku 29, no. 3 (2020): 12–20. Ishizawa, Jichō. Yachō no kenkyū. Tokyo: Kaneko Shobō, 1953. Japan Times. The. “Bird Week.” 11 May 1964, 12. ———. “Bird’s death seen caused by chemicals.” 4 August 1971, 3. ———. “Chemicals kill 2 Japan storks.” 17 March 1966, 2. ———. “Gov’t to designate 30 new national bird sanctuaries.” 24 October 1973, 2. ———. “Gov’t will collect wild bird data.” 11 May 1959, 3. ———. “Hyogo hamlet aids birds.” 31 December 1963, 4. ———. “Last native male stork dies in Kobe.” 27 March 1969, 3. ———. “New insecticide developed to fight pine-bark beetles.” 24 February 1964, 4. ———. “Protection of birds.” 19 February 1961, 8. ———. “Today’s TV Choice.” 21 November 1964, 5. ———. “Today’s TV Choice.” 29 March 1962, 4. Knight, John. Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006. Koba, Kazuo. “Bādo dei ni chinande.” Chūgakkō no kagaku, no. 4 (1949): 2–3. Kuroda, Nagamichi. “Protect our feathered friends.” Nippon Times, April 10, 1949, 4. Maruyama, Tamotsu. “Japan’s pine trees are gradually dying.” Nippon Times, November 22, 1946, 3. McKean, Margaret A. Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981. Miller, Ian Jared, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Brett Walker, eds. Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013. Nippon Times. “Akan sacred cranes may be dying out.” 28 January 1953, 3. ———. “Bird day program revealed in Tokyo.” 9 April 1947, 3. ———. “Bird Week.” 11 May 1954, 1. ———. “Bird week opens.” 11 May 1953, 2. ———. “‘Bird Week’ planned.” 5 May 1951, 7. ———. “Children observe bird week.” 14 May 1956, 3. ———. “Facts and figures.” 5 February 1948, 4. ———. “Japan day by day.” 18 May 1950, 4. ———. “Japan manufacturing its own DDT powder.” 6 March 1946, 3. ———. “Japan thanks USAF for spraying trees.” 29 October 1954, 3.

Chapter 11: Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History

207

———. “Nation’s pine trees are gradually dying.” 15 October 1946, 3. ———. “Nation to observe bird day April 10.” 1 March 1947, 3. ———. “Save the trees!” 24 October 1946, 4. ———. “To protect cranes.” 6 August 1946, 3. Nōrinshō Chinsankyoku, ed. Yachō subako no kakekata zukai. Tokyo: Nihonchō Gakkai, 1933. Ogata, Masaki, Takeshi Mitsuya, and Yoshiyuki Tanaka. 2021. “Data on swan arrival, departure, and population size on the Asadokoro tidal flat, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, from 1956 to 2010.” Data in Brief 35: 106825. Shimomura, Kenji. “Tsuru to kodomotachi.” In Shōwa kodomo kinema, 2013. vol. 3 DVD. Tokyo: Kē shī Wākusu, 1949. Tōkyō asahi shinbun. “Aichō kamera taikai.” 8 May 1955, evening, 3. ———. “Esa fusoku no tsuru ni kanpa.” 1 February 1965, evening, 6. ———. “Hokkaidō no tsuru ni mo esa o, Tōkyō Shiba kōkōsei ga ai no te.” 24 December 1956, 3. ———. “Hyōshō sareru aichō no gakuen.” 22 April 1957, 7. ———. “Konchū taberu tori.” 7 May 1955, evening, 2. ———. “Nihon ni mo yachō aigo kurabu.” 20 November 1955, evening, 3. ———. “Shōgakusei hassennin o dōin, Hokkaidō de tanchōzuru shirabe.” 9 December 1959, 10. ———. “Tanchōzuru ka hikōjō ka, Kushiro hikōjō bakuon de idō no osore.” 5 December 1953, 7. ———. “Tanchōzuru utaru, Kushiro jidō no kokoro fuminijiri.” 25 November 1961, 14. ———. “Toshin ni hirogaru kotori netsu.” 23 November 1957, 10. ———. “Yachō kansatsu nado.” 30 April 1956, 8. Tsutsui, William M. “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan.” Environmental History 8, no. 2 (2003): 294–311. Walker, Brett L. Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2011. Yamashina, Yoshimaro. “Dai jūnikai kokusai chōrui hogo kaigi (I.C.B.P) Tokyo ni hirakareru.” Yamashina chō kenpo 2, no. 15 (1960): 67–70.

208

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 12 Japan’s Got Talent: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture Seong Un Kim Japanese TV programs have been dominated by tarento, multi-talented entertainers who can sing, act, talk, host or appear in commercials. These entertainers, by forming an intimacy with TV viewers, have played an important role in mediating cultural resources to audiences. With tarento emerging as cultural mediators, television became increasingly considered as a medium helping viewers have a clearer view of their society, and was able to counter anti-television criticisms that relegated television to a medium that continued to offer mindless entertainment programs.

Introduction Japanese TV programs have been filled with a variety of entertainers. The so-called tarento, a transliteration of the English-word “talent,” are those entertainers who play diverse roles in dramas, music shows, wide shows and other variety shows. They are usually multi-talented individuals who can sing, act, talk, host or appear in commercials. Tarento have dominated Japanese entertainment television so much that any individuals who regularly appear on TV shows are called tarento regardless of their true talent. In fact, they are known for the mediocrity in their art, often supplemented by frequent media exposure.1 Due to the dominance of their presence in Japanese television, many scholars have discussed this tarento phenomenon. The discussion of tarento has first and foremost focused on their multi-talentedness.2 They are entertainers who are usually associated with multiple TV genres. With this intertextual exposure, tarento form an intimacy with TV audiences.3 Unlike movie stars who seem beyond reach of their fans, tarento often do not hesitate to express their true emotions and honest thoughts in front of cameras. Often tarento are expected to act spontaneously even when they have a script to follow, thereby exposing their private selves.4 Scholars argue that such “honesty” and “spontaneity” helps television create a sense of “unmediatedness” toward its viewers.5 Along with the appeal to the sense of immediacy and unmediatedness, scholars emphasize the tarento’s centrality in the Japanese TV industry and national culture.6 They argue

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

209

that tarento have been a “fundamental labor component of the Japanese entertainment and televisual industries,” 7 and a “monetary unit of late capitalism.” 8 The economic role of tarento is underscored by their ability to create an exclusive community in which viewers gain membership when they understand the complex hypertextual cross-genre presence of tarento. That community is regarded as extending to the national scale with the power of the television, “one of the most powerful apparatuses of the national imaginary that is currently available.” 9 While the central role of tarento in creating a national TV culture and maintaining the Japanese media industry is unquestionable, most of the existing scholarship on tarento focuses on recent Japanese television, namely from 1990s, when challenges for viewership from new media forced the industry to transform itself. The question of how the tarento culture even started in the first place has rarely been studied. Gabrielle Lukács’s study is probably the only attempt to shed light on the genesis of tarento. In her analysis of postwar Japanese TV drama, she discusses the genealogy of tarento and their presence in making TV drama. Lukács points out that tarento came from the shortage of actors and actresses in the initial TV drama productions.10 Although it is true that seriously understaffed drama productions employed talents from other areas, giving rise to multi-talented TV entertainers, this was only a small part of the larger picture of the tarento production. In Japanese television, tarento culture has been shaped across the entirety of TV genres, and this process even went beyond the TV world and affected other popular culture genres. Lukács, focusing on 1990s tarento culture, argues that although the tarento system saved the TV industry from collapsing, the community that the tarento literacy created was an illusion.11 Toward the turn of the 21st century, tarento were increasingly considered little more than a cultural commodity the Japanese cultural industry adopted to stay afloat in late-capitalist market fragmentation. However, at the outset of Japanese television in 1950s and 1960s, tarento culture was open to a range of possibilities with the potential to impact contemporary media culture. In this connection, this paper explores the early history of tarento and the discourse on its cultural significance in postwar Japanese society. I especially focus on how discourses on tarento articulated television’s potential in creating civic democracy in 1950s and 1960s Japan when the voice of the people increasingly gained currency in Japanese politics. First, I discuss the genesis of the term tarento in the lexicon of Japanese broadcasting which was in frequent use from 1954 to 1964, when television took root in Japanese society.12 The emergence of the term, along with actual tarento, reveals how TV culture took shape in Japan. I also explore who tarento actually were and how they were described. While tarento could boast of their skills in several different areas, they were largely defined as amateurs on television. That categorization had much to do with Japanese television as a synthetic media that produced programs that mixed and matched varied elements. The chapter concludes with discussion of the possibilities tarento culture demonstrated in the society that emerged from the Asia-Pacific War and the Allied Occupation. As cultural icons as well as core parts of rising TV culture, tarento were expected to contribute to the mediation between television and its viewers, and by extension, the medation between mass media and people, ultimately leading to the creation of postwar democratic culture in Japanese society. Using a historical approach to studying the tarento phenomenon—a unique feature of Japanese TV culture—I hope to fill the gap in our understanding of the role of tarento, and at the same time, examine the meaning of television as a popular media in the cultural landscape of 1950s and 1960s Japan. 210

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The emergence of tarento In 1954, the first book series on communication studies in Japan, Masu komyunikēshon kōza (Lectures on mass communication), addressed tarento for the first time.13 The author writes that the term originated in the United States.14 “Talent” had been used to indicate people appearing on radio or television in the United States, and the usage was also adopted in Japan. But how did a word that had described people who had natural ability to do well in various arenas come to be used for people within the broadcasting community? This question can be answered by reference to a few US radio and TV shows that were produced to scout talents. The popular American musician Horace Heidt was involved in two popular talent scout shows, The Original Youth Opportunity Shows (CBS) in 1948 and The Swift Show Wagon (NBC) in 1954.15 In both shows, Heidt traveled across the country to find new musical talents. At the same time, US broadcaster Arthur Godfrey hosted a similar show Talent Scouts (CBS) from 1946 to 1956.16 The form and language of talent scout shows crossed the Pacific and arrived in Japan in the early 1950s, when the rise of commercial radio and television in 1951 and 1953, respectively, increased the need for on-air personalities to fill newly-opened time slots. One of the Japanese TV shows that was directly influenced by US talent scout shows was Talent Scout (Tarento sukauto), which was among the first programs of Radio Tokyo Television (KRTV)—current-day TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System)—that began operating in April 1955. This show was the first to use the word tarento in its title. An article in the Mainichi shinbun introduced the program as a Nodo jiman show—a stage for amateur talent—in which Heidt, the “creator of the original show,” debuted an exchange program that would invite winners of the Japanese show on an all-expense paid trip to the original stage in the United States.17 Neither of the titles of Heidt’s two shows exactly match Talent Scout but this type of show was called a “talent scout show” and there was a show with the title “Talent Scouts” on CBS. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the American usage of “talent” was imported to Japan in early 1950s, and started to be used similarly among Japanese broadcasters with the KRTV’s Talent Scout as the catalyst for that popular usage. In this way, the importation of the new term came with the beginning of the commercial broadcasting in Japan. In April 1951, sixteen commercial broadcasters were given new licenses and opened their stations one after another beginning from September of that year. These new stations created new programs, resulting in rapidly increased demand for entertainers for new quiz shows, music shows, traditional storytelling shows (manzai, rakugo and naniwabushi), dramas and variety shows. By 1955, there were some forty-one commercial radio stations in operation across the nation. Among them, six were the so-called “key stations,” four in Tokyo and two in Osaka, which produced most of the original programming and provided itto local stations.18 The opening of TV channels even further expanded the number of broadcasting opportunities for entertainers. Beginning with Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) TV in February 1953, Japanese television broadcasting experienced tremendous growth. In 1957, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications granted licenses to thirty-six new commercial and seven NHK stations. With the newly licensed TV stations opening, there were some forty-four NHK stations along with thirty-eight commercial ones by 1959 including seven “key stations.” 19 Vicious competition among multiple channels resulted in an increase in

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

211

entertainment programming. As a result, stations were pressured to find entertainers to fill the slots of these newly created shows. Rising demand for entertainers across the Japanese broadcasting community led to growing usage of the word, tarento, an umbrella term that covered all types of broadcasting entertainers. The discourses of tarento in 1950s mostly focused on the fact that every station was suffering shortages of entertainers. The shortage was particularly acute when Nippon Education Television (NET) and Fuji TV began operations in February and March 1959, respectively. Along with two NHK TV channels, Nippon Television (NTV) and KRTV, Tokyo alone had six different key TV stations, all producing original shows. Lukács points out that the increase in TV drama production only further exacerbated the dearth of tarento in early TV broadcasting.20 This was particularly true when NET and Fuji TV arrived on the scene and the established competitors—especially KRTV—strengthened their drama offerings to compete with the newcomers.21 Writer Iizawa Tadasu observed that the supply of leading actors and actresses fell well short of available opportunities at existing TV stations. According to Iizawa, there were only 120 actors and actresses available for around 160 open positions; producers were forced to fill in the remaining forty spots with talent from other drama productions. On top of that, supporting actors and actresses were sparse as well, making matters even worse.22 The Six-Company Agreement among major film companies (Shochiku, Tōhō, Daiei, Shintōhō, Toei, Nikkatsu) made casting for drama productions even more difficult. Created as an industry-wide pact to protect each studio’s directors, screenwriters, actors and actresses from competitors, the agreement evolved into one that prohibited TV stations from purchasing and broadcasting members’ films and disallowed their actors and actresses from appearing in TV dramas without permission. Already seriously understaffed, TV drama casting directors had to find entertainers outside of cinema.23 However, drama was not the only area in dire need of tarento. In fact, TV productions across the industry were desperately seeking new talents. In October 1959, Ikeda Yukihiko, a journalist at Sankei shinbun, observed in a roundtable discussion reproduced in Hōsō bunka—a journal published by NHK—that the number of tarento was far from enough compared to the number of all programs broadcast.24 In the same year, TV advertisers were criticized for using the same announcers, making the commercials less persuasive.25 In response, many advertisers concluded exclusive contracts with able tarento, leaving other advertisers without anyone to hire.26 Manzai shows27 also faced a shortage of manzai tarento, and were forced to overuse a small pool of available talent because it was almost impossible to nurture new performers in a short period of time.28 The increased demand for talent inevitably caused overwork for some tarento. Their tight schedule repeatedly forced them to do “buttsuke honban” (performing without enough rehearsal), thus degrading the quality of the shows and their own reputations.29 Understandably, many of these performers were under tremendous pressure, which affected their health and cost some their lives. For example, Nakamura Meiko, a popular actress who worked non-stop in cinema, radio and television simultaneously in 1956 was told by her doctor to take a break for a month due to overwork.30 In 1959, several tarento including Awashima Chikage actually collapsed from overwork. Awashima starred in two dramas and two films in the span of two weeks in November, which gave her acute hepatitis.31 In February 1966, the death of Kiyomura Kōji, a popular actor in NHK’s hit drama Accident-Covering Reporters (Jiken kisha), shocked Japanese TV viewers. Investigators discovered that Kiyomura killed 212

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

himself after battling serious health conditions. His suicide note read “I’m physically and mentally at the breaking point as an actor.” Before his death, Kiyomura had also shown symptoms of stomach cancer and had been hospitalized. When he tried to retire, his theater company would not let him go.32 After facing so much difficulty securing enough tarento, many stations offered exclusive contracts to their favorite entertainers. In 1953, Radio Tokyo, which later founded KRTV, contracted with several storytelling artists and singers as well as six musical bands including the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.33 In early 1959, facing the opening of NET and Fuji TV, existing stations rushed to broker deals with famous tarento. KRTV signed with eleven actors and actresses and increased the number to thirty the next year. NTV did not make any exclusive contracts but secured tarento from theater companies such as Kikugorō Gekidan, Haiyūza, Bungakuza and Mingei. New stations also jumped into the competition before it was too late and the best tarento were under contract somewhere else. NET contracted with several tarento including the great Misora Hibari. Kabuki actor Nakamura Kanzaburō also joined Fuji TV for a number of shows.34 But these exclusive deals had limitations. Top tarento still preferred to stay free agents. The exclusive contracts mostly applied only to their work in commercial television, and contracted tarento were still free to work with NHK and any radio stations they chose, or even appear on theatrical stages or in films. Therefore, many of the contracted tarento were unable to focus on the work at their primary station. Frankie Sakai, one of the top tarento in 1959, signed exclusively with KRTV but accommodating his tight schedule meant that station staff at times had to squeeze Sakai’s gigs into his already-hectic schedule or travel all the way from Tokyo to Osaka to shoot with him.35 The high demand for on-air talent meant that stations felt an urgent need to train new tarento, which proved to be another difficult task. In 1959, NTV sponsored a dancer, Itō Michirō, and his Itō Michirō Research Center to turn the center into NTV’s exclusive tarento school.36 In September the same year, NHK also recruited radio and TV acting trainees to systematically cultivate tarento. Selected from more than a thousand aspiring applicants, the first forty-four trainees underwent a one-year training process to debut on various broadcasting stages in the NHK network.37 Tarento academies sprang up outside broadcasting stations as well. In Tokyo, some twenty-five new schools were built in 1958 alone.38 Among them, the Television Tarento Center (TTC), established by Dentsu—the biggest advertising agency in Japan—in November 1958, received the most media attention. Founded in the anticipation of rising demand for tarento with the opening of NET and Fuji TV, TTC selected fifty-four new talents to train for one year. It invited several masters in the broadcasting community as their trainers, including Tokugawa Musei, a true multi-talent in Japanese broadcasting, and dramatists Uchimura Naoya and Agi Ōsuke, to teach the trainees acting, dancing, singing and diction.39 This way, with the expansion of the broadcasting industry, a tremendous number of entertainers occupied new positions in the newly created entertainment shows, and the stations never had enough talents at their disposal. The scramble to obtain a decent entertainer took place in every genre of TV broadcasting. The rapidly increased role of talents in broadcasting entertainment gave rise to the imported word tarento, an umbrella term to cover the whole spectrum of broadcast entertainers. Although radio certainly contributed to the creation of new jobs for entertainers, it was TV broadcasting that explosively broadened the world of tarento. Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

213

Tarento as cultural mediator Although entertainment radio and television were in dire need of new tarento, it proved to be difficult to nurture such entertainers in the existing media institutes. The training program for radio and TV acting that NHK ambitiously launched in 1959 showed little success, and soon closed.40 A great number of tarento wannabes rushed to tarento schools every year but they did not show enough promise for TV show productions to stop complaining about the lack of able tarento.41 Showrunners preferred established entertainers outside broadcasting over untested newbies. Traditional storytelling shows usually invited storytellers who were already well-established on yose stages. Many of them built their reputation through frequent appearance on radio and television, and some of them converted to TV show hosts.42 The Six-Company Agreement turned the TV stations’ eyes to kabuki and modern theaters, thus allowing the theaters to make a profit when they sent their tarento to stations and received commissions in return.43 Along with such outsourcing from other entertainment genres, some talents were also drawn from different fields of broadcasting. This cross-genre exchange of talents was commonplace within the Japanese broadcasting community. Singers were employed as actors, and announcers hosted entertainment shows. Ueki Hitoshi, a member of the jazz band Hana Hajime and Crazy Cats, performed comedy skits with his band in NTV’s variety show Soap Bubble Holiday (Shabondama horidē) from 1961.44 In this show, Ueki had a major breakthrough with his hit song Sūdarabushi. Thereafter, he entered Tōhō Studios to star in a series of popular films including Japan’s Irresponsible Time (Nippon musekinin jidai), appeared in several TV commercials and hosted his own comedy show, the Ueki Hitoshi Show.45 In the meantime, a few NHK announcers successfully transformed themselves into entertainment show hosts. Takahashi Keizō gained popularity by hosting an NHK quiz show My Secret (Watashi no himitsu), and Kijima Norio became the first “wide show” 46 host with the Kijima Norio Morning Show (Kijima Norio mōningu shō) on NET.47 Some tarento were formerly broadcasting writers. Ei Rokusuke, Jō Yūsuke, Nosaka Akiyuki, Nozue Chinpei, Ōhashi Kyosen and Maeda Takehiko were among those who became tarento through their writing careers at various TV stations.48 Media critics Etō Fumio and Fukuda Sadayoshi remarked that entertainers became tarento when they expanded their specialty into other areas.49 Increased job opportunities and the relative shortage of able performers resulted in a “mix and match” of talents in every corner of TV broadcasting. Consequently, many entertainers became multi-skilled through these cross-genre transactions. Extant scholarship on tarento has generally agreed that they were all-purpose entertainers who fit into a multitude of roles because entertainers were expected to become utility players from the beginning of postwar broadcasting. Moreover, tarento’s multiple talents derived from television’s “syntheticity” (sōgōsei) as a mass media. At the beginning of Japanese TV broadcasting, media scholars tended to describe television, in comparison with other media, as a synthetic medium that contained a mixture of diverse elements. Sociologist Yamamoto Akira argued that while newspapers had different sections such as politics, society, culture and life, television blended all those components into a single program. It was the reason, he argued, that it was difficult to differentiate entertainment shows from informational programs on television.50 Film critic Ogi Masahiro observed that television had all the features of the existing media including

214

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

newspapers, film and radio. “With the synergy of all those elements, television is a totally new media that occupies a far more multi-dimensional and profound space than those traditional media,” he asserted.51 Media scholars singled out wide shows, which combined live news, talk, music, commercials and other types of entertainment in about an hour of livecast, as best explaining television’s syntheticity. Beginning with the launch of the Kijima Norio Morning Show in April 1964, wide shows had drawn large audiences.52 Media scholar Arase Yutaka emphasized that rather than just broadcasting different segments in sequence, wide shows synthesized those segments to create a completely unique mixture. He defined this “chemical transition” as “televisual synthesis”(terebi teki sōgō).53 Therefore scholars and commentators believed that tarento, by appearing on such synthesized shows, became multitalented entertainers. In this way, entertainers came to work in so many different capacities that the TV audience had difficulty putting them into traditional categories. For example, Igarashi Shinjirō, a former announcer on NHK’s international broadcasting team, became a professor of English language and literature at Waseda University. At the same time, Igarashi taught English on a popular English education program, English for One Million People (Hyakumannin no eigo), on NET. Commentator Kagami Hiroshi asserted that with the growth of TV broadcasting, there had emerged a completely new type of occupation that could only be properly defined by the term tarento—of which Igarashi was a perfect example with his multiple capacities both inside and outside of broadcasting.54 When tarento were brought from other areas of the performing arts to appear on new TV shows, they were basically amateurs in front of TV cameras despite their expertise in their own fields. Experienced talents certainly had a better chance of demonstrating deeper, more developed, skills on television than complete amateurs, but broadcasting was a different matter. Rakugo storytellers had to give up their traditional yose stage performances and come up with new methods that could appeal to TV viewers.55 Stage or kabuki actors were pressed to adapt to TV cameras. In 1964, NHK ambitiously produced Samurai of Akō (Akō rōshi), a large-scale historical drama with an all-star cast from kabuki, modern theaters and cinema. Despite the distinguished cast, viewers were not impressed when their different acting styles created cacophony onscreen.56 Therefore, the tarento in the earlier period of television were all considered as amateurs despite having been respected as masters in their own areas before coming to television.57 This was also the case with various radio and TV show hosts, who were in a sense all amateurs. Show hosts had hardly existed before the advent of radio and TV broadcasting, thus different entertainers from varied backgrounds were employed in these roles. Songwriter and composer Miki Torirō secured a hosting opportunity on NHK radio’s satirical comedy show, The Sunday Entertainment Show (Nichiyō gorakuban), after which he hosted several shows on radio and television. Mikuni Ichirō was introduced to television as the host of a variety show, The Let’s Do Anything Show (Nandemo yarimashō) in 1953 when he was working as a mere “salaryman” in Asahi Breweries, a sponsor of the show. Thereafter he went on to become a popular host on several TV shows in 1960s.58 Another avenue through which outside experts were brought into broadcasting as tarento was the NHK radio quiz shows of the Occupation period. During the Occupation, NHK was under the direct control of the Allied Occupation authority. The Civil Information and Education Section, in charge of media operations within the Occupation administration, introduced a number of popular quiz shows from the United States. Among them were Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

215

Information Please (Hanashi no Izumi) and Twenty Gates (Nijū no tobira), which gained great popular support.59 Both quiz shows had the same format in which panels consisting of experts from various professions—from journalists to filmmakers, and writers to musicians— were invited to answer questions sent in by the radio audience. Although total novices to broadcasting, these experts sculpted the shows by way of their pleasant conversational style. Rather than damaging the vibe of the shows, audiences actually found their amateurism refreshing, and it became a central attraction of the shows. By appearing regularly on the quiz shows and showing off their unconventional charm, these outside experts also came to be called tarento.60 In addition to the quiz shows, Amateur Singing Contest (Shirōto nodo jiman ongakukai hereafter Nodo jiman), another entertainment show launched during the Occupation, also added a refreshing amateurism to Japanese radio broadcasting. This amateur talent show intended to open the broadcasting stage to anyone who liked music and singing. The show traveled around the nation to audition local people, and those selected received the opportunity to perform in front of the “national microphone.” The Nodo jiman, still broadcast on NHK TV up to this day with the title NHK Amateur Singing Contest (NHK Nodo Jiman), attracted audiences with the promise that even mediocre musical talents could showcase their unique performances and please radio listeners. Nodo jiman, with its popular success, was the beginning point of postwar amateur talent shows and thereafter many commercial channels emulated it.61 Ji Hee Jung, in her study of Nodo jiman, observes that several participants moved to professional stages following their appearance on the show despite its orientation toward pure amateurism.62 In the show, “good performers” received a “pass” with three bells while others were given one or two bells. Performers who got three bells moved to the next stage, Three Bells (Mittsu no kane), where they were given an opportunity to be included in the cast of Stars of Singing (Uta no meisei), a music show where fans determined who would perform. Many singers became professionals step-by-step through Nodo jiman, Mittsu no kane, and Uta no meisei along with other similarly-inspired amateur shows on commercial channels. Etō and Fukuda argued that those who debuted through amateur talent stages still retained their amateurish uniqueness even when they were performing on a professional stage.63 The amateurish appeal of tarento had much to do with the popular quality of television as a mass medium. Emerging as non-specialists just like the ordinary TV audience, tarento were defined by their familiarity and closeness to the viewers. Tarento were often compared with top stars from the cinema. Just like Hollywood, from the beginning, Japanese cinema adopted a strategy to produce films that relied on star power. Based on the assumption that fans went to the movies to see their favorite stars, studios planned, wrote and directed films centering on their main star actors and actresses. A star’s status went unchallenged in and out of the studios.64 Stars were “revered” by fans, who felt in awe of rather than friendly toward them.65 Tarento, however, needed to have an air of friendliness; they needed to be buddies with the audience.66 Scholars studying the tarento phenomena all agree that they were defined by feelings of intimacy shared with the TV audience. They seemed to be the friendly characters who lived next door. However perfect their appearance was, if they were not approachable, they were not deemed to be tarento. The tarento’s intimacy toward their audiences was associated with the rapid growth of TV culture in Japan from late 1950s to the 1960s. The live coverage of the imperial wedding of Shōda Michiko and Crown Prince Akihito in 1959, and Japan’s hosting of the 1964 Summer 216

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Olympics significantly boosted the distribution of TV sets to Japanese homes. By 1965, TV broadcasting reached 75 percent of all Japanese homes, infiltrating into the daily life of the nation.67 Television was expected to transfer all kinds of information immediately and accurately to home audiences. Therefore, it was considered a friendly media that could comfort and entertain the audience at a close distance. Herein, tarento fulfilled an intimate role on the TV screen. Commercial TV broadcasting, in particular, placed heavy emphasis on the friendliness of tarento. Unlike NHK, the sole public broadcaster in Japan supported by TV license fees, commercial stations operated on the basis of advertising revenue. Therefore, they preferred entertainers who demonstrated selling power—that is, those who were able to make a friendly appeal toward as much of the audience as possible.68 This was why Eri Chiemi reigned as a top tarento in 1960s, making great use of her folksy persona created in her role as Sazae in the popular film Sazae-san.69 With their close proximity to the audience, tarento were expected to play a mediative role between media and the masses. Fukuda likened the role of tarento in broadcasting with that of a sophist in ancient Greece and the encyclopedists in 18th-century Europe, defining them as linking the masses with cultural resources. Minamie Jirō, a broadcasting critic and director of TTC, quoted German Sociologist Georg Simmel’s discussion of the aesthetic value of a vase’s handle, arguing that tarento, while a part of the artistic world, were the people who linked the world of art with the masses just as the handle on a vase could be used to connect the vase to the outside world.70 Contemporary scholars and commentators of media tended to describe them as communication specialists in the discourses of tarento, which was called “talentology” (tarentorogī). In the 1960s, two journal article series and a monograph were published under the title of “Talentology.” The first article series, “Japanese Talentology” (Nihon tarentorojī), published in CBC Report, a monthly journal of the Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Co., Ltd., from 1960 to 1961, mainly dealt with renowned tarento’s career stories.71 The second series on talentology in CBC Report, “Contemporary Talentology” (Gendai tarentorogī), took one step further to discuss tarento’s role—rather than the tarento themselves—in the context of Japan’s shifting media environment. The authors of the series, Fukuda Sadayoshi and journalist Okamoto Hiroshi, expanded the notion of tarento from entertainers in broadcasting to anyone working in any type of mass media institutions. In the authors’ estimation, tarento were not just singers and comedians but also TV show producers and newspaper reporters; they were defined as specialists in communication who could create organic relationships between culture and people.72 Accordingly, Fukuda and Okamoto sought to find the role of tarento in diverse areas of the Japanese mass media industry from commercials to historical dramas, from cinema to women’s weeklies. Analyzing the trend of tarento in those varied areas of the mass media, the authors concluded that tarento were those who, equipped with the function of the mass media, could normalize relations between the public and mass media at times when the latter was distrusted by the former.73 In the monograph, Contemporary Talentology: Or Freedom of Frivolity (Gendai tarentorogī: aruiwa keisotsu e no jiyū), published after the “Contemporary Talentology” series, Fukuda and Okamoto went even further to broaden the sphere of influence of tarento within general society. The two argued that not just media institutions but also other companies including education, healthcare or advertising firms, sought tarento with advanced communication skills as they had complex structures in which different parts of the companies Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

217

functioned differently from one another.74 In a sense, however, everyone in society could be called tarento since they all had to make use of their communication skills to deal with the complexity of their own communities.75 Consequently, questioning who tarento were was precursory work to understanding human beings in contemporary Japanese society.76 Arguably it was unproductive to stretch the domain of tarento beyond the media world. However, the authors of the talentology monograph and articles made it clear that tarento were the ones who, with their exceptional communication skills, could connect the media audience with culture and information. They emphasized that tarento were not just mass media employees. Tarento were free agents who moved within their respective domains and often times resisted the status quo of the media system that hired them. They observed that by going against the grain of the media, tarento made it possible for audiences to be critical consumers of media messages, making them a more active audience.77 This was the tarento’s true communication skill.

Tarento in democratic culture Within this emphasis on the role of tarento in Japanese media and their communication skills lay a democratic wish that television could create an organic relationship between the reality of Japanese society and the general public. Such a desire to utilize television as a democratic and participatory medium was closely associated with the rise of civil society sparked by the struggle against the US-Japan Security Treaty that swept the entire nation in 1960. The so-called Anpo protests proved to be the beginning of Japan’s postwar citizens’ movement, which covered several social agendas throughout 1960s, and culminated with the organization of Beheiren, the abbreviation of The Citizen’s League for Peace in Vietnam (Betonamu ni heiwa wo! Shimin rengō). With his research group Institute for the Science of Thought (Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai) the prominent sociologist and one of the founders of Beheiren, Tsurumi Shunsuke, concentrated on the philosophy of ordinary people (hitobito no tetsugaku) based on the belief that postwar democracy should be led by a grass-roots movement.78 The institute’s perspective was that Japanese intellectuals failed to prevent Japan from waging the war because they only pursued the perfection of their system of thought, and were disconnected from the larger Japanese public. Therefore, it became the institute’s intellectual goal to find a way to approach ordinary Japanese people with the aim of fostering a new postwar democratic culture. It was thus important from this perspective, to study how to communicate with the masses. In that vein, the institute launched “the philosophy of ordinary people” project which was aimed at giving philosophical voice to non-intellectuals in order to prove that ordinary people were the source of thought that could advance democracy in Japan.79 In this project, the institute attempted to interview people from different walks of life including schoolteachers, female clerks, factory workers, farmers and homeless people to find out their philosophy of life. At the same time, it published collections of interviews with and essays of “leaders of society” as models of the philosophy of ordinary people.80 The first volume of the two-volume My Philosophy (Watakushi no tetsugaku) series contained politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and scholars expressing their views of life along with a similar questionnaire that the institute used with ordinary people. Although far from ordinary, the researchers in the institution believed that those exemplary people could show that

218

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

non-philosophers could also be agents of philosophical thought. The institute hoped those in My Philosophy would work as mediators, inducing thinking on life issues among the readers of the book. While the first volume focused on those opinion leaders, the second volume was reserved for representatives of Japanese popular culture. The contributors ranged from the radio performer Tokugawa Musei to film director Yamamoto Kajirō and cartoonist Shimizu Kon.81 The choice to devote the entire second volume of My Philosophy to the thought of popular media figures represented the institute’s belief that individuals in the media could also play a meaningful role in mediating public and the philosophical thinking just as politicians, businessmen and scholars did. This is where the discourse on tarento as communication specialists was located. Media critics expected television and tarento to be a bridge between ordinary viewers and intellectual culture, thus creating a democratic culture centering on ordinary people. Tarento were to be a purveyor of culture and information who were also on the same level as the audience.82 In the process of communication, tarento and their audience were, at times, considered interchangeable. Fukuda asserted that tarento, who were engaged in creative work in broadcasting, in essence, were no different from the masses.83 Another media critic and journalist, Suzuki Hitoshi, defined tarento as a “status,” rather than a person or an occupation, and stated that everyone could become a tarento when they appeared on air. For example, ordinary TV viewers could become tarento when they appeared in an audience participation show, and popular tarento active on television were no different from them.84 In this way, tarento were explained as those who could communicate with the masses and provide them with access to cultural activities and resources. With tarento’s mediating efforts, the Japanese people could absorb different layers of culture, enabling them to contribute to the democratization of postwar society. “The significance of tarento having a path to amateurs like us is that it enables us to sustain our interests in culture and the arts in order to improve ourselves. This job is impossible for top artists and cultural figures,” Fukuda argued.85 As cultural mediators, tarento communicated with TV viewers on an equal footing. The possibility of two-way communication between tarento and their audience gave rise to the term a hundred million critics (ichioku sōhyōronka), meaning that Japanese audience members, through their interaction with tarento, could become critics actively participating in the creation of media products rather than blindly consuming them.86

Conclusion While tarento were expected to play an important cultural role mediating TV audiences with culture and information, some established tarento failed to meet those high expectations. In particular, several popular tarento belonged to entertainment agencies which wielded tremendous power over TV stations by influencing contracts of their signed tarento and operating their own productions. Particularly notorious was the monopoly of Watanabe Productions which managed key tarento like Hana Hajime and Crazy Cats, and exerted exclusive power in the Japanese TV industry by the late 1970s.87 Those tarento who belonged to the mighty agencies were unable to enjoy the freedom necessary to play the mediating role that the cultural critics expected them to play. However, Japanese tarento culture also communicated the possibilities of TV broadcasting, bringing special talent to various TV programs and allowing viewers to enjoy what those

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

219

tarento had to offer. For example, Yamamoto Naozumi, a renowned composer of classical music, was regularly invited to NET’s Hasegawa Hajime Morning Show (Hasegawa Hajime mōningu shō) in 1968 to host a musical segment, “Training by music” (Ongaku shitsuke) with his wife Yamamoto Masami, a composer herself. The two composers, with their four-yearold son, played a series of songs for children’s training (shitsuke no uta) for viewers to use in training their own children.88 Yamamoto Naozumi also appeared in many TV programs to popularize classical music. The Yamamotos illustrate how tarento culture was considered central to television’s role in mediating cultural resources to the audience. The discourse regarding tarento’s cultural role can thus be better understood against the backdrop of an intellectual tendency toward “television-bashing.” With television penetrating the everyday life of Japanese people, scholars started to study the nature and social influence of TV broadcasting in Japan, and their initial views on television were less than optimistic. Sociologist Shimizu Ikutarō was among those who expressed concerns about the implications of TV broadcasting in Japan. In 1958, he argued that television, with a greater degree of technological complexity, was susceptible to the power of monopolistic capital, and thus could easily fall into the hands of conservatives.89 Intellectuals generally agreed with Shimizu’s negative view on television after renowned cultural critic Ōya Sōichi famously criticized TV broadcasting as turning Japanese into “one hundred million idiots” (ichioku sōhakuchika) in 1957—a phrase that would appear in every critical conversation on television throughout 1960s.90 Along with criticism from intellectuals, an anti-televisual violence campaign took place with NHK’s initiative after the violence between protesters and riot police was repeatedly broadcast during the Anpo protests, and particularly after the secretary general of the Japan Socialist Party, Asanuma Inejirō, was assassinated during a live broadcast in October, 1960.91 In the face of this continued criticism of TV broadcasting, scholars who advocated for the possibility of television as a mass medium emphasized the role of tarento in order to overcome negative views about television.92 They sought to shed light on the subjectivity of Japanese TV audiences.93 They believed that viewers would not just sit in front of TV sets and become idiots as Ōya worried, instead describing Japanese TV audiences as active agents, capable of interpreting messages from television into their own life contexts. In this respect, the tarento’s mediating role played a critical part in the discourse on an active audience because tarento were the ones who connected audiences to the media and helped viewers interpret media messages using their own perspectives. The author of talentology Fukuda argued, “By realizing that we are in conversation with tarento, we can depart from such an inferior status of the masses” who “lack independent judgment” and become active agents in reading media messages.94 Tarento’s communicative role, intensively discussed in 1950s and 1960s, was to help Japanese TV viewers actively acquire cultural resources, interpret media messages, and, by extension, have a clearer view of their own society. In this way, tarento can be considered to have been an integral component in advancing participatory democracy in which television played a constructive role.

220

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Notes 1

Andrew A. Painter, “Japanese Daytime Television, Popular Culture and Ideology,” in Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, ed. John Whittier Treat (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), 213. 2 Gabriella Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 45; Eva Tsai, “The Dramatic Consequences of Playing a Lover: Stars and Televisual Culture in Japan,” in Television, Japan, and Globalization, eds. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai and JungBong Choi (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010), 95–97. 3 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 52; Painter, “Japanese Daytime Television,” 226; Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “Image, Information, Commodity: A Few Speculations on Japanese Televisual Culture” in In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture, eds. Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 133. 4 Yoshimoto, “Image, Information, Commodity,” 133. 5 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 49. 6 Griseldis Kirsch, “Next-Door Divas: Japanese Tarento, Television and Consumption,” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 6, No. 1 (June 2013): 85; Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 54–55; Jayson Makoto Chun, “A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953–1973 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 100–2. 7 Tsai, “The Dramatic Consequences of Playing a Lover,” 97. 8 Yoshimoto, “Image, Information, Commodity,” 134. 9 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 53; Yoshimoto, “Image, Information, Commodity,” 135. 10 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 45. 11 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 54. Lukács’s discussion of tarento focuses on how from late 1980s, Japanese TV industry used tarento culture in making trendy drama, a new drama genre that brought back TV viewers who had begun to abandon the medium. 12 Tsai, “The Dramatic Consequences of Playing a Lover,” 94. 13 Minami Hiroshi, ed., Masu komyunikēshon kōza, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1954), 269. 14 The chapter about tarento was written by Shakai Shinri Kenkyūjo (Social Psychology Research Institute), which was led by Minami Hiroshi, the editor of the book series. 15 Leo Walker, The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 178–79. 16 John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43. 17 “Yūshū na mono wa beikoku e: KR no Tarento sukauto,” Mainichi shinbun, April 10, 1955. From the Occupation period, a popular NHK amateur talent show, Shirōto nodo jiman ongakukai (Amateur Singing Contest) was imitated by other channels, and nodo jiman became a common noun for any amateur talent stage. I will elaborate this point further later in this chapter. 18 Nihon Minkan Hōsō Renmei, ed., Minkan hōsō gojū nenshi (Tokyo: Nihon Minkan Hōsō Renmei, 2001), 12. 19 Nihon Minkan Hōsō Renmei, Minkan hōsō gojū nenshi, 16–17. 20 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 45. 21 By 1960, KRTV was producing twenty-seven dramas with thirteen hours and fifteen minutes of airtime every week. “KR terebi senzoku tarento kyōka,” Asahi shinbun, October 31, 1960. 22 Iizawa Tadasu, “Taranto,” Hōsō asahi 64, (September 1959): 10. 23 Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 32–45. The agreement was begun by Five-Company Agreement in which signed companies sought to prevent Nikkatsu, a new competitor from taking their existing staff. Nikkatsu later participated in the agreement after its actor Ishihara Yūjirō became a big star, making it Six-Company Agreement. The agreement had some exceptions when it comes to their actors and actresses appearing on TV. Tōhō was relatively generous in allowing its actors and actresses to be cast in TV drama. Iwamoto Kenji and Makino Mamoru, ed., Eiga nenkan-sengōhen, vol. 19 (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1999), 251. 24 Noro Kazu et al., “Zadankai: tarento wo sukauto suru,” Hōsō bunka 14, no. 10 (October 1959): 25. 25 Yoshida Minao et al., “Seisakusha no kataru rajio terebi tarento,” Hōsō asahi 64 (September 1959): 42. 26 Katō Hidetoshi, “‘Tarento’ no henbō to sono haikei,” Hōsō asahi 102 (November 1962): 19. 27 Manzai is a genre of traditional Japanese comedy which consists of comic dialogues between two comedians.

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

221

28

“Tarento fuzoku no manzai bangumi,” Asahi shinbun, April 27, 1964. Shiozawa Shigeru, “TV tarento no genjō: mazushii genjitsu no Sugata,” Kinema junpō 208 (July 1958): 142–45; “Ōkiku nurikawaru terebi tarento chizu, NTV kyōikuterebi to fujiterebi, NHK,” Yomiuri shinbun, January 24, 1959. 30 “Meiko Taoru,” Mainichi shinbun, July 18, 1956. 31 “Geijutsusai tsukare no tarento tsugitsugi to taoreru,” Asahi shinbun, December 9, 1959. 32 “Byōkizami ni owarete shinshin suriherasu TV tarento tachi: jisatsu,” Asahi shinbun, February 15, 1966; Shiga Nobuo, Terebi no sekai: jitsuzō to kyozō no aida (Tokyo: Seibundō Shinkōsha, 1967), 165–66. 33 Minami, Masu komyunikēshon kōza, 270–71. 34 “Tarento no senzoku mondai,” Asahi shinbun, January 18, 1959; “KR terebi senzoku tarento kyōka,” Asahi shinbun, October 31, 1960; Minami, Masu komyunikēshon kōza, 270–71. 35 “KR terebi senzoku tarento sei wo saikentō,” Asahi shinbun, November 8, 1959. 36 “Ōkiku nurikawaru terebi tarento chizu, NTV kyōikuterebi to fujiterebi, NHK,” Yomiuri shinbun, January 24, 1959. 37 “Tarento no mon wa semai, NHK haiyū shaken kara,” Asahi shinbun, April 27, 1959. 38 “Tarento yōseijo: Tōkyō nyū fēsu,” Asahi shinbun, January 8, 1959. 39 “Kakuteru de hanayaka na kaikō, shūshoku no shinpai mo nai terebi tarento gakkō,” Yomiuri shinbun, November 7, 1958. TTC director Minamie Jirō edited a book, Terebi tarento tokuhon (Television Tarento: a Reader), presumably intended as a textbook for TTC trainees. This book covers a wide range of subjects from acting, directing, TV musicals, ballet, pantomime to vocalization, speech, narration and educational programs. Such wide coverage suggests that while TTC focused primarily on training CM tarento, it also sought to educate different categories of them. This book also illustrates the extent to which tarento and their fields varied. Minamie Jirō, ed., Terebi tarento tokuhon (Tokyo: Shikisha, 1959). 40 Shiga Nobuo et al., “Tarento no kenkō,” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 21. 41 “Terebijon: tarento wa doko ni? Shibōsha wa wansa to, daga,” Mainichi shinbun, April 10, 1959. 42 Minami, Masu Komyunikēshon Kōza, 269; “Tarento fuzoku no manzai bangumi,” Asahi shinbun, April 27, 1964. 43 “Gekidan ka tarento gurūpu ka,” Yomiuri shinbun, October 6, 1961. 44 For details of this show, see “Bangumi seminā: shabondama horidē,” Hōsō bunka 21, no. 6 (June 1966): 40–43. 45 Etō Fumio and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Ueki hitoshi no ba’ai,” Chōsa jōhō 78 (September 1965): 36; Etō Fumio, “Oshaberi tarento tachi,” Chōsa jōhō 113 (August 1968): 41; “CM ni torikumu ninki tarento, engi ni haba ga deru, shūnyū mo kōjōken, yorokonde shutsuen wo,” Yomiuri shinbun, June 5, 1964. 46 A “wide show” is a variety talk show that blends newscast and talks with various entertainments. I will elaborate this genre further later in this chapter. 47 Shiga Nobuo, Terebi no sekai, 177. 48 Etō Fumio, “Tarento,” Hōsō asahi 209 (October 1971): 79. 49 Etō and Fukuda, “Ueki hitoshi no ba’ai,” 34–37. 50 Yamamoto Akira, “Terebi no sōgōsei,” Hōsō asahi 149 (October 1966): 42–43. 51 Ogi Masahiro, “Hōsō to amachuashippu,” Hōsō hihyō 6 (May 1968): 6–7. 52 I discussed the significance of wide shows in 1960s’ Japanese broadcasting history in Seong Un Kim, “Crazy Shows: Entertainment Television in Cold War Japan, 1953–1973” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2017), 106–47; Seong Un Kim “Ilbon TV waidŭsyo wa k’ŏmyunik’eisyŏn ŭi saeroun yangsik,” Ilbon yŏn’gu 32 (2019), 298–320. 53 Arase Yutaka, “Nyūsushō no honshitsu,” Gekkan nihon terebi 82 (January 1966): 12. 54 Kagami Hiroshi, “Terebi tarento ron,” Kōkoku 143 (February 1960): 10. 55 Sanuka Mitsuo, “Terebi yose wa naze hayaru: atarashii geinō e no jōken,” Hōsō bunka 21, no. 8 (August 1966): 45. 56 Tonomura Kanji, “Taishū ni aisareru terebi jidaigeki,” YTV Report 32 (April 1964): 6–7. 57 Katō, “‘Tarento’ no henbō,” 12. 58 Katō, “‘Tarento’ no henbō,” 14. 59 For details of these two quiz shows, see Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 20-seiki hōsōshi, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2001), 241–45. 29

222

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

60

Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Gendai tarentorojī (4) NHK teki tarentorojī no himitsu,” CBC Report 7, no. 10 (October 1963): 34. 61 For details of Nodo jiman, see Ji Hee Jung, “Chapter 2. Radio Singing Show Nodo jiman (Amateur Hour) and Audience Participation in Transwar Japan” in “Radio Broadcasting and the Politics of Mass Culture in Transwar Japan” (PhD dissertation, University of California San Diego, 2010), 70–151; Shuhei Hosokawa, “The Uses of Routine: NHK’s Amateur Singing Contest in Historical Perspective,” in Television, Japan, and Globalization, eds. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai and Jung Bong Choi (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010), 51–72. 62 Jung, “Radio Singing Show Nodo jiman,” 131–37. 63 Etō Fumio and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Tarento no shirōtosei,” Chōsa jōhō 77 (August 1965): 34. 64 Satō Tadao, Nihon eigashi, vol. 1 1896–1940 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995), 27. 65 Suzuki Hitoshi, “Terebi tarento towa nanika,” Shisō no kagaku dai-5-ji 73 (March 1968): 22–23. 66 “Tarento no jōken, terebi 10-sai,” Asahi shinbun, June 11, 1963; Kōuchi Saburō, “Tarento no rekishi,” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 15–16. 67 On the distribution of TV sets in Japanese homes, see Kobayashi Shichirō, “Kokumin seikatsu no naka no terebi fukyū,” TBS Chōsa jōhō 37 (January 1962): 3–4. 68 Katayanagi Tadao and Sano Hideo, “CM tarento ron,” YTV Report 28 (August 1963): 31–33. 69 Nihon terebi chōsabu, “Tarento ninki chōsa kekka,” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 30. 70 Minamie, Terebi tarento tokuhon, 6. 71 “Nihon tarentorogī” series consists of twenty-one articles from “Hayashiya Sanpei” (April 1960) to “Kishida Kyōko” (December 1961). Authors varied from article to article but mostly writers and cultural critics. While rarely touched upon theoretical aspects of tarento, those articles still suggest important points about tarento’s mode of being and their social roles. 72 Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Gendai tarentorojī (1) gendaijin wa jānarisutoka suru,” CBC Report 7, no. 7 (July 1963): 6. 73 Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Gendai tarentorogī (21) masukomi to wareware no aida no ningenteki kankei,” CBC Report 9, no. 4 (April 1965): 39–40. 74 Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi, Gendai tarentorogī: aruiwa keisotsu e no jiyū (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1966), 6–7, 185. 75 Okamoto and Fukuda, Gendai tarentorogī, 7, 93, 221. 76 Okamoto and Fukuda, Gendai tarentorogī, 71. 77 Okamoto and Fukuda, Gendai tarentorogī, 24, 398–99; Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi, “Gendai tarentorogī (19) shōshimin to iu tachiba,” CBC Report 9, no. 2 (February 1965): 45. 78 Adam Bronson, One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016), 98–99. 79 Kenkyūbu, “Hitobito no tetsugaku nit suite no chūkan hōkoku 1,” Shisō no kagaku 3, no. 2 (February 1948): 57. Details of the institute’s effort to discover the philosophy of ordinary people are drawn from “Chapter Three: The Philosophy of Ordinary People” in Bronson, One Hundred Million Philosophers. 80 Bronson, One Hundred Million Philosophers, 109. 81 Shisō no kagaku kenkyūkai, ed., Watakushi no tetsugaku, zoku (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1950): 5–12. 82 Shiga Nobuo, Masaki Kyōsuke and Katō Morio, “Tarento no genkō,” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 20. 83 Okamoto and Fukuda, “Gendai tarentorogī (19),” 19. 84 Suzuki, “Terebi tarento towa nanika,” 23–24. 85 Etō and Fukuda, “Tarento no shirōtosei,” 37. 86 Etō Fumio, “Sengo bunka no tokushitsu, zoku,” Chōsa jōhō 87 (June 1966): 41. 87 On the monopoly of Watanabe Production, see Gunji Sadanori, Nabepuro teikoku no kōbō: Star Dust (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1992); Takenaka Rō, Tarento zankoku monogatari: sutā wo kuimono ni suru warui yatsu wa dare da (Tokyo: Ēru Shuppansha, 1979) 88 “Terebijon: Atarashii tarento Yamamoto Naozumi,” Mainichi shinbun, April 29, 1968. 89 Aaron Gerow, “From Film to Television: Early Theories of Television in Japan,” in Media Theory in Japan, eds. Marc Steinberg and Alexander Zahlten (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 36. Aaron Gerow discusses the theoretical significance of the Shisō special volume that dealt with the issues of TV as a rising

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

223

mass media. Shimizu’s article was a part of the special volume. See Shimizu Ikutarō, “Terebijon jidai,” Shisō 413 (October 1958). 90 Chun, “Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots,” 160. 91 Chun, “Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots,” 183–84. 92 Okamoto and Fukuda, Gendai tarentorogī, 88–89. 93 I discussed the discourse of the audience’s subjectivity in postwar Japan in Seong Un Kim, “Performing Democracy: Audience Participation in Postwar Broadcasting,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 81–83. 94 Okamoto and Fukuda, Gendai tarentorogī, 88.

References Arase, Yutaka. “Nyūsushō no honshitsu.” Gekkan nihon terebi 82 (January 1966): 11–15. “Bangumi seminā: shabondama horidē,” Hōsō bunka 21, no. 6 (June 1966): 40–43. Bronson, Adam. One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. Chun, Jayson Makoto. “A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953– 1973. New York: Routledge, 2007. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Etō, Fumio. “Oshaberi tarento tachi.” Chōsa jōhō 113 (August 1968): 41–45. ———. “Sengo bunka no tokushitsu, zoku.” Chōsa jōhō 87 (June 1966): 39–42. ———. “Tarento.” Hōsō asahi 209 (October 1971): 77–83. Etō, Fumio and Fukuda Sadayoshi. “Tarento no shirōtosei.” Chōsa jōhō 77 (August 1965): 33–37. ———. “Ueki hitoshi no ba’ai.” Chōsa jōhō 78 (September 1965): 34–38. Gerow, Aaron. “From Film to Television: Early Theories of Television in Japan.” In Media Theory in Japan, edited by Marc Steinberg and Alexander Zahlten, 32–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Gunji, Sadanori. Nabepuro teikoku no kōbō: star dust. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1992. Hosokawa, Shuhei. “The Uses of Routine: NHK’s Amateur Singing Contest in Historical Perspective.” In Television, Japan, and Globalization, edited by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai and JungBong Choi, 51–72. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010. Iizawa, Tadasu. “Taranto.” Hōsō asahi 64, (September 1959): 9–11. Iwamoto, Kenji and Makino Mamoru, eds. Eiga nenkan-sengōhen, vol. 19. Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1999. Jung, Ji Hee. “Chapter 2. Radio Singing Show Nodo jiman (Amateur Hour) and Audience Participation in Transwar Japan.” In “Radio Broadcasting and the Politics of Mass Culture in Transwar Japan.” PhD dissertation, University of California San Diego, 2010. Kagami, Hiroshi. “Terebi tarento ron.” Kōkoku 143 (February 1960): 10–12. Katayanagi, Tadao and Sano Hideo. “CM tarento ron.” YTV Report 28 (August 1963): 30–35. Katō, Hidetoshi. “‘Tarento’ no henbō to sono haikei.” Hōsō asahi 102 (November 1962): 8–22. Kenkyūbu. “Hitobito no tetsugaku nit suite no chūkan hōkoku 1.” Shisō no kagaku 3, no. 2 (February 1948): 57–67. Kim, Seong Un. “Crazy Shows: Entertainment Television in Cold War Japan, 1953–1973.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2017. ———. “Ilbon TV waidŭsyo wa k’ŏmyunik’eisyŏn ŭI saeroun yangsik.” Ilbon yŏn’gu 32 (2019): 297–322. ———. “Performing Democracy: Audience Participation in Postwar Broadcasting.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 61–89. Kirsch, Griseldis. “Next-Door Divas: Japanese Tarento, Television and Consumption.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 6, No. 1 (June 2013): 74–88. Kobayashi, Shichirō. “Kokumin seikatsu no naka no terebi fukyū.” TBS Chōsa jōhō 37 (January 1962): 3–9. Kōuchi, Saburō. “Tarento no rekishi.” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 14–19. Lukács, Gabriella. Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Minami, Hiroshi, ed. Masu komyunikēshon kōza, vol. 4. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1954. Minamie, Jirō, ed. Terebi tarento tokuhon. Tokyo: Shikisha, 1959. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai. 20-seiki hōsōshi, vol. 1. Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2001.

224

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Nihon Minkan Hōsō Renmei, ed. Minkan hōsō gojū nenshi. Tokyo: Nihon Minkan Hōsō Renmei, 2001. Nihon Terebi Chōsabu. “Tarento ninki chōsa kekka.” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 29–34. Noro, Kazu, Nasui Tadashi, Koike Ichirō, Yoshimoto Akimitsu, Sugimoto Yōkichi, Ikeda Yukihiko and Katagiri Akinori. “Zadankai: tarento wo sukauto suru.” Hōsō bunka 14, no. 10 (October 1959): 24–29. Ogi, Masahiro. “Hōsō to amachuashippu.” Hōsō hihyō 6 (May 1968): 4–12. Okamoto, Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi. “Gendai tarentorojī (1) gendaijin wa jānarisutoka suru.” CBC Report 7, no. 7 (July 1963): 3–6. ———. “Gendai tarentorojī (4) NHK teki tarentorojī no himitsu.” CBC Report 7, no. 10 (October 1963): 34–36. ———. “Gendai tarentorogī (19) shōshimin to iu tachiba.” CBC Report 9, no. 2 (February 1965): 42–45. ———. “Gendai tarentorogī (21) masukomi to wareware no aida no ningenteki kankei.” CBC Report 9, no. 4 (April 1965): 37–40. ———. Gendai tarentorogī: aruiwa keisotsu e no jiyū. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1966. Painter, Andrew A. “Japanese Daytime Television, Popular Culture and Ideology.” In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by John Whittier Treat, 197–234. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996. Sanuka, Mitsuo. “Terebi yose wa naze hayaru: atarashii geinō e no jōken.” Hōsō bunka 21, no. 8 (August 1966): 44–47. Satō, Tadao. Nihon eigashi, vol. 1 1896–1940. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. Shiga, Nobuo. Terebi no sekai: jitsuzō to kyozō no aida. Tokyo: Seibundō Shinkōsha, 1967. Shiga, Nobuo, Masaki Kyōsuke and Katō Morio. “Tarento no genkō.” Gekkan nihon terebi 75 (June 1965): 20–25. Shimizu, Ikutarō. “Terebijon jidai.” Shisō 413 (October 1958): 2–22. Shiozawa, Shigeru. “TV tarento no genjō: mazushii genjitsu no Sugata.” Kinema junpō 208 (July 1958): 142–45. Shisō no kagaku kenkyūkai, ed. Watakushi no tetsugaku, zoku. Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1950. Suzuki, Hitoshi. “Terebi tarento towa nanika.” Shisō no kagaku dai-5-ji 73 (March 1968): 22–27. Takenaka, Rō. Tarento zankoku monogatari: sutā wo kuimono ni suru warui yatsu wa dare da. Tokyo: Ēru Shuppansha, 1979. Tonomura, Kanji. “Taishū ni aisareru terebi jidaigeki.” YTV Report 32 (April 1964): 6–9. Tsai, Eva. “The Dramatic Consequences of Playing a Lover: Stars and Televisual Culture in Japan.” In Television, Japan, and Globalization, edited by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai and JungBong Choi, 93–116. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010. Walker, Leo. The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands. New York: Doubleday, 1972. Yamamoto, Akira. “Terebi no sōgōsei.” Hōsō asahi 149 (October 1966): 41–44. Yoshida, Minao, Tsukuda Yoshirō, Hayashi Kiyohiro, Katsuragawa Kichirō, Koizumi Yūji, and Matsumoto Shōzō. “Seisakusha no kataru rajio terebi tarento.” Hōsō asahi 64 (September 1959): 32–43. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. “Image, Information, Commodity: A Few Speculations on Japanese Televisual Culture.” In In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture, edited by Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder, 123–38. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

Chapter 12: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture

225

Part 4 The Transnational Postwar

Chapter 13 Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective Julia C. Bullock Western feminists often assume that feminism originated in the West; by this logic, all other feminisms must be the product of borrowing or imitation. Yet the Japanese case clearly illustrates that feminism is necessarily the product of local concerns, even as it finds inspiration in foreign models and develops according to a logic of transnational exchange and negotiation. In this chapter, I explore the development of postwar Japanese feminism in transnational frame, focusing on four major loci of discursive negotiation: the early postwar Cold War context, travel and study abroad, translation, and international organizations and frameworks.

Introduction Western feminists have often assumed that feminism originated in the West. By this logic, all other feminisms must be the product of borrowing or imitation. In this chapter, I argue that the Japanese case provides clear evidence that feminism is necessarily the product of local concerns, even as it finds inspiration in foreign models and develops according to a logic of transnational exchange and negotiation. Here I take a capacious view of both halves of the term “transnational feminism.” I understand “transnational” to mean any activity that reaches beyond the boundaries of Japan as they are currently defined (territorial disputes notwithstanding), and “feminism” to mean any endeavor or discourse that seeks to improve women’s status or broaden the range of possible forms of subjectivity available to them. In particular, I understand the latter term in a flexible sense because of the diversity of viewpoints that has historically characterized women who sought such improvement, and because the terminology that has denoted such activity in Japan has been equally diverse. It was only in the 1970s that Japanese women began to reclaim the term feminisuto (feminist) from its earlier usage to mean “ladies’ man.” Meanwhile, although terms as different as fujin mondai (the woman problem) and danjo dōken (lit. “same rights for men and women”) have been employed in Japanese feminist discourse, and every such term carries its own historical significance and baggage, we can nevertheless argue that women who engaged in such discourse can be said to have sought to improve the circumstances of women, though they may

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

229

have defined such objectives very differently. Therefore, I use the term “feminist” advisedly, understanding that while it may seem anachronistic to do so in some cases, it nevertheless allows us to see common cause among various schools of Japanese feminist thought with the same basic objective, albeit with different visions of the path to that objective. In this chapter I explore the development of postwar Japanese feminism in transnational frame, taking a chronological approach that begins by acknowledging that the transnational nature of Japanese feminism long predates World War II (WWII). I then discuss the impact of the (primarily) US Occupation (1945–1952) in shaping the Cold War context with which Japanese feminists had to negotiate post-1945, noting both continuity and change across this ostensible watershed of defeat. Subsequent sections trace the way feminists responded to the rise and fall of the bubble economy and the societal transformations this provoked, bringing the discussion up to the present day. Throughout, I identify three forms of transnational activity that have been especially important to the development of Japanese feminist discourse. I highlight the physical movement of female intellectuals and feminist activists as they ventured outside the country (or non-Japanese ventured in) to enrich the landscape of discourses available to Japanese women, which they then adapted or debated through a highly agentive process for their own use. I also explore the role of translation of foreign texts and concepts as a process of knowledge transfer and negotiation. Finally, I discuss the participation of Japanese women in international organizations and frameworks, such as United Nations (UN)-sponsored conventions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in facilitating activist demands for inclusion and empowerment.

Prewar antecedents First it is important to note that Japanese feminism was already in a sense transnational from the early Meiji era (1868–1912). Scholars have traced the rise of Japanese feminist activism to the early Meiji Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, whose arguments for inclusion of non-elites in the political process drew on Western theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and included female writers and speakers like Fukuda Hideko and Kishida Toshiko.1 We should also note that transnational should not be conflated solely with engagement with Western culture and thought, particularly at this early stage of modernization. As Indra Levy has succinctly put it, “modern Japan is a culture of translation,” and not merely because of its opening to the West.2 Chinese language and philosophy had been woven into the fabric of Japanese culture from the dawn of the written word in the Nara period (710–784), and continued to shape Japanese letters particularly in the first few decades of Meiji. Because this form of discourse came to be seen as “masculine,” and therefore authoritative, early feminists like Kishida were able to leverage its persuasive power to make cogent arguments for expanded rights and privileges for women, inspiring future generations of Japanese women to organize and fight for inclusion in political and social spheres.3 That said, Japanese feminists also had to contend with a culturally and historically specific landscape of opportunities and constraints that profoundly shaped both feminist discourses and activist strategies from the Meiji era onward. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was the rise of “good wife, wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo) as the dominant paradigm of femininity in the 1890s.4 While the definition of a good wife and wise mother would shift repeatedly over subsequent decades, essentially this meant giving women a role in the modernization

230

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of the nation that was defined by supporting the work of their husbands and nurturing and educating their children for future gender-specific roles. While this elevated the status of Japanese women to some extent in comparison with premodern constructions of femininity— most especially by justifying the need to invest more in their education, ultimately leading to the creation of higher schools and colleges for women—it simultaneously confined the realm of acceptable social activity primarily to the domestic sphere. In the prewar era this paradigm of femininity became encoded into law through educational decrees and civil code legislation that legally subordinated women to their head of household (typically husbands or fathers); restricted their opportunities for self-determination through education, occupation or marriage; and curtailed their right to participate in political and social activities beyond the domestic sphere. Even when women participated in public-sphere activities (e.g., charitable work or social reform organizations) they were often forced to justify this through their roles as wives and mothers as a form of gender-appropriate nurturance, as opposed to “political” activity that might risk transgressing gender norms. (There were obvious class implications to this discourse, as poor women typically had no choice but to work outside the home from an early age, often in grueling and poorly-paid occupations.) This strategy of conforming to gendered expectations even while transgressing them would have a profound effect on feminist discourse and activism in the postwar era as well. Study abroad, and education in foreign language and culture more generally speaking, was a critical driver of the feminist movement in Japan from the beginning of the modern era. Christian missionary schools in the 1870s and 1880s brought foreign women to Japan to train Japanese girls in English language, literature and culture at a time when the Japanese government mostly ignored increasing demands for higher education for women. As early as 1871, the Meiji government sent five young girls to the United States to live and study with American families. The youngest of these girls, Tsuda Umeko, became a celebrated educator of young women, founding Tsuda Juku (Tsuda English Academy) in 1900, which trained generations of young women in English and American culture. Many of its graduates would go on to become translators or progressive educators in their own right, or participate in international organizations for which fluency in English was requisite. The school also took an active role in encouraging its graduates to study abroad. Sally Hastings has traced a steady stream of Tsuda graduates to the United States between 1900 and the onset of war between Japan and the US in 1941.5 These young women completed bachelor’s and graduate programs at prestigious women’s colleges (for example, Bryn Mawr, Mills, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley) and coeducational universities (e.g., Oberlin, University of Michigan). Study abroad was particularly important to Japanese women’s education because beginning with the Education Law (Kyōiku rei) of 1879, women were excluded from the elite prep academies that trained men for top-tier universities. Thus, ambitious women wishing to pursue an equivalent course of education were forced to travel abroad. The Taishō era (1912–1926) saw an intensification of feminist activity particularly in the realms of literature and journalism, with the rise of the Seitō (Bluestocking) coterie and the image of the Japanese New Woman (atarashii onna). By the early 20th century Japanese women began editing and publishing their own literary journals, facilitating experimentation with new forms of female subjectivity that pushed the discursive envelope further toward liberation of women’s desires. In some cases, as in the fiction of Yoshiya Nobuko, these literary experiments opened a space for escape (however temporary and contingent) from the dominant logic of heterosexual romance and motherhood as the teleological objective of Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

231

women’s sexuality. Jan Bardsley demonstrates how contributors to the pathbreaking journal Seitō (Bluestocking, 1911–1916) used translation to challenge conventional wisdom of women’s place in society, as encounters with feminist writings from abroad “gave [them] new, gendered terms for interpreting [their] own life events.” 6 Like her Euro-American parallels, the Japanese New Woman faced her share of backlash through “newspaper gossip, government censors’ scrutiny, and public concern.” 7 Undeterred by these societal headwinds, the editors of Seitō published an extraordinary array of translations of fiction and non-fiction works that advocated in various ways for greater roles and rights for women, from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to meditations on the “woman question” from diverse theoretical perspectives by authors such as “Emma Goldman, Ellen Key, Sonya Kovalevsky, and Olive Schreiner, as well as sexologist Havelock Ellis and sociologist Lester Ward.” 8 We must note that the written word provided a critical venue for Japanese feminist activity at this time precisely because other avenues of self-expression were legally foreclosed to them. Women were prohibited from participating in political meetings and organizations beginning in 1890 with the Law on Political Associations and Assembly, restrictions that were reinforced in Article 5 of the Public Peace Police Law of 1900. Consequently, revision of this legal hurdle to activism occupied much of the energies of Japanese feminists prior to 1945, as this was a precondition for advocacy for other rights.9 This situation did not apply to feminists in Europe and North America, which helps account to some degree for the comparatively weaker emphasis on women’s suffrage (in comparison with feminist movements abroad) in prewar Japan. These legal obstacles also had practical effects on the way feminist activists conducted their advocacy for women’s rights; for example, they resulted in the creation of separate women’s sections of political parties because they were not legally allowed to participate in the parent structures.10 This is not to say that suffrage was not an important issue for Japanese feminists, and those who struggled for suffrage prior to 1945 were clearly inspired by similar movements abroad. The career of Ichikawa Fusae, who in the postwar era came to be known as the “Susan B. Anthony of Japan,” is testament to the power of these transnational networks, as she traveled extensively in the United States in the early 1920s and maintained close ties to suffrage activists such as Alice Paul and Jane Addams.11 However, Japanese women were also forced to contend with a different discursive landscape that made it harder to argue for suffrage based on the kind of natural rights discourse employed by women in Europe and North America. Advocates of greater rights for Japanese women had to work within conventional notions of femininity that rendered such arguments convincing only to the extent that they reinforced women’s ability to better support their husbands or more effectively raise their children.12 These legal and cultural obstacles to organization posed specific challenges to Japanese women that required them to selectively adopt and adapt arguments and strategies from abroad in ways that made sense given the domestic context. In spite of these hurdles, Japanese women did find inspiration through transnational networks. Socialist women were inherently internationalist in their outlook, even as their interests diverged from both “bourgeois” feminists and male party and labor leaders.13 International organizations that espoused Christian values likewise found a ready home in Japan. For example, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) sent a representative to Japan as early as 1886 to solicit support for a local branch of the organization.14 In addition to abstention from tobacco and alcohol, the Japanese chapter would harness the Meiji-era fervor for national improvement to advocate monogamy and celibacy before marriage, 232

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

lobby for anti-prostitution measures and support other initiatives designed to enhance the moral fiber of Japanese people (and later, activism for peace and suffrage). However, while keeping the acronym WCTU in their promotional materials, they dropped the word “temperance” from the Japanese title, which was changed to Women’s Moral Reform Society (Fujin Kyōfūkai)—an illustration of the way local concerns shaped reception and adoption of foreign paradigms of feminist organization.15 Direct encounters with Western feminists also gave women in Japan the opportunity to “apply Western feminists’ methods and ideologies selectively—tailoring them in ways that would meet Japanese sociocultural conditions.” 16 The role of Japanese feminist Ishimoto (Katō) Shidzue (Shizue) in partnering with Margaret Sanger to introduce birth control methods to Japan is well documented. In testament to the mobility of Japanese women at the time, it is important to note that Ishimoto first met Sanger in New York in 1920, while living there with her husband.17 Leaders of Japanese women’s organizations also represented their nation at pathbreaking international conventions, such as meetings of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference. These experiences often had a transformative effect on Japanese women, as Shibahara Taeko notes of one such delegate, Gauntlett Tsuneko. Gauntlett reportedly “changed her mind [to support women’s suffrage] after direct contact with Western activists, through attending the WCTU Congress in London and being invited by the IWSA to participate in the Eighth IWSA Congress in Geneva in 1920 as an observer.” 18 Participation in such meetings likewise had the effect of training women in skills of public speaking, political organizing, and leadership that facilitated women’s active involvement in voting and running for office once suffrage was achieved.19 In summary, we have seen that well before the ostensible watershed of defeat in WWII, Japanese feminists were both aware of and engaged with the theories and strategies of feminist activists abroad. However, with the rise of militarism and imperialism in Japan in the 1930s, these transnational ties grew increasingly difficult to maintain as the government increased surveillance of feminist activists, and tensions over Japanese aggression in Asia frayed relationships between Japanese women and their overseas partners.20 But once war ended, Japanese women were able to capitalize on their international experiences to push for rapid and dramatic improvements in women’s status.

The Occupation period: Change and continuity Defeat in WWII led to a seven-year occupation (1945–1952) by foreign powers that dramatically shaped postwar Japan through revision of its constitution and civil code, and attempted to remake its culture and society as well. These changes gave women a host of unprecedented new rights and opportunities, including the right to vote and run for office, to marry and divorce of their own accord, and to equality of educational opportunity. Article 14 of the new constitution, effective in May of 1947, further guaranteed that “all of the people are equal under the law,” and forbade discrimination based on “race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.” 21 A newly formed Women’s and Minor’s Bureau (1947) of the Ministry of Labor brought female leadership to the Japanese bureaucracy, creating an institutional foundation for future policy change. The transnational character of the Occupation is perhaps obvious, but it is important to note that these new rights were not merely a gift from the

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

233

foreign occupiers. Rather, they were the product of concerted effort by Japanese feminists, in cooperation with lower-ranking Occupation staffers (many of whom were female), to lobby first the Japanese authorities and then the Occupation regime for full political rights.22 The Occupation created an enormous opportunity for Japanese women with Englishlanguage skills to find employment at a time when the economy was in a shambles and Japanese people struggled to support themselves. Women who spoke English found ready employment as typists, translators and other white-collar support positions to Occupation staffers, who were remarkably dependent upon their skills. Uemura Chikako has illustrated that the labor of female Japanese office staff contributed greatly to promotion and reception of Occupation-era reforms, particularly those affecting women. For example, Yamamuro Tamiko, of the Civil Information and Education (CIE) Division, seems to have been given great responsibility for promoting coeducation at the local level once it became part of the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education.23 The Occupation and its aftermath also created an infrastructure to support further opportunities for study abroad at a time when stringent restrictions on the movement of capital and people made foreign travel legally or effectively impossible for most Japanese. As Alisa Freedman has noted, “study abroad students were instrumental in forging Japan-US cultural exchange in the early Cold War era and in advancing women’s equality.” 24 From 1949 to 1951, the GARIOA (Government Account for Relief in Occupied Areas) program funded young Japanese to study abroad; after 1952 the Fulbright program took up this mantle. The two funds together supported 651 Japanese women to study abroad between 1949 and 1966.25 A number of these women ultimately returned to Japan to become university presidents or found universities of their own, thus extending the investment in Japanese women’s education to future generations of female leaders.

Early Cold War controversies While we should not underestimate the importance of this changed landscape, human behavior does not change with the stroke of a pen. Thus, well into the postwar era we continue to see the legacy of prewar constructions of conventional femininity and the feminist discursive and activist strategies that developed to challenge such conventions. From the latter half of the Occupation, the resurgent power of right-wing Japanese politicians who appealed to “traditional” gender norms as a stabilizing force in society meant that it became increasingly difficult for women to capitalize upon many of the rights and freedoms promised by Occupation-era reforms. Furthermore, the Cold War context contributed to this retrenchment of conservative gender norms during and after the Occupation. As Mire Koikari has documented, “The US efforts to democratize Japanese women [during the Occupation] were inseparable from Cold War containment politics,” whereby “traditional heterosexual gender roles within the family came to be invested with new meaning and significance, resulting in the postwar cult of domesticity.” 26 This conflation of femininity with domesticity and motherhood was further enabled by the consolidation of conservative parties under the umbrella of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of 1955, which would go on to rule Japan for much of the postwar era. Japanese feminists responded to this challenging political landscape in various ways. As Koikari further notes, “for many Japanese middle-class women, that repertoire of

234

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

sense-making practices [promoted by the Occupation] was congenial, resulting in their willing participation in containment narratives [of feminine domesticity].” 27 Particularly for those raised and educated to become good wives and wise mothers prior to 1945, such containment narratives would likely have seemed to make common sense. Thus some women, such as those who participated in Mothers’ Congress activism to protest nuclear testing, continued to lobby for improved social conditions on the strength of their status as wives and mothers through what Hillary Maxson has dubbed “matricentric feminism.” 28 Meanwhile, others argued for expanded professional and political roles for women. This diversity of views resulted in a series of spirited housewife debates (shufu ronsō) over the social role and obligations of the housewife, beginning in 1955 and ranging across several decades and phases of argument. Here too we see the importance of transnational networks and discourses in shaping the course of Japanese feminism. Ishigaki Ayako—whose essay “The Secondary Occupation Called the Housewife” (Shufu to iu daini shokugyō ron), published in the February 1955 issue of the women’s journal Fujin Kōron, provided the spark that lit the conflagration—had lived for years in the United States prior to WWII. Drawing on these experiences abroad, she upholds American women as a model for Japanese women, arguing that “when women in the United States realized the extra time produced by modern conveniences and the financial benefit of working … they seized the opportunity to go out to work and thereby inspired an even more rapid rationalization of the home.” 29 By contrast, Japanese women, in her estimation, seem content to live lives of indolence and low ambition. Interestingly, one of Ishigaki’s earliest detractors, Sakanishi Shiho (Shio)—whose essay in the April 1955 issue of Fujin Kōron provided a spirited defense of the social value of the work performed by the Japanese housewife—also spent significant time in the United States prior to World War II, earning a doctorate from the University of Michigan and working as a translator and librarian at the Library of Congress for more than ten years. In her rebuttal to Ishigaki, Sakanishi too employs the example of American women, but to opposite effect. She notes that when American women flocked to the workplace during wartime, they were unprepared for the consequences this would have for their families: While they earned financial freedom, they wondered if they hadn’t lost something more precious. … Their homes were in disarray, incidents of juvenile crime increased year upon year, and divorce [rates] rose. Many had the experience of feeling that if they had been more conscious of their important roles as housewives, mothers, and wives, and really poured their energies into that, this kind of misfortune would probably not have happened…30 But what is most interesting is that both of these commentators seem to have agreed on at least one point: the naturalness of women’s performance of domestic labor through the increasingly reified role of the postwar housewife. Such debates illustrate the pervasive (and persuasive) power of the postwar “cult of domesticity” to shape expectations of women’s roles in Japanese society. In the 1960s, university attendance expanded dramatically as the children of the postwar baby boom reached college age, and women as well as men benefited from this massification of higher education. The percentage of young men of college age entering four-year universities doubled during this decade, whereas that for young women nearly tripled.31 However, young women were aggressively tracked into two-year junior colleges or women’s colleges by Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

235

a host of government policies, from requirement of home economics coursework for girls only to gender stereotyping in textbooks and tracking of students into specific courses of study based on gendered expectations of future social roles.32 In tandem with these pressures on women to “choose” educations that led to marriage and motherhood, the mass media inflamed a backlash against young women who enrolled in formerly all-male universities that had recently become coeducational due to postwar education reforms. Awash in claims of “coeds ruining the nation,” these media outlets’ broadsides illustrate the challenges faced by ambitious young women whose pursuit of professional careers post-graduation threatened presumptions of female domesticity as women’s “natural” and innate purpose in life.33 Those who did graduate and seek employment found pervasive discrimination, with many employers advertising positions for men only, in blatant violation of postwar legal guarantees of sexual equality. Frustration with these straitened opportunities for self-actualization led some women to turn to fictional landscapes as a way to critique the rigidly gendered division of labor that structured the Japanese economy and society. In the process, these writers anticipated many of the feminist theoretical problems that would be debated more explicitly by the “women’s lib” movement of the following decade.34 It is important to note how many of these authors’ intellectual experiences were shaped by education in foreign languages and cultures, or by traveling or living abroad—experiences that allowed them to critique Japanese discourses of gender from an external perspective (e.g., Kurahashi Yumiko, Takahashi Takako, Oba Minako, Yamamoto Michiko). Similarly, as James Welker has demonstrated in his study of women’s consumption and production of “boys’ love” manga in the 1970s, “visual and cultural borrowing helped to liberate writers and readers to work within and against the local heteronormative paradigm in the exploration of alternatives” to conventional romance and marriage, and foreign landscapes served as a critical site that enabled fantasy projections of such alternatives.35 These narratives not only served as a means for young women to explore their sexual desires at a time when Japanese society neither encouraged nor accepted female sexuality as valuable for its own sake, but also “opened up space for some readers to experiment with marginalized gender and sexual practices and played a role in identity formation,” especially for young women who came to identify as lesbian.36

Struggles for equality As in many other nations, the student movement of the 1960s was animated by both domestic and international problems, ranging from opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty, to protests against the Vietnam War (for which Japan served as a staging ground for US military activity), to more local concerns such as tuition increases and anger at the cozy alignment between Japanese education policies and the dictates of industry. Though this is often remembered as a male-dominated youthquake, women too participated at all levels of the movement, in the process encountering male chauvinism and abuse not only from the mass media but even from their own supposedly progressive comrades. Female members of New Left political sects faced not just relegation to kitchen and secretarial duty but also sexual abuse and denigration from male members of their own and other groups. Anger at this mistreatment, as well as serious theoretical and strategic differences with New Left leadership, led many female members to break away and form their own separatist

236

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

women’s lib groups in the 1970s. Many opted out of established student organizations as violence became more central to New Left activism, and the willingness to take up the gebabō (lit. “stave of violence”) to attack riot police or members of rival sects came to be seen as proof of commitment to the revolutionary cause. In response, theorists like Tokoro Mitsuko began to articulate an alternate vision of social change through maternal nurturance.37 “Women’s lib” theorists like Tanaka Mitsu vigorously critiqued men’s advocacy of “free sex.” In her seminal essay “Liberation from the Toilet,” Tanaka employed the image of a “toilet” as a metaphor for men’s perception of women as a crude means of satisfying their own physical needs, arguing that while “free sex” ostensibly implied sexual liberation, in fact such liberation was enjoyed primarily by men through a poorly camouflaged sexual exploitation of women.38 Former student movement participants were also disillusioned with the way New Left sects had given lip service to equality, while organizing their activism around a gendered hierarchy of labor whereby men occupied the more visible leadership and public speaking roles while women performed the invisible support and care work. In opposition, women began to experiment with horizontally structured forms of collective action such as communes and (theoretically, if not practically) leaderless conscious-raising circles.39 As James Welker has documented, translation served a pivotal role in disseminating information about feminist movements outside of Japan during the early 1970s. Although the “women’s lib” movement of that era has been conventionally associated with the former student movement activists of the New Left, Welker notes that a slightly older generation of professional women with foreign language skills devoted themselves to “transfiguring” seminal American feminist texts such as Notes from the Second Year and Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) into Japanese versions that took local needs and contexts into account, thus making them more accessible to Japanese readers.40 It is important to note that some of these translators were themselves former study abroad students and/or recipients of prestigious grants such as Fulbright scholarships.41 Other women formed collaborative translation groups such as Urufu no Kai—the name of this group itself suggesting conversance with Western feminist discourse, with urufu evoking the British feminist writer (Virginia) Woolf. This group understood its translation work as a critical component of its broader mandate to facilitate debate about women’s lives and experiences through journalism; in addition to translating feminist texts from abroad, it was active in publishing its own series of journals on feminist issues titled From Woman to Women (Onna kara onna-tachi e).42 In the process, and particularly in the case of OBOS, they wound up pioneering innovative strategies to combat the chauvinism inherent in the Japanese language, for example by inventing new words to render female body parts and biological processes that redressed the discriminatory effects of standard Japanese terminology.43 As Welker is careful to note, while feminist activists in Japan have frequently objected to the notion of “women’s lib” as connected to similar movements in the United States and elsewhere, this is primarily because the Japanese media highlighted such lines of influence in order to discredit the movement as an “imported” and disruptive phenomenon with little relevance to the lives of Japanese women.44 Here I wish instead to underscore the productive nature of such transcultural and translinguistic lines of communication between feminists in Japan and elsewhere, which illustrate the degree to which so-called second-wave feminism was a truly transnational occurrence that inspired radical action across the globe—albeit action that manifested variously in response to local circumstances and constraints.

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

237

By the mid-1970s, the “women’s lib” circles began to give way to more institutionalized structures of feminist theoretical and activist work, and new forms of transnational activity emerged. The 1975 UN-sponsored International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City drew numerous Japanese delegates, and resulted in new forms of collaborative activity within Japan, for example under the umbrella organization Women’s Action Group.45 Feminists in the late 1970s and 1980s began to examine the legacy of Japanese wartime aggression in Asia, and particularly its institutionalized sexual enslavement of so-called “comfort women.” This in turn forced a re-thinking of the ways that Japanese feminists had collaborated with the state, willingly or not, during wartime. It also motivated many (such as the journalist Matsui Yayori) to build ties with other Asian women to combat contemporary echoes of this system, such as overseas sex tours commercially organized for Japanese businessmen. On university campuses, female academics began the pioneering work of creating women’s studies courses and programs. This spurred new publications such as the journal Feminisuto (Feminist), which “aspired to be the ‘New Bluestocking’” through its mix of political and cultural coverage, and attempted to forge a transnational dialogue both with Asian and Western women (most prominently through its English-language edition).46 Meanwhile, feminist activists mobilized to push for laws and policies more amenable to women and families. The Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) is one example of the kinds of compromises these painstaking lobbying efforts required. It also illustrates the limits of gaiatsu, or the strategy of using external pressure to effect changes in laws and government policies. In this case, that pressure came from the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted by the UN in 1979 during the International Decade of Women (1975–1985). A coalition of Japanese feminist journalists, politicians, and NGO representatives pressed the Japanese government to sign CEDAW, which in turn forced adoption of legislation to prevent discrimination in employment. This was a pervasive problem given cultural practices that made it common for employers to coerce women to “retire” from paid work upon marriage and motherhood, to pass over women for promotion to higher-paid leadership positions, and to re-hire them after their children reached school age in temporary and poorly paid lower-status roles.47 While the EEOL was successfully passed into law in 1985 and became effective the following year, it has been derided by feminists as insufficient, weak, and favorable mostly to business interests, thus prompting two attempts to revise it over subsequent decades (in 1997 and 2005). It has also forced female employees to decide between a managerial track (offering promotion to upper-level administrative roles) and a general track (with less responsibility but no opportunity for advancement), meaning that women who “choose” the latter as more congruent with wife-and-motherhood effectively relegate themselves indefinitely to clerical work. The law’s effectiveness has been compromised primarily because it does little to address underlying societal barriers to women’s professional advancement—namely, the gendered division of labor that has structured the postwar Japanese economy, confining women to prescribed roles as wives and mothers in order to support salarymen husbands’ full-time devotion to “Japan, Inc.” and their children’s success in competitive examinations for top-tier prep schools and universities. On the other hand, it has perhaps mitigated the conflation of femininity with motherhood in the public imagination, and encouraged many younger women to aspire to positions of higher responsibility than before, although without resolving the conflicts that inevitably arise when these young women reach marriageable age.48 238

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

In the early 1990s, with the bursting of the bubble economy and less favorable economic headwinds, Japanese women faced increased challenges in the professional sphere as downsizing disproportionately affected women workers. At the same time, though, the brief rise to power of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP; now the Social Democratic Party) in the mid-1990s provided a window in which to make lasting electoral and bureaucratic changes that led to adoption of a Basic Act for Gender Equal Society in 1999. Unfortunately, a subsequent rightward shift in the political landscape led to a vociferous backlash against “gender-free” policies that they believed threatened the integrity of the family and the “beautiful customs” of “traditional” Japan.49 This tug of war between progressive and conservative forces over the direction and degree of change in women’s status would continue into the first two decades of the 21st century, as the economy continued to languish and the government, under the leadership of Abe Shinzō (2006–2007 and 2012–2020), gave lip service to gender equality while doing little of substance to actually improve women’s status. Abe’s signature “womenomics” agenda to push for more inclusion of women in government, business, education and bureaucratic leadership has received scathing criticism from feminist scholars and journalists who have derided the plan as a disingenuous attempt to draw attention away from his efforts to whittle away at the more progressive aspects of the postwar legal structure through constitutional revision. Linda C. Hasunuma has also described it as a public relations campaign in response to “gender gaiatsu,” or pressure felt by the Japanese government to respond to coverage in the international press of the unresolved “comfort women” issue, as well as reports by international bodies like the UN and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that describe Japan as lagging behind other industrialized countries in indicators that measure women’s status and quality of life.50 The recent rash of suicides among women attempting to manage childcare and professional responsibilities due to the global pandemic of 2020 and beyond demonstrates that Japan, just like the United States and many other industrialized countries, still has a long way to go toward rectifying the unequal pressures on women to balance motherhood and work outside the home.51

Conclusion As Barbara Molony has noted, transnational feminism “does not have clean hands,” and Japan has ably demonstrated this by the fact that many women who fought to improve the status of their countrywomen nevertheless aligned themselves with the Japanese imperial cause during the Asia-Pacific War.52 However, we have also seen that venturing beyond the boundaries of the nation-state has afforded Japanese women an opportunity to see their own circumstances in relative terms, and to envision new possibilities for citizenship and meaningful personal and professional lives. These transnational connections were facilitated by study abroad and by other forms of travel and movement of ideas across national boundaries, such as through translation. Participation in international organizations, and/or the ability to leverage the moral authority of these institutions through strategies such as gaiatsu, have also proved productive for feminist thought and activity, albeit with limitations due to local circumstance. It is also important to note that transnational feminism in Japan has been a cultural as well as political phenomenon, with fantasy spaces such as those offered by literature and manga serving as rich sites of discursive negotiation, allowing women to project desires unfulfillable in society as it is currently structured and to imagine ways that

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

239

it might be structured differently. Finally, we have seen a striking degree of continuity across the prewar/postwar divide, in terms of the ways Japanese feminists have sought inspiration in the space of the transnational, and then amended and adapted those ideas to the Japanese context. What this seems to illustrate most clearly is that even at this historical juncture Japan is far from the only country that struggles to actualize ideals of gender equality, and that while feminists in Japan have learned much from like-minded activists and theorists abroad, the rest of the world might do well to take its own lessons from the experiences of Japanese women too.

Notes 1 On Kishida Toshiko see Marnie Anderson, A Place in Public: Women’s Rights in Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Rebecca L. Copeland and Melek Ortabasi, The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); and Mamiko C. Suzuki, Gendered Power: Educated Women of the Meiji Empress’ Court (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019). On Fukuda Hideko, see Vera Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 2 Indra Levy, “Introduction: Modern Japan and the Trialectics of Translation,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society (December 2008): 1–14. 3 Suzuki, Gendered Power, 44–49. 4 Koyama Shizuko, Ryōsai Kenbo: The Educational Ideal of “Good Wife, Wise Mother” in Modern Japan (Boston: Brill, 2013). 5 Sally A. Hastings, “Traveling to Learn, Learning to Lead: Japanese Women as American College Students, 1900–1941,” in Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, edited by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller and Christine R. Yano (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 193–208. 6 Jan Bardsley, “The New Woman of Japan and the Intimate Bonds of Translation,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society (December 2008): 221. See also Bardsley, The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman Essays and Fiction from Seitō, 1911–16 (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2007). 7 Bardsley, “The New Woman of Japan,” 207. 8 Bardsley, “The New Woman of Japan,” 209. 9 Mackie, Creating Socialist Women, 130–31. 10 Mackie, Creating Socialist Women, 114–15. 11 Barbara Molony, “Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Feminisms in Twentieth-Century Japan,” in Women’s Movements in Asia: Feminisms and Transnational Activism, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 101–2. 12 Barbara Molony, “Women’s Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870–1925,” Pacific Historical Review 69, no. 4 (November 2000): 651. 13 Mackie, Creating Socialist Women, 141. 14 Elizabeth Dorn Lublin, Reforming Japan: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the Meiji Period (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 23. 15 Lublin, Reforming Japan, 26–31. 16 Taeko Shibahara, Japanese Women and the Transnational Feminist Movement before World War II (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 23. 17 Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 19. 18 Shibahara, Japanese Women, 38. 19 Shibahara, Japanese Women, 55. 20 Molony, “Crossing Boundaries,” 103. 21 As quoted in Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 127.

240

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

22

Susan J. Pharr, “The Politics of Women’s Rights,” in Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation, edited by Robert E. Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987), 221–52; Uemura Chikako, Josei kaihō o meguru senryō seisaku (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2007). 23 Uemura, Josei kaihō o meguru, 143. On the CIE see also Bronson in this volume. 24 Alisa Freedman, “The Forgotten Story of Japanese Women Who Studied in the U.S.,” CSWS Annual Review 2016: 14. 25 Freedman, “The Forgotten Story,” 12. 26 Mire Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 19–20. 27 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 21. 28 Hillary Maxson, “From ‘Motherhood in the Interest of the State’ to Motherhood in the Interest of Mothers: Rethinking the First Mothers’ Congress,” in Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano and James Welker (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018), 35. 29 Jan Bardsley, “Discourse on Women in Postwar Japan: The Housewife Debate of 1955,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 16 (1999): 8. 30 Sakanishi, “’Shufu daini shokugyō ron’ no mōten,” 19. 31 The percentage of males entering four-year universities increased from 13.7 in 1960 to 27.3 in 1970. For women over the same period, the percentage rose from 2.5 to 6.5—still small in comparison with men, but across the decade women became an increasingly visible presence on college campuses that had until the late 1940s been male-only. See Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow, “College Women Today: Options and Dilemmas,” in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, eds. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (New York: The Feminist Press, 1995), 127. 32 Atsuko Kameda, “Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in Schools,” in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, eds. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (New York: The Feminist Press, 1995), 107–24. 33 Julia C. Bullock, Coeds Ruining the Nation: Women, Education, and Social Change in Postwar Japanese Media (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019). 34 Julia C. Bullock, The Other Women’s Lib: Gender and Body in Japanese Women’s Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010). 35 James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ and Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga,” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 841–42. On postwar manga see also Suter in this volume. 36 Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent,” 843. 37 Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021). 38 Tanaka Mitsu, “Benjo kara no kaihō,” in Shiryō Nihon ūman ribu shi, v. 1, ed. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko and Miki Sōko (Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1992–1995), 201–7. 39 Setsu Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 40 James Welker, “The Revolution Cannot Be Translated: Transfiguring Discourses of Women’s Liberation in 1970s–1980s Japan,” in Multiple Translation Communities in Contemporary Japan, edited by Beverley Curran, Nana Sato-Rossberg, and Kikuko Tanabe (New York: Routledge, 2015), 61. 41 Welker, “The Revolution Cannot,” 64. 42 Welker, “The Revolution Cannot,” 65–67. 43 Welker, “The Revolution Cannot,” 72–73. 44 Welker, “The Revolution Cannot,” 60–61. 45 Molony, “Crossing Boundaries,” 105. 46 Molony, “Crossing Boundaries,” 105; Alisa Freedman, “Mizuta Noriko: Biocritical Essay of a Literary Feminist and Global Scholar,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society XXX (2018): 36–37. 47 Joyce Gelb, “Tradition and Change in Japan: The Case of Equal Employment Opportunity Law,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal English Supplement 1 (1991): 48–75. 48 Barbara Molony, “Japan’s 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the Changing Discourse on Gender,” Signs 20, no. 2 (1995): 294–96.

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

241

49

Tomomi Yamaguchi, “The Mainstreaming of Feminism and the Politics of Backlash in Twenty FirstCentury Japan,” in Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano and James Welker (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018), 68–85. 50 Linda C. Hasunuma, “Gender Gaiatsu: An Institutional Perspective on Womenomics,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 48 (2015): 79–114. 51 Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida. “As Pandemic Took Hold, Suicide Rose Among Japanese Women,” The New York Times, February 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/world/asia/japan-women-suicide -coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1. 52 Molony, “Crossing Boundaries,” 90.

References Anderson, Marnie. A Place in Public: Women’s Rights in Meiji Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Bardsley, Jan. The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman Essays and Fiction from Seitō, 1911–16. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2007. ———. “Discourse on Women in Postwar Japan: The Housewife Debate of 1955.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 16 (1999): 3–47. ———. “The New Woman of Japan and the Intimate Bonds of Translation.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society (December 2008): 206–25. Bullock, Julia C. Coeds Ruining the Nation: Women, Education, and Social Change in Postwar Japanese Media. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. ———. The Other Women’s Lib: Gender and Body in Japanese Women’s Fiction. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010. Copeland, Rebecca L. and Melek Ortabasi. The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Freedman, Alisa. “The Forgotten Story of Japanese Women Who Studied in the U.S.” CSWS Annual Review 2016: 12–15. ———. “Mizuta Noriko: Biocritical Essay of a Literary Feminist and Global Scholar,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society XXX (2018): 11–51. Fujimura-Fanselow, Kumiko. “College Women Today: Options and Dilemmas.” In Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, 125–154. New York: The Feminist Press, 1995. Gelb, Joyce. “Tradition and Change in Japan: The Case of Equal Employment Opportunity Law.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal English Supplement 1 (1991): 48–75. Hastings, Sally A. “Traveling to Learn, Learning to Lead: Japanese Women as American College Students, 1900–1941.” In Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, edited by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller and Christine R. Yano, 193–208. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Hasunuma, Linda C. “Gender Gaiatsu: An Institutional Perspective on Womenomics.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 48 (2015): 79–114. Kameda, Atsuko. “Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in Schools.” In Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, 107–24. New York: The Feminist Press, 1995. Koikari, Mire. Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008. Koyama, Shizuko. Ryōsai Kenbo and the Educational Ideal of “Good Wife, Wise Mother” in Modern Japan. Boston: Brill, 2013. Levy, Indra. “Introduction: Modern Japan and the Trialectics of Translation,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society (December 2008): 1–14. Lublin, Elizabeth Dorn. Reforming Japan: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the Meiji Period. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010. Mackie, Vera. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

242

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

———. Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Maxson, Hillary. “From ‘Motherhood in the Interest of the State’ to Motherhood in the Interest of Mothers: Rethinking the First Mothers’ Congress.” In Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano and James Welker, 34–49. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018. Molony, Barbara. “Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Feminisms in Twentieth-Century Japan.” In Women’s Movements in Asia: Feminisms and Transnational Activism, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards, 90–109. New York: Routledge, 2010. ———. “Japan’s 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the Changing Discourse on Gender.” Signs 20, no. 2 (1995): 268–302. ———. “Women’s Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870–1925.” Pacific Historical Review 69, no. 4 (November 2000): 639–61. Pharr, Susan J. “The Politics of Women’s Rights.” In Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation, edited by Robert E. Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto, 221–52. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987. Rich, Motoko and Hikari Hida. “As Pandemic Took Hold, Suicide Rose Among Japanese Women,” The New York Times, February 22, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/world/asia/japan-women-suicide -coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1. Sakanishi, Shiho. “‘Shufu daini shokugyō ron’ no mōten.” In Shufu ronsō o yomu I: Zen kiroku, edited by Ueno Chizuko, 15–22. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1982. Schieder, Chelsea Szendi. Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Shibahara, Taeko. Japanese Women and the Transnational Feminist Movement before World War II. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014. Shigematsu, Setsu. Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Suzuki, Mamiko C. Gendered Power: Educated Women of the Meiji Empress’ Court. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Takeuchi-Demirci, Aiko. Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. Tanaka, Mitsu. “Benjo kara no kaihō.” In Shiryō Nihon ūman ribu shi vol. 1, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 201–7. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1992–1995. Uemura, Chikako. Josei kaihō o meguru senryō seisaku. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 2007. Welker, James. “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ and Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga.” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 841–70. ———. “The Revolution Cannot Be Translated: Transfiguring Discourses of Women’s Liberation in 1970s–1980s Japan.” In Multiple Translation Communities in Contemporary Japan, edited by Beverley Curran, Nana Sato-Rossberg, and Kikuko Tanabe, 60–78. New York: Routledge, 2015. Yamaguchi, Tomomi. “The Mainstreaming of Feminism and the Politics of Backlash in Twenty First-Century Japan.” In Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano and James Welker, 68–85. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018.

Chapter 13: Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective

243

Chapter 14 Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics Aya Homei This chapter studies post-war Japanese history through the lens of sciences that engaged with reproductive and population politics. It examines two scientifically informed projects, the knowledge of which directly interacted with statecraft in postwar Japan; namely, a bureaucratic exercise to count population numbers in the political turmoil after the Asia-Pacific War and the policy-relevant birth control research headed by Koya Yoshio. Through these cases, this chapter stresses the importance of locating post-war Japan into the transnational context, by arguing that postwar Japanese history was constructed through the reconfiguration of material and political conditions surrounding Japan and beyond.

Introduction Postwar Japan’s history as it relates to reproduction and population is a well-studied topic, approached by scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives.1 Demographers have contextualized the patterns of reproductive behaviors since the end of World War II in terms of long-term population trends. Social historians and scholars in gender or disability studies have narrated this history in terms of its linkages with various forms of social activism that emerged after Japan’s defeat in the war, such as the popular birth control movement, the disability rights movement against abortion and the women’s liberation movement. Anthropologists and sociologists have understood this history as mirroring the changing ideas and structures of personhood, kinship and other social relations as Japan was rebuilt from the rubble of the war. Historians of medicine and science have explored the role of medical and scientific theories as well as doctors, healthcare practitioners or scientists in postwar policies and practices in reproductive, infant and maternal health. An important theme running through the historiography on this topic is politics, manifest in everyday negotiations and public debates over what to do with reproductive bodies. In Japan, reproductive bodies—which Kohama Masako and Matsuoka Etsuko concisely

244

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

summarize with the expressions “umu, umanai [and] umenai shintai” (bodies that do, do not or cannot bear children)—gradually constituted a subject of political and policy discussion beginning in the 1860s.2 From this decade onward as Japan was transformed into a modern sovereign power, emerging groups of scientific experts and bureaucrats discussed the new concept of “population” in association with the wealth and health of the nation, along with childbirth as a factor directly affecting population trends.3 In this context, reproduction came to be understood not only as a personal matter but also as a public event that had ramifications for wide-ranging population issues such as food production, resource management, employment, public health and social and political security, which the Japanese government managed for the prosperity of the Japanese nation-state and empire. Even after Japan’s surrender in 1945 when the old administrative, legal and political structure that had previously supported Japanese sovereignty collapsed, this assumption—namely, that reproduction is personal and political—persisted in the approach of the Japanese government to issues associated with reproductive bodies. Scholars specializing on the postwar era emphasize this point, depicting this history in terms of the negotiations among various actors including the government, its various associates, public and private corporations, charitable organizations, activists and ordinary citizens, over issues of reproductive control and autonomy that were determined by demographic trends and swayed by trends in the nation’s political economy. Despite the richness of the scholarship, however, until recently most research on the politics of postwar Japan’s reproduction and population has focused primarily on domestic phenomena, presenting Japan at face value.4 However, a critical feature of Japan’s engagements with the issues of reproduction and population immediately after the war and a striking lacuna in scholarship to date is the fact that Japanese polity was itself in flux. This notion of a polity in flux is important because the Japanese state was the source of the legal definition of the Japanese who were subject to its reproductive and population policies and politics.5 Moreover, even when it was presented as a more stable unit in later years, the Japanese state’s engagement with the issues associated with reproductive practices and population phenomena never proceeded in isolation from Japan’s relations with neighboring countries and international communities, both in the form of state-based and more informal diplomacy. To address this historiographical gap, this chapter examines two interlinked episodes of scientific exercises that shaped the reproductive and population politics unfolding in Japan between 1945 and the 1960s. These were, first, the efforts of population bureaucrats to count the Japanese population immediately after Japan’s surrender in 1945, and second, policy-relevant birth control campaigns and studies in from the 1940s to the 1960s based on dialogues between Koya Yoshio, the Director-General of the Institute of Public Health (IPH), one of the most prominent racial hygienists in Japan, the American Oliver R. McCoy (Rockefeller Foundation officer based in the IPH), and the birth control researcher and philanthropist Clarence J. Gamble. These episodes offer an effective lens through which to reappraise the history of reproduction and population in postwar Japan, precisely because they illuminate both the precarity of Japan as a political unit and the intersections of domestic and transnational negotiations that profoundly shaped postwar Japan’s experiences with reproduction and population. In the first part of my analysis I will show how population experts had to grapple with a few challenges when collecting population data because of the enormous volume of migration triggered by Japan’s surrender and the demise of the Japanese Empire that followed. I will show that the demographic data compiled in this unique context was ultimately built on Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

245

precarious epistemological foundations, precisely because the Japanese polity that formed the basic premise for the data was itself undergoing fundamental shifts. In the second section, I will analyze Koya’s birth control research, which on the surface appeared relevant only to domestic population control policy. In contrast, I will demonstrate that Koya’s research was in fact borne out of transnational exchanges of money, goods, communication and knowledge involving McCoy and Gamble that unfolded initially in the context of the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), and later came to constitute an integral part of the transnational population control movement.

Reproductive and population politics in Japan, 1945–1960s: An overview The “improvement” of population quality and quantity via changing reproductive behaviors had been a central theme in policy discussions within Japan ever since policymakers and policy intellectuals connected the “population problem” (jinkō mondai) to a myriad of economic, social and health issues in the early 20th century.6 However, ideas about exactly what comprised the population problem and what aspects of the problem reproductive behaviors could rectify shifted over time. In the period immediately after Japan’s surrender, in the context of the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), the sudden population expansion and the decline in the “quality” (shitsu or shishitsu) of the Japanese race were seen as particularly problematic.7 The influx of repatriates into Japan, the baby boom and the visibility of homeless children, “panpan” girls (women associated with courting with or selling sex, mostly to American GIs), and vagrant disabled soldiers on the street contributed to the rise of a narrative that Japan faced overpopulation and a racial crisis. Observing these phenomena, the minister of health and welfare Ashida Hitoshi claimed in 1946 that “racial reconstruction” (minzoku fukkō) should be realized to rebuild Japan as a “cultured nation” (bunka kokka) and a “healthy nation” (kenkō kokka).8 In tandem, the staff working for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Headquarters (GHQ) saw the sudden population expansion as a possible threat to their mission in Japan due to anticipated food, labor and resource shortages and other economic issues that would preclude Japan’s economic recovery and national independence.9 Under such circumstances, the implementation of birth control practices based on eugenic principles emerged as an urgent matter within policymaking.10 Responding to these concerns, the Japanese government formed a Population Roundtable Group (Jinkō Kondankai) in January 1946, summoning experts to deliberate on the imminent population problem. Members of the group discussed the need for the government to implement both a birth control policy and a specific policy to “improve the population’s inherent and acquired quality [of the Japanese people].” 11 In 1948, the government issued the Eugenic Protection Law (Yūsei hogo hō, EPL). The EPL—presented to the public as distinct from the National Eugenic Law (Kokumin yūsei hō) promulgated in the wartime—aimed to defend the quality of the Japanese race by allowing birth control on eugenic grounds. Furthermore, its amendment in 1949 allowed women to undergo abortions on the grounds of economic difficulty, which de facto legalized abortion. Yet, the EPL—especially the 1949 amendment—resulted in an unexpected consequence: a sudden increase in the abortion rate. In 1951, in part to tackle this issue, the Cabinet approved the popularization of birth control as a national policy. In 1954, the Foundation-Institute for Research of Population

246

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Problems (Zaidan Hōjin Jinkō Mondai Kenkyūkai) produced a policy recommendation that specifically defined the government’s birth control policy as a population control policy.12 During the Occupation, GHQ officially took a neutral stance on the Japanese approach since birth control was a politically charged topic. Behind the scenes, however, staff in the relevant offices within GHQ aided their Japanese colleagues because they recognized the potential of birth control for stabilizing Japanese population trends.13 Outside of the government, birth control activists resumed their activities in the postwar after having been previously suppressed by the government due to their association with socialist and labor activism and the pronatalist policy during the war. They were commonly based in cities but not at all a homogenous group. In the early 1950s, some of those who maintained close international connections such as Katō (Ishimoto) Shizue began an initiative to unite the various birth control groups scattered across Japan into a nationwide organization that would act as the Japanese affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Consequently, the Family Planning Federation of Japan was launched in 1954, hosting The Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Tokyo in October 1955, which considered population control as a central theme. Over the 1950s, the government and birth control activists collaborated with public and private corporations to spread the idea and practice of birth control. The most notable outcome of this collaboration was the birth control program integrated into the New Life Movement (Shin Seikatasu Undō), a half-state, half-private initiative promoting a democratic, efficient and cultured life through the rationalization of everyday activities.14 Promoters of birth control under the New Life Movement—many of them technical bureaucrats affiliated with the Ministry of Health and Welfare—explained to company representatives that the rational application of contraception in employees’ marital lives represented a “modern birth control” practice, or “family planning” (kazoku keikaku), which would bring enormous benefits to the companies.15 It would not only help reduce social welfare expenses covered by corporations but also provide them with enlightened, disciplined and efficient workers who would help to raise industrial productivity. Many large corporations adopted the idea of family planning, and by the end of the 1950s birth control had become a major initiative in the New Life Movement. In part due to the efforts to popularize family planning by the government, activists and corporations throughout the 1950s, birth rates decreased significantly, with the total fertility rate falling from 4.54 in 1947 to 2.0 in 1960.16 However, fertility decline during this period was realized to a great extent through abortion among married women and the use of condoms, and not via contraceptive methods intended to foster women’s reproductive health or autonomy. In fact, this birth control behavior—highly anomalous among the industrial nations—remained as a feature of reproductive practices in Japan for a long period even after the 1950s.17 It is attributable to the sexism that tended to overlook women’s rights, and to the influence of the various interest groups, including the government and medical doctors’ associations, which prioritized benefits for the nation or themselves over individual women’s welfare. In the 1960s, the success in the family planning campaign rather ironically caused another concern among the technical bureaucrats and policymakers. Witnessing the drastic decline in fertility rates, from the late 1950s, they were now worried that Japan’s population would go below the so-called replacement level—the level at which a population would be able to reproduce itself from generation to generation without decreasing or increasing. In Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

247

the eyes of the government officials committed to postwar reconstruction through economic means, this was highly problematic because it meant that Japan might imminently be faced with labor shortages, which would then hamper the economic recovery.18 To make matters worse, fertility decline was occurring simultaneously with the comparatively high child mortality rate, which they believed would together exacerbate the labor shortage situation.19 In this context, the government presented the idea of “improving population quality” (jinkō shishitsu kōjō) via social policies specifically targeted at younger populations.20 The government’s White Paper on Health and Welfare (Kōsei H akusho) in 1962 contained a whole chapter dedicated to this topic.21 The “population quality” policy elaborated in the White Paper contained elements of the wartime eugenic policy, by including reproductive measures such as the promotion of genetic screening. At the same time, “population quality” as formulated in the early 1960s was slightly different from the previous eras, referring broadly to “the basic mental and physical state of individuals determining the characteristics of a human group called a population” as defined by the Foundation-Institute for Research of Population Problems.22 According to the paper, population quality would arguably be “improved” not only through eugenic reproductive policies, but also through other social policies, ranging widely from child-support allowances to educational reform.23 As the new discourse of population quality was emerging, further fertility decline gave rise to the argument that the government needed to promote social development (shakai kaihatsu). Social development—a term originally coined by the United Nations in the 1950s to enable a more holistic approach to development—did not resonate with Japanese politicians and policymakers in the 1950s as the whole country was focused on postwar reconstruction geared toward economic development.24 But a decade later, political leaders in Japan became more receptive to the concept as they were confronted with more and more cases of serious pollution and damage to human health, which indicated the negative effects of the economy-centric approach to reconstruction.25 In his inaugural speech in November 1964, Prime Minister Satō Eisaku proclaimed, “the promotion of social development will be the basis of [my government’s] domestic policy … with a long-term perspective … to create a high-quality welfare state.” 26 After the speech, social development surged as a catchphrase in policymaking, providing momentum for the implementation of major postwar health and welfare reforms.27 Specifically, in the policy discussion on population and reproduction, it was argued that social development would ultimately boost fertility by removing various socioeconomic factors that were currently preventing couples from having babies. As the Japanese government applied social development to solve population and reproductive issues domestically, it also began to promote birth control internationally in the context of international cooperation and overseas development aid.28 In 1968, thanks to the campaign led by the health and family planning activist Kunii Chōjirō with the support of Kishi Nobusuke and Sasakawa Ryōichi—two giants in the economic and political life of transwar Japan—the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning was founded as the first and only non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting family planning and maternal and child health as part of overseas development aid and international health.29 Thereafter, the Japanese government began donating to international organizations specializing in family planning and population issues, starting with the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1969. By the mid-1970s, Japan had become one

248

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

of the major donors in international cooperation in family planning, ranking in the top five after the United States, Sweden, West Germany and the Netherlands.30

Counting which populations? Demographers’ endeavors to present population data immediately after World War II Beginning in the 1920s when the population problem came onto the policy agenda in Japan, the government relied heavily on demographic data as it attempted to address this problem through the modification of people’s reproductive practices. In the 1920s, population figures in the first national census in Japan Proper (naichi), along with the annual vital statistics report, led to the argument that Japan—with its expanding population—would be imminently confronted with food, labor and other crises. This prognosis eventually urged the government to set up the Investigative Commission for Population and Food Problems as the first ever official policy deliberation and research body specializing on population matters. Commission members—composed of population experts, policymakers and politicians—deliberated the issues utilizing population data, ultimately producing various policy recommendations including reproductive measures. In a similar way, immediately after the war, population figures gave rise to the narrative of an overpopulated Japan, which ultimately led to the birth control policy of the early 1950s mentioned above. However, despite the dramatic changes in the political and bureaucratic structure experienced in Japan before, during, and after the war, from the 1920s onward, statistical data quantifying demographic phenomena in numbers consistently shaped the discourse of the population problem and exhorted government officials and population experts to employ reproductive policies as a solution to the problems. However, demographic data were never a static bureaucratic object passively there for official use. On the contrary, these data were dynamic, constantly shaped and reshaped both by the sociopolitical conditions surrounding the act of collecting, calculating, documenting and preserving the data, and by the tireless efforts of the official statisticians and population experts tasked with completing these jobs in these specific conditions. In this connection, the demographic data Japanese population specialists produced immediately after the war were built on highly precarious epistemological foundations, precisely because the contours of Japan’s sovereignty and citizenship—on which the data was based—were destabilized by Japan’s surrender in the war. The activities of research bodies within the Ministry of Health and Welfare to produce policy-relevant demographic data vividly illustrate this point. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, established in 1938 to offer high-quality human resources (jinteki shigen) to Japan at war, was charged with population matters from the outset. In 1939 it became host for the Institute of Population Problems (IPP), the first government research institute specializing in policy relevant population research. Shortly after Japan’s surrender, the government confidentially assigned a team of technical bureaucrats in the institute to report on the projection for the “population of Mainland Japan” (naichi jinkō) over the next couple of years, so that it could evaluate Japan’s food supply capacity.31 For this task, the team presented three population estimates that factored in the repatriation of soldiers and civilians: 74,252,000, 74,524,000, and 77,640,000 at the end of June 1945, June 1946, and June 1947, respectively. As a supplement, the team also presented 71,996,000 for November 1945.32

Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

249

The data—which heralded population growth in the imminent future—fulfilled this goal by providing material for the policy discussion on overpopulation. But also significant for my argument here is the fact that, first, the act of counting population figures turned out to be an onerous undertaking, and second, the data resulting from the calculation exercise, though presented in the report as if they were comparable with each other, were far from consistent. Let me elaborate these points below. Related to the first point, Japan’s surrender led to a crumbling of the existing administrative structure that had hitherto undergirded Japanese sovereignty. It also accelerated the movement of people in and out of the area designated formally as “Mainland Japan.” These conditions made it almost impossible for census-takers to capture the full picture of the population of Japan Proper. For instance, the team was doubtful if the November 1945 figure—which turned out to be much less than the others—represented the population accurately because the fieldwork leading to the estimation was replete with complications. According to the report of the team, the questionnaire—which formed a core part of the fieldwork—failed to reach out to certain population groups that “should have been included as part of the population subject to the research, such as the vagrants who increased significantly after the war and Koreans and Taiwanese residing in Japan Proper.” 33 This happened despite the team’s effort to distribute the questionnaire through various layers of administrative functions, including neighborhood associations, village, town, and city councils and prefectural authorities.34 The team hinted that they faced these difficulties in part because the research was conducted immediately “after the war” when Japan had “not yet returned to peacetime,” and hence administrative bodies were not fully functioning and could not grasp the whereabouts of the people in their locales.35 The chaotic situation following Japan’s surrender clearly created extra work for the census-takers as well as leading to the flaws in the demographic data produced immediately after the war. Second, with the demise of the Japanese empire following surrender, essential categories for calculating demographic data were undergoing a fundamental shift, which prevented the team from adhering to the same criterion to produce the demographic figures. Most evident was the category of the population of Japan Proper. Like the wartime, the team tried as much as possible to use the legal definition of Japan Proper to calculate the figures. But, in the context in which Japan Proper itself was changing quickly (and this was compounded by the varying degrees of the availability of the data across the country), the team was also compelled to mobilize different criteria for Japan Proper for each calculation. For instance, for the June 1945 figure, the population of Japan Proper included people living in Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and parts of Hokkaido, but excluded Japanese soldiers dispatched to the warfront, people residing in “special investigation areas” (tokubetsu chōsa chiiki) under the jurisdiction of the ministries of the Imperial Household, foreign affairs and justice, areas under the jurisdiction of Oshima, Hachijo, Miyake, Ogasawara Islands, Tomari and Ruyobetsu, Shikotan villages under the jurisdiction of Nemuro, and the areas designated by Order No. 4 issued by the Cabinet in February 1945 relating to Hokkaido and parts of Karafuto. The record gave no mention of whether colonial subjects living in Japan Proper should be counted in for the exercise.36 In contrast, for the June 1946 calculation, the team included Koreans and Taiwanese living in Japan Proper but excluded Koreans who departed Japan Proper between October 1945 and June 1946. In turn, they included Japanese soldiers and civilians repatriating back home.37

250

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The different categorizations used to calculate the population of Japan Proper reflected the messy process in the period immediately after the war during which Japanese sovereignty was reconfigured from a multiethnic empire to eventually a nation-state whose identity hinged on the notion of an ethnically homogeneous Japanese population. For the IPP technical bureaucrats working on the task, applying the different—tentatively functioning—definitions of the population of Japan Proper was their attempt to cope with the chaotic context in which Japan’s position in world politics was itself very much in flux.

Transnational exchanges for domestic policy: Koya Yoshio’s policyrelevant birth control research While the IPP technical bureaucrats continued to make efforts in presenting more accurate demographic data, from the late 1940s onward, the staff at the newly established Department of Public Health Demography (Eisei Jinkōgakubu, DPHD) at the Institute of Public Health (Kokuritsu Kōshū Eisei In, IPH) conducted surveys on abortion in response to the surge in abortion rates after the 1949 amendment of the EPL.38 In parallel, the DPHD organized a number of pilot projects to popularize birth control in collaboration with local public health offices, and later, with the New Life Movement.39 The DPHD staff was headed by Koya Yoshio (1890–1974), formerly a technical bureaucrat serving in the Ministry of Health and Welfare and now IPH Director-General, who was also a government advisor and social reformer renowned for his research on race science and campaigns to promote eugenic and reproductive policies.40 Up until the late 1940s, Koya was against birth control, as were many of his colleagues supporting the eugenic movement. Seeing that contraceptives were used mostly by the urban intellectual class with the “superior” biological traits, Koya believed that birth control would eventually lower the quality of the Japanese race, by promoting fertility decline among that class and allowing the expansion—and subsequently the domination—of the biologically “inferior” lower socioeconomic class within the Japanese population.41 However, in the late 1940s, seeing the surge in the abortion rate, Koya decided to advocate for birth control through contraception. Koya came to the conclusion that birth control risked damaging the quality of the Japanese race because it was practiced in a laissez-faire manner. This would not happen, he believed, if the practice of birth control was guided properly by the government and health experts. Based on this belief, from the late 1940s, Koya lobbied for making guided birth control a national policy, which was materialized with the cabinet’s decision to promote birth control in 1951. For his policy campaign, Koya mobilized research.42 As mentioned above, from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s, DPHD researchers under Koya’s leadership carried out pilot birth control initiatives. Such initiatives simultaneously provided policy-relevant, applied, semi-longitudinal public health and demographic research aimed at evaluating the efficacy of particular contraceptive methods or the impact of a specific birth control initiative on birth, pregnancy and abortion rates. These DPHD initiatives directly supported Koya’s birth control advocacy in and outside of the government, by producing evidence that would justify his campaign to promote guided birth control, which he believed was more “scientific” than birth control practiced up till then.43

Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

251

Most remarkable about Koya’s research was that, while on the surface it appeared to unashamedly serve the Japanese government’s domestic birth control policy, it was strongly shaped by trends from outside Japan. Specifically, the research was integral to the transnational population control movement of the 1950s, which aimed to suppress world population growth via fertility regulation in Asia, Latin America and Africa.44 In the 1960s, the movement coalesced into governmental, intergovernmental and nongovernmental endeavors to implement family planning in countries labelled as underdeveloped or developing—all as part of the package of overseas development assistance or international health. As mentioned above, the Japanese government actively participated in this movement from the 1960s. Koya was at the center of this Japanese involvement, joining in the Japanese government’s cause by drawing on the international experience he gained in the early 1950s through his birth control advocacy and research. As typical of the generation of elite Japanese medical researchers, Koya nurtured an international outlook when he studied medicine in Berlin in the mid-1920s. But his most extensive work alongside non-Japanese colleagues came after the war in the context of the Allied Occupation.45 An important figure in enabling Koya to forge such international links was Oliver R. McCoy, the Japan-based liaison officer of the US-based philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Foundation.46 McCoy’s office was conveniently located in Koya’s IPH for historical reasons.47 Almost immediately on his arrival in Japan in 1948, McCoy began to support Koya’s fertility research by facilitating funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. McCoy also assisted Koya in establishing contacts with the individuals who were leading the transnational population control movement. Among those was Gamble, a medically trained philanthropist and heir of the Proctor and Gamble Company, who was dedicated to promoting contraceptives globally among the target populations within the transnational movement.48 The collaboration between Koya and Gamble began in the early 1950s and continued until Gamble’s death in the mid-1960s. Often the collaboration took the form of Gamble funding Koya’s birth control pilot projects in Japan.49 These projects tested the efficacy of various “simple” contraceptive methods, such as the spermicidal foam tablet, which both Gamble and Koya believed were suitable for the target populations they assumed to be less educated.50 In addition, Gamble introduced Koya to his colleagues based on the East Coast of the United States, not least the staff working for the Population Council that was supporting the transnational population control movement. Thanks to Gamble’s assistance, Koya had enough funding to travel abroad to present on the projects’ findings at major international population conferences, as well as to visit various destinations—Egypt and India were most memorable for Koya—to meet colleagues working on birth control.51 Gamble’s support provided Koya with opportunities to introduce his domestic, policy-oriented birth control research to the proponents of global population control, and through this exercise, Koya became a key Japanese representative in the transnational population control movement. In addition to the financial assistance, Gamble generously gave his time to mentor Koya, commenting on his research and editing his writings in English. For instance, on one occasion Koya wrote Gamble asking for his opinion about using part of Gamble’s funding to manufacture and trial what he called a “Rute cap”—a contraceptive which looked like a truncated male condom applied to the tip of a penis before ejaculation which would stay in the vagina after intercourse.52 In reply Gamble advised that he would, in principle, be happy for Koya to invest some of Gamble’s funding for the Rute-cap, but also expressed his doubt 252

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

on the efficacy of the contraceptive.53 Instead, in the same correspondence, Gamble eagerly pushed Koya to perfect the trial he had commissioned to Koya to conduct on a contraceptive using “5cc syringes.” 54 Later, when Koya’s research reached publication stage, Gamble suggested Koya publish in the Milbank Memorial Quarterly Fund, an English-language journal circulated widely among the proponents of global population control.55 Gamble also asked Koya to send drafts of his English-language papers, and gave him detailed advice on which information (data, tables, figures and phrases) should be included and excluded to make them palatable for the intended readers.56 Koya followed Gamble’s generous advice as if he was the latter’s model student.57 Publications born of the collaboration reached a wide audience—so much so that Gamble praised Koya for having “accomplished a great deal” for “Japan, and for the world as a whole” through his research.58 Gamble’s support directly shaped the content of Koya’s research, in the ways its results exhibited the applied knowledge useful for family planning initiatives developed under the aegis of the transnational population control movement. The legacy of their collaboration lived on in Koya’s birth control activities after Gamble’s death. Indeed, even without Gamble’s support, the department Koya had originally founded at the IPH was carrying out the kind of birth control research that would be applicable globally. In 1966, neighboring Taiwan and South Korea—with the support of the Population Council—organized state-led family planning programs as a strategy for socioeconomic development and they popularized modern intrauterine devices. The DPHD also launched a project that tested the Japanese intrauterine contraceptive device, the Ota Ring, and later American-made intrauterine devices together with researchers affiliated with obstetrics and gynecology departments at Iwate, Gunma, Tokyo, Niigata, Osaka Medical, Okayama and Kyushu universities.59 Furthermore, in the late 1960s, Koya supported Japan’s participation in the global promotion of family planning as a technology of development, by acting as a senior member of the International Family Planning Cooperation Conference, which was an advisory body for the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning.60 In this context, postwar Japan’s experience with reproduction and population, in which Koya played a pivotal role, was presented to the international community as an anecdote of past success, and a model that Asia’s developing countries could emulate.61 It became an item of collective memory in the global politics of health and development.

Conclusion Postwar Japanese history seen through the lens of the science of reproduction and population was constructed through the reconfiguration of Japan after the war and the shifting regional and world politics in which Japan’s postwar reconstruction effort was embedded. The endeavors of technical bureaucrats at the Ministry of Health and Welfare research institute to compile demographic data immediately after the war and Koya Yoshio’s birth control research from the late 1940s through the early 1960s illustrate the constructed nature of this history. These cases clearly show how the scientific practice and knowledge behind the political negotiations for promoting certain reproductive and population phenomena for the sake of Japan’s postwar reconstruction were often unstable and malleable to change. They were directly shaped by Japan’s shifting status from the world’s only non-western imperial power to a defeated, occupied and then independent nation striving to rebuild itself through

Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

253

economic and social development. Ministry of Health and Welfare technical bureaucrats struggled to present a seamless dataset depicting trends in the population of Japan Proper precisely because the definition of the population group itself became unstable when the Japanese Empire, which had hitherto upheld this category, ceased to exist. Koya’s applied birth control research informing reproductive and population policies in the 1950s and 1960s was a direct outcome of the transnational collaborations between Koya and his American colleagues such as McCoy and Gamble. Through these collaborations, Koya was encouraged to engage in issues that were directly relevant to the transnational population control movement. In part due to Koya’s internationally-oriented activities, Japan came to be caricatured within the movement as a model that other Asian countries could aspire to. Together, these stories therefore reveal how “Japan” in the postwar Japanese history of reproduction and population was far from a historically consistent, domestically contained category, despite the fact that it is often depicted in that way. Instead, Japan was molded incessantly by the country’s constantly shifting position in world politics and by Japanese actors’ involvement in transnational dialogues. But the precarity of Japan as a category is not only a characteristic of the early postwar history analyzed in this chapter: it continues to shape reproductive and population politics even today.

Notes 1

For a list of recent literature see Aya Homei and Yoko Matsubara, “Critical Approaches to Reproduction and Population in Post-War Japan,” Japan Forum 33, no. 3 (2021): 307–17. For examples of notable works that have been published since then, see Chiaki Shirai, ed., Ajia no shussan to tekunorojī: ripurodakushon no saizensen (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2022). 2 Kohama Masako and Matsuoka Etsuko, eds., Ajia no shussan to kazoku keikaku: “umu, umanai, umenai” shintai wo meguru seiji (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2014). 3 Aya Homei, Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). 4 Exceptions are Yoko Matsubara, “The Eugenic Border Control: Organized Abortions on Repatriated Women, 1945–48,” Japan Forum 33, no. 3 (2021): 318–37; Matsubara Yoko, “Hikiagesha iryō kyūgo niokeru soshikiteki jinkō ninshin chūzetsu,” in Jendā to seiseiji, ed. Tsuboi Hideto, 4 vols., Sengo nihon wo yomikaeru (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 2019), 37–79; Yamamoto Meyu, “Savaivā no kikan— ‘fujoshi iryō kyūgo’ to kaikō ken’eki no jendāka,” in Hikiage, tsuihō, zanryū: sengo kokusai minzoku idō no hikaku kenkyū, eds. Araragi Shinzō, Kawakita Kawakita and Matsuura Yūsuke (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2019), 172–95; Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018); Kristin Roebuck, “Orphans by Design: ‘MixedBlood’ Children, Child Welfare, and Racial Nationalism in Postwar Japan,” Japanese Studies 36, no. 2 (May 2016): 191–212. 5 Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, eds., The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife (London: Routledge, 2017); Asano Toyomi, ed., Sengo nihon no baishō mondai to higashi ajia chiiki saihen (Tokyo: Jigakusha Shuppan, 2013). 6 For a concise summary of population policies in modern Japan, see Kojima Hiroshi and Hiroshima Kiyoshi, eds., Kazoku kenkyū no saizensen jinkō seisaku no hikakushi—semegiau kazoku to gyōsei (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 2019). 7 Ogino Miho, “Kazoku keikaku” eno michi: kindai nihon no seishoku wo meguru seiji (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008); Matsubara Yoko, “Nihon—Sengo no yūsei hogohō toiu na no danshuhō,” in Yūseigaku to ningen shakai: seimei kagaku no seiki wa doko e mukaunoka, by Yonemoto Shohei et al. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2000), 169–236; Christiana A. E. Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 8 Matsubara, “Nihon,” 186.

254

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

9

Takeuchi-Demirci, Contraceptive Diplomacy, 117–80; Deborah Oakley, “American-Japanese Interaction in the Development of Population Policy in Japan, 1945–52,” Population and Development Review 4, no. 4 (1978): 617–43. 10 Ogino Miho, “Jinkō seisaku no sutoratejī: ‘umeyo fuyaseyo’ kara ‘kazoku keikaku’ e,” in Tekuno/baio poritikkusu: kagaku iryō gijutsu no ima, ed. Tachi Kaoru (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2008), 145–59. 11 Cited after Matsubara, “Nihon,” 187–88. 12 The institute, originally founded in November 1932, was a long-surviving inquiry body on population matters accountable for government policies. It was made dormant temporarily toward the end of the WWII but resumed activities in April 1946 because of the recommendation made by the above-mentioned Population Roundtable Group. 13 Takeuchi-Demirci, Contraceptive Diplomacy, 119–23; Oakley, “American-Japanese Interaction,” 624–34. 14 Ogino, “Kazoku keikaku” eno michi, 208–13; Tama Yasuko, “Kindai kazoku” to bodī poritikkusu (Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 2006), 100–61; Andrew Gordon, “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan,” in Gendering Modern Japanese History, eds. Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 423–51; Hiroko Takeda, The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 127–52. 15 Kōseishō jinkō mondai kenkyūsho, “Tokyo-to wo chūshin tosuru sanji seigen no jittai ni kansuru shiryō” (Kōseishō jinkō mondai kenkyūsho), 23 in Irene B. Taeuber (1906–1974), Papers, 1912–1981, C2158, Folder f.2224, The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA. 16 Total fertility rate refers to the number of children a woman would have in her life course if the fertility rates observed at each age each year was unchanged. 17 Samuel Coleman, Family Planning in Japanese Society: Traditional Birth Control in A Modern Urban Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 18 Population Problems Inquiry Councile [sic], “An Outline of Trends in Japan’s Population,” in Activities in Japan for the World Population Year 1974, n.d. c. 1974, 6, National Institute of Public Health Library archives, Wako-shi, Saitama Prefecture, Japan [hereinafter NIPHL archives]. 19 Zaidan hōjin jinkō mondai kenkyūkai, “Jinkō shishitsu kōjō ni kansuru taisaku yōkō ketsugi,” May 8, 1962, 13–14. 20 Koseishō, Kōsei hakusho (Shōwa 37 nendoban), accessed December 25, 2021, http://www.mhlw.go.jp /toukei_hakusho/hakusho/kousei/1962/. 21 Koseishō, Kōsei Hakusho, accessed January 2, 2022, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei_hakusho/hakusho /kousei/1962/dl/02.pdf. 22 Zaidan hōjin jinkō mondai kenkyūkai, “Jinkō shishitsu kōjō,” 12. 23 Jinkō mondai shingikai, “Jinkō shishitsu kōjō taisaku ni kansuru ketsugi,” July 12, 1962, 3–14. 24 Scott O’Bryan, The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009). 25 Brett Walker, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 137–210; Timothy S. George, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001). 26 “Satō shushō, hatsu no shoshin hyōmei,” Asahi shinbun, November 21, 1964, evening edition, 1. 27 “Mazu jūtaku nado shichikōmoku shushō ryōshō shakai kaihatsu no kihon kōsō,” Asahi shinbun, December 12, 1964, morning edition, 1. 28 Aya Homei, “Between the West and Asia: ‘Humanistic’ Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 10, no. 4 (December 2016): 445–67. 29 Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning was approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MHW and originally funded by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Tokyo-based health prevention center managed by Kunii and his activist colleagues, Health Clinic (Hoken Kaikan). Kunii Chōjirō, ed., Joisefu no nijūnen (Tokyo: Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning, Inc., 1988). 30 “Nihon no jinkō kazoku keikaku kyōryoku,” n.d. c.1975, 1–9, NIPHL archives. 31 The “institute” here refers to the Department of Population and Race of the Ministry of Health and Welfare Research Institute, which absorbed the IPP between November 1942 and May 1946. Tachi Minoru [submitted to Kōseishō Kenkyūsho Jinkō Minzoku Bu], “Shōwa 20 nen ikō Shōwa 22 nen ni itaru zaigai heiryoku no fukuin oyobi zaigai naichijin no hikiage niyoru naichi jinkō no suitei (zanteikō),” September 18, 1945,

Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

255

PDFY090803077, Senji sengo suikei jinkō kankei shiryō Shōwa nijūnen shichigatsu, Tachi Bunko archives, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo, Japan [hereinafter Tachi Bunko]. 32 Naikaku shingi shitsu, “Kyōgi jikō, (1) Shōwa 20 nen 6 gatsu matsu jinkō no suitei (2) Shōwa 21 nen 6 gatsu matsu jinkō no suitei (3) Shōwa 22 nen ikō 250 nen made maitoshi rokugatsu matsu jinkō no suitei,” 1945, PDFY090803078, Tachi Bunko. 33 Naikaku shingi shitsu, “Kyōgi jikō.” 34 Naikaku shingi shitsu, “Kyōgi jikō.” 35 Naikaku shingi shitsu, “Kyōgi jikō.” 36 Naikaku shingi shitsu, “Kyōgi jikō.” 37 Tachi Minoru, “Shōwa 20 nen ikō Shōwa 22 nen ni itaru zaigai heiryoku no fukuin oyobi zaigai naichijin no hikiage niyoru naichi jinkō no suitei (zanteikō),” September 18, 1945, PDFY090803076, Tachi Bunko. 38 Yoshio Koya, “Preliminary Report of a Survey of Health and Demographic Aspects of Induced Abortion in Japan,” December 1951, Rockefeller Foundations Archive, Record Group 1.2, Series 609, Box 6, Folder 45, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, United States [hereafter RAC]. 39 Yoshio Koya, Pioneering in Family Planning (New York: Population Council, 1963). 40 For Koya’s biography, see Izumi Takahide ed., Nihon kingendai jinmei jiten 1868–2011 (Tokyo: Igaku Shoin, 2012), 265; “The Rockefeller Foundation, Division of Medicine and Public Health, Personal History Record and Application for Travel Grant: Koya Yoshio,” n.d. c.1954, Rockefeller Foundations Archive, RG 1.2, Series 609, Box 6, Folder 46, RAC. 41 Yoshio Koya, Kokudo, jinkō, ketsueki (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1941). 42 Aya Homei, “The Science of Population and Birth Control in Post-War Japan,” in Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire, eds. David G. Wittner and Philip C. Brown (London: Routledge, 2016), 227–43. 43 See e.g., Edna McKinnon, “Report for the Far East and Austrasian Region of I.P.P.F. Tokyo, Japan, September 14 to 26, 1960,” 3, 1960, Series III, Box 97, Folder 1582, Gamble, Clarence James Papers, 1920–1970s, Center for the History of Medicine. Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA [hereinafter Gamble Papers]. 44 Matthew James Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008); Peter J. Donaldson, Nature against Us: The United States and the World Population Crisis, 1965–1980 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Boston: South End Press, 1995). 45 Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, “The Color of Democracy: A Japanese Public Health Official’s Reconnaissance Trip to the US South,” Southern Spaces, March 18, 2011, https://southernspaces.org/2011/color-democracy -japanese-public-health-officials-reconnaissance-trip-us-south/. 46 McCoy also served as an informant for the GHQ. 47 The Rockefeller Foundation and the IPH had this arrangement because the former financially supported the building of the IPH in the 1920s. Aiko Takeuchi, “The Transnational Politics of Public Health and Population Control: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Role in Japan, 1920s–1950s,” Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online, published January 1, 2009, https://rockarch.issuelab.org/resource/the-transnational-politics -of-public-health-and-population-control-the-rockefeller-foundation-s-role-in-japan-1920s-1950s.html. 48 Doone Williams, Greer Williams and Emily Flint, Every Child a Wanted Child: Clarence James Gamble, M.D. and His Work in the Birth Control Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). 49 See e.g., Yoshio Koya, “Statements of Expenditures for My Projects Financed by the National Committee of Maternal Health, N.Y. from January 1 to December 31, 1957,” January 1, 1958, Gamble Papers. 50 Toyoda Maho, “Sengo nihon no bāsu kontorōru undō to kurarensu gyanburu: dai 5 kai kokusai kazoku keikaku kaigi no kaisai wo chūshin ni,” Jendā Shigaku 6 (2010): 55–70. 51 e.g., Clarence J. Gamble to Frederick Osborn, August 20, 1957, Population Council Collection, Record Group 1, Accession 1, Series 1, Box 19, Folder 301, RAC; Clarence J. Gamble to Yoshio Koya [hereinafter Gamble to Koya], October 14, 1957, and Yoshio Koya to Clarence J. Gamble [hereinafter Koya to Gamble], October 26, 1957, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1559, Gamble Papers. 52 Koya to Gamble, February 16, 1952, Series III, Box 94, Folder 1538, Gamble Papers. 53 Gamble to Koya, February 25, 1952, Series III, Box 94, Folder 1538, Gamble Papers. 54 Gamble to Koya, February 25, 1952.

256

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

55

Gamble to Koya, September 14, 1956, and October 18, 1956, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1556, Gamble Papers; Gamble to Koya, July 14, 1957, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1559, Gamble Papers. 56 Gamble to Koya, November 29, 1957, and Koya to Gamble, July 14, 1957, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1559, Gamble Papers; Gamble to Koya, January 21, 1958, March 7, 1958, June 25, 1958, July 3, 1958, July 10, 1958, August 3, 1958, and August 6, 1958, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1564, Gamble Papers. 57 Koya’s response, see e.g., Koya to Gamble, February 5, 1958, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1564, Gamble Papers. 58 Gamble to Koya, October 26, 1964, Series III, Box 97, Folder 1600, Gamble Papers. Gamble himself helped to circulate Koya’s publications globally, by buying and distributing offprints to his international colleagues. Gamble to Koya, December 30, 1958, Series III, Box 95, Folder 1564, Gamble Papers. 59 See the IPP Annual Reports (Kokuritsu kōshū eisei in nenpō) published in 1966–1973. 60 Yoshio Koya, “Kokusai kazoku keikaku kyōryoku kaigi setsuritsu hirōshiki niokeru keika hōkoku,” Sekai to jinkō no. 1 (15 April 1968): 8–9. 61 Hidebumi Kubo et al., Family Planning in Japan (Tokyo: Asia Family Planning Association, 1961).

References Asano, Toyomi, ed. Sengo Nihon no baishō mondai to Higashi Ajia chiiki saihen. Tokyo: Jigakusha Shuppan, 2013. Coleman, Samuel. Family Planning in Japanese Society: Traditional Birth Control in A Modern Urban Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Connelly, Matthew. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Donaldson, Peter J. Nature against Us: The United States and the World Population Crisis, 1965–1980. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. George, Timothy S. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. Gordon, Andrew. “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan.” In Gendering Modern Japanese History, edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, 423–51. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005. Hartmann, Betsy. Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control. Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1995. Homei, Aya. Science for Governing Japan’s Population. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. ———. “Between the West and Asia: ‘Humanistic’ Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 10, no. 4 (December 2016): 445–67. ———. “The Science of Population and Birth Control in Post-War Japan.” In Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire, edited by David G. Wittner and Philip C. Brown, 227–43. London: Routledge, 2016. Homei, Aya and Yoko Matsubara. “Critical Approaches to Reproduction and Population in Post-War Japan.” Japan Forum 33, no. 3 (2021): 307–17. Izumi, Takahide, ed. Nihon kingendai jinmei jiten 1868–2011. Tokyo: Igaku Shoin, 2012. Kohama, Masako and Matsuoka Etsuko, eds. Ajia no shussan to kazoku keikaku: “umu, umanai, umenai” shintai wo meguru seiji. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2014. Kojima, Hiroshi and Hiroshima Kiyoshi, eds. Kazoku kenkyū no saizensen jinkō seisaku no hikakushi—semegiau kazoku to gyōsei. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 2019. Koseishō. Kōsei hakusho (shōwa 37 nendoban). http://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei_hakusho/hakusho/kousei/1962/. Koya, Yoshio. Kokudo, jinkō, ketsueki. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1941. ———. Pioneering in Family Planning. New York: Population Council, 1963. ———. “Kokusai kazoku keikaku kyōryoku kaigi setsuritsu hirōshiki niokeru keika hōkoku.” Sekai to jinkō 1 (April 1968): 8–9. Kubo, Hidebumi, Minoru Muramatsu, Masabumi Kimura, Nobuo Shinozaki and Hisao Aoki. Family Planning in Japan. Tokyo: Asia Family Planning Association, 1961. Kunii, Chōjirō, ed. Joisefu no nijūnen. Tokyo: Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning, Inc., 1988.

Chapter 14: Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics

257

Kushner, Barak and Sherzod Muminov, eds. The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife. London: Routledge, 2017. Matsubara, Yoko. “Hikiagesha iryō kyūgo niokeru soshikiteki jinkō ninshin chūzetsu.” In Jendā to Seiseiji, edited by Hideto Tsuboi, 37–79. Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 2019. ———. “Nihon—Sengo no yūsei hogohō toiu na no danshuhō.” In Yūseigaku to ningen shakai: seimei kagaku no seiki wa doko e mukaunoka, edited by Yonemoto Shohei, Matsubara Yoko, Nudeshima Jiro, and Ichinokawa Yasutaka, 169–236. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2000. ———. “The Eugenic Border Control: Organized Abortions on Repatriated Women, 1945–48.” Japan Forum 33, no. 3 (2020): 318–37. “Mazu jūtaku nado shichikōmoku shushō ryōshō shakai kaihatsu no kihon kōsō.” Asahi shinbun, December 12, 1964, morning edition, 1. Norgren, Christiana A. E. Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Oakley, Deborah. “American-Japanese Interaction in the Development of Population Policy in Japan, 1945– 52.” Population and Development Review 4, no. 4 (1978): 617–43. O’Bryan, Scott. The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. Ogino, Miho. “Jinkō seisaku no sutoratejī: ‘umeyo fuyaseyo’ kara ‘kazoku keikaku’ e.” In Tekuno/baio poritikkusu: kagaku iryō gijutsu no ima, edited by Tachi Kaoru, 145–59. Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2008. ———. “Kazoku keikaku” eno michi: kindai nihon no seishoku wo meguru seiji. Iwanami Shoten, 2008. Roebuck, Kristin. “Orphans by Design: ‘Mixed-Blood’ Children, Child Welfare, and Racial Nationalism in Postwar Japan.” Japanese Studies 36, no. 2 (May 2016): 191–212. “Satō shushō, hatsu no shoshin hyōmei.” Asahi shinbun, November 21, 1964, evening edition, 1. Shirai, Chiaki, ed. Ajia no shussan to tekunorojī: ripurodakushon no saizensen. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2022. Takeda, Hiroko. The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005. Takeuchi, Aiko. “The Transnational Politics of Public Health and Population Control: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Role in Japan, 1920s–1950s.” Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online, 2009. https:// rockarch.issuelab.org/resource/the-transnational-politics-of-public-health-and-population-control-the -rockefeller-foundation-s-role-in-japan-1920s-1950s.html. Takeuchi-Demirci, Aiko. Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. ———. “The Color of Democracy: A Japanese Public Health Official’s Reconnaissance Trip to the US South.” Southern Spaces, March 18, 2011. Online. https://southernspaces.org/2011/color-democracy-japanese -public-health-officials-reconnaissance-trip-us-south/. Tama, Yasuko. “Kindai kazoku” to bodī poritikkusu. Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 2006. Toyoda, Maho. “Sengo nihon no bāsu kontorōru undō to kurarensu gyanburu: Dai 5 kai kokusai kazoku keikaku kaigi no kaisai wo chūshin ni.” Jendā shigaku 6 (2010): 55–70. Walker, Brett. Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. Williams, Doone, Greer Williams, and Emily Flint. Every Child a Wanted Child: Clarence James Gamble, M.D. and His Work in the Birth Control Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Yamamoto, Meyu. “Savaivā no kikan—‘fujoshi iryō kyūgo’ to kaikō ken’eki no jendāka.” In Hikiage, tsuihō, zanryū: sengo kokusai minzoku idō no hikaku kenkyū, edited by Araragi Shinzō, Kawakita Atsuko and Matsuura Yūsuke, 172–95. Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2019.

258

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Part 5 Japan’s Postwar in Asia and the World

Chapter 15 Japan’s American Alliance: Forgoing Autonomy for Deterrence H.D.P. Envall Japan’s alliance with the United States remains the cornerstone of the country’s security policy. Indeed, the alliance has long delivered Japan considerable strategic advantages, such as greater deterrence of regional security threats. Yet the alliance has also come with costs. It has institutionalized Tokyo’s dependence on Washington, thus limiting the country’s strategic autonomy. This chapter examines how Japan has sought to manage the task of reconciling such tensions— between the often-conflicting goals of deterrence and autonomy. It argues that, while Japan has pursued autonomy where possible, it has repeatedly prioritized deterrence as the country’s primary national security goal.

Introduction No country in the world today is in a position to defend itself unaided against aggression. Yoshida Shigeru, 19611 Japan’s alliance with the United States remains the cornerstone of the country’s defense seventy years after the original security treaty was signed by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru in September 1951. Why has Japan clung so close to the United States? The alliance has always delivered Japan considerable strategic advantages, notably a security guarantee and an opportunity to “underproduce” on defense.2 But there have also been costs. It has left Japan with a perpetual fear of either abandonment by the US or entrapment in US policies and institutionalized in Tokyo a high level of strategic dependence on Washington. For international relations theory, Japan’s partnership with the US therefore raises some fundamental questions of alliance management. When managing alliances, how do states weigh up different costs and benefits and reconcile competing and sometimes contradictory national objectives? In examining the history of Japan’s alliance management, this chapter focuses on the challenges Japan has faced in reconciling in its commitment to two, at times competing,

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

261

national strategic objectives: the pursuit of autonomy and deterrence. Autonomy—the capacity to act freely in international affairs—is often viewed as a key national policy goal, along with status and prestige, and has been widely examined in relation to Japan.3 Deterrence is widely seen as a core justification for alliances. Where states seek to balance against or deter perceived threats, they have two choices: to do so internally (via military buildups) or externally (by forming alliances).4 Once an alliance is formed, allies must continue to address an autonomy/deterrence dilemma. For a junior ally especially, pushing too hard for autonomy may risk abandonment by the senior partner to the threats posed by adversaries while pushing too hard for deterrence may risk entrapment in the senior partner’s separate disputes.5 This chapter seeks to trace the evolution of Japan’s responses to the autonomy/deterrence dilemma over the history of the US-Japan alliance. This history is divided into four periods, each of which entailed various forms of the autonomy/deterrence dilemma: from Occupation to the security treaty crisis; from the Nixon “shocks” to the end of the Cold War; from the Gulf War to the War on Terror; and since the rise of China. The chapter argues that, through the history of the US-Japan alliance, Japan has repeatedly forgone autonomy in order to fortify deterrence. That this has happened does not fit easily with many past understandings of Japanese policymaking—that it has been incoherent or absent.6 Japan’s alliance history, however, supports those who argue that Japan has consistently been pragmatic in its strategic thinking, attuned to fluctuations in power and capable of fine calculations of its strategic interest.7 At the same time, it also raises questions about the direction of this pragmatism and attention to power, especially in terms of the view that Japan would increasingly prioritize autonomy in the post–Cold War period. Samuels, for instance, has argued that Japan was moving toward a new “Goldilocks consensus” on security where it would find a balance between autonomy and national strength or deterrence, and between the US and China.8 This briefly appeared likely around 2009–2010. In the face of a more threatening region of the past decade, however, Japan has returned to its traditional prioritization of deterrence.9 In this less secure environment, the appeal of increased autonomy (though not of increased capabilities) has shrunk significantly.

Cold War compromise to treaty crisis Japan’s strategic circumstances were fundamentally changed by the country’s defeat in World War II. Occupation by the US and its allies meant that Tokyo could not immediately reestablish the nation as an independent player in world affairs. Though far from independent, Japan nonetheless faced a challenging strategic environment characterized by great power rivalry between the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union and China on the other. In response to Japan’s weak position, Yoshida adopted a strategy that would involve a “grand bargain” with the US while also finding a balance in Japan’s turbulent domestic politics of the time—between conservatives who pushed for greater autonomy through rearmament and progressives who sought autonomy through a policy of unarmed neutrality. Instead, Yoshida opted for deterrence with dependence.10 In what eventually came to be known as the Yoshida Doctrine, Japan agreed to a subordinate position to the US in the new international order, and so traded greater autonomy in the Cold War for increased deterrence via an alliance with the US, the quid pro quo being that Japan would agree to host American military bases.11

262

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

The final major benefit of the alliance was the opportunity it provided to underproduce on defense. Yoshida used Article 9, the so-called “peace clause” in Japan’s new constitution, to blunt requests from the US for a rapid rearmament.12 As Yoshida later wrote, rearmament verged on “idiocy.” For a country in its economic situation, “to attempt anything which could be considered as rearmament” was “completely out of the question.” 13 Accordingly, Japan rearmed only slowly over the next two decades. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, spending on defense fell from 1.78 percent in 1955 to below 1 percent by 1967.14 In 1976, Prime Minister Miki Takeo would announce that Japan’s defense spending would be limited to this 1 percent figure.15 Yet, as noted, the costs to Japan’s strategic autonomy were substantial. This new alignment with the US further complicated Japan’s already messy relations with the region—a legacy of its prewar and wartime conduct around the region. It undermined Japan’s diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China during the 1950s. Indeed, Tokyo’s failure to negotiate a peace treaty with Moscow would undermine Soviet-Japanese relations for much of the Cold War.16 Similarly, Tokyo’s autonomy when dealing with Beijing was also heavily constrained.17 This was in fact well understood by Yoshida. He noted, for instance, that Japan would remain in a “state of weakness” if it continued depending on the American security guarantee for too long.18 On the right of Japanese politics, the criticism of Yoshida was much stronger. Subsequent prime ministers such as Kishi Nobusuke and Hatoyama Ichirō saw this heavy dependence on America as humiliating and argued strongly for rearmament. Kishi had contended that “it is not the policy of an independent nation to have troops of a foreign country based on its soil,” 19 while Hatoyama, upon becoming prime minister, talked of a major goal for Japan being “‘to achieve complete independence’—in other words, the diplomatic and military independence of Japan.” 20 A key aim for the revisionists was to achieve a more “autonomous defense” (jishu bōei) posture for Japan.21 Yet the revisionists were to be frustrated in their attempts to achieve greater autonomy. On rearmament, their hands had already been tied by budget preparations in 1953–1954 that reflected Yoshida’s viewpoint. By the time Hatoyama gained power, Japan’s militaryindustrial complex, the major potential driver of rearmament, had largely been hollowed out.22 Planning for constitutional revision moved slowly; revision was, in any case, blocked by anti-revision opposition parties after 1955.23 This essentially left the US-Japan alliance as the major leftover area for change. When Kishi became prime minister in 1957, he argued that “it is now time to fundamentally review the security treaty.” 24 However, Kishi’s approach to the security treaty represents an important shift in how Japanese policymakers viewed the autonomy/deterrence dilemma. The objective now was not greater autonomy but greater equality within the alliance framework. Bilateral negotiations over the new security treaty, which largely took place through 1958–1959 were complex but mostly progressed smoothly. In January 1960, Kishi was able to visit Washington to sign the final document, with the trip receiving wide media coverage.25 Ratification, by contrast, would lead to a major crisis in Japanese politics and US-Japan relations and cost Kishi his prime ministership. By the time of final ratification, Japan was beset by mass protests and violence. Finally, when the necessary legislation was passed and the instruments of ratification exchanged in late June 1960, Kishi resigned as prime minister.26 Japan had achieved greater equality in the alliance, but revisionist ambitions—on rearmament, constitutional revision and further autonomy—had been widely discredited. Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

263

After the Nixon “shocks” Japan’s strategic circumstances began to move once again in the second half of the 1960s. The region became more threatening for Japan in 1964 when China tested its first nuclear weapon.27 Although Prime Minister Satō Eisaku had been open to Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, he eventually pushed Japan down the non-nuclear path, setting out Japan three non-nuclear principles (prohibiting Japan from making nuclear weapons, possessing them or allowing them into the country) in December 1967 and its Four Pillars Nuclear Policy in January 1968.28 By instituting these policies, Satō was effectively closing off the option of Japan becoming an autonomous nuclear actor. Instead, the country would again achieve deterrence at a reasonable cost by ceding nuclear autonomy to the US, even if this came at the expense of constant fears about the credibility of the American nuclear commitment. The more significant challenge for Japan on the autonomy/deterrence dilemma, however, was to come at the end of the decade with the strategic “shocks” (shokku) set off by US President Richard Nixon.29 There were three of these shokku. First, in July 1969, Nixon announced the broad parameters of what would become the Guam or Nixon Doctrine. While the US would maintain its treaty commitments and provide extended nuclear deterrence to allies and partners, it would look to these countries to take up “primary responsibility” for their own defense. Second, in July 1971, Nixon announced that he would visit China to meet with Mao Zedong and seek to normalize America’s diplomatic relations with China.30 Finally, in August 1971, Nixon announced a new set of policies intended to boost the US economy. Including an import tariff, wage and price controls and an end to the US dollar’s convertibility to gold, this third shock had a significant impact on the Japanese economy.31 For Japan, these shocks reset the dynamics of the autonomy/deterrence dilemma, offering new opportunities for greater autonomy but also increased concerns around the deterrence value of the alliance. Certainly, the shocks prompted Japanese revisionists to revisit the autonomy issue. The new Director General of the Japan Defense Agency Nakasone Yasuhiro, a revisionist from the right of the LDP, sought to boost Japan’s defense capabilities and give the country a more significant role in the alliance.32 Nakasone’s “autonomous defense” vision maintained much of the status quo but put more responsibility on Japan to take up the primary role in the nation’s defense, thus pushing the alliance into a secondary role.33 It would, moreover, entail a doubling of defense spending.34 Nakasone’s ideas, however, proved far too controversial. Domestically, they were not well supported within the LDP or key parts of the bureaucracy, let alone Japan’s opposition parties and the wider public.35 Internationally, China was opposed to increases in Japanese military spending, while the US was also concerned about the apparent downgrading of the alliance to a secondary role. The normalization of Sino-American relations would also weaken the rationale for increased defense spending based on a “China threat.” 36 Instead, Japan gradually moved toward a more modest reform of defense strategy. This approach was exemplified by the “basic defense force concept” (kibanteki bōeiryoku kōsō) developed by JDA Vice Minister Kubo Takuya. Kubo’s basic defense strategy was a recalculation of the post-Nixon autonomy/deterrence dilemma. Once again, however, Tokyo determined that autonomy beyond basic self-defense added little to Japanese security, which could largely be achieved through the alliance. Indeed, rapid militarization could upset the

264

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

strategic balance and thus weaken Japanese security.37 The price of this moderation, however, would be continued dependence. But continued dependence did not mean that Japan would continue to play the same role in the alliance. The logic of the Guam Doctrine was still for Japan to do more. This remained an expectation of the US; it was also a Japanese goal, as a way to keep the US engaged in Asia. Indeed, growing regional threats, especially from the late 1970s, made Japanese policymakers more wary of abandonment than they were of entrapment, leading to a period of enhanced cooperation with a view to clarifying the alliance’s “division of labor.” 38 The result was the 1978 Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation.39 Japan became gradually more capable but not necessarily more autonomous. As Satake argues, Tokyo was seeking to “tighten” the alliance in order to boost its deterrence capacity by enmeshing the US more credibly in regional security.” 40 Growing capabilities would also be a feature of Japan’s alliance management through the 1980s, especially when Nakasone became prime minister. His major goal now was to push Japan’s defense spending above the 1 percent limit set in the 1970s, an objective he achieved, albeit only by a “symbolic” 0.004 percent.41 However, Nakasone’s efforts were not especially addressed at achieving greater autonomy. Instead, he sought to give Japan a greater role within the alliance and on Western security debates more generally. Japan would be America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and its security interests would be “indivisible” from those of the US and Europe.42

From Gulf War to War on Terror By the end of the Cold War, growing Japanese economic power, coupled with apparent American decline, meant that some saw the world as moving “toward a Pax Nipponica.” 43 In Japan, figures such as Ishihara Shintarō, a nationalist politician, talked of Japan as a “hightech superpower” and suggested the country now had the “power to say no” to the US.44 Yet Japan’s autonomy remained tightly constrained, a reality exposed by its response to the Gulf War in 1991 and key developments in Asian security through the 1990s. Concerning the Gulf War, Tokyo’s failure to do much more beyond financial contributions—although these were substantial, amounting to approximately US$14 billion—meant that it was criticized by the US for its “checkbook diplomacy.” 45 The government of Kaifu Toshiki had, in fact, attempted to do much more in support of the war effort. But for a range of reasons, the government found itself unable to deliver on these promises.46 It was only in June 1992, well after the war, that it was able to pass new legislation to allow the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to engage in limited peacekeeping activities.47 The peacekeeping initiative emerged from a debate that followed the Gulf War failure on how Japan might become a more “normal nation” (futsū no kuni) and play a more active role in international affairs. It was an example of this decade’s liberal internationalism and the idea that Japan be more active through engagement with multilateral institutions, particularly the UN.48 This thinking was also prompted by moves in America to draw down US involvement in the Asia-Pacific and thus realize the “peace dividend” delivered by the end of the Cold War.49 Accordingly, the Japanese government established an Advisory Group on Defense Issues (The Higuchi Committee), which argued that Japan needed to “play an active role in shaping a new order.” 50 The committee emphasized multilateralism and non-military commitments as a means to boost Japan’s prominence.

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

265

On Asian security in the 1990s, it soon became clear that there would be little in the way of a peace dividend and that any policy based on international institutions would also come with limitations. First, in Northeast Asia, even as the Soviet Union had collapsed, North Korea became a clear security threat following the nuclear crisis of 1993–1994 and even more so after it launched a missile over Japanese territory in 1998.51 Similarly, the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996 exposed the limitations of the alliance coordination as set up in the 1970s. Second, the alliance itself endured a period of crisis. The two sides were at odds over trade, and mutual confidence in the alliance itself was severely tested by the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by US military personnel in Okinawa.52 Rather than drift further apart, however, the two countries engaged in a period of reform from the mid-1990s leading to new Guidelines for JapanUS Defense Cooperation in 1997.53 Lastly, the limitations of Japan’s multilateralism were revealed by the 1998 nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan. As a country devasted by the atomic bombings of World War II, Japan reacted negatively to these tests and pushed for a strong international response. Yet it received only lukewarm support in the UN Security Council, even from the United States.54 The limitations of diplomatic autonomy based on liberal internationalism had been exposed by the new realities of post–Cold War Asia. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US led to another reappraisal of Japan’s security posture. In particular, the government led by Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō, one of Japan’s most charismatic postwar leaders, reemphasized the alliance as the central pillar of Japan’s security policy.55 Koizumi’s intention was to make sure that Japan responded to the War on Terror more effectively than it had to the Gulf War. There would be no repeat of “diplomatic shock” after the Gulf War. Koizumi passed two important pieces of legislation which allowed Japan to support America’s War on Terror—the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law of 2001 and the Iraq Special Measures Law of 2003.56 Accordingly, Koizumi had pushed Japan suddenly toward what has been called “de facto collective self-defense.” 57 But Koizumi also saw the War on Terror as an opportunity to reshape Japan’s own security posture to make the country, if not more autonomous, at least more capable. He initiated or oversaw a range of security-related reforms, such as giving more status to the Japan Defense Agency within the bureaucracy, marginalizing the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which had historically interpreted Article 9 to constrain Japan’s security role, and strengthening the role of the prime minister in foreign and security policy.58

The China challenge Following America’s normalization of relations with China, Japan was able to engage more freely with China, and the relationship was largely positive for the remainder of the Cold War. But this slowly changed in the post–Cold War period, as various tensions, such as territorial disputes, began to disrupt the relationship.59 Perhaps counter-intuitively then, in 2009–2010, China became the focus of another effort by Tokyo to establish some autonomy from the US. A new government led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) sought to reposition Japan as a “bridge between China and the US.” 60 The logic, espoused most prominently by then Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, was that greater autonomy from the US could be achieved by reducing the role played by the US in Japan’s international relations and instead deepening the country’s engagement with Asia, especially China. Although the US-Japan alliance would remain important, Japan would develop a new strategy following a philosophy of

266

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

“open regional cooperation” and based on new regional institutions such as the proposed East Asian Community (EAC).61 Hatoyama’s vision for a more autonomous Japan soon fell apart, however. The DPJ mismanaged the relationship with the US, a major source of tension being US bases in Okinawa.62 But the DPJ also failed to explain its thinking on the EAC idea. America’s role was poorly explained, leading to fears in Washington that it was being excluded. Beijing, meanwhile, viewed the proposal as an effort by Tokyo to set up a “Japan-led order” in the Asia-Pacific.63 Even as the DPJ was arguing for a distancing from the US, events in the region were pushing in the opposite direction. After a Chinese fishing vessel collided with a Japan Coast Guard ship in September 2010, Japan’s relationship with China deteriorated significantly.64 Consequently, Hatoyama’s successors in the DPJ soon returned Japan to the postwar orthodoxy of alliance centrality. The 2010 National Defense Program Guidelines strengthened alliance cooperation, reorganized the JSDF and set out a new “dynamic defense force concept” (dōteki bōeiryoku) to replace the “basic defense force concept” of the 1970s.65 By 2012 it was clear that the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations would not be transient. Rather, a longer term hardening of strategic interests and mutual threat perceptions was now underway, as illustrated by the new diplomatic furor which erupted in 2012 after the DPJ nationalized the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.66 Japan’s strategic vulnerability due to China’s growing assertiveness, the threat posed by North Korea and the unpredictable nature of Asia’s security flashpoints all highlight the continuing deterrence value of the alliance.67 Accordingly, when the LDP returned to government in late 2012, it sought to boost Japan’s military and diplomatic capabilities. But rather than a renewed attempt at autonomy this was, instead, aimed at buttressing the alliance and reducing the risk of abandonment. Led by Abe Shinzō, the government issued a National Security Strategy and set up a National Security Council. Henceforth, Japan would seek to make a “proactive contribution to peace” in the Asia-Pacific.68 Restrictions on the country’s right to collective self-defense were loosened: under a “reinterpreted” Article 9, Japan could now come to the defense of an ally.69 Tokyo also cooperated closely with Washington to develop new Guidelines for JapanUS Defense Cooperation in 2015, updating the 1997 Guidelines so that the alliance would be more flexible in responding to Asia’s new security challenges.70 When the US Obama administration sought to “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, Abe ensured that Japan responded proactively.71 Indeed, Abe argued that Japan’s own security reforms would “complement” the rebalance and that Japan would support US efforts “first, last, and throughout.” 72 In fact, Abe also envisaged that Japan would play a much larger and more autonomous diplomatic role in the region. This process had begun in the mid-2000s as Japan began establishing key strategic partnerships around Asia, notably with Australia and India.73 From the mid-2010s, however, Abe began drawing together a more ambitious regional agenda under the banner of the “Free and Open Indo Pacific” (FOIP). The aim of FOIP has been to maintain and strengthen the regional order—now the “Indo-Pacific” connected through the “confluence of the two seas” (futatsu no umi no majiwari).74 Under FOIP, Japan has been seeking to uphold key principles of the “rules-based order,” build regional prosperity and make sure that the region remained peaceful and stable.75 But FOIP, too, has been aimed at maintaining key elements of the US-led regional order, keep the US engaged in the IndoPacific and substitute for American weaknesses in the region. Japan has thus been a major actor in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the leading power pushing ahead with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership after America’s Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

267

withdrawal under President Donald Trump.76 FOIP thus represents Japan’s most determined attempt since World War II to become more autonomous and more engaged in international affairs. Once again, however, the intention has not been to loosen Japan from the alliance but to tighten the alliance linkages and further enmesh the US in the region.

Conclusion To argue that through alliance history Japan has repeatedly foregone autonomy to prioritize deterrence is not to suggest that this has been accepted universally in Japan. As this chapter has demonstrated, this consensus has been challenged repeatedly during the Cold War and since. It was attempted in the 1950s by revisionists such as Hatoyama Ichirō and Kishi Nobusuke and by Nakasone Yasuhiro in the early 1970s.77 But efforts to overturn the status quo also came from liberal internationalists and the political left. The push toward multilateralism after the Gulf War was intended to challenge the primacy of the alliance in Japanese policymaking, as was Hatoyama’s vision of Japan balancing equidistantly between the US and China following the 2008 global financial crisis.78 Nevertheless, prioritization of deterrence over autonomy has endured and, in fact, continuously evolved. Alliance history also demonstrates how revisionists have been repeatedly coopted into this consensus. When negotiating security treaty revisions in the late 1950s, Kishi abandoned notions of drawing down the US military presence in Japan to focus instead on establishing a more equal partnership. Having pushed autonomous defense in the early 1970s, Nakasone argued for a “tighter coupling” with the US in the 1980s.79 Abe Shinzō came to power (twice) as a nationalist and historical revisionist; but he too ultimately deepened Japan’s alliance with America. The key plank of his security reforms, the loosening of restrictions on collective self-defense, makes Japan substantially less autonomous from the US.80 Clearly, different Japanese governments have pursued distinct policies, and the underlying rationale for these decisions has also changed. The Yoshida Doctrine came about when Japan faced significant external and internal challenges with limited capabilities. The alliance offered maximum deterrence at little cost relative to a strategy based on autonomy.81 Kubo’s basic defense policy represented a judgement that potential threats were manageable via the deterrence offered by the alliance and that any significant push for autonomy would be counterproductive.82 The Abe Doctrine, notwithstanding Abe’s personal nationalism, flowed from an assessment that Japan’s strategic environment was becoming substantially more threatening, meaning that Japan required a more robust level of deterrence. Having greater autonomy would not fundamentally address this problem.83 This pattern reveals two striking features of Japan’s alliance management. The first is the consistency in the process through which these decisions came about or what Pyle has called Japan’s “pattern of extraordinary sensitivity to the workings of the international system.” 84 Japanese policymakers have demonstrated unwavering attention to a broadly similar array of factors: the intentions as well as capabilities of adversaries; Japan’s own capabilities and the likely effects that changing these would have in terms of regional stability and domestic cohesion; the intentions and capabilities of the US; and the likelihood and risks of abandonment and entrapment in the alliance.85 The second feature, however, is that this consistent sensitivity appears to be leading not toward a balancing of autonomy and deterrence in Japanese policy, as might be expected of the “Goldilocks consensus” imagined by Samuels.86

268

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Instead, the importance of deterrence to Japanese grand strategy, and thus the importance of the alliance, has steadily increased—initially after the Nixon “shocks” of the early 1970s and then again with the rise of China. On the flip side, autonomy has become less of a national strategic goal to be pursued and more a sign of strategic failure to be avoided. In the current environment, a sudden rush toward true autonomy would indicate that Japan had become isolated in the region, including from the US, and would need to take dramatic steps for national self-defense. Thus viewed, Yoshida’s counsel—that no country can defend itself unaided—is more relevant than ever for Japan. Deterrence is fundamental to Japanese security and thus so too is the US-Japan alliance.

Notes 1

Shigeru Yoshida, The Yoshida Memoirs: The Story of Japan in Crisis (London: Heinemann, 1961), 195. Jennifer M. Lind, “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,” International Security 29, no. 1 (2005): 92–121. 3 Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 55–58, 62–65; Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 6. 4 John S. Duffield, “Alliances,” in Security Studies: An Introduction, ed. Paul D. Williams, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 344. 5 Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 467. On Japan, see H. D. P. Envall, “Underplaying the ‘Okinawa Card’: How Japan Negotiates Its Alliance with the United States,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 67, no. 4 (2013): 385–86. 6 Samuels offers the best outline of this debate. See Samuels, Securing Japan, 1–9. 7 Samuels, Securing Japan, 6; Pyle, Japan Rising, 27. 8 Samuels, Securing Japan, 9. 9 Shogo Suzuki and Corey Wallace, “Explaining Japan’s Response to Geopolitical Vulnerability,” International Affairs 94, no. 4 (2018): 713–18. 10 H. D. P. Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” in National Perspectives on a Multipolar Order: Interrogating the Global Power Transition, ed. Benjamin Zala (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 144–68. 11 John Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954, paperback ed. (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Affairs, Harvard University Press, 1988); Kenneth B. Pyle, The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1996); Soeya Yoshihide, “Yoshida Rosen to Yoshida Dokutorin,” Kokusai Seiji 151 (2008): 1–17. 12 Richard J. Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 206–7. 13 Yoshida, The Yoshida Memoirs, 191–92; Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children, 206. 14 Samuels, Securing Japan, 41. 15 Joseph P. Keddell, The Politics of Defense in Japan: Managing Internal and External Pressures (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 56–57. 16 Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 114–23. 17 Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” 150–51. 18 Cited in Samuels, Securing Japan, 7. 19 Kishi Nobusuke, “Makoto no dokuritsu Nihon no tame ni,” Fūsei, January 1954, reproduced in Kishi Nobusuke, Kishi Nobusuke kaikoroku: Hoshu gōdō to anpo kaitei (Tokyo: Kōsaidō, 1983), 109. See also Samuels, Securing Japan, 30. 20 Cited in Masumi Junnosuke, Postwar Politics in Japan, 1945–1955, trans. Lonny E. Carlile (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley), 314. 21 Samuels, Securing Japan, 30. 2

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

269

22

Samuels, Securing Japan, 33–34. Richard Sims, Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation, 1868–2000 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 274–78. 24 Kishi Nobusuke, Kishi Nobusuke kaikoroku: Hoshu gōdō to anpo kaitei (Tokyo: Kōsaidō Shuppan, 1983), 294. 25 Schaller, Altered States, 140–42. 26 Masumi Junnosuke, Contemporary Politics in Japan, trans. Lonny E. Carlile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 38–48. 27 Shingo Yoshida, “In the Shadow of China’s Bomb: Nuclear Consultation, Commitment Reconfirmation, and Missile Defence in the US-Japan Alliance, 1962–1968,” in Joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Deterrence, Non-Proliferation and the American Alliance, ed. John Baylis and Yoko Iwama (London: Routledge, 2019), 172–73. 28 Kusunoki Ayako, “The Satō Cabinet and the Making of Japan’s Non-Nuclear Policy,” Journal of American– East Asian Relations 15 (2008): 25–50; Mark Fitzpatrick, Asia’s Latent Nuclear Powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Adelphi Paper 55, no. 455 (2015): 71–73. 29 Schaller, Altered States, 210–44. 30 Fintan Hoey, Satō, America and the Cold War: US–Japan Relations, 1964–72 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 147–48; Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” 151. 31 Michael J. Green, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 344. 32 Yukinori Komine, Negotiating the U.S.–Japan Alliance: Japan Confidential (London: Routledge, 2017), 165–68. 33 Yasuhiro Nakasone, The Making of a New Japan: Reclaiming the Political Mainstream, trans. Lesley Connors (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999), 160. 34 Sheila A. Smith, Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 38–40; Michael J. Green, “Balance of Power,” in U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World, ed. Steven K. Vogel (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002). 18. 35 Komine, Negotiating the U.S.–Japan Alliance, 167. 36 Hoey, Satō, America and the Cold War, 122–33; Green, “Balance of Power,” 18. 37 Samuels, Securing Japan, 2–3; Tsuyoshi Kawasaki, “Postclassical Realism and Japanese Security Policy,” Pacific Review 14, no. 2 (2001): 233–35. See also Kubo Takuya, “Boeiryoku seibi no kangaekata,” February 20, 1971, reproduced in Sekai to Nihon database, ed. Tanaka Akihiko, https://worldjpn.grips.ac.jp/documents/ texts/JPSC/19710220.O1J.html. 38 Tomohiko Satake, “The New Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and an Expanding Japanese Security Role,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (2016): 29. 39 Sado Akihiro, The Self-Defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan, trans. Noda Makito (Tokyo: Japan Library, 2017), 105–16. 40 Satake, “The New Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation and an Expanding Japanese Security Role,” 29. 41 Keddell, The Politics of Defense in Japan, 147. 42 H. D. P. Envall, Japanese Diplomacy: The Role of Leadership (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 2015), 153–55, 159. 43 Ezra F. Vogel, “Pax Nipponica?” Foreign Affairs 64, no. 4 (1986): 767. 44 Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan that Can Say No: Why Japan will be First Among Equals, trans. Frank Baldwin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 25, 43. See also Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” 152. 45 H. D. P. Envall, “Japan: From Passive Partner to Active Ally,” in Global Allies: Comparing US Alliances in the 21st Century, ed. Michael Wesley (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 20. 46 For example, see Michael J. Green and Igata Akira, “The Gulf War and Japan’s National Security Identity,” in Examining Japan’s Lost Decades, ed. Yoichi Funabashi and Barak Kushner (London: Routledge, 2015), 161–62. 47 Katsumi Ishizuka, “Japan’s Policy Towards UN Peacekeeping Operations,” International Peacekeeping 12, no. 1 (2005): 69; Paul Midford, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 86–95. 23

270

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

48

A key figure in this debate was the politician, Ozawa Ichirō. See Ichiro Ozawa, Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, trans. Louisa Rubinfien (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994); Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” 153. 49 Anthony DiFilippo, The Challenges of the U.S.-Japan Military Arrangement: Competing Security Transitions in a Changing International Environment (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 23–24. 50 Advisory Group on Defense Issues, “The Modality of the Security and Defense Capability of Japan,” August 12, 1994, reproduced in Redefining the U.S.-Japan Alliance: Tokyo’s National Defense Program, Patrick M. Cronin and Michael J. Green, McNair Paper 31 (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1994), 30; Envall, “Clashing Expectations,” 69. 51 Envall, “Japan,” 20–21. 52 Kōji Murata, “The 1990s: From a Drifting Relationship to a Redefinition of the Alliance,” in The History of US-Japan Relations: From Perry to the Present, ed. Makoto Iokibe, trans. Tosh Minohara (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 224–28; Edward J. Lincoln, Troubled Times: U.S.-Japan Trade Relations in the 1990s (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 121–34; Envall, “Underplaying the ‘Okinawa Card’,” 386–87. 53 See, for example, Yoichi Funabashi, Alliance Adrift (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999). 54 Satu Limaye, “Tokyo’s Dynamic Diplomacy: Japan and the Subcontinent’s Nuclear Tests,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 22, no. 2 (2000): 332–35. See also H. D. P. Envall, “Japan’s India Engagement: From Different Worlds to Strategic Partners,” in The Engagement of India: Strategies and Responses, ed. Ian Hall (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 44–46. 55 H. D. P. Envall, “Exceptions that Make the Rule? Koizumi Jun’ichiro and Political Leadership in Japan,” Japanese Studies 28, no. 2 (2008): 235–36. 56 Tomohito Shinoda, Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 86–98, 113–32. 57 Samuels, Securing Japan, 94–99; Envall, “Japan,” 21. 58 H. D. P. Envall, “Transforming Security Politics: Koizumi Jun’ichiro and the Gaullist Tradition in Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 8, no. 2, art. 3 (2008), https://www.japanesestudies.org. uk/articles/2008/Envall.html; Shinoda, Koizumi Diplomacy, 63–85. 59 Kent E. Calder, “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2006): 1–11. 60 Takashi Yokota, “The Real Yukio Hatoyama; Japan’s New Prime Minister Could Be Asia’s First ‘Third Way’ Leader,” Newsweek, September 28, 2009. 61 Yukio Hatoyama, “Japan’s New Commitment to Asia: Toward the Realization of an East Asian Community,” address by H. E. Dr. Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan, November 15, 2009, Singapore, https:// worldjpn.grips.ac.jp/documents/texts/exdpm/20091115.S1E.html. See also Daniel Sneider, “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy Under the Democratic Party of Japan,” Asia Policy 12 (2011): 99–129; Envall, “Clashing Expectations,” 71–76. 62 Tomohito Shinoda, Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Power Shifts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 168–79; H. D. P. Envall and Kerri Ng, “The Okinawa ‘Effect’ in US–Japan Alliance Politics,” Asian Security 11, no. 3 (2015): 231–33. 63 Envall, “Clashing Expectations,” 71–73; Sneider, “The New Asianism,” 112. 64 Ryo Sahashi, “The DPJ Government’s Failed Foreign Policy: A Case of Politician-Led Government Gone Wrong,” in Looking for Leadership: The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan, ed. Ryo Sahashi and James Gannon (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2015), 145–48. 65 See Japan Ministry of Defense, “National Defense Program Guidelines for FY 2011 and Beyond,” December 17, 2010; H. D. P. Envall and Kiichi Fujiwara, “Japan’s Misfiring Security Hedge: Discovering the Limits of Middle-Power Internationalism and Strategic Convergence,” in Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. William T. Tow and Rikki Kersten (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 71; Shinoda, Contemporary Japanese Politics, 197–99. 66 Sahashi, “The DPJ Government’s Failed Foreign Policy,” 146–48. 67 Suzuki and Wallace, “Explaining Japan’s Response to Geopolitical Vulnerability,” 713–18; H. D. P. Envall, “What Kind of Japan? Tokyo’s Strategic Options in a Contested Asia,” Survival 61, no. 4 (2019): 118–20. 68 Government of Japan, “National Security Strategy,” December 17, 2013, 1. 69 H. D. P. Envall, “The ‘Abe Doctrine’: Japan’s New Regional Realism,” International Relations of the AsiaPacific 20, no. 1 (2020): 43.

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

271

70

Tomohiko Satake, “The New Guidelines for Japan–US Defense Cooperation and an Expanding Japanese Security Role,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (2016): 28; Envall, “The ‘Abe Doctrine’,” 43–46. 71 H. D. P. Envall, “Japan’s ‘Pivot’ Perspective: Reassurance, Restructuring, and the Rebalance,” Security Challenges 12, no. 3 (2016): 5–19. 72 Shinzo Abe, “Remarks by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a Symposium hosted by Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA,” Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, April 29, 2015, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/ statement/201504/1210942_9918.html. 73 H. D. P. Envall and Ian Hall, “Asian Strategic Partnerships: New Practices and Regional Security Governance,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (2016): 93–95, 98–99. 74 Abe Shinzō, “Futatsu no umi no majiwari,” speech at the Parliament of the Republic of India, August 22, 2007, https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/19/eabe_0822.html. 75 Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Bluebook 2018 (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2018), 20; Envall, “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation,” 157. 76 Kei Koga, “Japan’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ Question: Countering China or Shaping a New Regional Order?” International Affairs 96, no. 1 (2020): 53, 66–69. 77 Samuels, Securing Japan, 30; Komine, Negotiating the U.S.–Japan Alliance, 165–68. 78 Envall, “Clashing Expectations,” 71–76. 79 Samuels, Securing Japan, 25. 80 Envall, “The ‘Abe Doctrine’,” 47–48. 81 Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children, 206–7. 82 Kawasaki, “Postclassical Realism and Japanese Security Policy,” 233–35; Samuels, Securing Japan, 2–3. 83 Envall, “The ‘Abe Doctrine’,” 41. 84 Pyle, Japan Rising, 27. 85 Samuels, Securing Japan, 2–3. 86 Samuels, Securing Japan, 9.

References Abe, Shinzō. “Futatsu no umi no majiwari.” Speech at the Parliament of the Republic of India, August 22, 2007, https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/19/eabe_0822.html. ———. “Remarks by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a Symposium hosted by Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA,” Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, April 29, 2015, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201504/1210942_9918.html. Advisory Group on Defense Issues. “The Modality of the Security and Defense Capability of Japan,” August 12, 1994. Reproduced in Redefining the U.S.-Japan Alliance: Tokyo’s National Defense Program, by Patrick M. Cronin and Michael J. Green, McNair Paper 31. Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1994. Calder, Kent E. “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry.” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2006): 1–11. DiFilippo, Anthony. The Challenges of the U.S.-Japan Military Arrangement: Competing Security Transitions in a Changing International Environment. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. Dower, John. Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954. Paperback ed. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Affairs, Harvard University Press, 1988. Duffield, John S. “Alliances.” In Security Studies: An Introduction, edited by Paul D. Williams, 339–54. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2013. Envall, H. D. P. “Clashing Expectations: Strategic Thinking and Alliance Mismanagement in Japan.” In United States Engagement in the Asia Pacific: Perspectives from Asia, edited by Yoichiro Sato and Tan See Seng, 61–88. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015. ———. “Exceptions that Make the Rule? Koizumi Jun’ichiro and Political Leadership in Japan.” Japanese Studies 28, no. 2 (2008): 227–42. ———. “Japan and the Dangers of Multipolarisation.” In National Perspectives on a Multipolar Order: Interrogating the Global Power Transition, edited by Benjamin Zala, 144–68. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. ———. “Japan: From Passive Partner to Active Ally.” In Global Allies: Comparing US Alliances in the 21st Century, edited by Michael Wesley, 15–30. Canberra: ANU Press, 2017.

272

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

———. “Japan’s ‘Pivot’ Perspective: Reassurance, Restructuring, and the Rebalance.” Security Challenges 12, no. 3 (2016): 5–19. ———. “Japan’s India Engagement: From Different Worlds to Strategic Partners.” In The Engagement of India: Strategies and Responses, edited by Ian Hall, 39–59. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014. ———. Japanese Diplomacy: The Role of Leadership. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 2015. ———. “The ‘Abe Doctrine’: Japan’s New Regional Realism.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 20, no. 1 (2020): 31–59. ———. “Underplaying the ‘Okinawa Card’: How Japan Negotiates Its Alliance with the United States.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 67, no. 4 (2013): 383–402. ———. “What Kind of Japan? Tokyo’s Strategic Options in a Contested Asia.” Survival 61, no. 4 (2019): 117–30. Envall, H. D. P. and Ian Hall, “Asian Strategic Partnerships: New Practices and Regional Security Governance,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (2016): 87–105. Envall, H. D. P. and Kerri Ng, “The Okinawa ‘Effect’ in US–Japan Alliance Politics.” Asian Security 11, no. 3 (2015): 225–41. Envall, H. D. P. and Kiichi Fujiwara, “Japan’s Misfiring Security Hedge: Discovering the Limits of MiddlePower Internationalism and Strategic Convergence.” In Bilateral Perspectives on Regional Security: Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific Region, edited by William T. Tow and Rikki Kersten, 60–76. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Funabashi, Yoichi. Alliance Adrift. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999. Government of Japan, “National Security Strategy.” December 17, 2013. Green, Michael J. “Balance of Power.” In U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World, edited by Steven K. Vogel, 9–34. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. ———. By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Green, Michael J. and Igata Akira. “The Gulf War and Japan’s National Security Identity.” In Examining Japan’s Lost Decades, edited by Yoichi Funabashi and Barak Kushner, 158–75. London: Routledge, 2015. Hatoyama, Yukio. “Japan’s New Commitment to Asia: Toward the Realization of an East Asian Community.” Address by Prime Minister of Japan, Singapore, November 15, 2009, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/hatoyama/ statement/200911/15singapore_e.html. Hoey, Fintan. Satō, America and the Cold War: US–Japan Relations, 1964–72. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Ishihara, Shintaro. The Japan that Can Say No: Why Japan will be First Among Equals, translated by Frank Baldwin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Ishizuka, Katsumi. “Japan’s Policy Towards UN Peacekeeping Operations.” International Peacekeeping 12, no. 1 (2005): 67–86. Japan Ministry of Defense. “National Defense Program Guidelines for FY 2011 and Beyond.” December 17, 2010. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Diplomatic Bluebook 2018. Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2018. Kawasaki, Tsuyoshi. “Postclassical Realism and Japanese Security Policy.” Pacific Review 14, no. 2 (2001): 221–40. Keddell, Joseph P. The Politics of Defense in Japan: Managing Internal and External Pressures. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. Kishi Nobusuke. “Makoto no dokuritsu Nihon no tame ni.” Fūsei, January 1954. Reproduced in Kishi Nobusuke kaikoroku: Hoshu gōdō to anpo kaitei, by Kishi Nobusuke, 107–10. Tokyo: Kōsaidō, 1983. ———. Kishi Nobusuke kaikoroku: Hoshu gōdō to anpo kaitei. Tokyo: Kōsaidō Shuppan, 1983. Koga, Kei. “Japan’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ Question: Countering China or Shaping a New Regional Order?” International Affairs 96, no. 1 (2020): 49–73. Komine, Yukinori. Negotiating the U.S.–Japan Alliance: Japan Confidential. London: Routledge, 2017. Kubo Takuya. “Boeiryoku seibi no kangaekata.” February 20, 1971. Reproduced in Sekai to Nihon [The world and Japan] database, edited by Tanaka Akihiko, https://worldjpn.grips.ac.jp/documents/texts/ JPSC/19710220.O1J.html. Kusunoki, Ayako. “The Satō Cabinet and the Making of Japan’s Non-Nuclear Policy.” Journal of American– East Asian Relations 15 (2008): 25–50.

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

273

Limaye, Satu. “Tokyo’s Dynamic Diplomacy: Japan and the Subcontinent’s Nuclear Tests.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 22, no. 2 (2000): 322–39. Lincoln, Edward J. Troubled Times: U.S.-Japan Trade Relations in the 1990s. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. Lind, Jennifer M. “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy.” International Security 29, no. 1 (2005): 92–121. Masumi, Junnosuke. Contemporary Politics in Japan. Trans. Lonny E. Carlile. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. ———. Postwar Politics in Japan, 1945–1955. Translated by Lonny E. Carlile. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. Midford, Paul. Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Murata, Koji. “The 1990s: From a Drifting Relationship to a Redefinition of the Alliance.” In The History of US-Japan Relations: From Perry to the Present, edited by Makoto Iokibe, translated by Tosh Minohara, 215–33. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Nakasone, Yasuhiro. The Making of a New Japan: Reclaiming the Political Mainstream, translated by Lesley Connors. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999. Ozawa, Ichiro. Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, translated by Louisa Rubinfien. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994. Pyle, Kenneth B. Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose. New York: Public Affairs, 2007. ———. The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1996. Sado, Akihiro. The Self-Defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan, translated by Noda Makito. Tokyo: Japan Library, 2017. Sahashi, Ryo. “The DPJ Government’s Failed Foreign Policy: A Case of Politician-Led Government Gone Wrong.” In Looking for Leadership: The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan, edited by Ryo Sahashi and James Gannon, 131–58. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2015. Samuels, Richard J. Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. ———. Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Satake, Tomohiko. “The New Guidelines for Japan–US Defense Cooperation and an Expanding Japanese Security Role,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (2016): 27–38. Schaller, Michael. Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Shinoda, Tomohito. Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Power Shifts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. ———. Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Sims, Richard. Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation, 1868–2000. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Smith, Sheila A. “The Evolution of Military Cooperation in the U.S.-Japan Alliance.” In The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Michael J. Green and Patrick M. Cronin, 69–93. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999. ———. Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Sneider, Daniel. “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy Under the Democratic Party of Japan.” Asia Policy 12 (2011): 99–129 Snyder, Glenn H. “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics.” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 461–95. Soeya, Yoshihide. “Yoshida rosen to Yoshida dokutorin.” Kokusai seiji 151 (2008): 1–17. Suzuki, Shogo and Corey Wallace. “Explaining Japan’s Response to Geopolitical Vulnerability.” International Affairs 94, no. 4 (2018): 711–34. Vogel, Ezra F. “Pax Nipponica?” Foreign Affairs 64, no. 4 (1986): 752–67. Yokota, Takashi. “The Real Yukio Hatoyama; Japan’s New Prime Minister Could Be Asia’s First ‘Third Way’ Leader.” Newsweek, September 28, 2009. Yoshida, Shigeru. The Yoshida Memoirs: The Story of Japan in Crisis. London: Heinemann, 1961.

274

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Yoshida, Shingo. “In the Shadow of China’s Bomb: Nuclear Consultation, Commitment Reconfirmation, and Missile Defence in the US-Japan Alliance, 1962–1968.” In Joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Deterrence, Non-Proliferation and the American Alliance, edited by John Baylis and Yoko Iwama, 172–95. London: Routledge, 2019.

Chapter 15: Japan’s American Alliance

275

Chapter 16 The Endless Postwar: Okinawa at the Modern Frontier Luke Franks Alone among Japan’s prefectures, Okinawa experienced a 27-year-long military occupation that fundamentally altered its history, and created a distinctive local politics, culture and economy that continue to speak to larger national and global issues. This chapter explores the contingencies that led to Okinawa’s wartime and postwar militarization, and the ways Okinawans have actively challenged American and Japanese efforts to control their postwar narrative. Despite persistent grievances regarding a fragile local economy and continued heavy US military base burden, Okinawans have promoted new visions emphasizing the themes of peace and transnational cooperation that meaningfully connect their past to their future.

Introduction Discussing Okinawa as part of Japan’s “postwar” is a necessary yet awkward endeavor; while the history of Japan’s southernmost prefecture has profound connections to the broader national story, it fits uneasily within its narrative conventions. The end of World War II for Okinawa represented a profound break greater and longer than that experienced by most mainland populations, but also a continuation of deep patterns that had shaped Okinawa’s modern development and identity. Part of the Ryukyu archipelago stretching from southern Kyushu to the eastern coast of Taiwan, Okinawa prefecture’s 48 inhabited islands had since the premodern eras served to connect Japan to its East Asian neighbors and vice versa; as Japan transformed itself into a modern empire these relations were reconfigured and Okinawa’s role as intermediary changed also. During the early Meiji period it became Japan’s foothold at its southern frontier, establishing Japanese sovereignty over the islands against Western incursions and Chinese claims. As Japan’s power grew and its empire expanded to include larger and more economically significant territories like Taiwan, Okinawa’s perceived importance to Japan decreased for a time, only to again become a critical defensive bulwark in the final desperate phase of the Asia-Pacific War. While Japan’s defeat led to a radical reconfiguration of security strategy under American leadership, Okinawa’s role as

276

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

military “Keystone of the Pacific” continued to find new justifications despite the gradually diminishing US military base presence elsewhere in Japan.1 These continuities in Okinawa’s modern history have fueled a sense among many Okinawans that they are trapped in an “endless postwar” while Japan and the rest of the world are allowed to move on. Reminders of the war abound in the form of enormous military bases that occupy valuable portions of the prefecture’s largest and most densely populated island, as well as the frequent school study tour groups traveling from mainland Japan to visit the island’s numerous war memorial sites. Even sites like Shuri Castle, whose reconstruction after World War II was seen as an important step in promoting pride in Okinawan heritage and culture locally and a more positive image of the prefecture worldwide, has become another reminder of futility as it burned down in an accidental fire in 2019. Amidst frustration and gloom, however, has been a persistent effort to project an optimism that can appeal to Japan’s “peace culture” and its affluent tourists. While the story of Okinawans pursuing their own material and moral claims against Japanese and American interests has come to dominate popular understandings of the prefecture’s history, it also risks overshadowing the ways in which Okinawa’s postwar history has followed the typical trajectories of islands of similar geographic, cultural, and economic endowments such as Hawai’i and Puerto Rico. The shorelines of Okinawa’s largest island (Okinawa hontō) and many of its smaller outlying islands have come to be dominated by large resorts catering to increasingly prosperous tourists from mainland Japan and surrounding East Asian economies. Okinawan agriculture and industry are no longer defined by prewar images of oppressive sugarcane-based monoculture, but now supply a wide variety of products made popular by growing Japanese/East Asian interest in Okinawa’s subtropical location and cultural distinctiveness. It is important to note that many of these changes have been directed by Okinawans themselves through new forms of political identity and activism, honed through decades of effort. As explored below, Okinawans quickly emerged out of the horrors of World War II to shape the trajectory of the postwar era, despite efforts by both the United States and Japan to dictate Okinawa’s role in their new relationship. Despite its small size, Okinawa has had an outsized role in defining the limits of Japanese identity and has exemplified the problematic place of minorities in Japan’s modern democratic order.

“The United States is a grown-up nation now”: Okinawa under American rule On April 1, 1946, Colonel Charles Ira Murray, Deputy Commander of the newly formed military government in Okinawa, marked the one-year anniversary of the US invasion of Okinawa by reflecting on the many accomplishments made since the Americans had taken control over the islands and its people. Murray, who arrived in Okinawa in early July 1945 from Guam where he had been serving in a similar capacity, had overseen early efforts to rebuild Okinawa’s broken infrastructure and rehabilitate its systems of governance and administration. His letter to the American forces in Okinawa, fashioned as a “fireside chat” from the “Old Man,” noted that the mission of the military government had begun to shift from “out and out relief administration” to a “program of reconstruction and forward planning.” 2 It had come time, Murray argued, to confront the complicated social dynamics

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

277

that accompanied US Occupation, and for US forces to rise to the challenge of responsibly governing their “wards.” Murray acknowledged the profound ambiguities that complicated relations with Okinawan populations: This reconstruction takes the superficial appearance of being a physical reconstruction. It is, but far more than physical. The United States arrived here as the enemy. Japan surrendered, but America is still here, and we are still by law the enemy of the Ryukyuans; by law, vis-a-vis us, they are still enemy nationals. The future relationship politically between the US and the Ryukyus, or rather the place of the Ryukyus in the political world, and in the economic world, is not known. It is not known any more to us as the occupying forces than it is to the Ryukyuans themselves. … Therefore it is not practical to plan in any definite terms for a forthcoming political and economic relationship.3 In such a context, Murray noted that his troops would take different approaches to dealing with Okinawans; “some of us as individuals work best by being objective and aloof,” while “others of us feel that we must ‘socialize,’ have a cup of tea, get palsy-walsy with the Okinawans.” Murray argued that of utmost importance was the avoidance of violence against local populations, since it “weakens the respect of the Okinawans for us, it is most likely to create a real enemy. It ill-becomes the representative of the stronger power.” 4 Tolerance was also essential: “when our patience is strained, think how many times their patience is strained. …” Murray closed his letter by appealing to a new sense of American maturity and purpose: “To make a long story short; let’s continue to do a mature job. The United States is a grown-up nation now.” 5 Murray’s letter effectively encapsulates several themes and contradictions that shaped the US presence in Okinawa in the early postwar years, and defined the longer Occupation era. Just as in mainland Japan, the end of the war in Okinawa was seen as an important turning point for occupied and occupier alike. For Okinawans, occupation was initially imagined to be both a separation from their imperial past, as well as a political, economic and cultural distancing from mainland Japan in favor of a new, freer future under American guidance. For the United States it was the final, full realization of the ideals that had justified the war against Japan and the other Axis powers, and American ascendance to global dominance. As a “grown-up nation,” the United States was now indisputably a peer of the old European states and empires, but one whose global mission was to be the benevolent promotion of liberal democratic values worldwide. Murray’s letter, however, also suggests how troubled this mission would be from the start, with its unease about “fraternization” with Okinawans, and the deep uncertainties about the ultimate ends of American control over the “Ryukyus,” as the territories were known during the US Occupation era. Even at the highest levels of the US military and civilian leadership there was little consensus on how the idealistic vision of American occupation could coexist with the Cold War realpolitik taking shape in the early postwar years. While Okinawa’s strategic value appears quite obvious now given its well-developed military base infrastructure and ability to project air power across a wide span of East Asia, this role only took shape through a series of historical contingencies and accidents. As Taira Yoshitoshi notes, there had been little militarization of the prefecture by the Japanese until very late in 278

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the Asia-Pacific conflict, as other areas such as Taiwan, New Guinea and the Marianas were seen as important bulwarks against the American offensive. There had been few efforts to mobilize local populations as well, with no organization of a local military guard (kyōdo butai), meaning that the few conscripts arriving from the island early in the war typically came from Kyushu-based battalions.6 It was only in early 1944, as Japan lost important battles in Micronesia, including the battle at Truk Atoll, when Japan’s military command recognized Okinawa’s strategic value, but even then other territories such as Taiwan were seen as more likely targets of American attack. Taira observes the irony that at this same moment Americans had begun shifting their attention from Taiwan to Okinawa as a staging ground for an offensive on the Japanese mainland, largely because of strong headwinds its B-29 bombers would encounter between Taiwan and Japan.7 Okinawa was thus thrust into a hopeless conflict in which the island was completely unprepared for a massive American attack in April 1945, leading to death and injury on an unprecedented scale for the Japanese, Okinawans and Americans. The battle was the bloodiest in the Pacific, with combined deaths of Japanese forces and Okinawan conscripts of over 100,000, and at least 12,000 dead among American forces. The number of Okinawan civilian deaths reflected the horrific nature of the battle, as nearly 100,000 perished as fighting concentrated in the most populated southern half of the island. While the end of the battle in June 1945 brought some relief to local populations, American plans to quickly expand existing Japanese military facilities to support an invasion of mainland Japan meant that survivors were relocated to camps in Okinawa’s north, usually far away from their homes. While Okinawans were allowed to return to their homes in late 1945 and 1946, the expansion of the military bases meant that for many this was impossible—a problem that would become a persistent source of tension between Okinawans and the US military. It is important to note, however, that even as Americans sought to consolidate control over Okinawa in the immediate postwar years, there was no consensus that American presence there would be permanent. The Americans quickly experienced Okinawa’s vulnerability to typhoons, leading some in the military leadership to advocate relocating forces to the US, leaving only smaller auxiliary and support facilities in the prefecture.8 Members of the US State Department were also concerned about the diplomatic and economic costs the occupation of Okinawa would entail, leading to heated disputes among the civilian and military leadership that continued through the late 1940s. It was only through the forceful and combined advocacy of powerful civilian and military figures like George Kennan and Douglas MacArthur that US commitment to a long-term military presence in Okinawa was confirmed.9 US claims to the prefecture were formalized in Article 3 of the 1951 Peace Treaty, which maintained US control over the Ryukyu islands south of the 29th parallel indefinitely while indicating that Japan continued to hold “residual sovereignty” over the islands.10

Early Okinawan responses While the early postwar years required the United States to come to terms with its new “grown up” status, Okinawans had to reconcile themselves to a new postwar world in which the basic foundations of everyday life had been profoundly disrupted. The prefecture had experienced a military buildup by Japan in the latter stages of the war, but it paled in comparison to what occurred under American rule. Japanese military installations occupied approximately 1,408

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

279

acres at the height of their development, while following the war the base presence would balloon to average of 43,000 acres under American occupation.11 This expanding American footprint fundamentally complicated the idealistic goals of postwar reforms in ways that Okinawans increasingly recognized. Major milestones such as the promulgation of the 1946 Japanese constitution and the implementation of land reform in the Japanese home islands highlighted the disparity between the Occupation experiences in Okinawa and on the Japanese mainland. While democratization and land reform largely achieved their objectives in mainland Japan of lessening the political and economic power of elites, reforms in Okinawa were undermined by the scale of the US military presence, and US determination to maintain political control over the island even while it permitted Okinawans a degree of self-government. Political reforms were thus erratically pursued. While early efforts to promote democratic government in late 1945 featured the first local elections to include women in Japanese history, the US Military Government remained wary of handing too much control to Okinawans, favoring instead the appointment of friendly locals to important political posts. The “civilian government” that was formed in 1946 comprised a governor and council—all appointed by the US military–only one of whom was a woman.12 While council positions became elected in 1950, they continued to serve in a largely advisory role to the military government, which exercised supreme control over budgetary matters and maintained the right to dismiss officials. Women remained woefully underrepresented in Occupation era politics as well.13 This condition of disenfranchisement quickly led to increasing Okinawan demands for reversion to Japan, remaining a constant political flashpoint with American officials throughout the Occupation era. While competing with those pushing for Okinawan independence, or continuation of American rule, reversion proved incredibly popular as seen in the results of a 1951 petition campaign that collected the signatures of approximately 72 percent of Okinawan adults in support.14 This movement was given greater urgency given that Okinawa’s position would likely be codified in the ongoing negotiations over Japan’s peace treaty and its strategic relationship with the US. It is important to note, however, that at the same time Okinawans were beginning to push for reversion, key Japanese government figures such as Emperor Hirohito were actively endorsing a long-term American Occupation of the island of up to 50 years in support of the emerging US-Japan bilateral security alliance.15

The value of a “keystone”: Land and labor, the Price Report, and evolution of the reversion movement The rejection of Okinawan reversion demands ushered in a new era in which American global strategic priorities increasingly collided with a sophisticated Okinawan political activism organized around opposition to the bases and support for Japanese reversion. The colonial nature of US rule in Okinawa had been explicitly identified and condemned by countries such as India, which refused to sign the San Francisco Peace Treaty and instead signed its own bilateral peace treaty with Japan in 1952 with American territorial claims to Okinawa omitted.16 Cold War anxieties combined with a burgeoning postwar global decolonization movement to create a volatile political environment throughout the 1950s as the United States asserted its strategic prerogatives against increasing Okinawan resistance.

280

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

One notable feature of the movement was the role of Okinawa’s teachers in this movement, led by Yara Chōbyō and the Okinawa Teachers Association (OTA). The revival of Okinawa’s educational system had been one bright spot in the early American Occupation, and educators and the public at large embraced the opportunity to create an explicitly Okinawan educational model reflective of new postwar ideologies and values. In addition to the rebuilding of primary and secondary schools and the training of a new generation of teachers, Occupation authorities also directed the construction of the University of the Ryukyus, which when completed in 1950 became Okinawa’s first post-secondary institution. While in line with broader efforts to promote democratic principles elsewhere in Japan, the development of a complete educational organization in Okinawa also raised the possibility of an independent and autonomous system no longer dependent upon Japan, and the basis for a closer partnership with the United States. The direction of Okinawan politics in the immediate aftermath of the World War II seemed to support such American hopes, as some of the first major political parties formed in 1947 supported either independence as the “Ryukyu Republic” or continued US trusteeship in the hopes that this would promote Okinawa’s democratization and economic development.17 The opposite was also true, however, given that both Okinawan and Japanese educators were at the time dealing with similar challenges of reframing prewar methods and practices for a postwar world. For Okinawans searching for new cultural directions, Japan offered a constant stream of resources and ideas that proved incredibly appealing. Yara, like others who became active in postwar Okinawan politics, came out of an earlier career in education; after graduating from Hiroshima Higher Normal School (now Hiroshima University) he worked until the end of the war in a number of high schools in Okinawa and colonial Taiwan. Following his repatriation to Okinawa in 1946, Yara quickly gained prominence in Okinawan governmental and educational circles, becoming the Chair of the newly formed Teachers Association in 1952 while also serving a leader of the reversion movement. The relative success of Japan’s postwar reforms also drew the attention of Okinawan leaders, particularly those working in educational and cultural fields. Kabira Chōshin, a staff member of the Ryukyu Civilian Government’s Culture Department during the early postwar years, recalled the surprise of hearing NHK broadcasts freely criticize Japanese government leaders, and a growing awareness of the importance of mass media in promoting democratic values in Okinawa.18 Resource constraints would also lead to closer cultural and educational ties between Okinawa and Japan, as the American Occupation authorities struggled to provide basic supplies like textbooks to Okinawan classrooms, leading it to instead adopt materials produced under the auspices of Japan’s Ministry of Education.19 By the early 1950s cultural and political conditions had begun to shift dramatically in favor of Japanese reversion as the best course for improving conditions in the islands. Over the course of the 1950s, the dynamics drawing Okinawa and Japan together grew even stronger, propelled by a sense that neither material prosperity nor democratization would be possible under American control. The early 1950s were marked by protests by Okinawan teachers over low pay and poor working conditions, sparking American concerns about the radicalization of labor and the threat of Communist influence. Such concerns were further amplified by the efforts of the Okinawa People’s Party and Okinawa Socialist Party to pass labor protection bills in 1952 and 1953, which included May Day celebrations and protests attended by labor activists and University of the Ryukyus’ students. The American

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

281

leadership took steps in 1954 to suppress the movement by regulating labor union leadership, and criticizing May Day protests’ supposed ties to Communist groups.20 Even with these efforts to tamp down labor activism, new flashpoints arose that further undermined the legitimacy of American rule. The US decision to maintain its military presence in Okinawa had meant that it urgently needed to reach agreement with landowners over the terms of its continued use of their property, and to identify a process moving forward for the acquisition of new land for its expanding base facilities. Against widespread Okinawan resistance to the long-term lease and rental rates that were initially proposed, the US military government began taking a harder line, invoking strategic necessity and the US military’s sovereign authority to force acceptance of the lease and acquisition of new land for military use. Based on the need for new military housing, the Americans took steps to seize land in Mawashi village near the city of Naha, initiating a period that came to be colloquially known in Okinawa as the era of “bayonets and bulldozers” (jūken to burudōzā) as landowners and protesters were forced off their land. A broad coalition of political and cultural groups began to organize around a series of demands related to military land use, most notably that new seizures be kept to a minimum, that rents be paid regularly and fairly compensate owners, and that any unused land be returned promptly.21 The movement began to make its economic demands more explicit, proposing a rental fee for military base lands far higher than what the United States was offering.22 By 1955, turmoil in Okinawa had attracted the attention of Washington, leading to the dispatch of a US Congressional inspection committee led by Democratic representative Melvin Price to Okinawa in the fall of 1955. The resulting report on the visit acknowledged the “unusually intricate and varied problems which face the United States in its occupancy and acquisition of lands in Okinawa,” a situation that had become even more complex as the United States sought to expand and secure its base presence. The military forces had proposed a doubling of its physical footprint by more than 50,000 acres, sparking contentious debates over the legitimacy and necessity of such an expansion, as well as the compensation required if expansion did proceed. The “Price Report” noted the conundrum US leadership faced in implementing such policies in a “traditional agricultural economy” in which yearly rents received by families for the use of their land was insufficient to provide for either their relocation or sustenance. The Committee proposed to resolve this problem through purchase of the land, resulting in a larger, one-time payment to current owners. Citing President Eisenhower’s pledge in his 1954 State of the Union address that “we shall maintain indefinitely our bases in Okinawa,” the report argued that the “land problem is not one for the present alone and for the immediate future but one with a relative permanence that cannot be disregarded.” The value of US bases in Okinawa was heightened by the “absence of a belligerent nationalistic movement” in contrast to conditions found in Japan and the Philippines, with the added benefit that in Okinawa there were “no restrictions imposed by a foreign government on our rights to store or to employ atomic weapons.” The report, however, recognized the danger that unrest in Okinawa could threaten its value as a “showcase of democracy” and provide “the hooded eye of the Communist world … propaganda against us.” 23 Despite the Price Committee’s efforts to balance “military necessity” against Okinawan resistance, the Committee’s proposals reflected a general colonial blindness to local political realities, exacerbated by a sense of American exceptionalism in its postwar geopolitical role. The Price recommendations had precisely the opposite effect as was intended; rather than tamp down Okinawan resistance, it further energized it, providing in its proposal to purchase 282

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

land a compelling rallying cry. By summer of 1956 there was already a sophisticated, coordinated response that mobilized wide swaths of Okinawan society. In the publication “Price recommendations and counterarguments” (Puraisu kankoku to sono hanron), Yogi Tatsubin, Chairman of the Ryukyu Legislative Council, wrote of the “utterly deplorable” (ikan senban) recommendations of the Price Report. Yogi observed that it was completely at odds with the US constitution’s conception of civilian authority, instead prioritizing “military necessity” in Okinawa’s case.24 Critics of the Price recommendations noted that existing military facilities already occupied 17 percent of Okinawa’s total arable land, endangering the incomes of 50,000 households.25 Further military expansion did not take into consideration both the scarcity of land in Okinawa and its importance to agrarian households facing both economic and cultural hardships when stripped of their patrimony.26 Protests subsequently erupted across Okinawa, leading to the “Island-Wide Struggle” (Shima-gurumi tōsō) that successfully pushed back against the Price Committee’s most controversial proposals, including that of purchase and “one-time payment” (ikkatsubarai) of military-held lands. The protest is widely regarded as the moment when the disparate movements seeking to advance “private” interests coalesced with “public” concerns with governance and democracy, allowing Okinawans to speak with a clear voice to advance their collective interests. Hiyane Teruo and and Gabe Masao have suggested that these movements in the late 1950s provided Okinawans with the conceptions that would underlie the movement as it gained momentum in the 1960s, including its nationalistic tone asserting closer political, legal and cultural ties with Japan, and its appeal to a mass Okinawan identity that could transcend regional and class divisions.27 Hiyane and Gabe note that American efforts in Okinawa were increasingly described as violations of Japanese law, and activists appealed to the Japanese government to “protect” its people in Okinawa.28 It is important to recognize that events on mainland Japan during the late 1950s had striking parallels to those in Okinawa, including the American military’s efforts to expand its Tachikawa airfield onto lands in nearby Sunagawa town. In the so-called “Sunagawa Incident” that followed, town leaders, led by its mayor, refused in 1955 to authorize the extension, setting off a political and legal controversy that yielded signs of support for the anti-base movement. While in 1959 the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed the Japanese government’s authority to override opposition of local officials in support of its security alliance with the United States, the long-term success of anti-base movements on the mainland in reducing and eliminating the base presence there served as inspiration that the same could be accomplished in Okinawa.29

Reversion and realism: The limits of Japanese identity in the Cold War era As Okinawa entered the 1960s there was increasing momentum for reversion as the solution for the numerous problems that Okinawans and the US military government confronted. The limits of American ability to control Okinawa had become apparent, and it had also become clear that the only way forward for a large US military presence there depended upon a much higher level of expenditure than the Americans were willing to provide. It was fortuitous, then, that at this moment of crisis Japan entered its period of “miraculous” economic growth, allowing it to escape both its own crises of the late 1950s but also providing the

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

283

means to increasingly compensate Okinawans for the US military burden. Labor strife and the turmoil surrounding the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 had famously led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party under Ikeda Hayato to launch the “Income Doubling Plan” to redirect popular energies toward the purpose of personal and national enrichment, which proved a tremendously successful strategy as Japan’s economic fortunes surged from the early 1960s until the late 1980s. As a result, Japan began to assume more responsibility for Okinawa’s governmental and base-related expenses, a trend that continued throughout the late 20th century and into the 21st. In 1962 Japan began making modest contributions to the budget of the Ryukyu civilian government, but by 1971 this amount had swelled to more than one-third of the annual Ryukyu government budget—more than five times what the US provided.30 It was the beginning of a security arrangement colorfully described by Japanese diplomat Nishimura Kumao as the “cooperation of things and people” (mono to hito to no kyōryoku), with the United States providing the service members and Japan providing the material support.31 Japan’s more prominent role in the economic support of Okinawa provided further momentum for reversion as the US military presence in Okinawa became the cornerstone of the US-Japan security alliance, regardless of which country held sovereignty over the islands. Given Okinawa’s importance to US efforts in Vietnam, the Japanese government felt increasingly confident in pressing the case for reversion. During his visit to Okinawa in 1965, Prime Minister Satō Eisaku declared that “Japan’s postwar is not over” as long as Okinawa remained under foreign control, signaling a public commitment to reversion in front of an Okinawan and American audience.32 Satō’s statement presaged the opening of formal negotiations between Japan and the United States in 1969 that culminated in an agreement that Okinawa would revert to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, while leaving most of the current US military facilities in place. For Japan and the United States reversion meant a more stable basis for the continuation of their security agreements, yet for Okinawans this resulting arrangement was sharply at odds with expectations. Discontent with the US military presence had erupted in protest, strikes and violence in the years leading to reversion. Notably, much of this unrest was centered in areas near US military facilities, as these communities felt the full impact of increased air traffic in support of the Vietnam War, as well as the effects of American policing of local Okinawan communities. In December of 1970, tempers flared to their boiling point in the city of Koza, located just outside the gates of Kadena Air Base, when a dispute over a traffic incident grew into a riot that pushed its way onto the military base, burning over 70 military-affiliated vehicles and several buildings. The announcement of reversion quelled some of this discontent, but there was a growing sense among anti-base activists that it was an incomplete victory, at best. Yara Chōbyō, whose earlier leadership of the Okinawa Teachers Association had led to his victory in 1968 as the first elected Chief Executive of the Ryukyu Islands, set the tone in his speech on May 15, 1972, the day Okinawa officially reverted to Japan and once again became a prefecture. As he saluted reversion as the culmination of Okinawan struggles since the end of World War II, Yara noted that reversion in its current form did not resolve some of the prefecture’s most pressing problems, most notably the military base issue.33 Using language that would become central to future Okinawan political discourse, Yara tied Okinawa’s suffering in war to a hope for a peaceful future in which it was no longer a “tool” used by others, but was free to pursue the “welfare of the prefectural people” as its highest priority.34 284

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Between bases and beaches: Tourism and Okinawan economic development While the period since reversion is now nearly twice as long as the Occupation era, the major themes and tensions of Okinawan history have remained firmly in place despite the end of American rule. Okinawan activism continues to be motivated by a mix of “private” and “public” interests seeking a more sustainable and equitable foundation for the promotion of Okinawa’s modern economy, culture and society. The promotion of Okinawa’s tourism industry has come to be seen as central to these efforts, as it promised both an economic basis that no longer relied upon base-related income, and a way to connect Okinawa’s past as an international entrepot to a future where it once again became the crossroads of Asian cultures. For most of the early Occupation era, the US military had tended to regard the Okinawan economy as primarily agrarian, with a growing base-related service sector. During the 1950s, however, a homegrown effort to promote Okinawan tourism took shape, initially focused on war-related sites but over the course of the 1960s increasingly emphasizing the “tropical” features of Okinawa’s topography and culture. American Occupation authorities took notice, establishing the Joint Ryukyu Tourism Board in 1961 with the guidance of University of Hawaii professor and Hawaii Visitors Bureau assistant general manager Frank T. Inoue.35 At the same time, the local tourism industry began actively consulting with mainland Japanese tourism experts, with some of the first mainland Japanese tour groups visiting the islands in 1960.36 While most of the early mainland visitors consisted of bereaved families visiting memorials dedicated to the war dead, Okinawa quickly became a way Japanese tourists could get an inexpensive “introduction” to overseas travel. As Osamu Tada notes, promoters of Okinawan tourism looked specifically at American models such as Hawai’i and Puerto Rico for inspiration, and tourists were lured by foreign goods such as whisky, watches, cameras and jewelry, which were much less expensive than in Japan.37 By the end of the Occupation era, the tourism industry had grown so significant that the last US High Commissioner of the Ryukyus James Lampert noted in his final speech on May 14, 1972 that “Okinawa has much to offer the visitor. If necessary arrangements can be made, I know that tourism will make an extremely important contribution to the future development and prosperity of Okinawa.” 38 Tourism has indeed remained a central pillar of Okinawa’s post-reversion economy, drawing visitors from mainland Japan and the rest of Asia in increasing numbers. By the mid-1970s Okinawa was beginning to rival destinations like Hawaii for Japanese tourists, and since then the industry has continued to grow rapidly, surpassing Hawaii’s numbers of inbound visitors for the first time in 2017. The size of Okinawa’s tourism economy peaked in 2019 with over 10 million inbound visitors, 30% of whom were international tourists coming from countries and territories like Taiwan, China, South Korea and Hong Kong. As Hiroshi Kakazu has observed, tourism seemed to promise a way out for small island economies like Okinawa’s, whose isolation, small market size, and high transportation costs have made the establishment of manufacturing industries difficult. Tourism-related industries, on the other hand, are “usually small-scale and labor-intensive,” and for that reason are also appealing to tourists seeking relief from the oppressive and alienating experience of life in urban industrialized societies.39 Kakazu observes that the growth of tourism has spurred the growth of an increasingly intricate web of services, goods and cultural products that are no longer confined to tourists alone, but like Okinawan music and awamori rice liquor are consumed

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

285

and appreciated widely throughout Japan. In addition to its economic benefit, Kakazu notes that tourism, as a “peace industry” not limited to national markets, is in keeping with Okinawan desires to distance itself from its long association with Japanese nationalism and the US military.40 This growth of the tourism industry has been accompanied by its own risks, however, as the global COVID crisis and the resulting collapse of holiday travel has made clear. The inherent volatility and competitiveness of the tourism industry, which by the late 2010s represented 15 percent of Okinawan total economic output, has continued to raise questions about its proper place within Okinawan development. While Okinawa’s economy has grown almost ten-fold since reversion, Okinawan average per-capita incomes remain only 70 percent of those on the mainland.41 Unemployment, too, remains stubbornly higher than in mainland Japan, with rates twice those in Japan for most of the post-reversion era.42 This is despite heavy Japanese government expenditures in the prefecture, which has focused on public works and continuing to subsidize the costs of maintaining US military bases. As Ikemiyagi Hidemasa argues, however, total central government spending in Okinawa is not out of line with what other Japanese prefectures have received, and when considering the “diseconomies” Okinawans face because of the continued US military presence “the idea that Okinawans receive subsidies from the central government that differ from those provided to other prefectures is mistaken, an illusion.” 43 Ikemiyagi notes that military bases have distorted the local economy and created a bubble in land prices, making homeownership rates in Okinawa one of the lowest in Japan. Perceptions of Okinawan economic weakness and dependence also do not consider how Okinawa’s economy will likely become an engine of future Japanese growth due to its young and growing population, in contrast to the graying and shrinking populace in mainland Japan. While base-related income has shrunk as a percentage of the overall Okinawan economy, the bases themselves continue to dominate large sections of Okinawa’s physical and psychic landscape, creating a political stalemate of sorts between those emphasizing Okinawa’s need for continued central government support, and those who see reduction of the base presence as essential to Okinawa’s cultural and economic transformation. Despite some modest declines in base-controlled land, the overall percentage of Japan-based US military facilities located in Okinawa has, in fact, increased to 70 percent of the national total, up from 58.8 percent in 1972.44 This has set the stage for some of the most contentious events in postreversion history, namely the 1995 Rape Incident and the subsequent debate about the future of military bases in Okinawa. While sexual violence against Okinawan girls and women has been a chronic problem associated with the US military presence, the circumstances of the 1995 attack were particularly shocking, with the gang rape and abandonment of a 12-year-old girl by three American Marines. The public furor that followed quickly coalesced into a highly organized mass movement reminiscent of earlier Okinawan anti-base struggles, culminating in a rally on October 21, 1995 that over 85,000 attended. Then-governor Ōta Masahide, who like his predecessor Yara Chōbyō had come to politics from a career in education, assumed a leading role in criticizing the inequities that characterized Okinawa’s relations with both Japan and the United States. He was a prominent figure both in negotiations with the Japanese government and American officials, and also led Okinawa’s legal challenges against the forced renewal of leases to US military facilities. When questions about the legal status of the military bases reached the Japanese Supreme Court in 1996, Ōta spoke on behalf of the prefecture, arguing that Okinawan culture was 286

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

rooted in a “longing for peace.” This was at odds with the “warrior culture” of Japan, and the “bayonets and bulldozers” previously employed by Americans to suppress Okinawan resistance.45 While the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed the right of the Japanese government to forcibly renew base leases against local objections, Okinawan protests did yield some apparent victories, including the 1996 pledge to relocate Futenma Air Base. Long a source of frustration due to its location in densely populated southern Okinawa, the return of these lands suggested the possibility that Okinawan society could finally begin moving forward with its civilian redevelopment goals. Local mood soured, however, when Japanese and American plans to move the base to northern Okinawa were revealed, fueling the sense that Okinawan calls to reduce and rebalance its base burden were being ignored. In the nearly 30 years that have followed the announcement of Futenma’s closing, and nearly 20 years since relocation to the northern Okinawan district of Henoko was formally proposed, construction of the new base has proceeded in fits and starts as it has faced consistent opposition from Okinawan environmental interests and other groups. During this period, Okinawan politics has also searched for direction in the face of legal defeat and coordinated Japanese and American efforts to maintain Okinawa’s complex of integrated military installations. Ōta’s hard anti-base stance led to his defeat in 1998 in favor of a more moderate candidate, Inamine Kei’ichi, who criticized Ōta’s strategy as unrealistic and likely to alienate central government authorities whose help was needed to address Okinawa’s high unemployment rate. The Japanese central government was widely seen as helping make Inamine’s case by cutting off relations with Ōta in the months leading up to the election, and reducing the level of subsidies to the Okinawan economy.46 This politics of moderation did not last, however, and governors in the past decade have returned to a more confrontational style of politics regarding Futenma and the larger base issue. This has been true even for previously conservative politicians like Onaga Takeshi, who won the governorship in 2014 by criticizing the politics of ideological division in favor of a unity of “identity” (ideorogii yori aidentiti). Like Ōta before him, Onaga sought to portray the base issue as one requiring a politics that recognized the deep structural problems that have troubled the Japan-Okinawa relationship throughout the modern era.47 While Onaga’s tenure was cut short by his sudden death from pancreatic cancer in 2018, his successor Tamaki Denny, a child of an Okinawan mother and an absent American Marine father, has maintained a strong anti-base stance and has led public efforts to stop construction of the new Henoko heliport.

Conclusion In reflecting upon the patterns and significance of postwar Okinawan history, Mori Yoshio noted that Okinawa has developed an increasing psychic independence from state power that has come to define its identity and politics. It was a sense of autonomy that was gained only through struggle with the larger powers that sought to control and limit Okinawan options. This “Okinawan democracy” was not defined by a particular party or leader, but by the “common people” who had learned from bitter experience that they could depend only on each other to advance their interests. Okinawan politics has come to reflect this, with

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

287

governors, mayors and local council members who seek to operate outside conventional party structures, and a tradition of activism and protest that is both dynamic and durable.48 There is little to indicate that this defining feature of the Okinawan experience will change anytime soon as the sources of Okinawan popular discontent—namely the US and Japanese commitments to maintaining military bases in the prefecture—will likely become even more entrenched as tensions in East Asia grow.49 There remains wide suspicion that the Japanese government still sees its budgetary outlays to the prefecture as a tool to force Okinawan acceptance of national security policy, reducing these funds to punish resistance to the Henoko heliport by Governor Tamaki and other local leaders.50 Nevertheless, local protests have continued, galvanized by a sense that resistance is meaningful and sometimes successful. This is a belief informed by Okinawan history itself, but also one that grows out of a commitment to peace that has become central to postwar Okinawan identity. This commitment to peace, however, has become paired with a strong sense of injustice. While Japan has been allowed to move beyond its “postwar” through Okinawan reversion, Okinawa’s desires to do the same through the reduction of its military burden have been consistently thwarted. Okinawa finds itself, as it did after its 1879 annexation by Japan and after its occupation by the US in 1945, again at the modern frontier, serving as a defensive bastion in a contest of nations it so desperately wants to transcend.

Notes 1 The term “Keystone of the Pacific” had entered common parlance by the 1950s, as indicated by the 1958 US Army film, “Okinawa: Keystone of the Pacific” https://www.c-span.org/video/?471240-1/okinawa-keystone -pacific See also Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Keystone (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000). 2 Text of Murray’s letter in Gordon Warner, The Okinawan Reversion Story (Naha: Executive Link, 1995), 47. 3 Warner, Okinawa Reversion Story, 47. 4 Warner, Okinawa Reversion Story, 47. 5 Warner, Okinawa Reversion Story, 48. 6 Taira Yoshitoshi, Sengo Okinawa to beigun kichi (Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2012), 11–12. 7 Taira, Sengo Okinawa, 16. 8 Taira, Sengo Okinawa, 32–24. 9 Taira, Sengo Okinawa, 29–40. 10 Japan’s “residual sovereignty” was subsequently confirmed by the Eisenhower-Kishi communique in 1957, while noting that effective control over the islands would remain with the United States “so long as the conditions of threat and tension exist in the Far East.” “Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McElroy,” Office of the Historian, US Department of State, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v18/d12. 11 Taira, Sengo Okinawa, 14. Taira notes that in the late 1950s US military facilities controlled up to 75,000 acres before returning to a lower level in the face of Okinawan resistance to this expansion. 12 Arashiro Toshiaki, Ryukyu Okinawashi (Naha: Tōyō Kikaku, 2001), The lone woman member of the council, Taketomi Setsu, is an indication of women’s emerging influence in Okinawan public life even under imperial Japanese rule. Taketomi was the first licensed female public educator in Okinawa and taught at prestigious Okinawan high schools prior to World War II. Under American occupation Taketomi became a leading political figure in Naha municipal politics and Chair of the Okinawan Women’s Association. 13 For a listing of prominent Okinawan women in postwar politics, see “Okinawa de haishutsusareta jōsei gi’in tachi,” (Okinawa Jōsei Zaidan, 2021), https://www.okinawajosei.org/pdf/2021/210804.pdf. 14 Asato Susumu et al, Okinawa ken no rekishi (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2004), 307.

288

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

For original documentation on the so-called “Emperor’s Message” (天皇メッセージ), see Okinawa Prefectural Archives, “Tennō mesēji,” https://www.archives.pref.okinawa.jp/uscar_document/5392, 16 For further discussion of controversies surrounding peace treaty drafting process, see John Price, “Cold War Relic: The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Politics of Memory,” Asian Perspective 25, no. 3 (2001): 31–60; and Hiroshi Sato, “India-Japan Peace Treaty in Japan’s Post-War Asian Diplomacy,” Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies 17 (2005): 1–20. 17 Mikio Higa, Politics and Parties in Postwar Okinawa (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Publications Centre, 1963), p. 27. 18 Kabira Chōshin, Shusengo no Okinawa bunka gyōseishi (Naha: Gekkan Okinawasha, 1997), 235–36. 19 Gordon Warner, History of Education in Postwar Okinawa (Tokyo: Nihon Bunka Kagakusha, 1972), pp. 59, 125. 20 Kiyoshi Nakachi, Ryukyu-U.S.-Japan Relations 1945–1972 (Quezon City, Philippines: Abiva Publishing House, 1989), 69–70. 21 Hiyane Teruo and Gabe Masao, “Tochi tōsō no igi,” in Okinawa henkan kõshõ no seiji katei (Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Seiji Gakkai, 1975), 29. 22 The “Price Report,” discussed in more detail below, noted that the “Okinawan Plan” was “in opposition to a lump-sum payment” and would mean that the funds set aside for purchase of the lands would amount to only about two years of rental payments under the Okinawan proposal. For full text of the Price Report, see John Michael Purves, “The Ryukyu-Okinawa History and Culture Website,” https://ryukyu-okinawa.net/ pages/archive/price.html. 23 “Report of a Special Subcommittee of the Armed Service Committee, House of Representatives Following an Inspection Tour, October 14 to November 23, 1955,” https://ryukyu-okinawa.net/pages/archive/price.html. 24 Yongensonku kankentsu jissen honbu, Puraisu kankoku to sono hanron: Okinawa gunyōchi mondai (Naha: Yongensoku Kanketsu Honbu, 1956), n.p. 25 Yongensoku kanketsu jissen honbu, 1. 26 Yongensoku kanketsu jissen honbu, 2. 27 Hiyane and Gabe, “Tochi tōsō no igi,” 43. 28 Hiyane and Gabe, “Tochi tōsō no igi,” 35. 29 For a discussion of the “Sunagawa Incident” and its legal implications for later Okinawan base disputes, see Luke Franks, “The Politics of Stalemate: Local Power, U.S. Military Bases, and the Japanese Courts,” ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 24, no. 2 (2017): 58–60. 30 Nakachi, Ryukyu-U.S.-Japan Relations,194. 31 Taira, Sengo Okinawa, 4. 32 Arashiro, Ryukyu Okinawashi, 257. 33 Arashiro, Ryukyu Okinawashi, 268. 34 Yara in Arashiro, Ryukyu Okinawashi, 268. 35 Gerald Figal, Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 91. 36 See Figal, Beachheads, 91, and Osamu Tada, “Constructing Okinawa as Japan’s Hawaii: From Honeymoon Boom to Tourist Paradise,” Japanese Studies 35, no. 3 (2015): 293. 37 Tada, “Constructing Okinawa,” 293–94. 38 Warner, The Okinawa Reversion Story, 167. 39 Hiroshi Kakazu, “Social Carrying Capacity for Sustainable Island Tourism: The Case of Okinawa,” The Journal of Island Studies 7, 54. 40 Kakazu, “Social Carrying Capacity,” 59. 41 Eric Johnston, “Tourism and logistics: Okinawa’s latest plan to boost its economy,” The Japan Times, May 15, 2022. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/15/national/okinawa-economic-development-local-leaders/. 42 “Okinawa paying the price for U.S. rule, COVID-19 crisis,” Asahi shinbun, May 15, 2021. https://www.asahi. com/ajw/articles/14350578. 43 Ikemiyagi Hidemasa, “’Okinawa promotion budget,’ a misleading name,” Meiji.net, March 6, 2018. https:// english-meiji.net/articles/82/. 44 Johnston, “Tourism and Logistics.” 45 Franks, “Politics of Stalemate,” 63. 15

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

289

46

Chalmers Johnson, “When Right Makes Wrong: the impact of the US Military in East Asia,” in Brian Loveman ed., Strategy for Empire: US regional security policy in the post-Cold War Era (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2004), 191–92. 47 Franks, “Politics of Stalemate,” 65–66. 48 Mori Yoshio, “Sengo Okinawa chika suimyaku,” in Mori Yoshio et al, Amayū e: Okinawa sengoshi no jiritsu ni mukete (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2017), 1–3. 49 See, for instance, US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel’s comments advocating a shift in the US-Japan security relationship from “alliance protection to alliance projection into the Indo-Pacific.” In the same speech Emanuel endorsed Japanese efforts to increase its defense spending to 2% of its national gross domestic product. The Japan News, “U.S. ambassador: Japan-U.S. alliance has entered era of ‘projection’ into Indo-Pacific,” September 4, 2022: https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/yies/20220904-55938/. 50 “Japan gov’t budget for Okinawa development to be smallest in 10 years,” Kyodo News, December 4, 2021. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/12/6cef0d05d498-japan-govt-budget-for-okinawa-development -to-be-smallest-in-10-yrs.html.

References Arasaki, Moriteru. Okinawa gendaishi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005. Arashiro, Toshiaki. Ryukyu Okinawashi. Naha: Tōyō Kikaku, 2001. Asato, Susumu et al, Okinawa ken no rekishi. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2004. Figal, Gerald. Beachheads: War, Peace and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. Franks, Luke. “The Politics of Stalemate: Local Power, U.S. Military Bases, and the Japanese Courts.” ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 24, no. 2 (2017): 58–60. Higa, Mikio. Politics and Parties in Postwar Okinawa. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Publications Centre, 1963. Hiyane, Teruo and Gabe Masao. “Tochi tōsō no igi,” In Okinawa henkan kōshō no seiji katei. Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Seiji Gakkai, 1975. Ikemiyagi, Hidemasa, “’Okinawa promotion budget,’ a misleading name.” Meiji.net, March 6, 2018. https:// english-meiji.net/articles/82/. Johnson, Chalmers, ed. Okinawa: Cold War Island. Cardiff, CA: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999. ———. “When Right Makes Wrong: the impact of the US Military in East Asia.” In Brian Loveman ed., Strategy for Empire: US regional security policy in the post-Cold War Era. Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2004. Kabira, Chōshin. Sengo shusengo no Okinawa bunka gyōseishi. Naha: Gekkan Okinawasha, 1997. Kakazu, Hiroshi. “Social Carrying Capacity for Sustainable Island Tourism: The Case of Okinawa,” The Journal of Island Studies 7 (2008): 53–85. Mori, Yoshio et al. Amayū e: Okinawa sengoshi no jiritsu ni mukete. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2017. Nakachi, Kiyoshi. Ryukyu-U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945–1972. Quezon City, Philippines: Abiva Publishing House, 1989. Okinawa Jōsei Zaidan. “Okinawa de haishutsusareta jōsei gi’in tachi.” 2021, https://www.okinawajosei.org/ pdf/2021/210804.pdf. Onaga, Takeshi. Tatakau min’i. Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2015. Price, John. “Cold War Relic: The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Politics of Memory.” Asian Perspective 25, no. 3 (2001): 31–60. Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.-Japanese Relations. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. Sato, Hiroshi. “India-Japan Peace Treaty in Japan’s Post-War Asian Diplomacy.” Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, vol. 17 (2005): 1–20. Tada, Osamu. “Constructing Okinawa as Japan’s Hawaii: From Honeymoon Boom to Tourist Paradise.” Japanese Studies 35, no. 3 (2015): 287–302. Taira, Yoshitoshi. Sengo Okinawa to beigun kichi. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2012.

290

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

United States House of Representatives. “Report of a Special Subcommittee of the Armed Service Committee, House of Representatives Following an Inspection Tour, October 14 to November 23, 1955.” https:// ryukyu-okinawa.net/pages/archive/price.html. Warner, Gordon. History of Education in Postwar Okinawa. Tokyo: Nihon Bunka Kagakusha, 1972. ———. The Okinawan Reversion Story. Naha: Executive Link, 1995. Yoshida, Kensei. Democracy Betrayed: Okinawa under U.S. Occupation. Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University, 2001. ———. “Gunji shokuminchi” Okinawa. Tokyo: Kōbunken, 2007.

Chapter 16: The Endless Postwar

291

Chapter 17 Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity Kimie Hara In its modern and contemporary history, Japan attained prosperity in the international order led by the West, especially in its cooperative relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, the Japanese formed an identity as a developed country of the “West,” drawing a line that set themselves apart from other Asian countries. Lining up along this fault line are the territorial problems Japan has had with neighboring Russia, Korea and China. Even today, this fault line continues to separate Japan from its Asian neighbors politically. This chapter discusses Japan’s identity from the perspective of the international order and territorial problems.

Introduction In its modern and contemporary history, Japan attained prosperity in the international order led by the West, especially in its cooperative relationship with the United States. In the mid19th century, while the Western imperialist powers were expanding their colonies in Asia, Japan, an island nation in the Far East, was dragged onto the international stage. It then promoted modernization with the slogan of “leaving Asia and joining Europe” (datsu a nyū ō), expanded its territories, and emerged as a mighty empire and the only Asian colonial power. However, as a result of continuing expansion and by attempting to create a new nonWestern order in East Asia, Japan pushed itself into World War II, ultimately losing most of the territories that it had advanced into. After World War II, Japan returned to an island nation of the Far East, and under the circumstances of the Cold War, grew to become the world’s second-largest economy in the Western capitalist and non-communist camp under the umbrella of the United States. Meanwhile, the Japanese formed an identity as a developed country of the “West,” drawing a line that set themselves apart from other Asian countries. Lining up along this fault line are the territorial problems Japan has had with neighboring Russia, Korea and China. Even today in the 21st century, this fault line continues to separate Japan from its Asian neighbors politically. This chapter discusses Japan’s identity from the perspective of the international order and territorial/border problems.

292

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Pre-World War II history: From the rise of the Japanese empire to the fall of the East Asian New Order construction The expansion of the Western powers into Asia in the 19th century injected into the region concepts of modern international relations such as the “sovereign state” and “territorial sovereignty,” along with a world order based on imperialism and colonialism. Japan, a feudal island nation in the Far East, also entered into this global trend at the end of the Edo period in 1854—the year after Commodore Matthew P. Perry arrived on the Black Ships, concluding a treaty with the United States and opening the country. Shortly thereafter, Japan began demarcating its borders with neighboring Russia, and in the Meiji era, it began to expand its territories and sphere of control, significantly transforming the shape of the country. In 1855, the Tokugawa shogunate signed the Treaty of Shimoda with Russia setting its first northern border between the islands of Etorofu and Uruppu, which Japan claims as its legitimate border today. The treaty also left the island of Sakhalin for mixed settlement. Twenty years later, in 1875, the Meiji government abandoned all claims to Sakhalin in exchange for the entire Kurile chain in the Treaty of St. Petersburg. In the southwest, Japan annexed the Ryūkyū kingdom—a tributary state to its Satsuma domain—as the Ryūkyū domain in 1872, turning it into Okinawa prefecture in 1879.1 As a result, the five-hundredyear history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom came to an end. China’s Qing dynasty, also having had tributary relations with the Ryūkyū Kingdom, protested this annexation.2 Japan, however, subsequently defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), acquired Taiwan and the Penghu Islands under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in April 1895, and moved its border further to the southwest. In the meantime, in 1885, Japan incorporated Kita Daitō and Minami Daitō Islands of the Daitō Islands group into Okinawa Prefecture.3 It incorporated the Senkaku Islands, whose sovereignty is currently contested by China, into Okinawa Prefecture by a cabinet decision in January 1895 during the Sino-Japanese War.4 In this period when the expansion of territories, colonies and spheres of control was regarded as a desirable national policy and contested on a global scale by the Western powers, Japan—under the slogans of “leaving Asia and joining Europe” and “rich nation with strong military” (fukoku kyōhei)—promoted its modernization and achieved a remarkable transformation both domestically and internationally within a matter of decades. Herein the Western countries were models to learn from and provided goals with which to catch up. However, as Japan emerged as a mighty empire, these relations began to change. Ten years after the Sino-Japanese War at the beginning of the 20th century, Japan fought and won a war with Russia, acquiring in September 1905 South Sakhalin under the USmediated Portsmouth Peace Treaty.5 The Russo-Japanese War was a clash over the control of the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. During this war, in January 1905, Japan incorporated Takeshima/Dokdo—the islets currently in dispute with South Korea—into Shimane Prefecture by a cabinet decision. Japan then made the Korean Empire a protectorate in November 1905 and annexed it in 1910. Prior to the Portsmouth Treaty, Japan had signed the Taft-Katsura Treaty with the United States in July 1905 and the Second Alliance Treaty with the United Kingdom in August of the following year. In exchange for recognizing US and British colonial rule over the Philippines and India, respectively, Japan had these nations recognize its colonial rule over Korea. In 1908, before the annexation of Korea, Japan signed the Root-Takahira Agreement with the United States which recognized the US annexation of

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

293

Hawaii and control of the Philippines, and the preservation of Japanese interests in Manchuria. Around this time, in 1910–1912, the Japanese expedition led by Lieutenant Nobu Shirase explored Antarctica, the last unexplored continent at the time. Even when its imperial calendar changed from Meiji to Taishō and then into the Shōwa era, Japan continued its expansion. In 1914, ten years after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan entered World War I under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. After the war, it became the only Asian permanent member in the Council of the League of Nations (newly established by the victorious powers in 1920), joining the ranks of the great powers in both name and reality. Moreover, it acquired Micronesia, a former German colony, as one of the League’s mandate territories. Meanwhile, when the socialist revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, Japan joined Figure 17.1 Transition of Japanese borders and areas of control: 1855–1941

1905

1875

Sakhalin Manchuria 1932

Kurile Is. 1855

Korea 1910 Take Is.

1905

China Ryukyu Is. 1872–79

Senkaku Is.

1895 Taiwan

1876

1885 1900

1891

1898

1931

1938 Spratly Is.

1920

Source: Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Greater_East_Asia_Co -Prosperity_Sphere_1941.jpg (English geographical names, years, and circles indicating island locations have been added by the author.)

294

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the Heimosodat with its World War allies in Siberia (1918–1922), even dispatching and stationing troops in North Sakhalin (1920–1925). While there are various theories about the origin of the Cold War, which divided the world into East and West after World War II, the origin of the international conflict over the ideology and principle of national existence (i.e., communism vs. capitalism) dates back to the Russian Revolution which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist state in 1922. The Russian Revolution shocked the world and precipitated various aftereffects. After World War I, the United States led the construction of an international order known as the Versailles-Washington System, and became a dominant global power economically, militarily and politically. Unlike the war-torn European countries, the United States—which did not become a battlefield and prospered due to particular war demand and technological innovation—enhanced its global presence. Thereafter, the relationship between the Western powers (including the United States) and Japan, which was emerging in the Asia-Pacific region, gradually transformed into one of conflict. In 1931, Japan began its invasion of China in the wake of the Manchurian Incident instigated by the local Kwantung Army, and the following year established its puppet state, Manchukuo, in northeastern China. Since the League of Nations did not recognize this, Japan withdrew from the League in 1933. Then in 1937, with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, it entered into a full-scale war with China, continued its expansion further into Southeast Asia, and, in 1938, claimed sovereignty over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as Shinnan guntō (new south islands). In this year—marking the 70th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration—Japan issued the Konoe Statement, launching the concept of a non-Western, non-communist “East Asian New Order.” Thereafter Japan attempted to build a new order to replace the West-led order in the region, eventually leading itself into World War II.6 In the words of Graham Allison, Japan fell into the “Thucydides Trap.” 7 Ultimately, Japan lost the war and, along with it, vast territories and areas of control that it had acquired or into which it had advanced, and it was forced to return to its earlier status as an island nation in the Far East.

After World War II: The Cold War structure and territorial problem in East Asia The post-World War II peace treaty was signed between Japan and forty-eight countries in San Francisco in September 1951, six years after the Japanese surrender, and came into effect in April 1952. Whereas the new Japanese constitution came into effect under the US Occupation in 1947, Japan only regained sovereignty through this peace treaty, thereby returning to the international community as a member of the non-communist and Western capitalist world. The Cold War structure that emerged after World War II was often referred to as the Yalta System, based on the postwar agreements made at the 1945 US-UK-Soviet summit in Yalta. But it was this peace treaty with Japan that largely determined the Cold War structure in the Asia-Pacific region. Together with the US-led regional alliance system (the San Francisco Alliance System), this international treaty laid the foundation for the postwar regional order, the “San Francisco System.” 8 The San Francisco System ensured US military presence and dominant influence in the region and brought democracy and economic prosperity to Japan.

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

295

However, it also came at the cost of a long-lasting structure of confrontation with several cracks dividing the nations and peoples of East Asia. The territorial problems that Japan currently has with its neighbors were initially due to its postwar territorial dispositions in the process of constructing the San Francisco System. These territorial problems were byproducts of the Cold War and represented the Cold War frontiers in the region. Territorial provision of the San Francisco Peace Treaty Chapter 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty stipulated the disposition of the vast territories that Japan had once controlled or advanced into. However, it did not specify precise limits or final attribution of those territories, and this ambiguity laid the seeds for various conflicts to emerge and/or continue thereafter. The territorial provision of the treaty consisted of Article 2 stipulating Japan’s renunciation of (a) Korea, (b) Taiwan, (c) Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, (d) Micronesia, (e) Antarctica and (f) the Spratly and Paracel Islands, and Article 3 guaranteeing exclusive US control of the Nansei (southwest) and Nanpō (southern) areas, including Okinawa/Ryūkyū and Ogasawara Islands (as a provisional measure until the submission and passing of the US trusteeship proposal). The major political and security quandaries surrounding Japan today—such as territorial problems of the Northern Territories/the Kuriles, Takeshima/Dokdo, and the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands, issues relating to US bases in Okinawa, conflicts in the South China Sea (Spratly and Paracel Islands), and the tensions associated with divisions across the Taiwan Strait and in the Korean Peninsula—are all derived from the territorial disposition of the former Japanese Empire and are closely related to the San Francisco Peace Treaty.9 The peace treaty draft was finalized as the US-UK joint draft, after careful deliberations and many revisions within the US government and several consultations with other concerned states, and adopted at the peace conference in San Francisco in September 1951. The

Table 17.1 The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Regional Conflicts in East Asia Regional Conflicts

San Francisco Peace Treaty (relevant articles)

Concerned States

Territorial Disputes Dokdo/Takeshima

Article 2 (a) Korea

Japan, ROK

Senkaku/Diaoyu

Article 2 (b) Formosa (Taiwan) Article 3 (Ryukyu Islands)

Japan, PRC, ROC

Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles

Article 2 (c) Kurile Islands/ Southern Sakhalin

Japan, Russia/USSR

Spratlys & Paracels

Article 2 (f ) Spratlys & Paracels

PRC, ROC, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei

Korean Peninsula

Article 2(a) Korea

ROK, DPRK

Cross-Taiwan Strait

Article 2 (b) Formosa

PRC, ROC

Article 3

Japan, USA

Divided Nations

Status Okinawa · Ogasawara Islands, etc.

Source: Kimie Hara, “The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in The Regional Order in East Asia A Sixty Year Perspective,” The Asia- Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 17, No. 1, April 23, 2012.

296

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

initial drafts of the United States were rigid in nature and detailed for clarity, generally following the wartime agreements. In the territorial provision of these drafts, Japan was to be expelled from all territories that it had seized by “violence and greed” according to the principle of no territorial expansion stipulated in the Cairo Declaration (December 1943), and it was to cede the Kurile Islands together with Southern Sakhalin to the Soviet Union in line with the Yalta Agreement (February 1945). Moreover, Japan’s sovereignty was to be limited to Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku, and “minor islands” determined by the Allied Powers as stated in the Potsdam Declaration (July 1945). These drafts were long and detailed, with clear border demarcations specifically aimed at preventing future conflicts. However, with the emergence and intensification of the Cold War, US policy toward Japan changed drastically. Not only the Soviet Union, but also communized “China” and “Korea” were targeted in US “containment” strategy. Japan—a former enemy—became a strategic key point to be secured in the Western bloc as a pro-US nation. Meanwhile, the treaty drafts went through several revisions, becoming more ambiguous and different from the earlier versions in many places. In the territorial provision, the borderlines disappeared, and the names of small islands, such as “Habomai,” “Shikotan,” and “Takeshima,” and country names of “China” and “Soviet Union” (to which Japan was to renounce Taiwan and the Kuril Islands/South Sakhalin respectively), disappeared one after another. As for Article 3 dealing with islands such as Okinawa, mention of the Japanese renunciation itself disappeared. At the peace conference US representative John Foster Dulles verbally expressed the US view that Japan retained “residual sovereignty” regarding this article. However, as described below, when he intervened in the Soviet-Japanese peace negotiations five years later, Dulles threatened that the nature of Okinawa’s sovereignty could change depending on the conditions. The United States anticipated the psychological effect that, while the Japanese would have negative feelings towards the Soviet Union occupying the northern islands that they considered to be their territories, they would appreciate and favor the United States if it showed a sympathetic attitude. A review of US government documents at the time reveals that the wording of the treaty was deliberately obscured, reflecting the US Cold War strategy.10 US Cold War strategy was reflected not only in the territorial clauses but throughout the treaty. To make Japan a pro-US nation, the US decided to present more liberal and attractive peace terms than the Soviet Union and communist China whose terms would have been aimed at bringing about a US-Japan split. The nature of the treaty thus changed from its initial “rigidity” to something more “generous.” This shift in US policy toward Japan—called the reverse course—also facilitated the eventual return of business tycoons and conservative politicians who had been punished as war criminals and were designated for expulsion from public office during the Occupation. Many of these individuals worked to prevent communism and expand pro-US conservative forces (sometimes with US assistance), contributing to the construction of a long-term postwar conservative government in Japan. However, these changes also lay the roots of discord with neighboring countries on issues such as war responsibility and the recognition of history—in other words, not only problems relating to postwar borders and territorial sovereignty.11 Neither the Soviet Union, China nor Korea signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The regional conflicts derived from the postwar disposition of Japan, including the territorial problems between Japan and its neighbors, were primarily due to the involvement of the

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

297

third parties—especially the United States, the principal drafter of the peace treaty—rather than having emerged within the framework of the parties directly concerned. Territorial problems between Japan and its neighbors: Developments after San Francisco On September 8, 1951, with the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the seeds of the territorial problems laid in the text began to smolder. The first conflict to emerge was the one over Takeshima/Dokdo between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK). Before the treaty came into force on April 28, 1952, Syngman Rhee’s administration issued a declaration of its maritime sovereignty on January 18, 1952, proclaiming the so-called “Peace (Rhee) Line” that included Takeshima/Dokdo within its boundaries. The Japanese government protested against this, and a disagreement ensued. In 1965, the two countries finally established diplomatic relations by concluding the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea with a strong push from the United States, which had begun a full intervention in the Vietnam War in that year. However, the Takeshima/Dokdo problem was not resolved by the treaty and continued to fester. Japan, which had renounced South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in San Francisco, set the focus of the Northern Territories issue on the return of the current Kunashiri, Etorufu, Shikotan, and Habomai Islands—the so-called “four islands”—during the Japan-Soviet peace negotiations that began against the background of the Cold War “thaw” in the mid-1950s. In the midst of these negotiations, in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) formed in Japan when the two major conservative parties merged to counter the then strengthening socialist party. Upon the establishment of this “1955 system” which reflected the Cold War structure in domestic politics, Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō relented to a group whose top priority was cooperation with the United States, and the return of the “four islands”—already considered difficult to achieve—became the newly-formed LDP’s policy goal of territorial recovery from the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in August 1956, Japan’s plenipotentiary representative, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, decided to conclude a peace treaty with the Soviet offer of the “two-islands” of Shikotan and the Habomais. However, Dulles, then the US Secretary of State, warned Shigemitsu that the US could not guarantee the future reversion of Okinawa to Japan if Japan compromised with the Soviet Union and gave up Kunashiri and Etorofu Islands.12 For the United States at that time, while an agreement to end the war between Japan and the Soviet Union was acceptable, any Japan-Soviet rapprochement potentially leading to normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and Communist China was intolerable—especially if resolving their territorial problems would pressure the US to return Okinawa to Japan. The United States thus supported Japan’s claim for the four islands, knowing that the Soviet Union would not accept this, leaving the territorial dispute between Japan and the Soviet Union unresolved.13 In 1956, Japan and the Soviet Union restored diplomatic relations and in their Joint Declaration, which was ratified in both countries, the Soviets agreed to transfer Habomai and Shikotan islands (i.e., two islands) to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty. However, the claim for the four islands became established as Japan’s national policy under long-term LDP rule thereafter, as too did the situation under which the Northern Territories problem remained as an obstacle to the conclusion of a postwar peace treaty between the two.14

298

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Whereas the United States occupied the Ryūkyūs (Okinawa) at the end of the war and valued its strategic importance, the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China (ROC)—which represented China among the Allies and in the United Nations—had insisted on the detachment of those islands from Japan from the early stages of the war against Japan, with an eye to its own annexation or trusteeship thereof. However, the ROC government was forced to flee to Taiwan following its defeat in the civil war on the Chinese mainland, and Okinawa remained under US control with the San Francisco Peace Treaty implying future trusteeship of the islands—thus avoiding the outbreak of any territorial conflict between Japan and China (ROC).15 The 1952 ROC-Japan Peace Treaty signed in Taipei confirmed Japan’s renunciation of Taiwan and the Spratly and Paracel Islands under the San Francisco Peace Treaty which came into effect on the same day, but it did not refer to Okinawa. Thereafter, the United States returned to Japan all of the islands under US control under Article 3 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty by the early 1970s without going through any trusteeship process.16 The focus of the territorial problem between Japan and China then shifted to the Senkaku/Diàoyú in parallel with the Okinawa reversion movement, while the value of resources in Senkaku/Diàoyú coastal waters began attracting attention from the late 1960s onward and resource nationalism rose worldwide in the 1970s. Both governments of China in Taipei and Beijing began to claim sovereignty over these islands on the grounds that they were “part of Taiwan,” even though they had never officially made such a claim about the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands in the past.17 For Japan, this was “a problem that suddenly emerged,” 18 and Japan’s official position thereafter has been that “there is no territorial dispute” over these islands. The United States also played an important role in this issue. Although the United States occupied and administered the islands as part of Okinawa, the Nixon administration adopted an approach of returning their administrative rights while maintaining neutrality on the sovereignty issue—thus leaving room for a dispute between Japan and China. A number of factors shaped this US approach: the failure of trade negotiations with Japan aimed at protecting the US textile industry, Taiwan linking their textile trade negotiations to a “favorable decision” by the US on the Senkaku/Diàoyú issue, and the US having embarked on a historic rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (in order to get out of the quagmire of the Vietnam War). Nevertheless, with the return of administrative rights to Japan, the US-Japan Security Treaty was applied to those islands including the Senkaku/Diàoyú, while the US military continued to be stationed in Okinawa.19 As a result, just as the wedge of the Northern Territories problem was set in place with Japan’s four-island claim between Japan and the Soviet Union during the 1950s “thaw,” another wedge of the Senkaku/Diàoyú problem was fixed between Japan and China during the 1970s détente.20

Orders, borders and Japan’s identity After the ending of the historical cycle of the rise of the Empire of Japan since the Meiji era, followed by its return to an island nation of the Far East at the end of World War II, Japan subsequently achieved a dramatic postwar recovery and enjoyed peace and prosperity in the Western world under the conditions of the Cold War, and especially the San Francisco System. Adhering to the postwar peace constitution and devoting itself to economic growth under the US security umbrella, Japan became the world’s second-largest capitalist economy

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

299

at the end of the 1960s, just one century after the Meiji Restoration. It then returned to the circle of the great Western powers through membership in the G7 in the 1970s. While actively developing diplomacy with an emphasis on economic relations, Japan led the “flying geese model” in Asia and contributed to development in the region. Meanwhile, territorial/ border problems with its neighbors tended to be neglected as less than pressing issues, as were other issues relating to historical transgressions. Moreover, under Cold War conditions, Japan could use problems like the Northern Territories issue as an excuse for not reconciling with the Soviet Union, which confronted its ally, the United States. In a sense, the existence of the territorial problem proved to be convenient. However, the so-called “end of the Cold War” and the domestic and international changes of the late 20th century had a considerable impact on the relationship between Japan and its neighbors in Asia, as well as on the issues smoldering between them. “The end of the Cold War” and Japan’s territorial problems Japan’s relations with the Soviet Union cooled down after the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1956 in as much as they were described as “relations of no relations.” 21 However, with the new diplomacy of the Gorbachev administration and the movement toward ending the Cold War from the mid-1980s, relations began to improve. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, frequent dialogues were held between Japan and Russia, including summit meetings. Various approaches were adopted to overcome territorial and peace treaty issues. Relations between the new Russia and the Western nations improved to the point where the G8 meetings, which added Russia to the G7, were held. Although their relations worsened with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, dialogues between Japan and Russia nevertheless continued. However, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Japan hardened its policy and imposed strict sanctions against Russia along with the US and its NATO allies. Russia then announced the suspension of peace treaty negotiations with Japan and their relations drastically cooled down. After all, there has been no change in the situation, meaning no resolution of the territorial problem or conclusion of a post-World War II peace treaty. Meanwhile, the islands’ “Russification” has been steadily progressing, with Russian troops being deployed and large-scale investment flowing into the Northern Territories, and the Russian constitution having been amended to make territorial cession illegal. Russia is wary that, if the islands are handed over to Japan, the US-Japan Security Treaty will be applied, and the US military deployed. This apprehension is essentially the same as the Soviet era when Moscow hardened its position on the territorial problem as having been “already solved” when Japan signed the revised security treaty with the United States in 1960. The structure of “US-Japan vs. USSR” has thus continued in the form of “US-Japan vs. Russia” following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both the Takeshima/Dokdo issue with South Korea and the Senkaku/Diàoyú issue with China derived initially from the postwar disposition of Japan, which was made ambiguous due to the intensifying Cold War. Indeed, these problems would probably not have emerged if the clear borderlines of Japan and the precise limits of the territories disposed of had been specified in the San Francisco Peace Treaty (as had been the case in early US drafts). However, their common origin and the nature of the Cold War by-products seem to have been

300

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

forgotten and overlaid by other aspects such as economic interests, international law, historical resentment and anti-neighbor nationalism, while both South Korea and Taiwan (ROC), once feared to be communized or “lost,” have remained in the non-communist and capitalist camp and China (PRC) has shifted to a capitalist and market economy. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into effect in 1994 (ratified by Japan, China and South Korea in 1996 and Russia in 1997), has made the nature of the territorial problems more complicated, as it sets out rights to territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, continental shelf development and other issues. Furthermore, several historic turning points and milestones since the late 1980s—such as the official apology and monetary compensation for the forced expropriation of Japanese people during World War II in the United States and Canada (1988), the end of “Shōwa” following Emperor Hirohito’s death (1989), the collapse of the “1955 system” (1993) and the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II (1995)—created momentum for the Japanese to reconsider history. On the other hand, the 1991 Gulf War presented Japan with the question of its international contribution beyond financial aid, which led to a move toward becoming a “normal country” through constitutional amendment and expanding the country’s influence in international politics. Under such circumstances, territorial conflicts were linked to negative memories of the past and, in turn, triggered a deterioration in relations between Japan and its neighbors. Statements by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei (1993) and Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi (1995) which referred to issues such as the “comfort women” and Japan’s invasion and colonial rule, expressed a level of apology and remorse that went further than before. In response, these statements invited nationalistic reactions which rejected their content and flagrantly denied history. These denials were accompanied by assertions and movements attempting to beautify the modern history of Japanese advancement into Asia,22 in turn offending neighboring countries and inviting further nationalistic anti-Japan campaigns—thus resulting in a downward spiral of worsening relations. Into the 21st century, in 2005 (i.e., the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and “liberation”) Shimane Prefecture enacted the Takeshima Day Ordinance which ignited the anti-Japanese nationalism that had been smoldering in South Korea. Furthermore, the Japanese government campaigned for permanent membership on the UN Security Council in that year, while the prime minister and cabinet ministers made official visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine (which enshrines some class-A war criminals). These actions invited severe criticism from South Korea and China (a permanent member of the UN Security Council), as they gave the impression of a Japan justifying its past aggression without remorse. In 2012, the Japanese government’s purchase of some of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner prompted large-scale protests in China. Tensions between Japan and China further increased, illuminating a deep-seated confrontational structure. These issues over territories and history tend to fuel nationalism, and they appear to have been used domestically to distract popular dissatisfaction or promote national unity against the backdrop of challenges at home: namely, China after the Tiananmen Incident, North and South Korea after their simultaneous accession to the United Nations, Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Japanese economic stagnation after the collapse of the bubble economy which has extended into the recent Reiwa era (2019–). In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party has continued to maintain its strong influence even after the collapse of the 1955 system in 1993—as the largest opposition party and later as the ruling coalition government.

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

301

The San Francisco system and Japan’s political fault line Japan and its neighbors in East Asia are connected by economics and divided by politics and history. As the waves of “post-Cold War” regionalism reached this region, various frameworks for multilateral cooperation and dialogue have been created with economics as the adhesive.23 However, the situation in East Asia is remarkably different from the comprehensive regional integration witnessed in the European Union (EU), primarily because the sources of historical distrust and feud between neighboring countries have not been resolved and endure as obstacles. Japan’s relationship to regionalism is particularly delicate. The Pan-Asianism that Japan launched in the past is remembered by its neighbors as a history of expansion and brutal rule through militarism and imperialism, rather than one of Japan as the bearer of modernization and liberator of Western exploitation in Asia. Territorial conflicts are thus seen as symbols and tangible reminders of this disturbing history. Furthermore, despite being geographically located in Asia, Japan has set itself apart from its Asian neighbors by forging its own distinct trajectory in the pre-and post-World War II era. Herein Japan emerged and prospered as a member of the West in West-led international orders, such as the imperialist and colonial order, the post-World War I Versailles-Washington system and the post-World War II Yalta-San Francisco system. Moreover, Japan still retains pride in frameworks such as the Japan-US security alliance and the G7.24 Therefore, rather than a vision of geographical integration solely among East Asian countries, Japan has promoted expanded regional concepts and cooperative frameworks, such as the “Asia-Pacific” and, more recently, the “Indo-Pacific” which does not include the word “Asia.” These involve like-minded countries sharing similar interests, values and challenges, including the United States and its allies, and aligned with US Asia strategy. Part of the problem is that the post-World War II peace settlement was made obscure. Before the settlement of past issues was clearly completed, Japan and the entire region were caught up in the new global Cold War, and the confrontational structure and regional order of the San Francisco System was put in place. It is no coincidence that the territorial problems that remain between Japan and its neighbors, and between China and its neighbors— the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, Takeshima/Dokdo, Senkaku/Diàoyú, the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea—line up along the Acheson Line: the US defense line of the western Pacific pronounced in 1950. These problems, along with the military demarcation lines of the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait, continue to divide nations and people and provide sources of instability in the region. Furthermore, the communist government of China, which emerged as the pole of the Cold War in Asia, did not collapse, even with the introduction of capitalism and the development of the market economy.25 Meanwhile, the US military presence has continued through its regional allies, i.e., under the San Francisco Alliance System, with recurring realignments. Accordingly, problems associated with US military bases, such as the “Okinawa problem,” have also persisted. In the 21st century, China overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy—just one century after the Xinhai Revolution (a landmark of Chinese modernization). Actively developing diplomacy with economic leverage on a global scale under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and advancing a modern version of “rich nation with strong military,” China is now recognized by the United States and its allies as more of a threat than ever before, challenging the West-led or “liberal” international order. Under such circumstances, Japan and the United States are working to strengthen their alliance system and strengthen 302

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

cooperation and relations with regional countries and other US allies that share similar interests. New frameworks of cooperation and alliance, such as the QUAD (US, Japan, Australia and India) and AUKUS (US, Australia and the UK), are becoming prominent in this context. Such movements, however, have motivated China and Russia to become closer and have also led to increased military tensions in the region. Unlike the Euro-Atlantic side, where the wall dividing the East and the West and the Yalta system collapsed at the end of the 20th century, even today, long after entering the 21st century, the San Francisco system continues to define regional international relations involving Japan and its neighbors while undergoing transformation. Even with deepening economic interdependence and developing security dialogues, to the extent that the fundamental structure of confrontation and the sources of dispute remain unresolved, conflicts can reignite and tensions be rekindled. Unless these sources of instability are removed, the region will not be liberated from this vicious circle—including the troubled relationships between Japan and neighboring countries. The United States will have a great deal of influence in solving these issues, much as it did in creating them. However, as long as the US-China conflict continues to unfold on a global scale—referred to as “Thucydides Trap” and a “New Cold War”—no more than lip service can be expected from the United States for the time being, given that the existence of these conflicts justifies the US presence in the region and supports its continuing influence. Japan relies heavily on the United States for its defense, and maintaining the US-Japan security system is essential as the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy. This position will not change easily, especially given the structural continuity of domestic politics under the long-term rule of the LDP. Japan’s identity is largely defined by the remaining regional Cold War structure, the San Francisco system, and its structural binding force and durability are deep-rooted. The territorial problems between Japan and its neighbors thus continue to be the political fault line dividing Japan and the Asian continent.

Notes 1

Commodore Perry had visited Shuri Castle of the Ryūkyū Kingdom before his encounter with the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan in 1853. In the following year, 1854, he concluded formal bilateral treaties with Japan and the Ryūkyū Kingdom separately on behalf of the United States. 2 In 1880, Japan-China negotiations were held with the mediation of former US President Ulysses S. Grant. Although the two countries came close to an agreement with the Japanese proposal of ceding Sakishima Islands (Miyako and Yaeyama Islands) to China, they did not sign a treaty in the end. 3 Japan incorporated Okidaitō Island into Okinawa Prefecture in 1900. (Kita, minami, and oki means, respectively, “north,” “south,” and “offshore” while daitō means “great east.”) Regarding other Nanpō (southern) islands, the Meiji government placed the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior and notified other countries of their possession in 1876. It also placed under the jurisdiction of the Ogasawara Island Agency the Volcano Islands (Iwo Island, Kita Iwo Island, Minami Iwo Island) in 1891 and Minamitori-shima (Marcus Island) in 1898. Okinotori-shima (Parece Vela) was named by the Ministry of the Interior and was incorporated into the Ogasawara branch office of Tokyo Prefecture later in 1931. 4 Ten years earlier, in 1885, when the Meiji government incorporated Kita and Minami Daitō Islands into Okinawa Prefecture, it also contemplated a plan to erect a national landmark on the Senkaku Islands. However, the plan was abandoned over concern that it might invite the suspicion of China. According to a study by Murata Tadayoshi, strictly speaking, only the islands of Uotsuri and Kuba in the Senkaku Islands were incorporated into Okinawa Prefecture by the time of the January 1895 cabinet decision during the SinoJapanese War. Moreover the name “Senkaku Islands” did not exist at this point. See Murata Tadayoshi, Shiryō tettei kenshō Senkaku ryōyu (Tokyo: Kadensha, 2015), Chapters 3 and 5.

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

303

5

US President Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements in mediating this peace treaty between Japan and Russia. 6 Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936, followed by the addition of Italy in 1937. In 1940, the three countries became allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact, which became the prototype of the Axis powers in World War II. The Pact confirmed Japan’s leading position in Asia and Germany and Italy’s leading position in Europe. 7 “Thucydides Trap” is a term coined after Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece. It refers to the phenomenon in which an existing hegemonic power and a newly emerging power confront each other until war is inevitable. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). 8 The United States signed the US-Japan Security Treaty on the same day as the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Prior to that, in 1951, it had signed the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines and the Security Treaty with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS). It also signed similar treaties with South Korea in 1953, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan in 1954, and Thailand in 1961. When the United States terminated its formal diplomatic relations with the ROC on the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, it passed the Taiwan Relations Act, and the de facto alliance with Taiwan has continued. 9 For details, see Kimie Hara, Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System (London: Routledge, 2007). 10 Hara, Cold War Frontiers. 11 For details, see Kimie Hara ed., The San Francisco System and Its Legacies: Continuation, transformation and historical reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015.) 12 Matsumoto Shunichi, Mosukuwani kakeru niji—nisso kokkō kaifuuku hiroku (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1999), 114–17; Kubota Masaaki, Kuremurin eno shisetsu—hoppō ryōdo kōshō 1955–1983, second edition (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1983), 133–37. 13 The US Aide-Memoir to Japan officially supporting the “four islands” claim was later issued in September 1956. For details, see US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Japan, Volume XXIII, Part 1 (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1991), 221. Kimie Hara, JapaneseSoviet/Russian Relations since 1945: A Difficult Peace (London: Routledge, 1998), Chapter 2. 14 Hara, Japanese-Soviet/Russian Relations since 1945, Chapter 1. 15 The communist government of China (PRC) was then supporting Okinawa’s reversion to Japan, stating “Okinawa is a part of Japanese territory and [the PRC] supports the struggle in Okinawa demanding the return of administrative rights to Japan.” In his statement of August 15, 1951, Chou En-lai flatly opposed putting Okinawa under US trusteeship, declaring, “these islands have never by any international agreement been separated from Japan.” Daily Bulletin, August 16, 1951. People’s Daily, March 26, 1958. Hara, Cold War Frontiers. 176–77. 16 Of the islands, which were placed under US administration along with Okinawa under Article 3 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Amami Islands of the Nansei Islands were returned at the end of 1953, and the Nanpō (southern) Islands such as the Ogasawara Islands were returned in 1968. 17 In the early postwar period, around 1947 in the ROC and in 1950 in the PRC, when the Ryūkyū disposition was deliberated within the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, there were proposals to consider whether the Senkaku Islands could be incorporated into a part of Taiwan, since they are “very close to Taiwan.” Some of the ROC documents contained a proposal that, if the Ryūkyū did not belong to China, or if China’s trusteeship was not possible, China should first request Yaeyama and the Miyakojima Islands to become its territory, and if that was not possible, it should request the Senkaku Islands as a compromise. However, such positions do not seem to have been adopted in either the ROC or PRC. Zhang Tingzheng, “Opinion on solving the Ryūkyū problem” and “Study on Japanese territorial disposition” (These documents are not dated but are contained in a file entitled “About the Ryūkyū Problem” that is dated from April 1947 to August 1948.), Ministry of Foreign Affairs File, 11-NAA-05509. Archives of the Academia Sinica, Republic of China, Taiwan; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Senkaku Shotō (Senkaku Islands) pamphlet, p.11. Accessed February 22, 2022. https://www .mofa.go.jp/mofaj/a_o/c_m1/senkaku/page1w_000018.html; Shiroyama Hiromi, “Fūin sareta Senkaku gaikō bunsho,” Bungeishunjū 91, no. 7 (June 2013): 264–71.

304

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

18

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Senkaku Shotō nit suite, 1972. Accessed February 16, 2022. http:// senkakujapan.nobody.jp/page065.html. At that time, the ROC government of Taiwan protested the Okinawa reversion, although it supported the continuing US military presence. 19 Hara, Cold War Frontiers. Chapter 7. 20 In 1972, after the Okinawa reversion, Japan under the Cabinet of Tanaka Kakuei, who replaced Satō Eisaku as Prime Minister, established diplomatic relations with the PRC and broke formal diplomatic ties with the ROC in Taiwan. Japan and the PRC signed the Joint Statement at this time and the Peace and Friendship Treaty six years later in 1978. On both occasions, priority was given to the normalization of their relations, and the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands issue did not become an official agenda item. 21 Kimura Hiroshi, Nichiro kokkyō kōshō-shi—ryōdo mondai ni ikani torikumuka (Tokyo: Chūōkōron-sha / Chūōkōron-Shinsho, 1993). There were only two summit meetings between Japan and the Soviet Union after 1956: the 1973 Moscow summit and the 1991 Tokyo summit. 22 Jennifer Lind claims that while denying or glorifying past violence is inimical to reconciliation, apologies that prove to be domestically polarizing may be diplomatically counterproductive. Moreover, apologies were not necessary in many cases of successful reconciliation. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2008). 23 These are, for example, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and several frameworks centered on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN + 3 (Japan, China and South Korea), ASEAN PostMinisterial Conference (PMC), East Asia Summit (EAS), Japan-China-ROK Trilateral Cooperation, and Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). 24 Regarding the US-Japan alliance, Odd Arne Westad argues that the Japanese elite had to be subordinate to the US goals in Asia in order to remain in power, whereas some Asian governments at least secretly believed that Japan under US control was better than a genuinely independent Japan, given its history of aggression. Odd Arne Westad, Gurōbaru reisen-shi: daisansekai eno kainyū to gendai sekai no keisei (Nagoya: Nagoya University Press, 2010), 7. 25 Communist or socialist one-party regimes also survived in Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.

References Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Hara, Kimie. Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System. London: Routledge, 2007. ———. Japanese-Soviet/Russian Relations since 1945: A Difficult Peace. London: Routledge, 1998. ———. “The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in The Regional Order in East Asia a Sixty Year Perspective.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, 17, no. 1 (April 23, 2012). Accessed February 15, 2022. https://apjjf.org/2012/10/17/Kimie-Hara/3739/article.html. ———. ed. The San Francisco System and Its Legacies: Continuation, transformation and historical reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. Kimura, Hiroshi. Nichiro kokkyō kōshō-shi—ryōdo mondai ni ikani torikumuka. Tokyo: Chūōkōron-sha / Chūōkōron-Shinsho, 1993. Kubota, Masaaki. Kuremurin eno shisetsu—hoppō ryōdo kōshō 1955–1983. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1983. Lind, Jennifer. Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2008. Matsumoto, Shunichi. Mosukuwani kakeru niji—nisso kokkō kaifuuku hiroku. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1999. Murata, Tadayoshi. Shiryō tettei kenshō Senkaku ryōyu. Tokyo: Kadensha, 2015. Shiroyama, Hiromi. “Fūin sareta Senkaku gaikō bunsho.” Bungeishunjū 91, no. 7 (June 2013): 264–71. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Japan. Volume XXIII, Part 1. Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1991. Westad, Odd Arne. Gurōbaru reisen-shi: daisansekai e no kainyū to gendai sekai no keisei. Translated by Sasaki Yūta, Ogawa Hiroyuki, Masuda Minoru, Misu Takuya, Miyake Yasuyuki, and Yamamoto Ken. Nagoya: Nagoya University Press, 2010.

Chapter 17: Orders, Borders and Japan’s Identity

305

Zhang, Tingzheng. “Opinion on solving the Ryūkyū problem” and “Study on Japanese territorial disposition” (1947–1948). Ministry of Foreign Affairs File, 11-NAA-05509. Archives of the Academia Sinica, Republic of China, Taiwan.

306

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 18 Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan Rebecca Suter This chapter examines the trajectory of manga production, circulation and consumption in postwar Japan to reflect on the ambiguity of the Japanese discourse of “internationalization.” It investigates institutional frameworks for the promotion of Japanese popular culture in relation to the discourse of kokusaika, internationalization, seen as both an attempt to open Japanese society to foreign elements, and an endeavor to reaffirm the value of Japanese culture and disseminate it globally. It further explores how producers and consumers of popular culture engage creatively with these governmental policies and social conventions, leading to the emergence of phenomena such as “gaijin manga.”

Introduction Manga, Japanese comics, are a particularly useful lens to examine and problematize the notion of postwar Japan, both because the medium acquired its distinctive contemporary form in the years after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, and because its public perception underwent several major transformations in conjunction with public events over the course of the second half of the 20th century. Tracing the history of manga production, circulation and consumption from the late 1940s to the new millennium can thus offer insight into a plethora of social, political, economic and cultural phenomena. One of the most interesting aspects of postwar manga is its intersection with notions of national identity and internationalization. The evolution of postwar manga’s themes and styles is best described as characterized by a constant oscillation between inward and outward drives. An examination of the institutional approach to the medium reveals a similar oscillation between shunning manga in the domestic arena and promoting it as a valuable cultural export on the international level. This chapter analyses the trajectory of manga production, circulation and consumption in Japan from the late 1940s to the 2010s, to reflect on the ambiguity of the Japanese discourses of national identity and internationalization, and their connection with the notion of the postwar era. The world of manga is extremely vast and varied, and it would be impossible to present a comprehensive picture of even only the most important among its subgenres within the

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

307

scope of one book chapter. I will focus primarily on the genres, authors, and texts that in my view best exemplify this tension between nationalistic and transnational drives.

Rental books, magazines, and the birth of manga studies In late 1940s Japan, one of the most popular forms of affordable entertainment was kamishibai, picture card shows accompanied by an oral narration. These shows had first appeared in Japan in the late 1920s but in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War they experienced a significant revival. As a result of several intersecting social and economic factors, including high unemployment rates and a housing crisis in urban areas that forced families to share very small lodgings, street entertainment could count on a sizeable audience, and many visual artists and storytellers turned to picture card shows for their livelihood.1 Not long after the kamishibai boom, some among the most talented authors of kamishibai pictures such as Shirato Sanpei, Mizuki Shigeru and Tatsumi Yoshihiro began to draw comic stories for publication in hard-bound books that were printed in limited numbers of copies and distributed through rental book stores (kashihon’ya). Over the course of the 1950s, as the economy recovered and street entertainment became less common, rental comics gradually replaced picture card shows. A significant proportion of the comic authors writing for the kashihon industry were low-income young factory workers.2 They introduced a new type of story manga, that were realistic in form and political in content, which later came to be described as gekiga (literally “dramatic pictures”). The term was coined by Tatsumi Yoshihiro in the late 1950s to distinguish this kind of adult manga from narrative comics aimed at children, called kodomo manga or jidō manga.3 The latter were also published in the early postwar years, both for the rental market and in akabon (red books) format—comic books printed in larger number of copies for individual purchase, whose price was kept affordable by using red ink and cheap paper, and by relying on street vendors rather than shops.4 Akabon manga were targeted at an audience of children, and they were mostly fantastical both in their themes and in their drawing style, often featuring anthropomorphic animals as protagonists, continuing a tradition that had started in the 1920s.5 The first single narrative manga distributed in this format was Tezuka Osamu’s New Treasure Island (Shintakarajima, 1948), which sold four hundred thousand copies, significantly boosting the industry, and paving the way for the subsequent rise of the manga magazine industry and the preeminence of longer narrative comics from the late 1950s onward.6 At the same time, shorter comics, both for children and for adults, were also published in daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines. In children’s magazines, the most common format was four-frame comic strips, known as yonkoma, where a brief, typically humorous story developed through a few strips of four frames for a total of two to four pages per story. Yonkoma short comics were the prevalent type of manga for children in the early postwar era.7 While they were gradually replaced by longer story manga over the course of the 1950s, some yonkoma manga, both for children and for adults, remained popular long after that. Arguably the most renowned of these is Hasegawa Machiko’s comic strip series Sazae-san. First published in 1946 in the local daily Fukunichi shinbun, in 1949 it started publication in the Asahi shinbun, where it continued to be serialized until 1974, offering social and political commentary on current events in a light humorous format. Short comics, which

308

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

had been the most popular type of manga throughout the 1920s and 1930s, thus continued to be produced and consumed throughout the postwar years. Because they were more clearly derivative of Euro-American media, however, single cartoons and yonkoma were perceived as less “uniquely Japanese” than gekiga like those of Shirato Sanpei and story manga such as Tezuka Osamu’s. They were therefore marginalized in the mainstream narrative of manga discourse, that portrayed it as a uniquely Japanese cultural product unaffected by Western influence. Finally, the 1950s also saw the emergence of what would become the prime medium for the publication of Japanese comics: dedicated weekly and monthly manga magazines featuring several different comics in each issue, comprising both short stories and longer stories serialized one episode at a time.8 Initially these were aimed primarily at young children, were produced in hard-bound editions and distributed through the rental market. In the late 1950s, the two largest commercial publishers of Japan, Kōdansha and Shōgakukan, both launched inexpensive weekly manga magazines, printed on cheap paper and with cheap ink, that became very popular and soon led to the disappearance of the kashihon industry.9 Thanks to the growth of a specialized manga magazine industry, comics for children enjoyed great popularity, and in the 1960s these became the most significant sector of the comics industry, outdoing gekiga in sales.10 Adult-oriented, serious-themed gekiga acquired a new dimension during the time of political protests surrounding and following the renewal of the US–Japan Security Treaty in 1960, when the genre became a privileged medium of expression of the New Left (shinsayoku) and Zengakuren (all-Japan student league). Initially the comics were published independently by student associations, while some also appeared in commercial magazines, particularly those publishing shōnen manga for boys. In 1964, Nagai Katsuichi, a gekiga author himself, launched the magazine Garo, which became the main venue for political manga aimed at young adults. Gekiga of these years were critical of Japanese society, showing the dark side of Figure 18.1 Cover of Nejishiki the institutional discourse of postwar economic and social progress. Some of them did it more directly, like the works produced by Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s collective The Gekiga Factory (Gekiga kōbo), founded in Ōsaka in 1959, that published realistic stories set in contemporary Japan and depicted the lives of those left behind by the economic miracle because of their age, gender, class or disability.11 Other works took a more indirect approach, like Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamui (Kamuiden, serialized in Garo in 1964–1971), which focuses on a Buraku (outcaste) community fighting against poverty and oppression in the Edo period but reads as a fairly transparent metaphor for the student and worker revolts of the 1960s, or Tsuge Yoshiharu’s Screw Ceremony (Nejishiki, 1968), which addresses the poverty that underlies industrialization, and the enduring legacy of the Asia-Pacific War, through a dreamlike, surre- Source: Tsuge Yoshiharu collected works. alist framework (Figure 18.1). Seirin Kogeisha, 2018. Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

309

While in 1950s the main audience of gekiga was primarily made up of high school students and young factory workers, in the 1960s the readership shifted to include a significant proportion of university students. More generally, in this period, growing numbers of university students became regular readers of manga, whether political works of gekiga or works of light entertainment in the boys’ (shōnen) and girls’ (shōjo) genres. This was frowned upon by social commentators, who condemned it as a sign of the decadent lifestyle of the younger generations. Manga thus acquired a new social stigma, as a “low” cultural product, that at best lacked the complexity and seriousness of literature and high art, and at worst encouraged deviant tendencies in its young readers.12 The late 1960s and early 1970s also saw the consolidation of Japanese critical theories of manga, produced both by scholars such as Tsurumi Shunsuke and by manga authors such as Tatsumi Yoshihiro and Nagatani Kunio.13 Focusing primarily on the genre of gekiga, manga critics of this period presented the medium as inherently political and progressive, and argued that it played a unique social role in postwar Japan as a form of what Tsurumi later described as “liminal art” (genkai geijutsu).14 Tsurumi, a sociologist of literature and cultural historian, grounded his analysis in a close reading of comics of the 1950s and 1960s such as those of Shirato Sanpei and Tsuge Yoshihiro cited above. While supported by textual evidence, his interpretation of manga’s broader role in postwar Japanese society is also affected by his choice of works to examine. These were not necessarily representative of the entirety of manga production, that included a broader range of themes, many of which were neither progressive nor deliberately political. The gekiga-centered vision of manga as a left-wing medium and an expression of the working class came to be questioned from the 1990s onward, as manga studies developed to incorporate a greater variety of textual examples—as we will see in the second half of this chapter. Besides gekiga, early manga scholars also examined comics for a younger audience, particularly shōnen manga. Here they emphasized the crucial role played by Tezuka Osamu, hailed as the god of manga (manga no kamisama) in developing the distinctive visual and narrative features of postwar Japanese comics, particularly through his use of cinematic drawing methods and complex storylines. Focusing on story manga rather than comic strips and single-frame cartoons, they further contributed to the development of a national(istic) narrative that presented manga as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, allegedly free from Western influence. Starting in the 1990s, this assumption, too, came to be challenged by manga scholars who revisited the importance of yonkoma, reassessing the continuities and discontinuities between prewar and postwar manga, and stressing the prewar and transnational origins of the medium. One of the most productive objects of enquiry in this respect was shōjo manga, comics written by and for teenage girls. Highlighting the significance of the medium as a means of expression of individual emotions and interiority, scholars questioned Tsurumi’s view that only directly political narrative manga was a valuable form of cultural production.15 Such sustained critical interest in shōjo manga, with its non-realistic style and its privileging of visual symbolism over cinematic narrative, led to a shift of focus in manga scholarship, that moved away from social and political analyses such as those of Tsurumi, and towards what was defined as manga hyōgenron or semiotic analyses of manga.16 This was also the result of the evolution of a distinctive shōjo style, whose sophisticated combination of text and image, and complex use of affective mobilization of the readership, required more nuanced

310

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

analytical tools. In the 1970s the world of manga had seen some radical transformations that once again offer valuable insight into the social and economic changes happening in Japan.

Amateur manga and the shōjo revolution The economic miracle of the 1970s affected positively the manga magazine industry, which saw its sales increase and its themes and styles grow more varied. Almost since their inception, specialized manga magazines had been marketed as aimed at specific audiences that were typically divided along the axis of gender. Magazines devoted to the publication of comics for boys included Shōnen magajin (Kodansha 1958), Shōnen sandē (Shōgakukan 1959) and Shōnen janpu (Shūeisha 1968), while magazines aimed at an audience of girls included Nakayoshi (Kōdansha, 1954), Ribon (Shūeisha 1955), Māgaretto (Shūeisha 1963) and Shōjo komikkusu (Shōgakukan 1968). Over the 1960s and early 1970s the number of magazines of both types grew very significantly, and by 1974 there were seventy-five different manga magazines published in Japan with a total monthly circulation of 20 million.17 Partly as a result of the division of the outlets in which they were published, over the course of the 1960s the genres of shōnen and shōjo manga developed distinctive genre conventions in their narrative structures, graphic styles and topics. Shōnen comics were closer to gekiga in their visual and narrative techniques. They usually featured a relatively realistic representation of both characters and landscapes, and a page layout organized like a storyboard in which the action progressed in a linear fashion from one frame to the next. The combination of text and image on the page tended to favor narrative clarity, with dialogues in speech balloons and third-person narration in clearly delimited text boxes. Shōjo manga on the other hand were less plot-focused and favored more complex combinations of text and image that emphasized emotional expression at the expense of narrative continuity, often without using any speech balloons or thought bubbles, but rather having the text flow freely over the page.18 A central feature of shōjo visual style was the use of backgrounds replete with stars and flowers that had a decorative, rather than representational, function, as exemplified by the title of Hakusensha’s flagship magazine, Flowers and Dreams (Hana to yume). Deborah Shamoon describes these as “emotive backgrounds,” and argues that the stars and flowers are not so much decorative, but rather used metaphorically to express the characters’ feelings.19 The fact that longer story manga were serialized over several different issues of a magazine, spanning months and sometimes years, combined with shōjo manga’s focus on interiority, resulted in production and marketing strategies that mobilized affective relations to build loyalty in the audience. In newsletters as well as advertising materials, readers of Japanese girl comics were invited to offer feedback on the stories, mainly through letters to the editors. Editors in turned often asked authors to take into account readers’ expectations in their creative production.20 This created a closer emotional connection between readers and authors of girls’ manga, which played a significant role in the subsequent evolution of the medium. Alongside the magazine industry, alternative channels of production, distribution and consumption of manga, both for boys and for girls, grew in the 1970s. This was also made possible by the development of cheap printing and photocopying technology, which enabled greater participation in the production of comics on the part of readers. Amateur manga were printed in magazines called dōjinshi, a term that had been originally used to refer to pamphlets published independently by political associations, and they were distributed

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

311

primarily through komiketto (short for komikku māketto, comic market)—an event where fans and authors gathered to buy and sell amateur manga. First launched in Tokyo in December 1975, komiketto grew steadily over the years, reaching an attendance of half a million and prompting the emergence of similar events elsewhere in Japan and internationally. This sphere of alternative cultural production and distribution grew significantly over the course of the 1970s, earning the name of minikomi or “media of mini-communication,” which was a play on masukomi, the Japanese shorthand for media of mass communication. In the 1970s, minikomi culture in general, and amateur manga production specifically, was particularly appealing to female authors. The shōjo manga magazine industry’s emphasis on the relationship between authors and readers encouraged girl readers to try their hand at drawing comics, forming a new generation of amateur manga authors that was soon to take over the sphere of production. While in the 1950s and early 1960s authors of girls’ manga such as Takahashi Makoto and Ishinomori Shōtarō had been predominantly male, in the late 1960s a group of teenage and young adult women who were all born in or around 1949—the year 24 of the Shōwa era—formed a collective called Nijūyonen-gumi, or “group 24,” and began to write, publish, and distribute their own comics, initially through dōjinshi and komiketto and later through mainstream girls’ manga magazines such as Nakayoshi and Shōjo komikkusu. Members of the group included some of the most renowned shōjo authors of the 1970s and 1980s like Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, Ikeda Riyoko, Ōshima Yumiko, Aoike Yasuko and Yamagishi Ryoko. These authors expanded the scope of girls’ manga to encompass a broader variety of topics, created sophisticated plots and characters of great psychological complexity, and wrote about controversial themes like homosexuality, incest, and gender dysphoria, bringing on what critics describe as the “golden age” of girls’ manga in Japan.21 The Group 24 authors built on the stylistic tradition of postwar girls’ manga, particularly its focus on emotions and its visual complexity, to radically transform the genre, pushing its boundaries in terms of storylines, which were less focused on romance and had less predictable developments and endings, and in terms of themes, that expanded into areas such as adventure, science fiction, and historical drama, previously considered the purview of boys’ comics. At the same time, the comics also relied on innovative visual and narrative techniques to reflect critically on the norms of Japanese society of the time, particularly in the areas of gender and sexuality. The flagship genre of the Group 24 collective was shōnen ai, variously translated into English as boys’ love, boy’s love, and boys love. Shōnen ai manga focused on romantic and sexual relationships between young men, were written by female authors, and were directed primarily at a female audience. Launched by Hagio Moto’s Thoma’s Heart (Toma no shinzō, serialized in Shōjo komikkusu in 1974–1975) and Takemiya Keiko’s A Poem of Wind and Trees (Kaze to ki no uta, serialized in Shōjo komikkusu in 1976–1984, Figure 18.2), two stories about homosexual relationships between teenage boys in early 20th-century boarding schools in Germany and France, respectively, the genre quickly grew in popularity, leading to the emergence of dedicated magazines and volume series. Another key feature of the works of Group 24 which proved highly popular and became a mainstay of shōjo manga was the use of transgender or gender ambiguous protagonists, epitomized by one of the most famous girls’ manga series of the time, Ikeda Riyoko’s The Rose of Versailles (Berusayu no bara, 1972–1973), which narrates the adventures of Oscar, the daughter of an aristocrat who is raised as a boy and becomes captain of the Royal Guard at the time of the French Revolution. The choice of Germany and France as a background for these three influential comic series is indicative of another central feature of the Group 24 gender and genre revolution: 312

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the use of exotic settings. As James Welker has ar- Figure 18.2 Cover of Kaze to ki no uta gued, in shōjo manga of the 1970s “the space of the foreign was at once the object of an insatiable longing and a means of sending and receiving messages about sexual and gender alternatives unavailable elsewhere.” 22 Although there were of course also works set in Japan, the number of 1970s shōjo manga whose stories take place outside Japan is remarkable, as is the amount of research that went into the reconstruction of the historical settings, which were very detailed and generally quite accurate.23 While gekiga authors of the 1960s like Shirato Sanpei had used Japanese historical settings as metaphors for contemporary struggles, shōjo artists of the 1970s chose foreign backgrounds to critique Japanese contemporaneity from a distance. Interestingly, shōjo manga’s fascination with the foreign diminished drastically in the 1980s and 1990s, which saw a surge in popularity of comics with domestic settings, particularly in the genre of gakuen rabukome (school love comedies).24 This shift in interest from the Source: Shōgakukan, Flower Comics, 1977. foreign to the national, which also coincided with a return to more conventional love stories as exemplified by the slice of life romantic comedies penned by authors like Yazawa Ai or Tada Kaoru, was part and parcel of the ambiguous discourse of internationalization that became prominent in the 1980s. Meanwhile, in the wake of the bubble era, the Japanese popular culture industry had grown further, and new genres had garnered attention on the manga scene.

Seinen manga, kokusaika and censorship As the baby boomer generation reached their thirties and forties they continued to read manga, and the publishing industry expanded its production to cater to their evolving taste. In the 1980s, a genre that became particularly popular were stories set in the corporate and/ or political world—a phenomenon that paralleled the rise in popularity of the genre of the business novel such as those of Ushijima Jin and Takasugi Ryō. The popularity of business manga helped the growth of seinen (young adult) magazines, a subdivision of the industry that had started a little later than shōnen and shōjo and had initially lagged behind shōnen in sales and in number of venues.25 A turning point was the year 1983, when the magazine Comic Morning (Komikku mōningu, established by Kōdansha in 1980) began serializing Hirokane Kenshi’s Division Chief Shima Kōsaku (Kachō Shima Kōsaku, a business manga that dramatized the life of a white-collar employee at a fictional major conglomerate called Hatsushiba Electrics, modelled on the real-life company Matsushita. The comic was a vast success and continues to be published to this day. Over the decades, the series went through several title adjustments as the protagonist progressed through the ranks in his company, from kachō to buchō (section head) all the way to shachō (company president, Figure 18.3), as

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

313

well as producing several spinoffs such as Gakusei Shima Kōsaku (Student Shima Kōsaku, 2014). The 1980s thus saw the growth of seinen manga magazines like Mōningu, Biggu komikku, and Yangu, and the creation of new ones, like Bijinesu jampu (1985), Sūpā janpu (1986), or Yangu chanpion (1988). Most seinen comics featured the realistic drawing and narrative style, storyboard-like page layout, and eventful plots that were typical of shōnen manga, but offered content more relevant to an audience of sarariiman (salarymen, white collar workers), that was arguably largely composed by the same readers who had enjoyed shōnen stories in the previous decades. They therefore featured primarily business, politics and sports stories, but also included science fiction works like Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s Akira (Shūkan yangu, 1982–1990) or Masamune Shirō’s Kōkaku kidōtai (Shūkan yangu, 1989–1997), or crime stories such as Saitō Takao’s Gorugo 13 (Biggu komikku, Source: Kōdansha, Morning KC, 2008. 1968–present) or Takada Yūzō’s 3x3 eyes (Shūkan Yangu, 1987–2002). The popularity of seinen manga also attracted the attention of large publishing companies that had not previously considered manga. In 1986, the book publishing branch of Japan’s leading financial newspaper, the Nihon keizai shinbun, issued a volume entitled Manga Introduction to Japanese Economics (Manga Nihon keizai nyūmon), which was an educational manga by Ishinomori Shōtarō, one of Japan’s most prominent manga authors who arguably rivalled Tezuka in reputation. The manga was a great commercial success, selling over half a million copies in Japan, and was also translated into English in 1988 and into French in 1989. The domestic and international success of Ishinomori’s comic prompted other large publishing companies to launch their own manga series. Another major daily newspaper, the Asahi shinbun, published Saitō Takao’s manga adaptation of Sony Chairman Morita Akio’s autobiography, Made in Japan (Meido in Japan, 1987), and Chūōkōronsha, a large publisher of literature and nonfiction, published Ishinomori’s forty-eight-volume Manga History of Japan (Manga Nihon no rekishi, 1989). Following the popularity of Saitō’s manga adaptation of Morita’s autobiography, some firms also began to publish manga versions of their company histories (mangashashi), which were both distributed to the public as advertising materials and offered to new employees as part of their training materials.26 Not all manga that emerged from the seinen boom was, however, ostensibly apolitical like business and sports manga. As magazine sales expanded, so did the themes and topics of the stories, which also included more overtly partisan ones. Interestingly, while ideologically oriented gekiga of the 1960s had primarily been a medium for protest culture and left-wing politics, ideological manga of the 1980s tended to be right-wing. One of the most extreme and most controversial examples is Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Gomanism Manifesto (Gōmanizumu sengen) series. The comic was first serialized in 1992 in the weekly magazine Spa! which discontinued its publication in 1995. It then moved to the magazine Sapio, with the title New Gomanism Manifesto (Shin-gōmanizumu sengen), where it continues to this day. An Figure 18.3 Cover of Shachō Shima Kōsaku

314

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

essay-style manga written in first-person narrative style, Kobayashi’s series systematically voices strong opinions on contested topics, from the denial of war crimes in the 1998 On War (Sensōron) issue, to the suggestion that Japan should abandon nuclear energy but acquire nuclear weapons in the 2012 On Abandoning Nuclear Power (Datsugenpatsuron) issue. Extreme examples like Kobayashi aside, the boom of seinen manga coincided with a conservative turn in the underlying ideologies of the medium. Based on her ethnographic research in the seinen manga publishing industry in the 1980s and 1990s, Sharon Kinsella has identified one major reason for this shift in the increasingly significant role of editors in the creative process. According to Kinsella’s research, in the 1980s seinen magazine editors were typically responsible for generating ideas for stories, and they often intervened heavily on the texts and drawings produced by authors. This, Kinsella noted, created a significant shift in perspective compared to the previous decades. While seinen authors of the 1980s, much like gekiga authors of the 1950s and 1960s, were from, or tended to associate themselves with, the working class, editors tended to be graduates from top universities coming from upper middle-class families. Their higher educational and cultural capital, Kinsella argues, was accompanied by conservative political views, and their increased importance in the creative process pushed adult manga in an ideologically conservative direction.27 Another consequence of the growth of informational manga, and more generally of the production and consumption of comics by a broader variety of social actors, was the shift of the medium from the marginal, subcultural position described by Tsurumi to what Kure Tomofusa has described as a “high cultural form and a source of national pride.” 28 In its new, conservative- and business-friendly guise, seinen manga came to be publicly perceived as a valuable vehicle for Japan’s discourse of internationalization, and the industry was quick to capitalize on this aspect. Kinsella for instance noted that the editors she interviewed in the 1980s and 1990s displayed “an acute awareness of the potential new role for manga, not only as a sphere for public political debate within domestic culture, but also as an official representation of Japanese culture abroad.” 29 Their efforts were rewarded both by international success and by public recognition in Japan. The English and French translations of manga like Manga Nihon keizai nyūmon further helped establish informational manga as a reputable form of cultural production on the international scene, and emerging institutions for the global promotion of Japanese culture—first and foremost the Japan Foundation—began to include manga among the cultural exports whose promotion they supported. With its history of combining different cultural influences, and its engagement with foreign settings and characters, manga seemed likely to become the poster child of the internationalization of Japan project. But rather than emphasizing its transnational origins and multicultural themes, institutional actors like the Japan Foundation embraced instead the 1960s manga studies discourse of manga as a uniquely Japanese cultural form, supposedly free from Western influence as evidenced by the choice of authors and texts for domestic and international exhibitions and events, like the Tezuka Osamu exhibition organized by the National Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo in July–September 1990, or the “Visions of the Floating World: The Cartoon Art of Japan” exhibition held at the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco in May–September 1992. In the same period, the idea of manga as a uniquely Japanese cultural form, distinct from and unrelated to either Euro-American or Asian artistic traditions, was also reinforced by the work of scholars that emphasized the similarities between the medium of manga and Japanese premodern visual cultures. Scholars like Shimizu Isao traced the origins of manga to art forms like chōjū jinbutsu giga (Heian-period picture Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

315

scrolls depicting birds and animals in a comical way) or Hokusai manga (Tokugawa-period woodblock prints with comedic and satirical content). These premodern and early modern art forms were described as akin to manga in their integration of text and image, in their use of motion lines to represent movement, and in their recourse to humor and caricature.30 Far from being seen as a model of multiculturalism, manga was presented as a uniquely Japanese cultural form, and a vehicle for making Japanese excellence known abroad to redress the so-called cultural trade imbalance that accompanied the Japanese hi-tech export boom. In this respect, the use of manga in cultural diplomacy was emblematic of the ambiguity of the internationalization project that coalesced around the term kokusaika in 1980s Japan. As many scholars have pointed out, the discourse of kokusaika was an intrinsically ambivalent one. Ostensibly presented as an endeavor to make Japanese culture more diverse, its concrete policies supported rather “the thorough domestication of the foreign and the dissemination of Japanese culture throughout the world.” 31 This incongruity becomes particularly evident when we look at the kind of practices and products chosen by institutions for the promotion of Japanese culture, that were framed as quintessentially Japanese rather than multicultural and transnational. Manga is a good example of this: it was enlisted as a means of cultural promotion insofar as it could be portrayed as a uniquely Japanese art form with strong roots in traditional national art forms. To make things more complicated, while educational and business manga were presented as a source of national pride and a valuable cultural export, other genres of manga, particularly the ones with erotic content, had become the object of increased public scrutiny. Already in the 1970s, parent-teacher associations and other groups of concerned citizens had been petitioning to the government to halt or limit the distribution of yūgai manga (harmful comics) primarily those containing graphic representations of sex and, to a lesser extent, violence.32 In the 1990s, the public perception of manga was further negatively affected by the “Miyazaki incident” of 1989, in which a young man, Miyazaki Tsutomu was later convicted of the serial murder of six schoolchildren after being arrested in an apartment filled to the brim with comic books, anime videotapes, and related merchandising such as character figurines. This fostered a perception of manga readers as socially deviant individuals, and manga itself became the object of a “moral panic.” 33 The public concern for manga-related deviancy extended into the new millennium, leading among other things to the famous 2010 “non-existent youth” (hijitsuzai seishōnen) bill—a modification by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that extended the purview of an existing municipal law regulating the use of sexual content in manga and anime to include depictions of “purely fictional or imaginary characters who were, looked like, or sounded like they were under the age of 18 and who were ‘recklessly’ depicted in a sexual manner that ‘positively affirms anti-social behavior.’” 34 Interestingly, as the debate on manga censorship attracted increased media attention domestically, in the new millennium the public discourse of internationalization enlisted manga with renewed enthusiasm as an instrument of cultural diplomacy.

From Cool Japan to transnational manga The new millennium saw a renewed appreciation for manga’s potential as a cultural export. A first important step was the Japanese government Educational White Paper of the year 2000,35 which praised manga as an important art form that was achieving popularity and

316

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

recognition abroad. In the following years, Japanese institutions increasingly explored the advantages of enlisting manga to promote a positive image of Japan, both nationally and internationally. Another significant moment was in the year 2006, when then-foreign minister Aso inaugurated a governmental campaign to promote Japanese popular culture abroad that included the institution of the Japan International Manga Award, a prize conferred by a committee composed of members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Japan Foundation to the best manga written and drawn by international authors.36 The winners of the Gold, Silver and Bronze medal in the first edition of the award in 2007 were from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia. Interestingly, while the manga featured in cultural diplomacy initiatives of the 1980s had been mostly shōnen and seinen works, in the new millennium shōjo and children manga were also included. This was part of a broader attempt to exploit the growing international appeal of Japanese girl subcultures, that included other initiatives like the 2009 government-sponsored world tour of three kawaii taishi (ambassadors of cuteness): Aoki Misako representing the Lolita style of European Rococo-inspired Japanese apparel, Kimura Yu representing the Harajuku style of street fashion and Fujioka Shizuka representing Japanese school-uniform-inspired designer clothing. The new wave of institutional support for comics also encouraged the creation of several manga studies programs at universities and the emergence of other research institutions related to manga. A notable example is the creation in 2006 of the Kyoto International Manga Museum which is a joint effort from the city of Kyoto and Kyoto Seika University’s International Manga Research Center. The museum functions as both a manga library and research institute available to individual researchers and organizing regular national and international workshops and conferences, as well as a tourist attraction that organizes shows and activities for adults and children, including kamishibai performances in a dedicated indoor space. The creation of these programs helped once again shift the balance of the public image of manga from “dangerous and deviant medium” to valuable cultural product and worthy object of scholarly enquiry.37 While the institutionalization of the discipline of manga studies led in some cases to further nationalistic interpretations of the medium, it also saw the emergence of critical engagements with the idea of manga as national treasure. In particular, investigating the legacy of Meiji period cartoons such as ponchi-e (drawings in the style of the British magazines called Punch) and pakku (in the style of North American magazines, or puck) in postwar manga, scholars like Natsume Fusanosuke and Miyamoto Hirohito foregrounded the influence of American and European cartoons on Japanese comics and, by extension, the multicultural origins of manga.38 Analyzing the influence of Euro-American cartoons led scholarship on manga to reconsider the importance of the koma (panel or single frame) as the fundamental unit of visual-verbal expression. Emphasizing the difference between koma-centered manga and premodern chōjū-giga, where images extended on the scroll without solution of continuity, these scholars questioned the idea of premodern and allegedly purely Japanese origins of manga. The focus on the koma also led them to reassess the dominant narrative that presented story manga as the most sophisticated and most authentic type of manga. In Tezuka Is Dead (Tezuka izu deddo, 2005), Itō Gō focused on the ambiguous status of the focal frame in the artistic vocabulary of Japanese comics, noting that often in actual reading practices the whole page is as important as the narrative sequence—a feature that in his view was overlooked by previous critics because of their exclusive focus on Tezuka’s cinematic style. Itō argued that by concentrating on story manga at the expense of comic strips, and Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

317

on stories in manga to the detriment of other elements such as characters and drawing style, Japanese critics had become increasingly estranged from its reception among the audience. By proclaiming that “Tezuka is dead” and that we need to move beyond his legacy, Itō advocated combining a semiotic approach that better captures the specific expressive features of the medium (as distinct from other forms of popular culture such as film, animation and videogames) with a reception analysis-based study of manga that takes better account of audiences’ actual reading practices. This focus on reader reception also had important implications for the understanding of manga’s complex cultural positioning. In the new millennium, manga readership had expanded significantly on the international level, further challenging the notion that the medium was quintessentially Japanese. As Iwabuchi Koichi persuasively argued, a result of the increase in the circulation of Japanese popular culture products within Asia is that “transnational encounters and imaginations are newly hatched in ways that generate the (partial) demise of the Japanese nationalist project.” 39 Interestingly, this phenomenon was amplified by institutional initiatives like the International Manga Award, which recognized and encouraged a phenomenon that had been slowly but steadily growing over the course of the postwar era, first in Asian countries and then in European ones: namely, the production of manga-style comics by authors located outside of Japan and/or written in languages other than Japanese. Manga-style comics had been produced in other parts of East Asia since the 1960s with varying degrees of restrictions and varying degrees of popularity. Chinese-language Japanese-inspired manhua published in Hong Kong included both shōjo comics like Theresa Wai-Chung Lee’s Miss 13 dot (1966–1980) and shōnen and seinen comics, among which martial arts stories featured prominently like Ma Wing-Shing’s Chinese Hero (Zhonghua Yingxiong, 1980–1995).40 In Taiwan and South Korea, translations of Japanese manga and locally produced manhua and manhwa, respectively, were also distributed beginning in the 1970s but were subjected to strict government regulation, both because of the perceived association with high levels of violence and sex, and as part of broader restrictions on Japanese popular culture imports.41 In South Korea, this changed dramatically from 1998, following President Kim Dae-Jung’s liberalization of Japanese cultural imports. The resulting rise of consumption of manga imported from Japan led to a significant growth of locally produced Koreanlanguage manhwa. These in turn became popular internationally as part of a global rise of consumption of Korean popular culture products, driven by K-pop music and K-drama television. At the same time, particularly in the US, manhwa were also cleverly marketed in ways that emphasized their similarity to Japanese manga by international publishers and distributors such as the North American company Tokyopop, thus riding the Cool Japan wave as well as the Korean wave. European manga began to emerge in the 1990s. A pioneer of the genre was Frédéric Boilet, who published two French-language, manga-inspired comics, Love Hotel (1993) and Tokyo is My Garden (Tōkyō est mon jardin, 1997), based on his experience living in Japan on a research fellowship. The semi-autobiographical account of a foreigner’s tragicomic adventures in Japan is a recurrent theme in European manga, as exemplified also by Vincenzo Filosa’s Italian-Japanese-English trilingual manga Trip to Tokyo (Viaggio a Tokyo, 2015) or Giuseppe Durato’s Japanese-language Mingo: Don’t Think All Italians are Popular (Mingo: Itariajin ga minna moteru to omou na yo), serialized in Biggu komikku supirittsu from 2019 to 2020). In 2001, Boilet launched a new concept that he called Nouvelle Manga 318

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and described as a combination of techniques and Figure 18.4 Cover of one of  “Peppe’s”  stories approaches derived from Japanese manga and Belgian and French bande dessinée. He inaugurated the genre with a bilingual comic, Yukiko’s Spinach, published under the dual title Yukiko no hōrensō and L’Épinard de Yukiko. Interestingly, both The Garden of Tokyo and Yukiko’s Spinach were translated into Japanese in 1998 and 2001, respectively, but while they were framed as “French manga” in the European context, in Japan they were marketed as translated bandes dessinées.42 Conversely, Giuseppe Durato positioned himself deliberately as an author of Japanese manga. After working as an assistant to manga author Nishi Keiko, he debuted on a mainstream seinen magazine, under the pen name Peppe. At the same time, Peppe’s stories, focusing on the experience of a foreigner trying to make a life for himself in Japan, have a significant transnational and cross-cultural component (Figure 18.4). Source: Shōgakukan, Big Comics, 2020. Migration and displacement are recurrent elements of European manga, and this is not limited to works that are set in Japan. Paul Malone has noted that within German-language manga, a significant proportion of the authors are of Eastern European descent, such as Dorota Grabarczyk and Olga Andryienko, writing together under the name of DuO (Dorota und Olga) as well as individually as Reami and Asu; and of Southern European, or Asian heritage, like Christina Plaka, Judith Park, and Ying-Zhou Cheng.43 Malone argues that the fact that the narrative and stylistic standards of manga “are already located outside German-language culture … allowed publishers and creators wiggle room to display a remarkable cultural diversity.” 44 While the German case, as Malone also notes, is different from that of France or Italy because authors do not have a strong local comic tradition to reckon with, in other European contexts, too, manga has provided amateur and professional authors alike with greater creative freedom to represent cultural hybridity and ambiguity than local artistic tradition, as the prevalence of foreign settings and of stories of travel and migration among the comics testifies. Far from being a uniquely Japanese cultural product that can help redress the cultural trade imbalance with the rest of the world, then, in the new millennium manga seems to be increasingly appreciated on a global scale because of its cultural ambiguity and transnational themes. As I have shown in this chapter, looking at the elements of continuity between prewar and postwar manga enables us to see that a transnational dimension has been part of the medium throughout the postwar era, challenging both the notion of manga as a distinctive and coherent “postwar” medium, and the view that it is a uniquely Japanese cultural product.

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

319

Notes 1

Shunsuke Tsurumi, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945–1980 (London: Routledge 1987), 22–23. Saitō Takao, “Seinen/otona manga no rūtsu wa gekiga ni ari,” in Kage/Machi: Kanzen fukkoku-ban, edited by Matsumoto Masahiko and Takao Saitō (Tokyo: Shōgakukan Creative), 4. 3 Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Gekiga Daigaku (Tokyo: Hiro Shobō, 1968). 4 Shimizu Isao, Manga no rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 175. 5 Takahashi Yasuo, “Manga no sekai,” in Bessatsu taiyō: Kodomo no Shōwa-shi, Shōwa 20 nen–35 nen (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1987), 53. 6 Shimizu Isao, Zenkoku manga fan ni okuru Nihon manga jiten (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1985), 181. 7 Takahashi, “Manga no sekai,” 52. 8 Shimizu, Zenkoku manga fan, 188–92. 9 Publication of manga in volume form, however, did not disappear entirely, and the most popular series were republished as single or multi-volume self-standing books (tankōbon). The practice continues to this day; tankōbon now dominate the foreign market, whether in the Japanese original or in translation. 10 Shimizu Isao, Manga no rekishi, 198. 11 Shige Suzuki (CJ), “Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties: Aspiring for an Alternative,” in Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (London: Routledge, 2013), 58. 12 Tsurumi, Cultural History, 30–31. 13 See for example Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Gekiga Daigaku; Tsurumi Shunsuke, Manga sengoshi (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1970); Ishiko Junzō, Gekiga no shisō (Tokyo: Taiheiyō Shuppan, 1973); and Nagatani Kunio, Nippon mangaka meikan (Tokyo: Data House, 1974). 14 Tsurumi Shunsuke, Genkai geijutsuron (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1982). See also Tsurumi, Cultural History, 23–27, and Tsurumi Shunsuke, Manga no sengo shisō (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1973). For a critical appraisal of this study of manga as mass culture and social phenomenon, see Kure Tomofusa, Gendai manga no zentaizō (revised and expanded edition) (Tokyo: Futabasha, 1997 (1986)). 15 See for example Yonezawa Yoshihiro, “Koi kara hajimaru shōjo manga no bōken,” in Bessatsu taiyō—kodomo no Shōwashi: shōjo manga no sekai II (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991); and Fujimoto Yukari, Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? Shōjo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi (Tokyo: Gakuyō Shobō, 1998). 16 See for example Ōtsuka Eiji, Sengo manga no hyōgenkūkan: Kigōteki shintai no jubaku (Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 1994); Inoue Manabu, ed., Manga no yomikata (Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1995); Natsume Fusanosuke, Tezuka Osamu wa doko ni iru (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992); and Natsume Fusanosuke, “Manga hyōgenron o megutte,” in Man-bi-ken. Manga no bi/gakutekina jigen e no sekkin, edited by Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto: Daigo Shobō, 2000). 17 Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society (London: Routledge, 2000), 31. 18 Mizuki Takahashi, “Opening the Closed World of Shōjo Manga,” in Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by Mark MacWilliams (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), 126–28; Deborah Shamoon, Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 94–98. 19 Shamoon, Passionate Friendship, 116. See also Takahashi, “Opening the Closed World,” 127. 20 Jennifer Prough, Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Production of Shōjo Manga (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 69–88. 21 Yonezawa Yoshihiro, Sengo shōjo manga shi (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2007), 217; and Prough, Straight from the Heart, 47–48. See also Yonezawa Yoshihiro, Sengo shōjo manga shi (Tokyo: Shinpyōsha, 1980). 22 James Welker, “From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono: Translation and the transfiguration of gender and sexuality in shōjo manga,” in Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley (London: Routledge, 2010), 162. 23 See among others Welker 2006; Ishida 2008; and Rebecca Suter, “Gender Bending and Exoticism in Japanese Girls’ Comics,” Asian Studies Review 37, no. 4 (2013). 24 Prough, Straight from the Heart, 51 25 The first dedicated seinen magazine was Biggu komikku, founded by Shōgakukan in 1968. 26 Kinsella, Adult Manga, 78. 27 Kinsella, Adult Manga, 170–71. 2

320

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

28

Kure Tomofusa, Gendai manga no zentaizō, 304. Sharon, Kinsella, “Change in the social status, form and content of adult manga, 1986–1996,” Japan Forum 8, no. 1 (1996): 110. 30 Shimizu, Zenkoku manga fan, 16–24. For a critical appraisal of this approach see Jaqueline Berndt, “Considering Manga Discourse: Location, Ambiguity, Historicity,” in Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by Mark MacWilliams (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 305–9. 31 Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1995), 3. For a discussion of the overlap between nationalism and internationalism in the discourse of kokusaika see also Iwabuchi 1994. 32 Fukushima Akira, Manga to Nihonjin: “Yūgai” komikku bōkokuron o kiru (Tokyo: Nihonbungeisha, 1993), 12–36. 33 Sharon Kinsella, “Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 289–316, 308–11; and Mark McLelland, “Thought policing or the protection of youth? Debate in Japan over the ‘Non-existent youth bill,’” International Journal of Comic Art 13, no. 1 (2011): 349–52. 34 McLelland “Thought policing or the protection of youth,” 352. 35 MEXT (Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). Educational White Paper Section 2.2: Cultural activities, 2000, accessed January 3, 2022, https://warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid /11293659/www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpad200001/hpad200001_2_082.html. 36 Information about the award, including a list of all winners, is available on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website: https://www.manga-award.mofa.go.jp/index_e.html. 37 Jaqueline Berndt, ed. Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale (Kyoto: imrc, 2010); Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, “Introduction: Studying Manga across Cultures,” in Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (London: Routledge, 2013). 38 Miyamoto Hirohito, “Rekishi Kenkyū,” in Mangagaku nyūmon, edited by Natsume Fusanosuke and Takeuchi Osamu (Kyoto: Minerva Shobō, 2009), 97–100; and Ronald Stewart, “Manga as Schism: Kitazawa Rakuten’s Resistance to ‘Old-Fashioned’ Japan,” in Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (London: Routledge, 2013), 28–30. 39 Koichi Iwabuchi. “Uses of Japanese Popular Culture: Trans/Nationalism and Postcolonial Desire for ‘Asia.’ ” Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures 11 No. 2 (2001): 218. 40 For a detailed analysis of the comic series and its transnational dimension see Wendy Siuyi Wong, “Fifty Years of Popularity of Theresa Lee Wai-chun and Her Comic, 13-Dot Cartoon: Changing Identities of Women in Hong Kong,” in Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities, edited by Ogi Fusami, Rebecca Suter, Nagaike Kazumi and John Lent (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). 41 John Lent, “Local Comic Books and the Curse of Manga in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan,” Asian Journal of Communication 9, no. 1 (1999): 126. 42 Tiago Canário, “On Everyday Life: Frédéric Boilet and the Nouvelle Manga Movement,” in Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics without Japan? edited by Casey Brienza (London: Routledge, 2015), 116. 43 Paul Malone, “Transcultural Hybridization in Home-Grown German Manga,” in Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics. Global Manga Studies 2, edited by Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto: Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center, 2012), 51–54. 44 Malone, “Transcultural Hybridization,” 51. 29

References Berndt, Jaqueline, ed. Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale. Kyoto: imrc, 2010. ———. “Considering Manga Discourse: Location, Ambiguity, Historicity.” In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by Mark MacWilliams, 295–310. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. ———. “Manga and ‘Manga’: Contemporary Japanese Comics and their Dis/similarities with Hokusai’s Manga.” In Civilization of Evolution, Civilization of Revolution: Metamorphoses in Japan, 1900–2000, edited by

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

321

Arkadiusz Jablonski, Stanislaw Meyer and Koji Morita, 210–22. Krakow: Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, 2009. Berndt, Jaqueline and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. “Introduction: Studying Manga across Cultures.” In Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, 1–15. London: Routledge, 2013. Canário, Tiago. “On Everyday Life: Frédéric Boilet and the Nouvelle Manga Movement.” In Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics without Japan? Edited by Casey Brienza, 115–32. London: Routledge, 2015. Fujimoto, Yukari. Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? Shōjo manga ga utsusu kokoro no katachi. Tokyo: Gakuyō Shobō, 1998. Fukushima, Akira. Manga to Nihonjin: “Yūgai” komikku bōkokuron o kiru. Tokyo: Nihonbungeisha, 1993. Inoue, Manabu, ed. Manga no yomikata. Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1995. Ishida, Minori, Hisoyakana kyōiku: ‘yaoi/boizu rabu’ zenshi. Kyoto: Rakuhoku Shuppan, 2008. Ishiko, Junzō. Gekiga no shisō. Tokyo: Taiheiyō Shuppan, 1973. Ivy, Marilyn. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1995. Iwabuchi, Koichi. “Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 8, no. 2 (1994): 49–82. ———. “Uses of Japanese Popular Culture: Trans/Nationalism and Postcolonial Desire for ‘Asia.’” Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures 11 No. 2 (2001): 199–222. Kinsella, Sharon. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Change in the social status, form and content of adult manga, 1986–1996.” Japan Forum 8, no. 1 (1996): 103–12. ———. “Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 289–316. Kure, Tomofusa. Gendai manga no zentaizō (revised and expanded edition). Tokyo: Futabasha, 1997 (1986). Lent, John. “Comics in East Asian Countries: A Contemporary Survey.” Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 1 (1995): 185–98. ———. “Local Comic Books and the Curse of Manga in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.” Asian Journal of Communication 9, no. 1 (1999): 108–28. Malone, Paul. “Transcultural Hybridization in Home-Grown German Manga.” In Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics. Global Manga Studies 2, edited by Jaqueline Berndt, 49–60. Kyoto: Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center, 2012. McLelland, Mark. “Thought policing or the protection of youth? Debate in Japan over the ‘Non-existent youth bill.’” International Journal of Comic Art 13, no. 1 (2011): 348–67. MEXT (Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). Educational White Paper Section 2.2: Cultural activities. 2000. Accessed January 3, 2022. https://warp.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/ pid/11293659/www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpad200001/hpad200001_2_082.html. Miyamoto, Hirohito. “The Formation of an Impure Genre: On the Origin of Manga.” Trans. Jennifer Prough. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 14 (2002): 39–48. ———. “‘Ponchi’ kara ‘manga’ e: jānarizumu to ‘bijutsu’ no aida de hyōgen o migaku.” In Meiji jidai-kan, edited by Miyachi Masato, 390–91. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2005. ———. “Rekishi kenkyū.” In Mangagaku nyūmon, edited by Natsume Fusanosuke and Takeuchi Osamu, 96–101. Kyoto: Minerva Shobō, 2009. Nagatani, Kunio. Nippon mangaka meikan. Tokyo: Data House, 1974. Natsume, Fusanosuke. “Manga hyōgenron o megutte.” In Man-bi-ken. Manga no bi/gakutekina jigen e no sekkin, edited by Jaqueline Berndt, 2–22. Kyoto: Daigo Shobō, 2000. ———. Tezuka osamu wa doko ni iru. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992. Ōtsuka, Eiji. Sengo manga no hyōgenkūkan: Kigōteki shintai no jubaku. Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 1994. Ōtsuka, Eiji and Sasakibara Gō. Kyōyō toshite no manga anime. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001. Prough, Jennifer. Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Production of Shōjo Manga. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010. Saitō, Takao. “Seinen/otona manga no rūtsu wa gekiga ni ari.” In Kage/Machi: Kanzen fukkoku-ban, edited by Matsumoto, Masahiko and Takao Saitō. Tokyo: Shōgakukan Creative. Unpaginated, 2009.

322

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012. Shimizu, Isao. Manga no rekishi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991. ———. Zenkoku manga fan ni okuru Nihon manga jiten. Tokyo: Sanseido, 1985. Stewart, Ronald. “Manga as Schism: Kitazawa Rakuten’s Resistance to ‘Old-Fashioned’ Japan.” In Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, 26–49. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Suzuki, Shige (CJ). “Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties: Aspiring for an Alternative.” In Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, 50–64. London: Routledge, 2013. Suter, Rebecca. “Gender Bending and Exoticism in Japanese Girls’ Comics.” Asian Studies Review 37, no. 4 (2013): 546–58. Tatsumi, Yoshihiro. Gekiga daigaku. Tokyo: Hiro Shobō, 1968. Tsurumi, Shunsuke. A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945–1980. London: Routledge, 1987. ———. Genkai geijutsuron. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1982. ———. Manga no sengo shisō. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1973. ———. Manga sengoshi. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1970. Takahashi, Mizuki. “Opening the Closed World of Shōjo Manga.” In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by Mark MacWilliams, 114–36. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2008. Takahashi, Yasuo. “Manga no sekai.” In Bessatsu taiyō: Kodomo no Shōwa-shi, Shōwa 20 nen–35 nen, 50–57. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1987. Welker, James. “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys’ Love as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 3 (2006): 841–70. ———. “From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono: Translation and the transfiguration of gender and sexuality in shōjo manga.” In Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley, 160–73. London: Routledge, 2010. Wong, Wendy Siuyi. “Fifty Years of Popularity of Theresa Lee Wai-chun and Her Comic, 13-Dot Cartoon: Changing Identities of Women in Hong Kong.” In Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities, edited by Ogi Fusami, Rebecca Suter, Nagaike Kazumi and John Lent, 253–70. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. Yonezawa, Yoshihiro. “Koi kara hajimaru shōjo manga no bōken.” In Bessatsu taiyō—kodomo no Shōwashi: shōjo manga no sekai II, 134–38. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991. ———. Sengo shōjo manga shi. Tokyo: Shinpyōsha, 1980. ———. Sengo shōjo manga shi (A Postwar History of Shōjo Manga). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2007.

Chapter 18: Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan

323

Part 6 Defining, Delineating, Historicizing and Chronologizing the Postwar Era

Chapter 19 Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar” Philip Seaton This chapter complicates all notions of the “postwar” through four lines of argument. The first is to contest the 15 August war-end myth by demonstrating how, for many individual Japanese, the Asia-Pacific War continued well beyond the symbolic war end. The second is to contest the notion of the post-1945 period as one without Japanese involvement in war. The third is to see post-1945 as a period of (incomplete) “deimperialization” rather than “postwar.” The final line of argument contests the postwar as a meaningful unitary period given the various other subperiods throughout the last 75+ years.

Introduction In Japan, the “war end” (shūsen, alternatively haisen, “defeat”) is officially considered to be noon on August 15, 1945, when the emperor’s radio broadcast informed the Japanese people of defeat. Three quarters of a century later in 2021, the Japanese media was still using the term “sengo 76” (postwar 76) during the period of August commemorations centered on a cluster of key anniversaries: Hiroshima (August 6th), Nagasaki (August 9th), and “war end” (August 15th). Despite many claims about the end of the postwar, the framework remains in Japanese public and media discourse, fundamentally because the war remains a current affairs issue in East Asia. Meanings and interpretations of “that war / those wars” (ano sensō) remain contested within Japanese society, and domestic debates spill over into the international and diplomatic arenas with particular implications for Sino-Japanese and Korean-Japanese relations. There have been multiple official attempts to bring an end to the postwar, such as the 1956 government declaration that on economic grounds it was “no longer the postwar” (mohaya sengo de wa nai).1 The 2015 statement on the war by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (discussed below) may also be understood as one such attempt. Nevertheless, the persistence of the history issue (rekishi mondai) symbolizes Japan’s inability to escape the postwar. Also referred to as the history wars (rekishi sensō), the history issue is a culture war regarding historical consciousness (rekishi ninshiki) that divides people along moral, political and ideological

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

327

grounds.2 In one sense, therefore, Japan will have escaped its postwar when the history issue retreats from the political, popular and media arenas into the specialist arena of scholarly debate. This transition seems likely only with the passage of sufficient time and may yet take multiple generations. Another scenario is that a major war ends the postwar by recreating “wartime Japan” and relegating the wars culminating in 1945 to a secondary position in Japanese discourses of war and peace. Starting from the premise that the existence of the history issue precludes the end of the postwar, this chapter first establishes the broad contours of Japan’s contested war memories and the intractability of the history issue. The chapter then exposes the nation-state-centric nature of the postwar framework and seeks to complicate notions of the postwar via four lines of argument. The first is to contest the August 15th myth by demonstrating how the AsiaPacific War (1937–1945) continued arguably for days, months, and even years beyond the symbolic or official war end. In other words, the war end is revealed as a political construct that in turn constructs a particular idea of the postwar. The second is to contest the notion of the post-1945 period as being post war, namely “not during war.” From the Korean War (1950–1953) to the Iraq War (2003), Japan has been an active participant in various wars since 1945. The third is to see post-1945 as a period of “deimperialization” rather than postwar.3 While postwar implies a neat, identifiable end point to the war, deimperialization implies a chaotic, indistinct transition. Furthermore, in Japan’s case this deimperialization project was never completed in Japan’s first colonies: Hokkaido and Okinawa. And the final challenge to the concept of the postwar is to contest the period since 1945 as a meaningful unitary period of history. Writing in 1993 Andrew Gordon not only noted that “the defeat and occupation did not bring a total rupture with the past,” but also referred to the “immediate postwar” and “late postwar.” 4 Three decades later the rhetoric of the “postwar” remains an overarching framework for discussing issues of war and peace, but postwar history now contains even more twists, turns and sub-eras than when Gordon made his comments. Ultimately what this chapter reveals is how, despite continual contestation over the past during many phases of postwar Japanese history, the very term postwar embeds a conservative continuity at the heart of public national discourse relating to the war.

Japan’s contested war memories The fundamental characteristic of Japanese war memories is their bitterly contested nature. Defeat, widespread suffering among the Japanese people and the millions of deaths across Asia caused by Japan’s wars have triggered complex debates over war responsibility. Opinions range across a broad spectrum and five main positions can be identified based on judgements regarding Japanese war actions.5 Nationalists have an affirmative view of Japan’s wars as part of a grand project to liberate Asia from Western imperialism. They deny Japan committed aggression and atrocities and reject calls for apologies. Conservatives accept the existence of some atrocities but avoid categorizing Japan’s wars as aggressive. They laud the sacrifice of patriots who died serving their nation. Broadly speaking, this conservative view has been the official government position in the postwar. Progressives, meanwhile, criticize an atrocity-soaked war of aggression against neighboring countries and stress the need for apology, compensation, self-reflective history education and other forms of addressing the past. Progressive-leaning people have a similarly critical view of the war, but reach these

328

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

conclusions through a focus on Japanese suffering. Such views are often criticized as victim mentality outside of Japan but are fundamentally anti-war. Finally, there is the category of don’t know and don’t care. These are people—often from the younger generations—without sufficient knowledge and/or interest to have a coherent position on the war. Complicating the picture further is that individuals may have different judgements about the various theaters of Japan’s wars. For example, more people categorize the invasion of China from 1937 as aggressive than would regard war against the Soviet Union in August 1945 as aggressive. And the history issue does not only relate to war responsibility but also colonial responsibility. Despite both involving Japanese rule over other Asians, distinctions are drawn between the colonization of Korea (1910–1945) and occupation/liberation of the Dutch East Indies (1942–1945). All these variations constitute a recipe for vociferous debate regarding the meanings and interpretations of “the war(s)” in politics, the media and creative industries. Scholars have used different terminology to depict this contestation. Saito Hiro refers to a nationalism—cosmopolitanism spectrum.6 Hashimoto Akiko refers to three main approaches to “moral recovery”: nationalist, pacifist and reconciliationist.7 However, there is scholarly consensus that Japanese war memories are contested and they lack the dominant memories forged particularly in the victorious Allied nations of a “good war.” While debates over the war(s) have continued in a domestic context ever since 1945, the internationalization of the history issue dates from the 1980s. This is the period after which postwar treaties had been concluded, relations with neighboring countries had been restored (particularly South Korea in 1965 and China in 1972) and Japan had emerged as the strongest economic power in Asia. Regional interest in what Japanese politicians, media and society thought or said about past wars increased. By the 2000s, the principal topics triggering domestic and international controversy as part of the history issue were: • Apologies: Japan has issued numerous official apologies, but doubts remain over their sincerity.8 In particular, official apologies often seem to be contradicted or otherwise invalidated by other controversial statements and actions. • Compensation/reparations: Japan paid extensive reparations under the terms of the various peace treaties signed after the war.9 But many people who feel they should have received personal compensation did not do so. The Japanese government has contested all post-treaty compensation claims using clauses in those treaties that rule out further monetary compensation. This upsets non-Japanese victims, particularly when Japanese perpetrators, such as companies and veterans (via their pensions), are believed to have been compensated before their victims (forced laborers and so-called “comfort women”). This issue is known as “inverted compensation.” 10 In the domestic context, Japanese civilian victims are also active in suing the Japanese government for compensation, particularly for losses endured during air raids. • Gaffes: Japanese politicians or other prominent people in Japanese society (such as celebrities) have made statements over the years that demonstrate a lack of tact, remorse or sincerity regarding past Japanese actions. This ranges from politicians denying any massacres occurred in Nanjing in 1937 to an anime voice actress unwittingly posting comments about her visit to Yasukuni Shrine on a social media account that enrages her Chinese fans.11 • History education: The content of Japanese junior high school textbooks and the nature of Ministry of Education screeners’ advice are subject to international scrutiny. There were textbook crises in 1955, 1982, 1986 and 2001, mostly centered on attempts Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

329

by nationalist historians to have more patriotic education in the school curriculum.12 This, however, is an indication that the war history taught in children’s textbooks is less nationalistic than ardent defenders of Japan’s wars would like it to be. • Yasukuni Shrine: This controversial shrine apotheosizes Japan’s military dead. Visits by politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, particularly on the war end anniversary, attract swift rebukes from neighboring countries. Since the enshrinement of the class A war criminals (in 1978) became public knowledge in 1979, paying respects to the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine has been widely interpreted as honoring war criminals. This interpretation rests heavily on the historical views of the Shrine, which are presented in the nationalistic museum Yūshūkan within the grounds of the Shrine. • Pop culture: Works of popular culture presenting nationalistic positions can trigger backlash when they are deemed to reach a level of consumption and attention that indicates a broader lack of Japanese remorse. Notable examples include the Hating “the Korean Boom” (Kenkanron) manga and best-selling manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori.13 Pop culture has attracted greater attention under the Cool Japan strategy, which cultivates soft power via the global export of manga, anime and other cultural products, but this can backfire when pop culture represents modern wars.14 • Heritage: Japan is proactive in registering its natural and cultural heritage on national and international heritage lists. Registration as UNESCO World Heritage has become a battleground in East Asian politics as countries try to get war-related artifacts (documents relating to the Nanjing massacre, “comfort women,” or kamikaze) registered. The meanings of any modern history site given heritage status are subjected to intense scrutiny, for example the role of forced labor in the Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution (UNESCO World Heritage since 2015).15 The triggers for the history issue on an international level are fundamentally actions by Japanese nationalists or conservatives that are perceived abroad as indicating a lack of national remorse. Controversy in a domestic context, however, can be triggered by anyone expressing forthright views of whichever ideological shade that gain sufficient attention in public discourse and trigger backlash from those with incompatible views. The progressive interlude: 1993–2012 The official position of the Japanese government for most of the postwar has been conservative using the above schema. Critics have argued that if a stable and sincere apologetic official narrative had been forged by the Japanese government, then Japan, like Germany, could have exited its postwar. The Germany-Japan comparison is a complex issue beyond the scope of this chapter.16 But even beyond the difficulties of making a meaningful comparison of German-Japanese war responsibility and responses to it, the problems encountered during the progressive interlude—1993–2012—reveal the formidable hurdles to resolving the history issue via Japanese official contrition. When the LDP was deposed from power in 1993, incoming prime minister Hosokawa Morihiro described the war as an “aggressive war” and a “mistake” shortly after taking office. An Asahi newspaper opinion poll found that 50 percent agreed and 9 percent basically agreed with his comments.17 His apology to South Korea on a visit in 1993 also constituted a

330

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

fundamental shift in style, rhetoric and stance from previous conservative administrations.18 Then, in 1995, in response to the failure of the Diet (parliament) to gain cross-party support for a forthright parliamentary statement on the war, Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi issued a statement including the following: During a certain period in the not-too-distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.19 This became the basis for subsequent prime ministerial statements on the war until it was effectively rescinded two decades later by prime minister Abe Shinzō on August 14, 2015. In a statement clearly intended to move Japan beyond the legacies of the war, part of Abe’s statement read: In Japan, the postwar generations now exceed eighty percent of its population. We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.20 While 40 percent of the public positively valued (hyōka suru) the statement as a whole according an Asahi newspaper opinion poll, 63 percent said they could empathize (kyōkan dekiru) with this particular section about apologies.21 In addition to the nationalists and conservatives within society who reject the need for apologies, the Abe statement exposed the fact that a significant segment of society feels weariness at the open-ended need to apologize. Ironically, the progressive interlude in the official Japanese position unraveled when Japan had its most stable progressive-leaning government of the entire postwar period, namely the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government, 2009–2012. The history issue should have gone smoothly on the DPJ’s watch. In 2010, Prime Minister Kan Naoto delivered a statement on the centenary of the annexation of the Korean peninsula that was even more forthright and apologetic than the Murayama statement; and for the first time since records were kept (from 1985), not a single cabinet minister visited Yasukuni Shrine on August 15th.22 However, the conciliatory mood in East Asian politics was shattered by an incident in which a Chinese trawler captain rammed the Japan Coast Guard near the Senkaku Islands. The DPJ decision to purchase the islands (a measure to prevent purchase by the Tokyo government, led by nationalistic mayor Ishihara Shintarō) sent Sino-Japanese relations to freezing point.23 The second incident involved South Korea. In 2011, the Constitutional Court “found it unconstitutional for the South Korean government to prohibit its own citizens from seeking compensation claims against Japan within the Korean jurisdiction.” 24 This set the South Korean government on a collision course with the Japanese government throughout the 2010s. Japanese corporations operating in South Korea that used Korean labor during the war became

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

331

the target of compensation claims, in spite of the Japanese government’s insistence that the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations resolved finally all such matters. Despite considerable effort, therefore, the DPJ government’s tenure ended with history issues escalating out of control. Moreover, conservatives could argue that the DPJ’s conciliatory approach had yielded no benefits; quite the opposite, it had triggered an even tougher response from Japan’s neighbors. When the DPJ government fell in 2012, the incoming administration of Abe Shinzō felt emboldened to take a tough stance on history. Abe did two things he had not felt able to do during his first tenure as prime minister in 2007: he visited Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 and then effectively tore up the Murayama statement in 2015. The situation that came to pass echoed the prescient analysis of Jennifer Lind, who suggested that “perpetrator countries wishing to reconcile with former adversaries should search for a middle ground that is contrite enough to placate former adversaries abroad, but not so much that it triggers backlash from nationalists at home.” 25 Saito Hiro, meanwhile, has argued that “while Japan needs to embrace a greater degree of contrition first, South Korea and China will have to meet Japan halfway.” 26 Elements of both arguments can be seen in the collapse of the progressive interlude. It is possible that a future progressive-leaning Japanese government would try again the path of reconciliation, but nationalists in all countries with little interest in sacrificing parts of the perceived national interest—whether territory, pride, financial claims, political bargaining chips or the moral high ground—have abundant means at their disposal for sowing mistrust, derailing reconciliation and thereby preventing an exit from Asia’s postwar.

The meanings of August 15th The postwar itself is a political construct. It was never naturally ordained that August 15th was the war end. Instead, it was created in Japan as the symbolic end, and thereby shapes the meanings of the postwar. Alternatively, the war end could be considered to be August 14, when Japan informed the Allies that it accepted the Potsdam Declaration. However, marking that anniversary could emphasize “surrender” over “war end.” Or, the war end could fall on any one of a number of later dates. In Karafuto (modern-day Sakhalin) fighting continued until 25 August. Karafuto was a settler colony that became a full prefecture in 1943, meaning that combat actually continued in naichi (Mainland Japan) for ten days after the supposed war end.27 The Soviet Army then continued its advance into the Kurile Island chain even after the signing of the official surrender on September 2, which is a key factor in the Japanese government’s call for the return of what Japan calls the Northern Territories. Recognizing September 2 as the war end would weaken Japanese claims that the Soviet occupation of the Southern Kuriles was an illegal postwar occupation. Beyond official ends, there are unofficial ends, too. The deaths of Japanese soldiers continued for years after August 1945, whether in Siberian labor camps (around ten percent of the six hundred thousand soldiers and civilians interned did not survive), Allied POW camps or as criminals executed after war crimes trials. Yasukuni Shrine apotheosizes those executed as war criminals, such as wartime prime minister Tōjō Hideki (executed December 23, 1948). In the nationalist Yasukuni reckoning, therefore, rather than executed criminals they are the war dead, albeit from 1948. Then, many Japanese soldiers and units fought— some voluntarily, others not—in the wars sparked by the end of the war, such as the Chinese

332

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

civil war and the Indonesian war of independence against the Dutch.28 The longest personal wars, however, were of the stragglers, who evaded capture or surrender after 1945. Dozens were found in the 1950s, and four were even found on Guam, Lubang and Morotai in 1972 and 1974.29 None of these alternative dates, however, had the symbolic weight of noon on August 15th. For many people, what they were doing when they heard the emperor’s broadcast is indelibly etched in their memories. Consequently, August 15th was the obvious candidate for a national day of commemorations. But it also appropriated the sentiments of the emperor’s radio address into the construction of postwar commemorations. The address is the blueprint for the postwar official conservative narrative as expressed in prime ministers’ speeches on August 15th and in the 2015 Abe statement: we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. …the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable. …We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire toward the emancipation of East Asia. The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, and those who met with death and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day.30 However, the construction of August 15th was not immediate. There were national ceremonies to commemorate the war dead in 1952 and 1959. But it was not until 1963 (well after the first attempt to declare the end of the postwar in 1956) that commemorations at noon on August 15th became an annual event attended by the emperor, prime minister, leading politicians and representatives of the bereaved families. In 1963 it was held at Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya Public Hall. The following year it was held within the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine (the only time since 1945 an emperor has visited Yasukuni Shrine on August 15th).31 Since 1965 the ceremony has taken place at Budōkan Hall. Built for the 1964 Olympics, Budōkan Hall is flanked on four sides by the Imperial Palace, Chidorigafuji Cemetery (established 1959, where the unidentified remains of Japanese soldiers are buried), Yasukuni Shrine and the Showakan museum (since 1999, discussed below). The contemporary shape of the war end anniversary (shūsen kinenbi) was constructed—politically, architecturally, geographically— from the early 1960s. Furthermore, the construction is inherently conservative. The purpose of the ceremony on August 15th is to mourn Japan’s military war dead, and not civilian victims or the victims of other countries. The official Japanese name for August 15th since 1982 has been “Day to Mourn the War Dead and Pray for Peace” (Senbotsusha wo Tsuitō shi, Heiwa wo Kinen suru Hi).32 Nevertheless, this ceremony had a progressive interlude, too, in tandem with the broader progressive interlude described above. This period was initiated by Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro in 1993, when he “was the first Japanese prime minister to refer to war victims in other Asian countries at the memorial service.” 33 Hosokawa’s views that the war was aggressive and his expressions of remorse on August 15th did not sit well with nationalists, conservatives and the Izokukai (War Bereaved Association), which issued Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

333

a statement of protest in October saying that the war was one of self-defense.34 In this view, state mourning of loved ones who had sacrificed their lives serving the emperor and empire was sullied by apologetic references to others. However, Hosokawa’s precedent proved hard to change, even by conservative prime ministers such as Koizumi Jun’ichirō, who worshipped (sanpai) at Yasukuni Shrine during his time in office from 2001 until 2006, in the face of widespread domestic and international criticism. However, beginning in 2013 Prime Minister Abe discontinued expressions of hansei to Asian neighbors following the collapse of the progressive interlude. In response, beginning in 2015 Emperor Akihito started using the phrase fukai hansei (deep remorse) in his address at the ceremony (a practice continued by Emperor Naruhito) in a pointed reminder of what had been omitted from the prime minister’s address.35 Ultimately, all war anniversaries marked with events and ceremonies are political constructs designed to shape memories of the past in a particular way. Collectively, Japanese society—and the media plays a particularly significant role here alongside national and local government—has constructed the custom of observing the Battle of Okinawa (June 23) and the bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) as the key anniversaries alongside August 15th. The result, particularly in televised commemorations, is heavy emphasis on defeat and the suffering concentrated in the closing months of the war.36 The somber mood is amplified because the war end anniversary coincides with the O-bon season, when ancestors are remembered. The focus on Japanese suffering might provide an oasis of relative national unity amidst the bitterly contested interpretations of Japanese war actions and responsibility. But it also reveals how official commemorations subtly promote a conservative postwar mindset revolving around the meanings of August 15th. Nationalistic war commemorations in other countries typically take place on veterans’ days, victory anniversaries or independence days. Germany has Volkstrauertag, a “people’s day of mourning” in mid-November which is more progressive in nature for remembering all victims of war. But Japan commemorates its war end. This has not always been the case and, indeed, it will not necessarily always be this way. In the 1920s, in the aftermath of the First World War, Japan observed Armistice Day.37 It could be argued that Japan will exit its postwar when August 15th stops being the focal point for discourses of war and peace in Japanese society.

Japan’s “non-postwar” The war end anniversary is not only a political construction. It is also the starting point of the myth of the postwar in the meaning of “not during a war now.” While Japan has indisputably been far less involved in wars since 1945 than other military powers of equivalent size, Japan has been supplier, forward staging post, financier and political supporter of many wars under the US-Japan Alliance, and been peacekeeper wearing the blue helmets of the United Nations. Article 9 of the 1947 constitution states “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained,” but through various “interpretations” of the constitution, the modern Japan Self-Defense Forces have developed into a high-tech fighting force of 250,000 personnel.38 Similarly, the phrase “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” in Article 9 has been “interpreted” to mean that Japan can provide material support to wars by others. This situation started covertly in the Korean war, but was

334

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

ultimately formalized in the controversial 2015 bills called Japan’s Legislation for Peace and Security (also sometimes referred to as the collective self-defense bills).39 The participation of Imperial Army soldiers who had not yet been demobilized or repatriated in post-1945 conflicts (such as China and Indonesia, mentioned above) cannot be categorized as a war involving Japan, the sovereign state. The first post-1945 war in which Japan had direct involvement was the Korean War, which broke out in June 1950. Japan supplied equipment and materiel for the US-led U.N. war effort. The wartime procurement boom is widely credited with lifting the Japanese economy out of the doldrums after the privations of the early Occupation years. Furthermore, Japan was used as a forward staging post for the war. However, the role of Japanese in the combat zone is much less well known. A mine explosion sank a Japanese minesweeper operating secretly off the Korean peninsula, resulting in the first postwar fatality of a Japanese serviceman on active duty.40 There was also the little-known use of Japanese troops. Much remains shrouded in secrecy, but Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s ground-breaking research documented Japanese nationals fighting on both sides in the Korean War, whether attached to American units or fighting in Chinese units for North Korea.41 The Korean War set the template for Japan’s involvement in wars through to the 1990s. The public was fiercely opposed to direct involvement, but often out of the public gaze Japan offered considerable support to its American ally. Morris-Suzuki writes, “the outsourcing of military tasks to private companies, which was to be such a future staple of later wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, was already becoming established in the US-Japan military relationship during the Korean War.” 42 This collusion even extended to covertly allowing nuclear weapons to pass through Japan in contravention of Japan’s publicly-stated three nonnuclear principles.43 The pattern was repeated during the Vietnam War. An extensive civil society movement (Beheiren—the Citizens’ Alliance for Peace in Vietnam) vocally opposing the war began in 1965, although it did “not have a palpable impact on Japanese government policy vis-à-vis the Vietnam War.” 44 Japan remained an important forward base from which the Vietnam War was conducted. One legacy of this involvement in Okinawa was uncovered well after the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972: a poisonous hazard in the form of abandoned chemicals and defoliants leaking into the environment from American bases.45 The next major event of Japan’s “non-postwar” was the 1991 Gulf War. Japan was now the world’s number two economy. When the US-led coalition was formed to drive Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, domestic opposition again prevented troops from being deployed. Instead, Japan bankrolled the war effort to the tune of thirteen billion dollars.46 However, stinging criticism of this checkbook approach to international diplomacy was instrumental in the PKO bill of 1992. Under this law, Japanese troops could be deployed in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations wearing the blue helmet. From the mid-1990s, Japanese troops operated in the Golan Heights and other hotspots. The next level of escalation came during the 2003 second Gulf War, when Japanese ships were sent to help in refueling and resupply missions as well as minesweeping. When Iraq was defeated and occupied, Japanese troops were sent to Samawa, “the first time since World War II that Japan ha[d] sent forces to a combat zone.” 47 By the time of another upgrading of Japan’s war-making capabilities in 2015 with the passing of the collective self-defense laws, “Japan’s new realism” meant that “Japan is once again becoming a military player of some significance in Asia, as well as a political force.” 48

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

335

In addition to these overseas troop deployments, the Japanese military is on continuous alert in its disputed borderlands. Chinese incursions into the waters around the Senkaku Islands and Russian sorties over Japan’s northern airspace mean that in the 2020s Japanese forces are scrambled to patrol Japanese territory on an almost daily basis. It will not take much for a minor incident or mistake by one side for a dangerous escalation to occur. Finally in this section on Japan’s non-postwar, mention should be made of the so-called Battle of Amami-Ōshima, or the Spy Ship Incident of December 22, 2001. A suspected North Korean spy vessel was chased and sunk by the Japanese Coast Guard with the loss of 15 lives.49 The dividing line between Japan being in its non-postwar era and a new prewar era or even wartime era is often very fine indeed.

From postwar to post-empire While the term used routinely in the Japanese media is sengo, postwar, arguably the term should be post-empire. It is instructive in the citation from the emperor’s address above that he referred to “the Empire” and not “Japan.” The wars fought by the Japanese Empire that ended in 1945 did not simply begin on August 8, 1945 (Soviet Union), December 8, 1941 (USA, UK, the Netherlands), July 7, 1937 (China), or even September 18, 1931 (China). The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific was the culmination of a century-long imperial struggle for power in Asia. Historians on both the nationalist (for example, Hayashi Fusao) and progressive (for example, Ienaga Saburo) wings of Japanese war history and responsibility debates point to the importance of the Opium Wars (1840–1842), western imperial advances into Asia, and the direct threat to Japan from ships making incursions into Japanese waters (up to and including Perry’s Black Ships of 1853) as critical for understanding why Japan sought to build an empire and fought the wars that culminated in defeat in 1945.50 In short, the Japanese Empire was defeated, not Japan; it is not simply the postwar but the post-empire. The large-scale research project “The dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the struggle for legitimacy in postwar East Asia, 1945–1965” focuses on precisely this point. Highlighting the processes of “deimperialization,” project leader Barak Kushner notes: “We cannot and should not just fold such a complex moment away with the brusque terms of defeat and postwar.” 51 The project charts across multiple books and publications how recriminations began in areas that had been occupied by the Japanese between those who were seen to have resisted the aggressor and those deemed to have collaborated. Across Asia, scores were settled, people were displaced, and new power structures emerged. The prevalent framing in Japanese media of the experience of sengo as primarily an ethnic Japanese experience, therefore, all too often erases people from Korea, Taiwan and other occupied areas who experienced the war as imperial subjects with Japanese names and in Japanese uniforms.52 This erasure is not simply an academic problem of narrative or framing. It feeds directly into key themes within the history issue because the transition from multiethnic Japanese Empire to postwar nation-state had practical consequences. For Taiwanese and Korean veterans it meant loss of any rights that their ethnic Japanese counterparts ultimately received in the forms of military pensions and other benefits, even if they still had to face justice in Allied war crimes tribunals for their crimes committed “as Japanese” (such as POW abuse).53 It also created conflict over commemorative practices as relatives of Koreans and Taiwanese

336

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

who died in the war sought to have their relatives removed from enshrinement at Yasukuni Shrine. They were told, however, that removal was impossible because they died “as Japanese.” 54 And civilians could find themselves stuck on the wrong side of borders in the wake of defeat, such as Koreans in Karafuto who got stuck in Soviet Sakhalin and were unable to repatriate until decades later.55 All these were consequences of the break-up of the empire for Japanese imperial subjects suddenly being treated as foreign nationals. However, the political construct of the postwar marginalizes all these issues. The official, conservative version of the postwar Japanese nation-state starts with people kneeling distraught in front of the imperial palace on August 15th as they listen to the emperor’s radio address, and continues with repatriation from foreign lands, life in burnt out cities and slow but sure recovery starting during the Occupation period. This is the narrative constructed by museums such as Showakan, a museum funded by central government and run by the War Bereaved Association that depicts life on the home front.56 Consequently, as Japan has built its post-1945 relations with China and South Korea, its two main antagonists in the history issue, it has had to address two completely different forms of responsibility. With China it is war responsibility for invasion, massacre, human experimentation in Unit 731, chemical warfare and other war crimes committed against Chinese. With South Korea it is colonial responsibility for annexation, assimilationist policies and forced labor (covering military service, industrial labor in mines and factories, and sexual labor in “comfort stations”). For former imperial subjects in particular, there is the additional grievance of abandonment, namely becoming ineligible for benefits stemming from service as imperial subjects before August 15, 1945 because they became foreign nationals after the war. A post-empire framework has one other consequence of significance. It recognizes that the imperial project embarked upon by Japan after the Meiji Restoration should treat Hokkaido and Okinawa as the first imperial acquisitions.57 The Ainu people and the Ryukyuan Kingdom were linguistically, culturally and politically distinct from Japan until the mid-19th century, when they were forcibly incorporated into the Meiji State as colonies. Their peoples were subjected to assimilation just as would be attempted later in Taiwan and Korea. However, with decades of extra time to complete the colonization project, Hokkaido and Okinawa were “successfully” (from an imperialist standpoint) absorbed within Japan. They were the colonies that did not gain independence in 1945. In this sense, Japan is non-post-empire in the same way as it is non-postwar. The contemporary multi-ethnic Japanese state—as Sasaki Toshikazu puts it “one archipelago, two states [Japan, Ryukyu], three cultures [Japan, Ryukyu, Ainu]”—remains a thoroughly imperial construct.58

Multiple postwars The final challenge to the idea of the postwar is simply to say that the three quarters of a century since 1945 cannot be considered a unitary period of Japanese history. War memories always exist within the contemporary political, social and cultural context. This has changed markedly over time. The broad contours of the postwar may be subdivided as follows: • Occupation, 1945–1952: War responsibility discourses began against the backdrop of American occupation, media censorship, the Tokyo Trials and the San Francisco Peace Treaty. There was considerable backlash against the military and veterans were

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

337

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

338

often “despised.” 59 War responsibility debates revolved around who was responsible for crushing defeat. Recovery, 1952–1964: Economic recovery began amidst the Korean War boom. The beginning of LDP rule in 1955 coincided with a rehabilitation of conservative narratives in textbooks and popular culture, such as the Senkimono (war story) publishing boom in the 1950s.60 By the time of the 1964 Olympics, the economic miracle was well underway. The Olympics, combined with the lifting of restrictions on overseas travel by Japanese, was the symbolic rejoining of the international community. Hitherto, war discourses had been fundamentally a domestic affair. Restoring ties, 1965–1972: Japan restored diplomatic relations with South Korea (1965) and China (1972). The Vietnam War and reengagement with China precipitated increasing examination of Japanese atrocities in Asia. In May 1972, Okinawa reverted to Japan after its twenty-seven years as an American “colony.” 61 This brought the complexities of Okinawan war memories back into Japanese war memories. Conservatism and (over)confidence, 1973–1988: Japan overtook West Germany to become the world’s number two economy by gross domestic product (GDP) in 1968. Amidst growing economic confidence, nihonjinron (“theories of the Japanese”) discourse mirrored conservative confidence in history issues. However, the 1982 textbook crisis triggered the internationalization of the history issue. Nakasone Yasuhiro’s “official worship” (kōshiki sanpai) at Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 1985, meanwhile, generated such controversy that it brought to an end the hitherto almost annual visits to the Shrine by prime ministers during the Shrine’s spring and autumn festivals (reitaisai).62 The year 1989: It was a landmark turning point for multiple reasons: a) The death of Emperor Hirohito ended the reign of Japan’s wartime monarch. It was a time for reflections on his reign and responsibility; b) the Tiananmen Square incident deeply affected Japanese views of China. The period of warming ties and cooperation in the early 1980s, signified by the emotional returns of Japanese war orphans (zanryū koji) raised by Chinese foster families, was tested by the textbook and Yasukuni issues in 1982 and 1985. However, the quashing of pro-democracy activists in Beijing ushered in a period of mutual distrust; and c) the fall of the Berlin Wall broke the Cold War backdrop to the emerging history issue and sped the break-up of the Soviet Union. Progressive breakthrough, 1990–2000: With a new emperor working towards reconciliation, the eruption of the “comfort women” issue in 1992, and the fall from power of the LDP in 1993, the stage was set for Japan’s progressive interlude. The latter half of the decade featured a crisis of confidence triggered by the Hanshin Earthquake and Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, and the bursting of the bubble economy. A nationalist campaign, focusing particularly on removing mentions of the “comfort women” from history textbooks, gathered pace in the late 1990s. The Koizumi Crisis, 2001–2006: Koizumi Jun’ichirō’s annual worship at Yasukuni Shrine and the textbook issue of 2001 ushered in a testing period in Sino-Japanese and Korean-Japanese relations, with large-scale anti-Japanese protests in China in 2005. However, the official position on the war remained based on the progressive 1995 Murayama statement. High point of official progressivism, 2007–2010: A period of diplomatic relations repair followed Koizumi’s tenure, and then the DPJ government’s management of the war Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

end anniversary in 2010 (no worship by cabinet ministers at Yasukuni Shrine and the Kan statement marking the centenary of the annexation of Korea) marked the apex of Japanese official attempts to resolve the history issue via progressivism. • Shocks and the reversion to conservatism, 2011–2019: The intensification of the Senkaku Islands dispute from September 2010 (trawler boat ramming incident) coincided with news that China had overtaken Japan to become the world’s number two economy by GDP. The history issue would no longer be managed with Japan as the biggest economic power in East Asia, and Chinese assertiveness was increasing noticeably. The Tohoku earthquake and nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 infused war memories as a war-like disaster, particularly in relation to radioactive exposure, the complete destruction of urban areas (reminiscent of air raids) and the instigation of a commemoration ceremony bearing close similarities to the August 15th commemorations.63 Abe Shinzō’s statement of August 14, 2015 marked a definitive end to the progressive interlude in the official position. • War memories during the pandemic, 2020–: Connections were made between the pandemic and war, both in instances of death through disease during wartime and in terms of the restrictions on ordinary life. As can be seen in this brief overview, which only scratches the surface of the complexity of war discourses in Japan during the postwar, there have been many ebbs and flows in the political and media arenas. The postwar is certainly not a unitary period. The shifts between periods of conservative and progressive prominence, whether in public discourse or international relations, has depended on many factors, often completely unconnected to war. In both 1993 and 2009, governments with more progressive views were elected into power, but these electoral victories owed little to history issues. On both occasions, fatigue at ruling LDP scandals were decisive. Ultimately, since 2015 conservatives have reasserted their grip over the official narrative, which they have held for most of the postwar. The progressive interlude revealed both the vulnerabilities of progressive approaches to the history issue at the diplomatic level in the face of strong nationalisms in other countries, and also the ease with which conservatives and nationalists in Japan can undermine or sabotage a progressive official narrative. However, if there is something of consistency throughout the postwar, it is the basic patterns of moral reasoning regarding Japan’s wars that underpin all discourses of war and peace among the Japanese people. People of all the key types of historical consciousness—nationalist, conservative, progressive-leaning and progressive—can be seen throughout the postwar, albeit as shifting proportions of the population and with the “don’t knows and don’t cares” increasing in number as those born after the war become the overwhelming majority. But perhaps what this chapter has demonstrated above all else is the extent to which the very concept of the postwar has played a powerful, yet largely subconscious, role in the course of Japanese cultural and political life since 1945. The political construction of August 15th and the construction of a nation-centric postwar discourse rather than a transnational post-empire discourse have been instrumental to the political strength of conservative views. The ability to frame the discourse via the adoption and definition of key terminology is a well-recognized phenomenon in politics. The word sengo, postwar, and its construction based on the meanings of August 15, 1945, is one such example of the phenomenon.

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

339

Notes 1

Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 72. See also John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 559. 2 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu. East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence (London: Routledge, 2015). 3 Barak Kushner, “Introduction: The Search for Meaning in Defeat and Victory,” in In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia, ed. Barak Kushner and Andrew Levidis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020). 4 Andrew Gordon, “Conclusion,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 449–52. 5 Philip A. Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories: The “Memory Rifts” in Historical Consciousness of World War II (London: Routledge, 2007), 20–28. 6 Hiro Saito, The History Problem: The Politics of War Commemoration in East Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 10. 7 Akiko Hashimoto, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 124. 8 See Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 84–89. 9 “60 Years: The Path of a Nation Striving for Global Peace,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 2005, accessed September 14, 2021, https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/pamph60.pdf. 10 Yukiko Koga, “Inverted Compensation: Wartime Forced Labor and Post-Imperial Reckoning,” in Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, eds Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). 11 Yoshibumi Wakamiya. The Postwar Conservative View of Asia: How the Political Right Has Delayed Japan’s Coming to Terms With its History of Aggression in Asia (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999), 10–15; Philip Seaton and Takayoshi Yamamura, “Yasukuni Shrine’s Yūshūkan Museum as a Site of Contents Tourism,” in War as Entertainment and Contents Tourism in Japan, eds Takayoshi Yamamura and Philip Seaton (London: Routledge, 2022). 12 Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, “Japanese Textbook Controversies, Nationalism, and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-national Conflicts,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 7, Issue 24, Number 5 (2009). https://apjjf.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki--Mark-Selden/3173/article.pdf. 13 Hironori Sasada, “Youth and Nationalism in Japan,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 26, no. 2 (Summer–Fall 2006): 118. 14 Seaton and Yamamura, “Yasukuni.” 15 Edward Vickers, “Slaves to Rival Nationalisms: UNESCO and the Politics of ‘Comfort Women’ Commemoration.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 19, Issue 5, Number 5 (2021). https://apjjf.org/-Edward—Vickers/5546/article.pdf. 16 Seaton, Contested War Memories, 78–83. 17 Yoshida Yutaka, Nihonjin no sensōkan: sengoshi no naka no henyō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995), 3. 18 Wakamiya, Postwar Conservative View of Asia, 247. 19 Tomiichi Murayama, “Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama ‘On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the War’s End’,” August 15, 1995, https://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508 .html. 20 Shinzō Abe, “Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” August 14, 2015, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe /statement/201508/0814statement.html. 21 Asahi shinbun, “Abe danwa ‘hyōka’ 40 percent,” Asahi shinbun, August 25 (morning edition), 2015, 1. 22 Philip Seaton, “NHK, War-related Television, and the Politics of Fairness,” in Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan, ed. Jeff Kingston (London: Routledge, 2017), 175. 23 Reinhard Drifte, “The Japan-China Confrontation Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands: Between ‘Shelving’ and ‘Dispute Escalation’,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 12, Issue 30, Number 3 (2014). https:// apjjf.org/2014/12/30/Reinhard-Drifte/4154/article.html. 24 Koga, “Inverted Compensation,” 190. 25 Lind, Sorry States, 197.

340

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

26

Saito, History Problem, 180. Svetlana Paichadze and Philip Seaton, eds., Voices from the Shifting Russo-Japanese Border: Karafuto/ Sakhalin (London: Routledge, 2015). 28 Around 30,000 soldiers were recruited into the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. See Tessa MorrisSuzuki, “Post-War Warriors: Japanese Combatants in the Korean War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 10, Issue 31, Number 1 (2012): 9. https://apjjf.org/2012/10/31/Tessa-Morris-Suzuki/3803/article.html. A few hundred Japanese joined the Indonesian war of independence against the Dutch, as depicted in the nationalistic 2001 Japanese film Murudeka. See Ethan Mark, Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 294. 29 Beatrice Trefalt, Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 (London: Routledge, 2003), 2. 30 Emperor Hirohito, “Emperor Hirohito’s Radio Address on August 15, 1945,” accessed September 11, 2021, https://pearlharbor.org/hirohito-radio-address/. 31 Kōshitsu Sokuhō Online, “Ryōheika, zenkoku senbotsusha tsuitōshiki ni go-rinseki,” posted August 15, 2021, https://imperialnews.net/archives/501. 32 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, “Zenkoku senbotsusha tsuitōshiki ni tsuite,” February 1, 2001, https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/tuitou/dai2/siryo2_2.html. 33 Wakamiya, Postwar Conservative View of Asia, 254. 34 Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 84. 35 Asahi shinbun, “Ayamachi nido to; tennō heika ‘taisen ni fukai hansei’; shusho, kagai sekinin mata furezu,” Asahi shinbun, August 15 (evening edition), 2015, 1. 36 Seaton, Contested War Memories, 95–117; Seaton, “Politics of Fairness.” 37 Frederick R. Dickinson, “Commemorating the War in Post-Versailles Japan,” in The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, eds John W. Steinberg et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 530. 38 “The Constitution of Japan,” Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, promulgated on September 3, 1946. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. 39 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Development of Security Legislation,” April 12, 2016, https://www.mofa.go.jp /fp/nsp/page1we_000084.html. 40 Garren Mulloy, “Ordered to Disarm, Encouraged to Rearm: Japan’s Struggles with the Postwar,” in In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia, eds Barak Kushner and Andrew Levidis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020), 145. 41 Morris-Suzuki, “Post-War Warriors.” 42 Morris-Suzuki, “Post-War Warriors,” 13. 43 Steve Rabson, “Six Decades of US-Japanese Government Collusion in Bringing Nuclear Weapons to Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 19, Issue 4, Number 3 (2021). https://apjjf.org/2021/14 /Rabson.html. 44 Simon Andrew Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010), 107. 45 Jon Mitchell, “Vietnam: Okinawa’s Forgotten War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 13, Issue 16, Number 1 (2015): 6. https://apjjf.org/-Jon-Mitchell/4308/article.pdf. 46 Michael Auslin, “Japan’s New Realism: Abe Gets Tough,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 95, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 127. 47 Dumeetha Luthra, “Warm Welcome for Japan’s Iraq Troops,” BBC, February 19, 2004. http://news.bbc.co .uk/2/hi/middle_east/3502471.stm. 48 Auslin, “Japan’s New Realism,” 134. 49 BBC, “Japan Says ‘Spy Ship’ Fired Rockets,” BBC, December 25, 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia -pacific/1727867.stm. 50 Philip Seaton, “Japanese Society at War: History and Memory,” in The Routledge History of the Second World War, ed. Paul R. Bartrop (London: Routledge, 2022). See also Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2021). 51 Kushner, “Introduction,” 5. 27

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

341

52

On Korean and Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese military, see Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People, trans. Ethan Mark (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 135–49. 53 Aiko Utsumi, Ikemi Nakamura and Heong-yun Gil, “Lee Hak Rae, the Korean Connection and ‘Japanese’ War Crimes on the Burma-Thai Railway,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 5, Issue 8 (2007). https://apjjf.org/-Aiko-Utsumi/2505/article.html. 54 Tetsuya Takahashi, “The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine,” trans. Philip Seaton, in Nationalisms in Japan, ed. Naoko Shimazu (London: Routledge, 2006), 176. 55 Yulia Din, “Dreams of Returning to the Homeland: Koreans in Karafuto and Sakhalin,” in Voices from the Shifting Russo-Japanese Border: Karafuto/Sakhalin, eds Svetlana Paichadze and Philip A. Seaton (London: Routledge, 2015). 56 Seaton, “Japanese Society at War.” 57 Philip Seaton, “Japanese Empire in Hokkaido,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, November 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.76. 58 Sasaki Toshikazu, “Hitotsu no rettō, futatsu no kokka, mittsu no bunka,” Gakujutsu no dōkō 16, no. 9 (2011). https://doi.org/10.5363/tits.16.9_70. 59 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 58–62. 60 Yoshida, Nihonjin no sensōkan, 112–15. 61 Mitchell, “Vietnam,” 1. 62 For a full list of imperial and prime ministerial visits to the Shrine (to 2004), see Watanabe Tsuneo and Wakamiya Yoshibumi, Yasukuni to Koizumi shushō (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2006), 88–91. 63 Philip Seaton, “Japanese War Memories and Commemoration after the Great East Japan Earthquake,” in Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, eds Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (London: Routledge, 2016).

References Abe, Shinzō. “Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.” August 14, 2015. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe /statement/201508/0814statement.html. Asahi shinbun. “Ayamachi nido to; tennō heika ‘taisen ni fukai hansei’; shusho, kagai sekinin mata furezu.” Asahi shinbun, August 15 (evening edition), 2015. ———. “Abe danwa ‘hyōka’ 40 percent.” Asahi shinbun, August 25 (morning edition), 2015. Auslin, Michael. “Japan’s New Realism: Abe Gets Tough.” Foreign Affairs Vol. 95, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 125–34. Avenell, Simon Andrew. Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010. BBC. “Japan Says ‘Spy Ship’ Fired Rockets.” BBC, December 25, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia -pacific/1727867.stm. Dickinson, Frederick R. “Commemorating the War in Post-Versailles Japan.” In The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, edited by John W. Steinberg et al., 523–43. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Din, Yulia. “Dreams of Returning to the Homeland: Koreans in Karafuto and Sakhalin.” In Voices from the Shifting Russo-Japanese Border: Karafuto/Sakhalin, edited by Svetlana Paichadze and Philip A. Seaton, 177–94. London: Routledge, 2015. Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Drifte, Reinhard, “The Japan-China Confrontation Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands: Between ‘Shelving’ and ‘Dispute Escalation’.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 12, Issue 30, Number 3 (2014). https://apjjf.org/2014/12/30/Reinhard-Drifte/4154/article.html. Emperor Hirohito. “Emperor Hirohito’s Radio Address on August 15, 1945.” Accessed September 11, 2021. https://pearlharbor.org/hirohito-radio-address/. Gluck, Carol. “The Past in the Present.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 64–95. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Gordon, Andrew. “Conclusion.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 449–464. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

342

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Hashimoto, Akiko. The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Koga, Yukiko. “Inverted Compensation: Wartime Forced Labor and Post-Imperial Reckoning.” In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, edited by Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, 181–95. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Kōshitsu Sokuhō Online. “Ryōheika, zenkoku senbotsusha tsuitōshiki ni go-rinseki.” Posted August 15, 2021. https://imperialnews.net/archives/501. Kushner, Barak. “Introduction: The Search for Meaning in Defeat and Victory.” In In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia, edited by Barak Kushner and Andrew Levidis, 1–24. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020. Lind, Jennifer. Sorry States: Apologies in International Relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Luthra, Dumeetha. “Warm Welcome for Japan’s Iraq Troops.” BBC, February 19, 2004. http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3502471.stm. Mark, Ethan. Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “60 Years: The Path of a Nation Striving for Global Peace.” July 2005. https:// www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/pamph60.pdf. ———. “Development of Security Legislation.” April 12, 2016. https://www.mofa.go.jp/fp/nsp/ page1we_000084.html. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “Zenkoku senbotsusha tsuitōshiki ni tsuite.” February 1, 2001. https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/tuitou/dai2/siryo2_2.html. Mitchell, Jon. “Vietnam: Okinawa’s Forgotten War.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 13, Issue 16, Number 1 (2015). https://apjjf.org/-Jon-Mitchell/4308/article.pdf. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Post-War Warriors: Japanese Combatants in the Korean War.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 10, Issue 31, Number 1 (2012). https://apjjf.org/2012/10/31/Tessa-Morris-Suzuki /3803/article.html. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu. East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence. London: Routledge, 2015. Mulloy, Garren. “Ordered to Disarm, Encouraged to Rearm: Japan’s Struggles with the Postwar.” In In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia, edited by Barak Kushner and Andrew Levidis, 139–60. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020. Murayama, Tomiichi. “Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama ‘On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the War’s End’.” August 15, 1995. https://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508 .html. Nozaki, Yoshiko and Mark Selden. “Japanese Textbook Controversies, Nationalism, and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-national Conflicts.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 7, Issue 24, Number 5 (2009). https://apjjf.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki--Mark-Selden/3173/article.pdf. Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931–1945. London: Allen Lane, 2021. Paichadze, Svetlana and Philip Seaton, eds. Voices from the Shifting Russo-Japanese Border: Karafuto/Sakhalin. London: Routledge, 2015. Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet. “The Constitution of Japan.” Promulgated on September 3, 1946. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. Rabson, Steve. “Six Decades of US-Japanese Government Collusion in Bringing Nuclear Weapons to Japan.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 19, Issue 4, Number 3 (2021). https://apjjf.org/2021/14 /Rabson.html. Saito, Hiro. The History Problem: The Politics of War Commemoration in East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. Sasada, Hironori. “Youth and Nationalism in Japan.” SAIS Review of International Affairs 26, no. 2 (Summer– Fall 2006): 109–22. Sasaki, Toshikazu. “Hitotsu no rettō, futatsu no kokka, mittsu no bunka.” Gakujutsu no dōkō 16, no. 9 (2011): 70–78. https://doi.org/10.5363/tits.16.9_70. Seaton, Philip A. Japan’s Contested War Memories: The “Memory Rifts” in Historical Consciousness of World War II. London: Routledge, 2007.

Chapter 19: Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar”

343

———. “Japanese War Memories and Commemoration after the Great East Japan Earthquake.” In Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, edited by Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen, 345–56. London: Routledge, 2016. ———. “NHK, War-related Television, and the Politics of Fairness.” In Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan, edited by Jeff Kingston, 172–85. London: Routledge, 2017. ———. “Japanese Empire in Hokkaido.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, November 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.76. ———. “Japanese Society at War: History and Memory.” In The Routledge History of the Second World War, edited by Paul R. Bartrop. London: Routledge, 2022. Seaton, Philip and Takayoshi Yamamura. “Yasukuni Shrine’s Yūshūkan Museum as a Site of Contents Tourism.” In War as Entertainment and Contents Tourism in Japan, edited by Takayoshi Yamamura and Philip Seaton. London: Routledge, 2022. Seraphim, Franziska. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. Takahashi, Tetsuya. “The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine.” Translated by Philip Seaton. In Nationalisms in Japan, edited by Naoko Shimazu, 155–80. London: Routledge, 2006. Trefalt, Beatrice. Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975. London: Routledge, 2003. Utsumi, Aiko, Ikemi Nakamura and Heong-yun Gil. “Lee Hak Rae, the Korean Connection and ‘Japanese’ War Crimes on the Burma-Thai Railway.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 5, Issue 8 (2007). https://apjjf.org/-Aiko-Utsumi/2505/article.html. Vickers, Edward. “Slaves to Rival Nationalisms: UNESCO and the Politics of ‘Comfort Women’ Commemoration.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 19, Issue 5, Number 5 (2021). https://apjjf.org/ -Edward--Vickers/5546/article.pdf. Wakamiya, Yoshibumi. The Postwar Conservative View of Asia: How the Political Right Has Delayed Japan’s Coming to Terms With its History of Aggression in Asia. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999. Watanabe, Tsuneo and Wakamiya Yoshibumi. Yasukuni to Koizumi shushō. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2006. Yoshida, Yutaka. Nihonjin no sensōkan: sengoshi no naka no henyō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People. Translated by Ethan Mark. New York: Columbia University Press, 201.

344

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Chapter 20 Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era Eiji Oguma In 1993, Carol Gluck argued that Japan’s “long postwar” was distinctive, and that Japanese people clung to the “postwar” to express contentment with the status quo of democracy, peace and prosperity. This chapter shows the analysis is not valid in the Heisei era. After the mid-1990s, Japan’s political and cultural elites, faced with Japan’s diplomatic and economic stagnation, began to criticize the idea of the “postwar” in order to disrupt the status quo. The general public of the 2010s, on the other hand, viewed territorial disputes, the presence of US military bases and memories of the war as reasons why the “postwar” era was still continuing,

Introduction In January 1989, the Showa Emperor, Hirohito, died and the Heisei Emperor, Akihito, took the throne. Nineteen eighty-nine was also the year that the Cold War ended. In other words, the Heisei era (1989–2019) overlapped with the post-Cold War era. Furthermore, within Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party having been in power since 1955, lost power in 1993, and the so-called 1955 System that was the domestic manifestation of the Cold War in Japan, ended. Thereafter, a generation of politicians who had not experienced WWII ascended to the post of prime minister. However, Japanese mass media and intellectuals continued to use the word “postwar” (sengo) even in the Heisei era and beyond. Every time an important event occurred, such as the earthquake in and around Kobe city in 1995, the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the change in security policy in 2015, or the Covid-19 pandemic starting in 2020, the mass media described these as “the first time in the postwar [era]” or “the turning point of the postwar [era].” What remains uninvestigated, however, is how the Japanese people of the Heisei era actually perceived the “postwar.” In this chapter I investigate this issue from three angles. First, I reconsider Carol Gluck’s commentary on the postwar published in 1993 and then categorize possible definitions of postwar. Second, I explore debates among political and cultural elites over the postwar era following the Cold War. Third, I then scrutinize opinion polls conducted in the Heisei era

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

345

in order to understand how the postwar era was perceived by the Japanese general public. Following this analysis, I reconsider whether Gluck’s commentary is still valid today.

The debate over the meaning of the “postwar” In 1993, Carol Gluck posed the concept of “the long postwar” in Japan and argued as follows: Most countries ceased to speak of themselves as “postwar” in the domestic sense by the late 1950s and became instead “contemporary.” Japan’s “long postwar” was as distinctive as it was anachronistic. One might argue that the name continued out of habit, awaiting a momentous event to end it, as the death of the emperor had ended the Meiji and Showa eras. More likely, however, there was a reason that public memory clung to the postwar. The founding myth of the new Japan, the mythistorical beginning in 1945, was in part responsible. The present—democracy, peace, prosperity, and all—owed its origins and authenticity to sengo. Clinging to the postwar expressed contentment with the status quo. Something similar is true of the widespread support for the constitution, which had long made it politically impossible for the right wing to force revision. The majority of Japanese associated their “peace constitution” with prosperity and were content to remain nomenclaturally postwar.1 According to Gluck, the reason for the continuity of Japan’s long postwar was the Japanese people’s contentment with the status quo. The “postwar” was an era of peace and prosperity disconnected from the cruel aggression of the past. As she suggested, “perhaps the postwar was amuletic; to jettison the name would throw the entire system open to question.” 2 Gluck claimed that progressive intellectuals, conservative intellectuals and the mass media (“the purveyors of the popular past” in her words) collaborated to construct and reconstruct individual memories into a “fictitious past” with which they could live.3 However, did this analysis by Gluck remain valid even after 1993? Moreover, even if intellectuals and the mass media used “postwar” as she claimed, how influential was the idea in the minds of ordinary Japanese? These are the central questions this chapter investigates. As a starting point for this investigation, I would like to propose some possible categories of “postwar.” The simplest definition of “postwar” is the period when the direct aftereffects of the war remained. We can think of such aftereffects in terms of the townscapes destroyed in battle or the turmoil in living conditions caused by the war—all of which would disappear in ten to twenty years as Gluck said. For countries like the United States, in particular, where people had not experienced any air raids or changes in territory or regime due to the war, it was quite natural that discussions of the “postwar” ceased within a few decades. In Japan, however, the direct effects of the war were not limited to the destruction of buildings. Accordingly, we can identify the following five postwars based on different categories of aftereffects. • Postwar #1: If we define the aftereffects of war as destroyed streets and turmoil in living conditions, then the postwar era in this sense ended in the late 1950s—even in Japan. It is well known that the Annual Economic Report of the Japanese Government in 1956 declared that it was “no longer postwar.” 4

346

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

• Postwar #2: If we define the aftereffects of the war as the destruction of international relations, the postwar era can be extended to at least the 1970s. Even after the San Francisco Treaty was signed in 1951, diplomatic relationships were not normalized with South-Korea until 1965, and 1972 with the People’s Republic of China. • Postwar #3: If we define the aftereffects of war in terms of changes in territory, then the postwar era is still continuing. In 1965, Prime Minister Satō Eisaku made a speech in which he said that “the postwar [era] will not end until Okinawa is returned”—something realized in 1972. Nonetheless, the “Northern Territories” issue with Russia and the continued presence of US military bases in Japan remain unresolved problems even now. • Postwar #4: If we define the aftereffects of war as the memories and traumas arising from that event, then the postwar era will not end until the generation that experienced the war dies out. Moreover, even if the generation with this lived experience disappears, the postwar era might not end if there are still people who have inherited these memories. • Postwar #5: If we define the aftereffects of war as changes in the constitution or the treaties that transformed Japan after the war, then the postwar era will not end until the enactment of a new constitution or until the US-Japan Security Treaty is abrogated. This would require reform of the political, economic and educational systems that were established in the aftermath of the war. These various postwars represent ideal types for the purposes of analysis. Below I investigate the meaning of the postwar for political and cultural elites5 and for the general public in the Heisei era with these ideal types in mind.

The postwar of the political and cultural elite in the Heisei era Figure 20.1 shows the number of Japanese books with titles including “sengo” (postwar) published in the Heisei era (1989 to 2019), as listed in the database of the National Diet Library. We can see peaks in 1995, 2005 and 2015, which represent publishing booms fifty, sixty and seventy years after the war. However, the total number of Japanese books revealed in the database was 86,998 in 1995, 138,159 in 2005 and 128,062 in 2015. Considering this, the percentage of books on the postwar among all publications in 1995 was approximately 1.5 times that of 2005 and 2015. This statistic reveals that 1995 represented the largest boom year in publications on the postwar era. Therefore, in this chapter I want to investigate how political and cultural elites were discussing the postwar in books published around 1995. There were active debates over the postwar at that time, the topics of which can be classified into the following three categories. Diplomacy and political regime With the response to the Gulf War in 1990 and the regime change in 1993, debates on postwar foreign policy and the domestic political regime emerged around this time. Politicians who had played a leading role in the 1993 regime change published books with their views on how Japan’s diplomacy and political system should change. Typical examples include Ozawa Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

347

Figure 20.1 Book Titles Including “Postwar”

1000

800

600

400

200 Book Titles Including "Postwar" 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

0

Source: The database of the National Diet Library

Ichirō’s Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation (Nihon kaizō keikaku) and Hosokawa Morihiro’s The Japan New Party: Responsible Transformation (Nihon shintō: Sekinin aru henkaku) both published in 1993. Ozawa’s book sold 725,000 copies, and a retrospective by political scientist Takashi Mikuriya later revealed that the book was actually written by Mikuriya together with the political scientist Kitaoka Shin’ichi and the economists Itō Motoshige and Takenaka Heizō.6 The economic system In the 1990s, the Japanese economy stagnated, resulting in growing debate over the postwar economic system. This was reflected in the publication of two 1995 books: The 1940 System (1940 nen taisei ron) by the economist Noguchi Yukio and A History of Japan Inc. in the Showa Era (Nihon kabushiki kaisha no Showa shi) by Kobayashi Hideo, Okazaki Tetsuji, and Yonekura Seiichirō. Their argument was that various regulations by the government, collusion between industry groups and government agencies and Japanese-style management had been formed during the war, thereafter creating a “postwar” economic system. Historical recognition The Gulf War in 1991 and the “comfort women” issue that emerged in the same year led to debates over Japan’s war responsibility, postwar compensation and historical recognition. Notably, in 1995, Katō Norihiro published his provocative After the Defeat (Haisengo-ron), which resulted in at least three hundred books and articles written in response, including Takahashi Tetsuya’s On Postwar Responsibility (Sengo sekinin ron) of 1999.7 Furthermore, Fujioka Nobukatsu’s Modern History as Humiliation (Ojoku no kingendaishi), which criticized 348

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

“postwar peace education,” was published in October 1996, while Fujioka and Takahashi Shirō formed a right-wing organization, the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai) in December of that year. Here I want to discuss two points: the first is the attributes of the political and cultural elites who participated in these debates, and the second is the common tendency evident in these debates. Table 20.1 shows the attributes of the authors mentioned in the above three categories. We see that their birth years are concentrated from 1938 to 1958, and that many of them have a history of studying in the United States. Although the politicians in this table had no experience of studying abroad, we will see how their assertions drew on views of the West below. Table 20.1 Select List of 1990s Authors on Diplomacy/Politics, Economics and Historical Recognition

Ozawa Ichirō

1942

Politics

Politician

Study Experience in the United States and elsewhere N/A

Hosokawa Morihiro

1938

Politics

Politician

N/A

Kitaoka Shin’ichi

1948

Politics

Professor, political science

United States

Mikuriya Takashi

1951

Politics

Professor, political science

United States

Takenaka Heizō

1951

Economy

Professor, economics

United States

Itō Motoshige

1951

Economy

Professor, economics

United States

Noguchi Yukio

1940

Economy

Professor, economics

United States

Kobayashi Hideo

1943

Economy

Professor, economic history

N/A

Okazaki Tetsuji

1958

Economy

Professor, economic history

United States

Yonekura Seiichirō

1953

Economy

Professor, management history

United States

Katō Norihiro

1948

History

Professor, literary criticism

Canada

Takahashi Tetsuya

1955

History

Professor, French philosophy

France

Fujioka Nobukatsu

1943

History

Professor, educational pedagogy

United States

Takahashi Shirō

1950

History

Professor, moral education

United States

Name

Born

Debate category

Occupation / Expertise

Source: Profiles in their published works. Compiled by the Author.

First, consider these authors’ ages. In May 2000, the Japanese public broadcaster, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, NHK) conducted a survey on memories of the war from 1937 to 1945.8 In the analysis of the survey, the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute (NHK BCRI) classified the respondents into three categories: the wartime/ prewar generation (born before 1938), the postwar generation (born 1939–1958), and the post-postwar generation (born after 1959). According to the NHK BCRI, the reason for this classification was that those born in 1939 were “the first generation who were enrolled in primary school under the new postwar education system” and those born in 1959 were “the generation who reached adolescence (16 years old) in the thirtieth year after the war.” 9 This classification focuses on the kind of education received at the primary and secondary levels.10 Immediately following defeat, education broke away from the ideology of prewar schooling, resulting in a system that emphasized reflection over wartime Japan. However, thereafter, a tendency toward conservatism emerged, such that by the mid-1970s the emphasis on reflection over the war in school education had significantly weakened. The so-called

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

349

postwar generation born between 1939 and 1958 were enrolled in primary school after the defeat and completed their compulsory secondary education by 1975—hence they were educated in a context emphasizing reflection on the war. Conversely, those born after 1939 were the generation that does not have or has only a relatively small amount of socialized memories of the wartime. In other words, the postwar generation born between 1939 and 1958 represents a generation that obtained its knowledge about, and formed its criticism of, the war through education. As we saw in Table 20.1, the participants in the debates in the 1990s were all born between 1938 and 1958. This NHK survey in 2000 reveals the characteristics of the postwar generation. To begin with, having not actually experienced the war they do not necessarily have correct knowledge about it. In response to four questions about (Q1) the country that fought the longest, (Q2) the country that Japan was allied with, (Q3) the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and (Q4) the day that the war ended, the percentage of correct answers given by this generation is clearly low compared to the wartime/prewar generation (born before 1938), which actually experienced the war (Table 20.2). Table 20.2 NHK Survey Questions and Answers about the Pacific War (2000) Question/Correct Answer Q1 (China)

37%

Post-postwar Generation 31%

Q2 (Germany)

55%

47%

57%

61%

Q3 (December 8)

36%

22%

35%

54%

Q4 (August 15)

91%

84%

94%

94%

Total

Postwar Generation 36%

Wartime/Prewar Generation 43%

Source: Makita (2000)

Conversely, for the question “do you think the ‘previous war’ was an invasion against Asian countries?” the postwar generation answered “yes” the most (Table 20.3), although their “no” responses do not differ greatly from those of other generations. For the response “it doesn’t matter to me because it was a long time ago,” the wartime/prewar generation is the lowest, and there is no major difference between the postwar generation and the postpostwar generation. As a result, the percentage of “I don’t know” is the lowest for the postwar generation. Table 20.3 NHK Survey (2000): Answers to Question about “Invasion”

Yes

51%

Post-postwar Generation 48%

No

15%

16%

Total

Postwar Generation 54%

Wartime/Prewar Generation 50%

13%

15%

It doesn’t matter to me

7%

7%

8%

5%

I do not know

28%

30%

25%

30%

Source: Makita (2000)

These facts reveal the characteristics of the postwar generation. They are a generation lacking much knowledge of the war, yet they do have a relatively strong sense of moral judgement—of good and bad—regarding the war. This tendency appeared in the Japanese student 350

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Figure 20.2 Japanese Students in the United States

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000 The Number of Japanese Students in the US 1954 1964 1966 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019

0

Source: Institute of International Education, Open Doors, Data Compiled by Fulbright Japan

movement in 1968.11 Although students did not have much knowledge of the war, they had a strong moralistic desire to criticize their parents’ generation who experienced the war as invaders of Asia. Some of the above-mentioned political and cultural elites, such as Katō Norihiro, participated in the student activism of 1968. Next, let us consider the socio-historical context of studying abroad in the United States. Looking at Figure 20.2 which shows the number of Japanese students in the United States as compiled by the Fulbright Foundation, there was a rapid increase in the latter half of the 1970s and the period from 1985 to 1997, followed by a sharp decrease in the 2000s and a levelling off after 2010. This trend closely tracks the value of the Japanese yen against the US dollar as well as trends within the Japanese economy. The early 1990s was a time when the number of people who had already studied abroad in the United States or traveled abroad remained relatively low, although the number of people wanting to do so was increasing rapidly. Internationalization (kokusaika) became a buzzword in Japan at that time. As a result, those who had already studied abroad attained a high social status, and their experience in the West was widely appreciated by, and gained the interest of, the public. As I discuss below, in debates over the postwar of the 1990s, participants had a tendency to discuss Japan’s postwar in reference to their own experiences in the West. Based on these individual perspectives, I would like to draw out trends common across the debates. Although each debate traced its own development, overall these debates exhibited the following common patterns, despite the topics and opinion of each participant being different12. First, they pointed out that the postwar system had not been able to cope with

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

351

changes in the international environment such as the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War, and accordingly they advocated systemic reforms. Second, in identifying the problems of the postwar era, they drew on views from the West and their own experiences in the West. Third, many of the participants offered negative evaluations of both postwar and wartime Japan, while some criticized the postwar era more stridently while positively evaluating wartime Japan. Three patterns can be discerned: 1. Emphasizing changes in the international environment As Ozawa Ichirō argued in Blueprint for a New Japan, “we can no longer only be concerned about the economic development of our own country as we were during the Cold War.” For Ozawa, because “postwar politics was all about distributing the profits of Japan Inc.,” reform of foreign policy, domestic politics and the economic system was sidelined.13 Similarly, in The Japan New Party, Hosokawa Morihiro observed that “the Cold War world order of the US and Soviet Union has ended, and the world is about to change drastically.” As a result, he suggested that the dualism of conservatives and progressives, which had characterized Japanese party politics in the Cold War, had lost its meaning.14 In the argument on the postwar economy, the first page of A History of Japan Inc. in the Showa Era stated that “The Japanese-style economic system formed through collusion of the public and private sectors” in the wartime was “undergoing major surgery in response to the internal and external transformations due to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the 1955 System.” 15 As Noguchi Yukio’s The 1940 system (1940 nen taisei ron) noted, “the 1955 system collapsed, but the 1940 system remains” and “at this rate, the Japanese economy” was “in danger of being left behind in the system of global competition.” 16 A similar trend can be seen in the debate over historical recognition. For example, Katō Norihiro’s criticism of the signature campaign against the Gulf War as an example of the “self-deception” of the postwar pacifism in his book After the Defeat provoked a debate over Article 9 of the constitution and historical recognition of the war.17 In 1996, the conservative scholar Fujioka Nobukatsu—later vice-chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform—observed that “with the end of the Cold War, the international environment surrounding Japan” had “changed dramatically.” Fujioka explained how the Gulf War had been “an eye-opener” for him, making him realize that “Japan was not a state that could manage the crisis.” Thereafter he commenced his criticism of “postwar peace education.” 18 For such individuals, the postwar era was one of pacifism protected by the military power of the United States and Article 9 of the constitution, and peace education symbolized its self-deception. For Takahashi Tetsuya, postwar Japan was a nation that could not take responsibility for invasion against Asia in the way that Germany had responded to the voices of victims of the Nazis.19 2. Emphasizing Western viewpoints and individual experiences in the West Ozawa’s Blueprint for a New Japan noted the criticism of “a prominent American intellectual” who said that he did not want to be a worker ant like the Japanese of the postwar era.20 In a similar vein, Hosokawa observed that “for Americans, the apartment buildings many Japanese office workers live in look like the ghettos of New York,” and moreover, “common sense in Japan” was considered “insanity” out “in the world.” 21 Noguchi’s The 1940 System used comparison with the West to advocate for deregulation. As he explained, “What the United States has consistently pointed out during the US-Japan economic negotiations is 352

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

the closed nature of Japanese society.” Noguchi warned that “the United States is shifting its interest away from Japan to [elsewhere in] East Asia, and especially China.” 22 In the debate on historical recognition, the prefaces of both Katō’s After the Defeat and Takahashi’s Postwar Responsibility noted that they had finished writing their books by looking at Japan from the outside while staying in Germany and France, respectively.23 Fujioka Nobukatsu similarly stayed in the suburbs of New York as an overseas researcher from August 1991 to August 1992, during which time he “had the opportunity to observe the behavior of Japan (which could not cope with the end of the Cold War)” from “the outside.” 24 Fujioka wrote how reading Richard Minear’s Victors’ Justice which criticized the Tokyo War Crimes Trial had provoked his misgivings about the nature of historical recognition in “postwar peace education.” 25 3. Evaluations of the postwar and wartime eras The postwar era was also critically discussed in these debates, with the term “postwar” used as a signifier for a stagnated politics lacking diplomatic strategies, an inefficient economic system, and an era of self-deception. Japan during wartime was also often negatively evaluated in the debates. Ozawa, for example, argued that Japan, which had not been able to contribute to the Gulf War through cooperation with the United States and the UK, should not follow “the road that might come someday” leading to a catastrophic war through a loss of cooperation with the United States and the UK.26 Ozawa also admitted that Japan “could not deny the fact that it had been an aggressor” in the past, and hence he called on the country to become a “member of the AsiaPacific region” through “correct historical recognition.” 27 Hosokawa said Japan should learn from the United States, which had compensated Japanese Americans for their internment during the war. He called for “compensation” instead of “aid” to Asian countries.28 In the debate over the economic system, wartime Japan was criticized as the origin of the inefficient postwar economic system. Drawing on research by the American political scientist Chalmers Johnson, Noguchi argued that the origins of the postwar economic system could be traced to the war period.29 Katō and Takahashi, who also debated historical recognition of the war, disagreed with each other over how the Japanese war dead should be memorialized, but both of them recognized the war was one of invasion.30 Those involved in the right-wing historical revisionist movement such as Nobukatsu Fujioka positively evaluated wartime Japan. However, Fujioka claimed that, as a pedagogue, he was a supporter of “postwar peace education,” and that his mindset had changed after the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union during his stay in the United States.31 His initial intention was to mount a criticism of “postwar peace education,” and his historical revisionism represented an extension of this.32 From the above three patterns, we can see the common characteristics of the debates over the postwar era in the 1990s. They were a collective reaction of political and cultural elites to the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War. Their discussion was about how the Japanese nation should be envisioned in response to the changing international environment. For these elites the “postwar” represented nothing more than the status quo in Japan. By criticizing this postwar with reference to the so-called Western view, they hoped to uncover a new direction for Japan.

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

353

For these political and cultural elites, the postwar was Postwar #5: that is, the political, economic, diplomatic and educational systems formed after the war. Such understanding of the postwar as Postwar #5 was not just a phenomenon during this period. For example, Abe Shinzō, who was born in 1954 and served as the prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and 2013 to 2020, also wanted to amend the constitution in order to have Japan “break away from the postwar regime.” 33 This way of understanding the postwar era among political and cultural elites and the mass media continued to appear many years after 1945 because it could only be invalidated by a total reform of the Japanese regime and its systems. Indeed, this might be one of the reasons why the idea of the postwar has continued for such a long time. However, different to Gluck’s commentary, the political and cultural elite of this period, the 1990s, were critical of the postwar era. The tendency to use the term “postwar” to express contentment with the status quo, or as an “amulet” to conceal Japanese military aggression of the past cannot be found in their debates. This was because they had come to think critically about the contemporary situation in Japan due to the Gulf War, the end of the Cold War and economic stagnation in the country. Another reason is that they were not the generation that had created the postwar regime. Here they differed from the political and cultural elite up to the 1980s who presented the postwar era favorably—not only because Japan’s economy was strong at the time, but also because they were the generation that had created the era. Conversely, for the elite of the postwar generation that emerged in Japan in the 1990s, criticizing the postwar era served also as a criticism of the earlier generation they were attempting to replace. Moreover, most of the participants in the debates of the 1990s were also critical of wartime Japan. Some of them also argued that the postwar era was not disconnected from wartime—and hence should be criticized on this basis. Such positions reflect their location in the postwar generation, which had a strong moralistic stance based on its criticism of wartime Japan. In this sense, they were somewhat close to student activists of 1968, who criticized the “deception of postwar,” that had concealed the past of invasion in Asia and demanded the abolition of the US-Japan Security Treaty in order to “break out of the postwar regime.” 34 Another characteristic of the debates in the 1990s was the many references to the West, especially to the United States. The participants in the debates were the forerunners of an era during which study in the United States became more popular, and criticisms of Japan’s postwar era drew on views and personal experiences in the West. In this sense, Gluck’s observation that “America, if not the model, was often taken as the comparative case” also applies to the debate over the postwar era during this period.35 However, the participants used the term postwar not to express contentment with the status quo but to criticize it.

The postwar of the general public in the Heisei era Apart from the debates among political and cultural elites, how was the postwar era perceived by the general public in Heisei era? We can investigate this question by looking at a survey conducted by NHK in 2014 on popular attitudes seventy years after the end of the war.36 This survey was conducted from November 22 to 30, 2014 among 3600 people aged twenty and over, randomly selected nationwide from the Basic Resident Register (the response rate was 73.2 percent).

354

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Figure 20.3 NHK Survey (2014): Do you think the postwar era has ended? (Male responses)

50%

40%

30%

20%

10% Yes

Can’t Say Either Way

No

0% 20s

30s

40s

50s

60s

Over 70

Age Source: Aramaki and Kobayashi (2015), Compiled by the Author

The survey asked the following question: “Some say that Japan’s ‘postwar’ is still continuing, while others say it has already ended. What is your opinion?” In response, 32 percent answered “I think it is still continuing,” 30 percent “I think it has ended,” 38 percent “I can’t say either way,” and 1 percent gave no response.37 The response rates by gender and age are shown in Figures 20.3 and 20.4. In 2014, those born in 1939 turned seventy-five years of age, while those born in 1958 turned fifty-six. Hence, referring to the 1995 NHK survey mentioned earlier, the “wartime/prewar generation” were now in their seventies or older, the postwar generation ranged from their fifties to seventies, and the post-postwar generation were in their 50s or younger. From these figures we can see that the response that the postwar era “still continuing” is relatively high among the elderly including the postwar generation, but there is not so much difference in age. For those respondents who answered that the postwar was “still continuing” the survey then asked for the reasons they thought this was so. Twenty-nine percent answered that this was “because the territorial disputes had not been resolved,” while 28 percent believed it was “because there are US military bases in Japan.” Twenty percent of respondents attributed it to “remaining traumas and memories of the war.” Other minor answers included “because Japan has not taken responsibility for the war” (7 percent), “because the Japanese have not yet established their own constitution” (6 percent), “because the peace constitution has been maintained” (5 percent), “because economic affluence continues” (1 percent), and “other reasons” (4 percent).38 The percentages by gender and age of the three major answers are shown in Figure 20.5. We can see that men tended to refer territorial disputes while women

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

355

Figure 20.4 NHK Survey (2014): Do you think the postwar era has ended? (Female responses)

50%

40%

30%

20%

10% Yes

Can’t Say Either Way

No

0% 20s

30s

40s

50s

60s

Over 70

Age Source: Aramaki and Kobayashi (2015), Compiled by the Author

Figure 20.5 NHK Survey (2014) Reasons for Believing the Postwar Era Still Continues

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Male 20–39

Male 40–59 Territory

Male Over 60

Female 20–39

Female 40–59

Female Over 60

War Memories

US Base

Source: Aramaki and Kobayashi (2015), Compiled by the Author

356

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

referred to US military bases and war memories. Respondents who referred war memories also tended to belong to younger generational cohorts. Here we can see that the meaning of the “postwar” for those in the general public who believe it is still continuing is a combination of Postwar #3 (territorial disputes and US military bases) and Postwar #4 (war memories). Conversely, relatively few respondents referred to the constitution, war responsibility and economic prosperity. This is a clear difference from the political and cultural elite who showed a strong interest in Postwar #5, that is, the postwar era as a political and economic regime. What then of the people who answered that postwar era was over? The survey asked those who answered that the postwar era has already ended to list one “event that symbolizes the end of postwar.” The highest response was the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games at 17 percent. In second and third place were the “death of the Showa Emperor” in 1989 and the “reversion of Okinawa” in 1972, respectively, with 11 percent each. In fourth place was Japan “attaining the second largest GNP in the world” in 1968 with 9 percent, in fifth was “becoming a member of the United Nations” in 1956 with 8 percent, in sixth was the “bubble economy and its collapse” in 1990 with 7 percent, and in seventh place was the “San Francisco Peace Treaty” of 1951 with 6 percent. As we can see in Table 20.4, the events that various generations experienced in their twenties tend to be highly ranked, such as the “reversion of Okinawa” for those their sixties, the “death of the Showa Emperor” for those in their fifties, and the “bubble economy and its collapse” for those in their forties. However, first for both men and women in the most of generations was the “Tokyo Olympic Games” of 1964.39 Table 20.4 NHK Survey (2014): Reasons for Believing the Postwar Era is Over Age 20–39

%

Age 40–49

Tokyo Olympic Tokyo Olympic 20 Games (1964) Games (1964)

%

Age 50–59 Death of 17 Showa Emperor

%

Age 60–69

%

Over 70

%

15

Tokyo Olympic Games (1964)

17

Tokyo Olympic Games (1964)

17

Okinawa Reversion

Death of 13 Showa Emperor

15

Tokyo Olympic Games (1964)

12

Okinawa Reversion

15

GNP World No. 2

13

Bubble Economy

9

Bubble Economy

11

GNP World No. 2

11

GNP World No. 2

11

Becoming a member of the UN

12

San-Francisco Treaty

8

GNP World No. 2

8

Okinawa Reversion

9

Becoming a member of the UN

Death of 9 Showa Emperor

8

Bubble Economy, Death of Showa Emperor

Death of Showa Emperor

8

Okinawa Reversion

8

Bubble Economy

7 Okinawa in each Reversion

10

8

Source: Aramaki and Kobayashi (2015)

Why are the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964 remembered as such a momentous event? A major reason is that the Olympic Games symbolized the return of Japan to the international community. Japan had lost all diplomatic and trade relations due to the war, and until 1964, traveling abroad and the use of foreign currency were only permitted for trade and study

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

357

abroad approved by the government. In April 1964, Japan became a member of the OECD and at the same time accepted the obligations under Article 8 of the International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement by removing most restrictions on foreign exchange. These moves resulted in the liberalization of foreign currency exchange and overseas travel. The Olympic Games were held in October of that year, with athletes from ninety-three countries appearing in the TV broadcasts. The daily life of the people, which had been destroyed by the war was finally recovering due to the high-speed economic growth of the time. In other words, the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games came to be remembered as a symbol of the end of the collapse of international relations due to the war (Postwar #2) and the destruction of living conditions (Postwar #1). Other responses such as “becoming a member of the United Nations,” the “San Francisco Peace Treaty” and “attaining the second largest GNP in the world” were also based on similar criteria. A few responses referred to other events as marking the end of the postwar era: “the Economic White Paper declaring it is ‘no longer the postwar’” of 1956 (4 percent), the “cabinet decision allowing collective self-defense” of 2014 (4 percent), the “end of the Cold War” in 1989 (4 percent), the “end of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial” in 1948 (2 percent), the “first overseas dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces” in 1991 (2 percent), the “Aum Shinrikyo cult incident” in 1995 (2 percent), the “Great East Japan Earthquake / Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident” in 2011 (2 percent), “Osaka Expo” in 1970 (1 percent), “other” (1 percent), and “nothing in particular” (10 percent). Both the “collapse of the 1955 System” in 1993 and the “Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake” in 1995 were zero.40 All of these events and happenings were discussed by the mass media and political and cultural elites at the time as representing either “the end of the postwar” or “the turning point of the postwar.” Mikuriya Takashi, for example, claimed that the postwar era had ended with the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and he insisted that new period of “post-disaster” had begun.41 However, it is hard to uncover any significant influence of such discourses among the cultural and political elite and the mass media on the responses given in the NHK survey. Accordingly, we might say that the imagination of the “postwar” among the general public in Japan is not so distinctive compared to other countries. In other words, those who think that the postwar era has finished understand the era as Postwar #1 (the destruction of living conditions) and Postwar #2 (the collapse of international relations), while those who believe that postwar era is still continuing understand the era as Postwar #3 (territorial disputes and US military bases) and Postwar #4 (war memories). It is not surprising that these legacies have lingered for a long time in a country like Japan, which was greatly affected by the war. According to Gluck, the Japanese clung to the term postwar because they were content with the contemporary peace and prosperity in the country, and also because they needed “the founding myth of new Japan” as an “amulet” that proved Japan was disconnected from the past of invasion. However, it is difficult to find such a usage of “postwar” in the responses to the survey. It is true that Japanese people regarded the postwar era as one of peace and prosperity,42 but the survey reveals that only 1 percent referred to economic prosperity and 5 percent to the maintenance of the peace constitution as the reasons why the postwar era was still continuing. This suggests that Gluck’s analysis probably only applies to a small proportion of the people, and perhaps only to the political and cultural elite until the early 1990s.

358

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Conclusion In this chapter, I have investigated the meaning of the “postwar” in terms of debates among the political and cultural elite and the general public during the Heisei era. My conclusions are that, first, Gluck’s analysis probably applies only to the political and cultural elite until the early 1990s, and second, comparatively speaking Japan’s “postwar” is not so distinctive. Gluck argued that the Japanese needed the “postwar” as the “founding myth of a new Japan” in order to express their contentment with the status quo, peace and prosperity. This is certainly true with respect to the political and cultural elite from the 1960s to the early 1990s to whom she was referring. Even prior to Gluck’s commentary in 1993, the Japanese student activists of 1968 and the intellectuals associated with the movement made a similar criticism of the progressive intellectuals, conservative intellectuals, and the mass media43. Until the 1980s, these criticisms remained as a marginalized discourse shared by young cultural elites. However, around 1993, after Gluck published her commentary, criticism of the postwar era by the political and cultural elite belonging to the postwar generation was gaining greater influence in the mass media and publishing industry. The collapse of the bubble economy and Japan’s failure to play an international role in the Gulf War severely undermined the pride of Japan’s political and cultural elite. According to them, the political and economic system and the nature of historical recognition that had caused Japan to stagnate and undermined its international status were all legacies of “postwar.” Hence, these individuals believed that criticizing the “postwar” was a method for overcoming Japan’s stagnation and raising its international status. The reforms they advocated varied, with some calling for neoliberal reforms modeled on the United States, and others advocating strengthening of the military alliance with the US. Some focused on Japan’s war responsibility by referring to postwar reparations payments made by the United States and Germany to their victims. Some criticized the Tokyo War Crimes Trial by drawing on American research, while others argued that the postwar economic system had originated in wartime—again, drawing on research from the United States. The variety of their opinions developed into the debate over the “postwar.” However, common among all of these perspectives was a criticism of the postwar era and an attempt to raise Japan’s international status through the various reforms being advocated. That said, their discourses had little effect on the general public. Conversely, the “postwar” in the minds of the Japanese general public is not as distinctive as Gluck claimed. If we define the postwar era as the period during which the destruction of living conditions and the collapse of international relations due to the war remained, then many people in Japan consider this era to have ended by the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Those who feel that the postwar era was continuing even in the 2010s referred to US military bases, territorial disputes and war memories as the reasons. The postwar era in Japan that is continuing for those reasons is thus longer than that experienced in the United States. However, it is unclear whether Japan would be so distinctive if compared to countries where territory had been lost, foreign military bases established and the political system transformed. At the very least, the postwar era in this sense is continuing due to the direct effects of the war, and not as an “amulet” to express content with the status quo. Of course, the number of people who have experienced the war continues to decline, and as a result, fewer people are able to recall the exact dates of the attack on Pearl Harbor and

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

359

the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That said, this does not necessarily mean that the memory of the war is disappearing. According to the “Atomic Bomb Consciousness Survey” conducted in June 2010, 69.7 percent of people living in Hiroshima city knew the correct date of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) compared to only 26.8 percent nationwide.44 However, to the question “which of the following is closest to your opinion about nuclear weapons such as the atomic bomb?” about 80 percent in both Hiroshima city and nationwide answered that “they are not good to possess or use.” To the question “should we make the three non-nuclear principles into Japanese law?” about 50 percent of respondents in both Hiroshima city and nationwide answered “yes.” And to the question “what do you think about the United States dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki now?” 52.8 percent nationwide answered that they “still cannot forgive,” which was higher than 47.9 percent for respondents from Hiroshima city. Although people nationwide were clearly less accurate in their knowledge of dates, the response of “still can not forgive” was higher than for people in Hiroshima city. This reveals the nature of war memory. Whether or not people directly experienced the war and whether or not they have accurate knowledge of the war does not really matter. In fact, moral judgment may be stronger for those who did not experience the war directly and have only inaccurate knowledge. As we have already seen, moral judgments about wartime Japan by the postwar generation that had not experienced the war were stronger than those of the wartime/prewar generation that directly experienced it. As mentioned above, in the 2014 NHK survey, younger generational cohorts referred to memories of the war more than older cohorts as the reason why the postwar era was still continuing. The long-postwar in Japan might be somewhat similar to the memory of the slave trade which still lingers in the United States. It has nothing to do with whether the generation that experienced it is still alive, or whether the following generation has correct knowledge such as years or dates. Perhaps such memories might not disappear from the United States until racial discrimination disappears. Similarly, in Japan, the postwar era might not end until US military bases disappear. Right now we cannot predict when or if this might happen. Gluck’s 1993 commentary on Japan’s “postwar” was correct as a critique of Japan’s political and cultural elite until the early 1990s, but that era was about to end at that time. Even with her deep insights, it was impossible for Gluck to predict subsequent developments. Similarly, this chapter is only able to reveal the results of an investigation into trends in the Heisei era, that came to an end in 2019. Researchers—the Owls of Minerva—can only fly at dusk.

Notes 1 Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” in Postwar Japan as History edited by Andrew Gordon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 76. 2 Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 76. 3 Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 55–64. 4 Economic Planning Agency of the Japanese Government, Nenji Keizai Hokoku, 1956, accessed September 1, 2021, https://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai3/keizaiwp/wp-je56/wp-je56-010501.html. 5 In this paper, I define “elites” as those who can make themselves heard (mainly through the mass media) as social authorities. Furthermore, those who have political influence themselves are called political elites,

360

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

and those who do not have direct political influence but have influence as so-called opinion leaders are called cultural elites. 6 Mikuriya Takashi, Nihon seiji hizauchi mondō (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2014), 72, 73. Mikuriya also mentions Iio Jun, who was 30 years old at the time of the publication of Ozawa’s book, as a co-author of the section on domestic politics which Mikuriya was in charge of. It is likely that Iio was an assistant to Mikuriya in this work. 7 The number of books and articles written in response to Kato’s book is based on Itō Yūri, “1995 nen toiu jidai to ‘haisengo ron,’” in Haisengo Ron, reprint, edited by Katō Norihiro (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2015), 377. 8 Makita Tetsuo, “Saki no senso to sedai gyappu,” NHK BCRI Yoron Chosa File, September 1, 2000, accessed September 1, 2001, https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/summary/yoron/social/pdf/000901.pdf. 9 Makita, “Saki no senso to sedai gyappu,” 1. 10 On postwar education see Cave in this volume. 11 Oguma Eiji, 1968 Ge: Hanran no shūen to sono isan (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2009). 12 Although I do not focus on the development of the debates here, there were differences in the opinions of participants. Kato and Takahashi fiercely criticized and responded to each other over how the Japanese war dead should be memorialized. Hosokawa gave priority to the relationship with Asian countries in his plan to reform “postwar” diplomatic policy whereas Ozawa emphasized the US and Japan security alliance. Noguchi and Kobayashi’s group did not share the same understanding over which governmental agency was the origin of the wartime economic regime. 13 Ozawa Ichirō, Nihon kaizo keikaku (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1993), 4, 18. 14 Hosokawa Morihiro, Nihon shinto, sekinin aru henkaku (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 1993), 16, 19. 15 Kobayashi Hideo, Tetsuji Okazaki, Seiichiro Yonekura, and NHK Shuzaihan, Nihon kabushiki kaisha no Showa shi (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1995), 1. 16 Noguchi Yukio, 1940 nen taisei ron: Saraba senji Keizai, revised edition (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 2002), iv, 178. 17 Katō Norihiro, Haisengo ron, reprint (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2015), 19. On the constitution and Article 9 see also Winkler in this volume. 18 Fujioka Nobukatsu, Ojoku no kingendaishi (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1996), 5, 94. 19 Takahashi Tetsuya, Sengo sekinin ron, reprint (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005), 6–10. 20 Ozawa, Nihon kaizo keikaku, 180–81. 21 Hosokawa, Nihon shinto, 209, 205. 22 Noguchi, 1940 nen taisei ron, 178. 23 Katō, Haisengo ron, 348. Takahashi, Sengo sekinin ron, 6. 24 Fujioka, Ojoku no kingendaishi, 94. 25 Fujioka, Ojoku no kingendaishi, 95–97. In a dialogue with Fujioka, Minear said that his book was written for American readers in 1971 to indirectly criticize America’s global policy in the Vietnam War and he told Fujioka to be aware of this historical context. See Fujioka, Ojoku no kingendaishi, 102–3. 26 Ozawa, Nihon kaizō keikaku, 22. 27 Ozawa, Nihon kaizō keikaku, 150, 151. 28 Hosokawa, Nihon shintō, 215, 216. 29 Noguchi, 1940 nen taisei ron, 85. 30 Kato, Haisengo ron, 62. 31 Fujioka, Ojoku no kingendaishi, 85–99. 32 In his March 1996 publication, Reform of Modern History Education, Fujioka criticized both “the Tokyo trial view of history” and “the Great Eastern Asian War view of history,” and positioned himself as having a “liberal view of history.” Thereafter Fujioka was approached by right-wing activists and he became vicechairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform in December 1996. See Oguma Eiji, Iyashi no nationalism: Kusanone hoshu undō no jisshō kenkyū (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2002). 33 Abe Shinzō. “Kenpo kaisei,” on the Official Website of Shinzo Abe’s Office, June 12 2009, accessed September 1, 2021, https://www.s-abe.or.jp/policy/consutitution_policy Abe Shinzō. 34 See Chapter 11 of Oguma Eiji, 1968 ge: Hanran no shūen to sono isan (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2009). 35 Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 74. 36 Aramaki Hiroshi and Kobayashi Toshiyuki, “Yoron chosa de miru Nihonjin no sengo: ‘Sengo 70 nen ni kansuru ishiki chōsa’ no kekka kara,” Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa (The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research),

Chapter 20: Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era

361

no. 771 (August 2015): 2–16. Due to the revision of the Immigration Control Act in 2012, the Basic Resident Register of Japan also includes permanent residents and medium- to long-term residents of foreign nationality. 37 Aramaki and Kobayashi, “Yoron Chosa de miru,” 10–11. 38 Aramaki and Kobayashi, “Yoron Chosa de miru,” 12. 39 Aramaki and Kobayashi, “Yoron Chosa de miru,” 11–12. 40 Aramaki and Kobayashi, “Yoron Chosa de miru,” 12. 41 Takashi Mikuriya, Sengo ga owari saigo ga hajimaru (Tokyo: Azekura Shobō, 2011). 42 The NHK survey asked respondents to select up to three answers to describe the “society built after the war” in the 2014 survey. In first place was “a peaceful society without war” (87 percent), second “an economically prosperous era” (51 percent), third “a safe society” (44 percent), fourth “a society that respects democracy” (29 percent), and fifth “a society where men and women became equal” (22 percent). 43 Oguma, 1968 Ge. 44 Nishi Kumiko. “Genbaku tōka kara 65 nen: Kienu kaku no kyōi,” Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa (The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research), no. 713 (October 2010): 72.

References Abe, Shinzō. “Kenpo kaisei.” In the Official Website of Shinzo Abe Office, June 12 2009. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://www.s-abe.or.jp/policy/consutitution_policy. Aramaki, Hiroshi and Kobayashi Toshiyuki. “Yoron chōsa de miru Nihonjin no sengo: ‘Sengo 70 nen ni kansuru ishiki chōsa’ no kekka kara.” Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa (The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research), no. 771 (August 2015): 2–16. Economic Planning Agency of the Japanese Government. Nenji keizai hokoku, 1956. Accessed September 1, 2021. https://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai3/keizaiwp/wp-je56/wp-je56-010501.html. Fujioka, Nobukatsu. Kingendaishi no kyoiku kaikaku. Tokyo: Meiji Tosho, 1996. ———. Ojoku no kingendaishi. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1996. Fulbright Japan. JAPANESE STUDENTS IN THE US 1954–2019. Accessed on September 1, 2021. https:// www.fulbright.jp/study/directory/jstds1954-2019.pdf. Gluck, Carol. “The Past in the Present.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon, 54–80. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Hosokawa, Morihiro. Nihon shintō: sekinin aru henkaku. Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 1993. Itō, Yūri. “1995 nen toiu jisai to ‘haisengo ron.’” In Haisengo ron, edited by Katō Norihiro, 372–81. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2015. Katō, Norihiro. Haisengo ron. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2015. Kobayashi, Hideo, Okazaki Tetsuji, Yonekura Seiichirō, and NHK Shuzaihan. Nihon kabushiki kaisha no Shōwa shi. Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1995. Makita, Tetsuo. “Saki no senso to sedai gyappu.” NHK BCRI Yoron Chosa File, September 1, 2000. Accessed on September 1, 2021. https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/summary/yoron/social/pdf/000901.pdf. Mikuriya, Takashi. Sengo ga owari saigo ga hajimaru. Tokyo: Azekura Shobō, 2011. ———. Nihon seiji hizauchi mondō. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2014. Nishi, Kumiko. “Genbaku tōka kara 65 nen: Kienu kaku no kyōi.” Hōsō kenkyū to chōsa (The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research), no. 713 (October 2010): 62–74. Noguchi, Yukio. 1940 nen taisei ron: Saraba senji Keizai, revised edition. Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 2002. Oguma, Eiji. 1968 ge: Hanran no shūen to sono isan. Tokyo, Shin’yōsha, 2009. ———. Iyashi no nationalism: Kusanone hoshu undō no jisshō Kenkyū. Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2002. Ozawa, Ichirō. Nihon kaizō keikaku. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1993. Takahashi, Tetsuya. Sengo sekinin ron. Reprint. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005.

362

Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook

Index 0–9 3Cs (Color TV, Cooler [air conditioner] and Car), 113, 148 3Ss (Senpuki, Sentakki, Suihanki—electric fan, washing machine, electric rice cooker), 148

A Abe, Shinzō: Abe Doctrine, 268; and Abenomics / “Three Arrows” economic reform plan, 82, 135; and academics, 82–83; approval ratings, 47; and constitutional reform, 118, 354; first term as prime minister, 82; “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP), 267; grandson of Kishi Nobusuke, 108; and hansei, 334; as longest serving Prime Minister, 117; and national security, 267, 268; and opposition, 82; and “postwar regime”, xxii, 327, 331; as rightist, 81, 82; second term as prime minister, 82; son of Abe Shintarō, 117; and status of women, 239; Towards a Beautiful Country (Utsukushii kuni e), 65; visit to Yasukuni Shrine, 332; “Womenomics”, 136 Abenomics / “Three Arrows” economic reform plan, 82, 135 abortion, 244, 246, 247, 251 Adenauer, Konrad, 112 Agricultural Bank of Japan, 23 Akihito, Emperor, see Heisei Emperor Allied Occupation, xvii, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii; censorship, 5, 51; Constitution of Japan, 91, 108–9; control of NHK, 216; and culture, xxiv, 210, 215; and democratic reforms, 3–4, 69, 234; forerunner of US-Japan alliance, 262; introduction of DDT into Japan, 201; and the “Korean minority question”, 13–15; launch of Nodo jiman, 216; and “Left” and “Right”, 65–84 passim; money, banking and fiscal reforms, xxiii, 20–37 passim; of

Index

Okinawa, xxiii, 277–78, 280–81, 285; and postwar education reform, 163, 165, 281; and postwar feminism, 230, 233–34; and public opinion, 47–60 passim; recovery during, 335, 337; reproduction politics, and 246, 247, 252; reverse course, and 4, 10–11, 69, 109, 297 Allinson, Gary, xviii, xix, xxi Amateur Singing Contest (Shirōto nodo jiman ongakukai), 217 ambassadors of cuteness, 317 American Council for Japan (ACJ), 26, 39 n35 anniversary of war end, 80, 301, 330, 332, 333, 334, 338–39 Anpo protests, see US-Japan Security Treaty Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law, 266 Aozora Bank, 23 Article 9 (of Constitution of Japan), 107–19 passim, 263, 266, 267, 334, 352 Asahi Chemicals, 187 Asanuma, Inejirō, xvii, 72, 110, 220 Ashida, Hitoshi, 246; and Article 9 109 Association for Thinking about the Throwaway Age, 152 atomic bombings, 102, 266; Atomic Bomb Consciousness Survey 360; Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Assistance Law, 98; The Characteristics of Damage from the Atomic Bombs and a Demand for a Hibakusha Relief Law (Crane Pamphlet), 99; Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Hidankyō), xxiii, 92–102 passim; damage from, 89–102 passim; “Fundamental Demands of Atomic Bombing Victims”, 98, 100, 101; Gensuibaku Kinshi (anti-atomic and hydrogen bomb) movement (Gensuikin), 90, 91, 93–95, 101, 102; Hibaku Issues Citizen Groups’ Commission, 97; Hiroshima, 91, 360; Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Hibakusha Relief Measures

363

Council, 94; Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Victims Association, 95; Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyō), 93, 94, 95, 101; Law Concerning Medical Care for the Hibakusha of the Atomic Bombings (Medical Care Law), 94; Nagasaki, 91, 361; Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Young Men’s Association, 93; Nagasaki Atomic Bombing Young Women’s Association, 93; Nagasaki Prefecture Atomic Bombing Victims’ Council, 93 National Council for Peace and Against Nuclear Weapons (Kakuheiki Kinshi Heiwa Kensetsu Kokumin Kaigi; Kakkin Kaigi), 94; Outline of Demands for the Atomic Bombing Victims Relief Bill, 96; survivors of (hibakusha), 89–102 passim August 15th, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xxvi, 3, 7, 8, 304 n15, 327, 328, 331, 332–34, 337, 338, 339, 350 Aum Shinrikyo cult incident, 338, 358 Austin, Oliver L. Jr., 195–98

B Bank of Chosen (Bank of Korea), 21, 23 Bank of Japan, 21–23 Bank of Taiwan (Bank of Formosa), 23 Bardsley, Jan, 232 Basic Act for Gender Equal Society, 239 basic defense force concept (kibanteki bōeiryoku kōsō), 264, 267 Bataan gang, 36 Battle of Okinawa 334, 336 “bayonets and bulldozers” (jūken to burudōzā), 282, 287 Betonamu ni heiwa wo! shimin rengō (Beheiren, The Citizen’s League for Peace in Vietnam), 218 birds: 12th International Council for Bird Preservation Congress, 201; Bird Day, 195–98 passim; Bird Week, 197, 198–99, 200, 201, 202; conservation of (activities for), 202–4; cranes, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203–4; crested ibis, 194, 195, 196, 202, 204; endangered, 201–4; nest boxes for, 195, 197, 199–200, passim, 205 n19; oriental white stork, 195, 202; storks, 195, 202; surveys of, 202, 203, 204; whooper swan, 195;

364

birth control, 233, 244–53 passim “bright Japan” (akarui seikatsu), xxiv, 178 Bretton Woods (monetary system), 20, 74 bubble economy, xvii, xviii, xxi, 66, 79, 114, 115, 117, 136, 230, 239, 286, 301, 313, 338, 357, 359 buraku / burakumin (outcaste community / outcaste), 55, 309 breadwinner, male, 127–32, 134, 137, 138, 140

C Central Research Services (Chūō Chōsasha), 57 Chemical Bank & Trust Co., 26 childcare, 129, 130, 134–36, 138–40 children: and bird conservation, 194–204 passim; education of, 162–69 passim, 172–73; and Korean schools, 13–14; manga for, 308, 309; and the role of women / mothers, 129–30, 132, 138, 231, 232, 238 China: Communist advances in, 26; conflict with Soviet Union, 91; educational and economic competition with, 169, 339; Japan at war with, 67, 329, 335, 336, 350; and Japanese security concerns, 262, 263, 264, 266–67; Nixon normalization of relations with, 74; postwar relations with, 337, 338, 347; and Right-wing rhetoric, 81–82; Seirankai opposition to normalized relations with, 120 n44; territorial disputes, 292–303 passim; tourists from, 285; wartime hyper-inflation in, 28 Chisso Corporation, 148, 149, 178, 179, 180 civil code, 128, 231, 233 Civil Information and Education Section (CIE), 49–52, 55, 215, 234 Clay, Lucius D., 26 coeducation, see education Cold War, xviii, xx, xxi, xxvi, 48, 56, 57, 58, 110 end of, 114, 117, 262, 265, 266, 338; feminists / feminism during, 230, 234–36; and occupied Japan, 3–15 passim, 50, 51, 109, 278; origins of, 295; post-Cold War Japan, 180; and postOccupation Japan, 262–63, 283–84; territorial dispute, 295–300 passim, 302 colonial / colony, xvi, xxii, 101, 102, 250, 328, 331, 337; apologies for, 301; Asian criticism of , 89–90; banking in, 21–23; decolonization / deimperialization / liberation in, xxvi, 3, 4, 6–8, 328; Korean occupation by US and

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

Soviet Union, 12; Koreans in Japan, 4, 5, 12–13; loss of as a result of defeat in WWII, 4; memory, 8–9; Okinawa as US colony, 280, 282, 338; repatriation from, xxiii, 4, 6; and Western imperialism, 292–93, 302 “comfort women”, 238, 239, 301, 329, 330, 338, 348 commemorations (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, end-ofWWII, war dead), 327, 332. 333, 334, 339 Commerce and Industry Central Bank, 23 Commission on the Constitution, 111 contraceptives, 251 efficacy testing of, 252, 253; and women’s reproductive health, 247 conservatives / conservative mainstream, 58, 65, 81, 90 anti-nuclear stance, 94; and constitutional reform, 107–19 passim; and importance of rural voters, 69, 73; and the Left, 67, 68, 70; and neoliberal views / policies, 78, 112; political domination by, xx, 66, 84; postwar emergence of, 10; and rearmament, 91 Constitution of Japan (COJ): 1950s and 1960s drafts, 111; amending / reforming / revising, xxiii–xxiv, 60, 90, 107–19 passim, 239, 263, 301, 347, 354, 355; Article 9, 107, 109, 110, 113–14, 115, 116, 118, 119 n15, 263, 266, 267, 334, 352; Article 14, 233; Article 25, 99, 114; Article 61, 111; Commission on the Constitution, 111; Comparative Constitutions Project, 107; Constitutional Study Group (Kenpō Kenkyūkai), 111; and equality of the sexes, 128; “forced” on Japan, 108, 109; and human rights, 100, 102, 108; Kobayashi Setsu and 1992 draft, 114; Meiji Constitution (1889), 108, 109; “peace” constitution, xxii, 89, 90, 91, 299, 346, 356, 358; promulgation of, 69, 233, 280, 295; and reverse course, 10; role of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in drafting, 108; Youth Alliance for an Independent Constitution (Jishu Kenpō Kisei Seinen Dōmei), 112 contraceptives, 251 efficacy testing of, 252, 253; and women’s reproductive health, 247 “cultured nation” (bunka kokka), 246 Currency Conversion Program (February 1946), 29 Currency Stabilization Board (November 1946), 30 curriculum, 164–65, 330

Index

D Daiichi zaibatsu, see Shibusawa zaibatsu danchi, 181 DDT, 201 decolonization / deimperialization, xxvi, 3, 4, 6–8, 328 deconcentration (of economic power), 24, 26, 180 defeat, xv, xvi, xxi, 23, 327, 336 change in strategic circumstances as a result of, 262, 276; and education reform, 349–50; and feminist activities, 230, 233; and loss of colonies, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12; and Occupation, 233, 337–38; peace as a result of, 90; and social activism, 240; war responsibility, 328 Democratic Party of Japan (Minshutō) (DPJ), 266, 267, 331, 332, 338; and the history issue, 332, 338; lack of cohesion in policies, 82; mismanagement of relations with US, 267; and neoliberalism, 116–17; relations with China / Senkaku Islands issue, 267, 331; succsessor to Japan Socialist Party, 80; victory in 2009 House of Representatives election, 82, 266, 331 democratization (of Japan), 4, 10, 11, 25, 26, 27, 52, 109, 219, 280, 281 demography / demographers / demographics, xx, 53, 57, 137, 139; and education, 168, 170, 172; fertility and reproductive behavior, 173, 244, 245, 251, 253; population data, 249–51; shift from rural to urban, 62 n56 Dentsu, 214 Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), 23 Dillon, Read & Co., 26, 39 n37 discrimination: Article 14 (of constitution), 233; of Burakumin and Ainu communities, 55; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 133, 238; of women, 132, 133–39 passim, 236 dissolution: of the Japanese Empire, 336; of the Korean Democratic Youth Alliance in Japan, 11; of the Korean League in Japan, 11; of “spousal tax” system, 138; of zaibatsu, 24–27, 35, 39 n34, 39 n39 doctrine of enduring war harm, 97–98

365

Dodge, Joseph M., 20, 31, 34 and the Dodge Line (or Dodge Budget Plan), xxiii, 31–35; Dodge Squeezes (of 1949–1951), 34 Dower, John W., xviii, 4 DPJ, see Democratic Party of Japan Draper, William H., 26, 31, 36, 39 n34, 39 n36 Draper Mission (March 1948), 26 Dyke, Kermit, 51

E Economic and Scientific Section (ESS; of SCAP), 22, 25 Economic Planning Agency, xxvii n34, 146, 147, 148, 153, 154 Economic Rehabilitation in Occupied Area (EROA), 32 education: coeducation, 163, 231, 234, 236; colonial, 13; compulsory, 162, 163–66, 349–50; and environmental awareness, 195, 196, 199; finance, 163–64, 171–72; Japan Teachers’ Union (JTU), 164–65; Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, 80; and Korean ethnic schools, 13–14; and manga, 314, 315, 316; in Okinawa, 281; peace education, 89, 92, 349, 352, 353; post-compulsory, 162, 166–72, 349–50; postwar reforms / reform plans, 56, 82, 118, 162–63, 233, 236, 248, 347; as source of controversy, 329–30; textbooks, 80, 329–30, 338; as theme in postwar histories, xviii, xxiv; and women, 131, 132, 231, 233–36, 239 Edwards, Corwin D., 25 Emperor: central role of, 77; death of Hirohito / ascension of Akihito, xviii, 79, 301, 338, 345, 346, 357; and “deep remorse”, 334, 338; and end of WWII / beginning of postwar, xviii, 3, 6, 327, 333, 336, 337; and Kigensetsu (Foundation Day), 58; and mythology, 181; system as subject for constitutional amendment, 115; and US Occupation, 280 Empire (of Japan): emergence of, 292, 293–94, 299; legacies of, xvi; loss of colonies / territorial dispostion of, 4, 296; memories of / “amnesia of ”, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9; Okinawa as part of, 276, 293; population / demographic issues of, 245, 250–51, 253; post-empire, 336–37; role of Bank of Japan / Bank of Chosen in, 21

366

employment: Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL), 133–34, 238; lifetime, 130; manga used as training materials for, 314; postwar, 32, 33–35, 234; and productivity improvement, 166; and the Red Purge, 111; rights of workers, 111; unemployment in Okinawa, 286, 287; and unionization, 68, 72, 76, 78; and women’s equality, 128–40 passim, 236, 238 environment / environmental: Ashio copper mine, 148; awareness, 195; bases in Okinawa, 287; Big Four Pollution cases, 113, 148; children and activism, 194–204 passim; conservations activities, 202–4; dangers of insecticides, 201; energy conservation, 153–54; Environmental Agency, 150; garbage / waste, 149–51, 152, 188; Itai-itai disease, 148; Minamata disease, xxiv, 74, 148–49, 150, 178, 179, 180; Niigata Minamata disease, 148; pollution, 113, 146, 147, 148–54 passim, 156, 178; recycling, 153, 155; rights, 113–14; war-related devastation, 194–95; Yokkaichi asthma, 148 Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL), 133–34, 238 equality / inequality: Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising NextGeneration Children, 134; Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace, 134; Basic Act for Gender Equal Society, 134; Child Care Leave Law, 134; and the Constitution, 128; economic, 67, 84, 172; Family Care Leave Law, 134; gender, xxiv, 84, 127, 128, 132–40 passim, 172, 233, 234, 236–39; income, 148; Office for Gender Equality / Gender Equality Bureau, 134, 135; social, 111–12; education, 162–66, 173 “era of anxiety” (fuan no jidai), xxiv, 146, 156 Eri, Chiemi, 217 Etō, Fumio, 214 Eugenic Protection Law (Yūsei hogo hō, EPL), 246, 251 Export Bank of Japan (JEB), 34

F family planning (kazoku keikaku), 57, 247, 248, 252, 253

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

Family Planning Federation of Japan, 247 Far Eastern Commission (FEC), 26, 27 Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), 30, 32 feminism: activism from Meiji period, 230; and birth control, 233; definition of / terminology associated with, 229; education of women, 231, 235–36; employment of Englishspeaking women during the Occupation, 234; gender-appropriate nurturance, 231; “good wife, wise mother”, 230, 235; and labor, 235, 236, 238–39; matricentric feminism, 235; represented in international conferences, 233; rights granted to women in postwar Japan, 233; Seito (Bluestocking), 232; and student movements, 236–37; suffrage, 232; as transnational, 229–30, 238, 239–40; Tsuda Umeko, 231; women subordinate to head of household, 231; Women’s and Minor’s Bureau, 233; Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 232–33 fertility: decline in, 136, 172, 173, 247, 248, 251; rate, 247, 255 n16; regulation of, 251; research, 252 Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, The, 247 Five-Company Agreement, see Six-Company Agreement Forrestal, James V., 26, 39 n34 Foundation-Institute for Research of Population Problems (Zaidan Hōjin Jinkō Mondai Kenkyūkai), 246, 248 Free and Open Indo Pacific (FOIP), 267–68 Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, 230 Freiburg School, 112 Fuji TV, 213, 214 Fukuda, Hideko, 230, 240 n1 Fukuda, Sadayoshi, 214, 216, 217, 219, 220 Fukuda, Yasuo, 117 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, see Great East Japan Earthquake Fulbright scholarship program, 234, 237 Fundamental Demands of Atomic Bombing Victims (1984), 98, 100, 101 fundamental human rights, 107, 108, 109, 111, Fundamental Law of Education, 234 furoshiki, 182 Futenma Air Base, 287

Index

G G2 (Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence), 52, 55, 61 n22 gaijin manga, 307, 317–19 Gallup, George, 50 Gamble, Clarence J., 245, 246, 252, 253, 254 garbage: changing composition of, 149, 152; collection by category, 153; in the ocean, 151; postwar growth in amount of, 149, 150, 152, 154; war against, 149; as wasted resources, 153 Gauntlett, Tsuneko, 233 gekiga, 308–10, 311, 313, 314, 315 Gensuikin (short for “Gensuibaku Kinshi”; antiatomic and hydrogen bomb movement), see atomic bombings Gensuikyō (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs), see atomic bombings GHQ, see Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Headquarters Gluck, Carol, xv, xx, xxvii n 34, 345–46, 354, 358, 359, 360 Good wife, wise mother (ryōsai kenbo), 230, 235 Gordon, Andrew, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxvii n34, 3, 328 Gordon W. Prange Collection, 5, 8, 16 n13 Government Appropriation for Relief in Occupied Area (GARIOA), 32 Great East Japan Earthquake, 82, 339, 345, 358; Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, 338, 345, 358 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 28, 294 Gulf War, 89, 114, 262, 265, 266, 268, 301, 335, 347, 348, 352, 353, 354, 358

H Hana Hajime and Crazy Cats, 214, 219 Hashimoto, Ryūtarō, 81, 115 Hashimoto, Tōru, 83, 115, 116 Hata, Tsutomu, 117 Hatoyama, Ichirō, 70, 108, 109, 110, 111, 263, 268, 298 Hatoyama, Yukio, 266 Heidt, Horace, 211 Heisei Emperor; Akihito, 334, 345; marriage with Shōda Michiko (as crown prince), 216 Heisei era, xv, xvii, xxii, xxvi 345–60 passim

367

heritage: Okinawan, 277; UNESCO World Heritage, 330 “healthy nation” (kenkō kokka), 131, 246 hibakusha (atomic bombing survivor), see atomic bombings Hidankyō (Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers’ Organizations), see atomic bombings hierarchy: corporate, 72–73, 173; gendered labor, 237; of high schools and universities, xxiv, 162, 166, 168, 169, 170, 172–73 Higashikuni, Naruhiko, 49 Hirohito, Emperor, see Showa Emperor history: and contested war memories, 328–30; distrust and feuds resulting from, 302; history issue (rekishi mondai), 327–28, 330–31, 336, 337, 338–39; Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, 80; of manga, 308–19 passim; and the meanings of August 15th, 332–34; Okinawan, 276–77, 285, 286; the rise of empire, 293–95; textbooks, 80, 329–30, 338; ultranationalist denials of, 301; of US-Japan Alliance, 262–69 Hodgson, William R., 27 Hokkaido Colonial Bank (Takushoku Ginkō), 23 Holding Company Liquidation Commission (HCLC), 25 Hosokawa, Morihiro, 330, 333, 334, 348, 349, 352, 353 household expenditure: and advice from women’s magazines, 155; Household Expenditure Survey, 185; as source of education financing, 171 household registry (koseki), 53 housewife: and child-rearing, 132; as consumers, 132; housewife debates (shufu ronsō), 235; “professional” housewife (sengyo shufu), 128, 129; and the relationship between gender and work, 128, 235; “The Secondary Occupation Called the Housewife” (Ishigaki Ayako), 235 human resources (jinteki shigen), 249 hunting: and bird conservation, 195, 203 Huntington, Samuel, 112 Hyman, Herbert, 49, 54, 55, 56 Hypothec Bank of Japan, 23

368

I Ichikawa, Fusae, 232 Ichimada, Hisato, 40 n53 Igarashi, Shinjirō, 216 Ikeda, Hayato, 33, 72, 111, 112, 147, 148, 284 Imperial Bank (Teikoku Ginkō), 27 Industrial Bank of Japan, 23 Industrial Bank of Manchuria, 23 Industrial Cooperative Central Bank (Norinchukin), 23 Industrial Promotion Bank of Chosen, 23 individualism: conservative rejection of, 118; and constitutional reform, 118; and survey results, 57 Inflation: anti-inflation, 20, 29, 30; chronic, 31–35 passim, 69; as a consequence of war, 28; the “Dodge Line”, 31–35; domestic inflation during the war years, 28; and “era of anxiety”, 146, 147, 154–56; hyper-inflation, 28; as a result of industrial subsidies, 29 Inglehart, Ronald, 113, 114 insects and insecticides, 191, 194, 195, 196, 198, 201, 202, 203, 205 Institute for the Science of Thought (Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai), 218–19 Institute of Population Problems (IPP), 249 Institute of Public Health, The (IPH), 245, 251 Institute of Public Health, Department of Public Health Demography (DPHD), 251 International Planned Parenthood Federation, 247, 248, 255 n29 International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), 233 International Women’s Year conference, 238 internationalization (kokusaika): as buzzword, 351; of the “history issue”, 329, 338; and manga, xxv–vi, 314–19 passim; of polling, 56 Investigative Commission for Population and Food Problems, 249 Iraq Special Measures Law, 266 Ishibashi, Tanzan, 29, 30, 34, 110 Ishigaki, Ayako, 235 Ishihara, Shintarō, 83, 265, 331 Ishimoto (Katō), Shidzue, see Katō (Ishimoto), Shizue Ishizawa, Jizō, 200 “Island-Wide Struggle” (Shima-gurumi tōsō), 283

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

J Japan Innovation Party (Nihon Ishin no Kai), 83, 105 n75, 115 Japan Self-Defense Forces (Jieitai) (JSDF or SDF): and the Anpo struggle (1960), 111; bases, 90; and Constitution of Japan, 90, 114, 118, 334; and Doi Takako (JSP), 79; domestic use, 111; and National Defense Program Guidelines (2010), 267; and pacifism, 90; reorganization of, 267; and UN peacekeeping operations (PKO) / deployment outside of Japan, 79, 90, 114, 265, 335, 358 Japan Sinks (Nihon chinbotsu), 156 Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō), 59, 91; 1960s decline, 73; assasinated Chairman, Asanuma Inajirō, xvii, 72, 110, 220; coalition government with LDP under Murayama Tomiichi, 80, 239; dependence on union support, 76, 78; dissatisfaction of members, 77; election of 1947, 69; expulsion of radical Left members, 77; and formation of Democratic Socialist Party, 71; leadership of Doi Takako, 79–80; leadership of Katayama Tetsu, 53, 69; as main opposition party, 66; split and reunion in the 1950s, 70, 71; and student protests / riots, 74; urban support for, 74–76 Japanese Communist Party, 11, 14, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 83, 91, 96 Japanese Foreign Investment Council (JFIC), 26, 39 n35 Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning, 248, 253, 255 n29 Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai), 80 Jiji Tsūshin, 57 Johnston, Percy H., 26 Johnston Report (to the Secretary of Defense), 26

K kabuki, 214, 215 Kagome, 187 Kaifu, Toshiki, 80, 114, 265

Index

kamishibai, 308, 317 Katayama, Tetsu, 26, 53, 69 katei denka (household electrical appliances), 181 Katō, Norihiro, 348, 349, 351, 353, 352, 361 n7; debate with Takahashi Tetsuya, 353, 361 n12 Katō (Ishimoto), Shizue, 233, 247 Kenpeitai, 53, 54, 55 Kewpie (kyūpī), 185, 186, 187 Keynesian economics / Keynesianism, xix, 29, 112, 115 Kigensetsu (Foundation Day), 58 Kijima, Norio, 214, 215 Kishi, Nobusuke, 108, 110, 111, 112; and constitutional reform / revision, 108; grandfather of Abe Shinzō, 108; resignation, xx, 72, 111, 263; and revised US-Japan Security Treaty, 71–72, 110, 263, 268; support for family planning, 248; under suspicion of war crimes, 110 Kishida, Toshiko, 230, 240 n1 Kiyomura, Kōji, 212–13 Kobayashi, Setsu, 114 Koizumi, Jun’ichiro: and 21st-century LDP politics, 81, 82, 85 n33, 117; fiscal reforms of, 164; and neoliberalism, 115, 116; and North Korea, 81; and poll-tested politics, 48; and US alliance, 266; and Yaskuni Shrine, 334, 338 kokusaika, see internationalization Korea, North (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK): as security threat, 266, 267; Japanese abductees 81, 114; and Koizumi Jun’ichirō, 81; land reform in 12; and nuclear weapons, 266; spying, 336; Korea, Republic of: Cold War interventionism in, 12; colonization of (and issues related to), 329, 330, 331, 332, 336, 337, 339; “comfort women”, 238, 239, 301, 329, 330, 338, 348; education and economic competition from, 169; family planning in, 253; Japanese repatriation from, xxiii, 4–13 passim; Korean-Japanese relations, 331, 338, 339, 347; liberation of, xxiii, 4–13 passim; postwar financial reforms, 20, 21; and San Francisco Peace Treaty, 296–97; territorial issues, 292, 293 298, 300, 301; tourists from, 277, 285; translations of manga, 318; US military occupation of, 5, 12, 14–15 Korean minority question, 11; demonstrations in Osaka and Kobe, 12, 14, 15; establishment

369

of Korean ethnic schools in Japan, 13–14; the Korean League in Japan, 13; as a “liberated people”, 13 Korean War, 35, 70, 110, 328, 334–35, 338 Kōsaka, Masataka, 58 Koya, Yoshio, 245, 251–54 Kōyama, Ken’ichi, 59 Koyama, Eizō, 50, 51, 56 Koza Riot, 284 Kramer, Raymond C., 38 n28 Kubo, Takuya, 264 Kunii, Chōjirō, 248, 255 n29 Kureha Chemical Industry, 186, 187 Kurerappu, 186, 187 Kuroda, Nagamichi, 195–96; on attitudes to birds in America and Japan, 196

L labor: and canceled General Strike of May 1, 1947, 69, 73; and dismissals under the Dodge Line, 33; forced (colonial and wartime), 330, 337; growth of labor unions and unionization after war, 68; and Koreans before and during WWII, 8, 330; and Okinawa, 281–82; and political parties, 69, 76; repression of labor movements, 11; sexed division of labor, 129–30, 236, 237; shortage of, 248; and the total war system, xx; unpaid labor (women’s), 128 and women, 127–40 passim; women’s labor force participation, 127, 135–36; see also Labor Standards Law (1947), Miike Mine Struggle, Rengō, Sōhyō Labor Standards Law (1947), 132–33 land reform: and Allied Occupation, 55, 69; attempts before 1945, 67; and farmers, 69; and Okinawa, 280 Lazarsfeld, Paul: on critical versus administrative research, 48 Hyman’s criticism of, 54; LDP, see Liberal Democratic Party Levy, Indra, 230 Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyū Minshu Tō): and the 1955 System, 66; and 1970s shocks, 74; in 1980s elections, 78; in the 1990s, 80; and Abe Shinzō, 82, 83; and atomic bombing victims, 40; and Constitution of Japan, 108–19 passim; and electoral malapportionment, 75; establishment of, xx, 70, 338; and Foundation

370

Day (Kigensetsu), 58; and Koizumi Jun’ichirō, 81; loss of power in 1993, 80, 338; and Mishima Yukio, 77; and the Northern Territories issue, 298; and organized crime, 79; and peace movement, 94; and public opinion, 47, 59, 62 n56, n63; and US-Japan security alliance, 90, 264, 267; see also Abe Shinzō, Koizumi Jun’ichirō, Miki Takeo, Nakasone Yasuhiro, Tanaka Kakuei, Yoshida Shigeru liquidation, see dissolution The Limits to Growth, 151 Long-Term Credit Bank (LTCB), 23 longitudinal studies (polling), 56–58, 59, 138 Lukács, Gabrielle, 210, 212

M MacArthur, Douglas: and Constitution of Japan, 108; and Koreans in Japan, 13; and Okinawa, 279; reflecting on Occupation, 36; and zaibatsu dissolution, 26 Maeo, Shigesaburō, 112 Mainland Japan (naichi), 3, 249, 250; and Okinawa, 277–80 passim, 283, 285; and war’s end 332 Manchuria, xix, 5, 6, 8, 293, 294 manga, 307–23 passim; and cultural borrowing, 236; and Mishima Yukio, 77; and nationalism, 330 manhua, 318 manzai, 211, 212 Marquat, William F., 36 masculinity, 128, 129, 131–32 mass consumption, 150, 152–53 Masu komyunikēshon kōza (Lectures on Mass Communication), 212 Matsui, Yayori, 238 Matsumoto, Jōji, 108–9, 119 n9 McCoy, Oliver R., 246, 252, 254 M-curve, 136 Medical Care for the Hibakusha of the Atomic Bombings, Law Concerning (Medical Care Law), 94, 97, 98 Meiji Constitution, 108 memories (of war), 5, 327–39 passim middle class, xx, 129, 131, 146–48, 152, 154, 169, 181

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

Miike Mine Struggle, 71, 72 Miki, Takeo, 59, 96, 263 Miki, Torirō, 215 Mikuni, Ichirō, 215 military (and occupation) currency, 21–22, 29–30, 32, 37 n8 Mill, John Stuart, 230 Minamata disease, 74, 148–49, 178, 179 Minami, Hiroshi, 57 minikomi, 312 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), 194, 195, 196, 197, 200 Ministry of Education: and Abe Shinzō, 82–83; and the environment, 195, 197, 199, 200, 203; and high schools, 164, 165, 167, 168; and Koreans in Japan, 13–14; and Okinawa, 281; and textbook screening, 329 Ministry of Finance, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 32 Ministry of Health and Welfare, 96; and family planning, 247, 249, 251, 253, 255 n31; and Minamata Disease, 149 Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), 155, 180, 181 Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, 211 Minobe, Ryōkichi, 75, 149 Misora, Hibari, 213 Mitsubishi zaibatsu, 24, 27 Mitsui zaibatsu, 24, 27, 184 Miyamoto, Hirohito, 317 Miyazaki, Tsutomu, 316 Miyazawa, Kiichi, 112–13 Molony, Barbara, 239 Money and Banking Branch (M&B of ESS-FI), 22 Mori, Yoshirō, 81, 117 Mothers’ Congress, 235 Mueller-Armack, Ludwig, 112 multiculturalism, 316

N Nakasone, Yasuhiro: and Constitution of Japan, 113; and privatization, 78, 115; and US-Japan security alliance, 78, 265, 268; vision of autonomous defense, 264; and Yasukuni Shrine, 338 Narita, Ryūichi, xvi, xix, xx, 6 National Eugenic Law (Kokumin yūsei hō), 246

Index

National Income Doubling Plan, 147–48, 157 n7, 284 National Public Opinion Research Center (Kokuritsu Yoron Chōsajō), 51 National Security Strategy, 267 nationalism: anti-Japanese, 301; Chinese, 82; Hibaku nationalism, 92, 101–2; and history writing, xxi; and Okinawa, 286; and pacifism, 89–106 passim; and territorial and historical disputes, 301; and war memories, 329 Neoliberalism, 115, 116, 117 New Left: and comics (manga), 309; female members of, 236–37; and Mishima Yukio, 77 New Liberal Club, 76 New Life Movement (Shin Seikatasu Undō), 152; and birth control, 247, 251 New Woman, Japanese, 231–32 Nichiboshin, 23 nihonjinron, 57, 338 Nine Point Stabilization Program (December 1948), 30, 31, 32 Nippon Education Television (NET), 212, 213, 214, 215 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK): 1964 documentary on cranes, 203; establishment of, 211; and Okinawa, 281; surveys on war memory, 349–60 passim; and tarento, 214–18 passim Nippon Rayon, 184 Nippon Television (NTV), 212, 213 Nixon, Richard: and Okinawa, 299; shocks, 41 n85, 74, 154, 262, 264 Nodo jiman, see Amateur Singing Contest (Shirōto nodo jiman ongakukai) Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth, 57 North Korea, see Korea, North nuclear weapons: abolution of, 91–102 passim; in Japan (US military), 335; Kobayashi Yoshinori on, 315; public opinion on, 360; and Satō Eisaku, 264; three non-nuclear principles, 335 Nugent, Donald, 51–52 nylon, 184, 186

O Obuchi, Keizō, 117 Occupation (1945-1952), see Allied Occupation official narrative (of Japan’s recent history), 330, 339

371

Ōhira, Masayoshi, 78; and Constitution of Japan, 112 oil shock, 74, 151, 152, 153 Okamoto, Hiroshi, 217 Okinawa, 276–91 passim; Allied Occupation of, xxiii, 277–78, 280–81, 285; Battle of, 334, 336; education in, 281; environmental issues on bases, 287; heritage of, 287; history of, 276–77, 285, 286; labor and, 281–82; land reform in, 280; and MacArthur, Douglas, 287; and mainland Japan, 277–80 passim, 283, 285; and Ministry of Education, 287; and nationalism, 286; and Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), 281; and Nixon, Richard, 299; Okinawa Teachers Association (OTA), 281; and Ōta Masahide, 286–87; as part of Empire of Japan, 276, 293; population of, 286; and Rape Incident (1995), 266, 286; reversion of, 280–84 passim; and Satō Eisaku, 284, 347; and San Francisco Peace Treaty, 279, 280; and student movements, 281; unemployment in, 286, 287 as US colony, 280, 282, 338; US military bases on, 267, 277, 279, 280, 282, 285–86, 288; Okinawa Teachers Association (OTA), 281 Ōnishi, Kunitoshi, 112 Original Youth Opportunity Shows (The), 211 Osaka Expo, 358 Ōta, Masahide, 286; criticisms of, 287; pacifist stance for Okinawa, 286–87 Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS), 237 Ōya, Sōichi: criticism of television, 220 Ozawa Ichirō: on Japan and World War II, 353; on Japanese economy, 352; on national security, 347–48, 361 n12

P pacifism: and atomic bombing victims, 89–106 passim; and Constitution of Japan, 90–91; and JSP, 80; Katō Norihiro’s criticism of, 352; in postwar Japan, 89–90; and postwar peace movements, 91–92 Passin, Herbert, 49, 56 peace movement, see pacifism Pensioner’s Bank, 23 People’s Bank, 23

372

philosophy of ordinary people (hitobito no tetsugaku), 218 PHP Kenkyūsho, 116 pine trees, 194–95, 196, 200, 201 plastics, 178–93 passim and food, 186–87; and Japanese petrochemical industry, 179; and postwar affluence, 178 pollution disasters, 74, 113, 146, 148–49, 150, 178, 195, 248; see also environment, Minamata disease pop culture, 330 Pope, Colonel Frederick, 180 population: aging, 137; collection of data on, 53; and Okinawa, 286; policies, 244–54 passim; Population Roundtable Group (Jinkō Kondankai), 246, 255 n12; “population problem” (jinkō mondai), 246; quality, 246, 248; quantity, 246; trends, 244, 245, 247; youth population, 170 postimperial, xvi, xxii, 4 post-materialism, 113, 115 postwar era: chronologies of, xix–xxi; historiography on, xvii–xix; proposed endings, xxi Potsdam Declaration, 50, 55, 297, 332 Price Report, 282–83, 289 n22 privatization: and Allied Occupation, 25; and Koizumi Jun’ichirō, 115; and Nakasone Yasuhiro in 1980s, 78 progressives: and Constitution of Japan, 108; and nuclear weapons, 92; and unarmed neutrality, 262; and war memories, 328 public opinion: GHQ control over, 109; and New-New Right, 83; and nuclear weapons, 89; shift against Left in 1970s, 77 Public Opinion and Social Research Division (PO & SR), 49, 52, 55 Public Opinion Science Association (Yoron Kagaku Kyōkai), 49, 52, 53–55 public policy companies, see special companies PVC, 179–86 passim

Q quiz shows, 211, 214, 215–16

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

R race science, 50, 251 “racial reconstruction” (minzoku fukkō), 246 Radiation: disease, 94, 97, 98, 99, exposure of Lucky Dragon No. 5 crew to 91 Radio Tokyo Television (KRTV), 211, 212, 213 Rape Incident, 1995 Okinawa, 266, 286 Reagan, Ronald, 78, 112, 115 Reconstruction Finance Bank (RFB), 23, 30, 31, 32, 34 recycling, 153, 155 Red Purge, 10, 11, 109, 111 Reischauer, Edwin O., xviii Relief Law for the Victims of the Atomic Bombings, 94 Rengō, 79, 82 reproduction, 244–55 passim responsibility: war, colonial: and atomic bombings, 95, 97, 99–100, 101–2, 348, 352–53, 355–59 passim; and “comfort women”, 348; debates over, 328–39 passim; and the Edwards Report (1946), 26; and neighboring countries, 297 reverse course (gyaku kōsu), 3, 4, 10–11, 26, 39 n38, 42 n103, 69, 90, 109–12 reversion of Okinawa, 280–84 passim Rio Earth Summit, 114 Rockefeller Foundation, 245, 252 Roepke, Wilhelm, 112 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 230 Ryukyu Tourism Board, 285

S Sakai, Frankie, 213 Sakamoto, Yoshikazu: on Constitution of Japan, 91; on hibaku nationalism, 101; on JSP, 58 Sakanishi, Shiho (Shio), 235 salaryman, 132, 215 San Francisco Peace Treaty: and end of postwar era, 357, 358; and India, 280; and Okinawa, 279, 280; and reparations, 95; and territorial issues, 295–300 passim Sanger, Margaret, 233 Sankei shinbun, 118, 213 Saranrappu, 186, 187 Sasakawa, Ryōichi, 248

Index

Satō, Eisaku: and Constitution of Japan, 112; and Environmental Agency, 150; and Foundation Day (Kigensetsu), 58; and Haneda protest (1967), 74; and nuclear weapons, 264; and Okinawa, 284, 347; on end of postwar, 284, 347; and social welfare policy, 248 SCAP, see Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Headquarters SDF, see Self Defense Forces seinen manga, 313–16 passim Seitō (Bluestocking), 231 Self-Defense Forces, see Japan Self-Defense Forces Shakai shinri kenkyūjo (Social Psychology Research Institute), 221 n14 Shibusawa, Eiichi, 24 Shibusawa, Keizō, 24 Shibusawa zaibatsu, 27 Shimizu, Ikutarō: and public opinion surveys, 53; on television broadcasting, 220 Shimizu, Isao, 315–16 Shimomura, Kenji, 197 shōjo manga, 310–13 passim shōnen manga, 309–18 passim Shoup Mission (1949), 32 Showa Emperor; Hirohito, xviii, 3, 280, 301, 338; death of, 79, 345, 357 Simmel, Georg, 217 Six-Company Agreement, 212 Soap Bubble Holiday (Shabondama Horidē), 214 social development, 248, 253 social security: and hibakusha, 97, 99, 100; and women, 137 Sōhyō, 70, 71, 79 Son, Jin-doo, 97 Southern Development Bank, 23 special banks (tokushu-ginkō), 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 36 special companies (tokushu-gaisha), 22, 24, 34 spousal tax, 137–38 state compensation: for the atomic bombing victims, 93–102 passim Statistics Law (Tōkei hō), 52 student movement, 70, 71–2, 73, 74, 110, 236–37, 309, 351–52, 354, 359; and Japanese Red Army, 76; and JSP, 77; and Mishima Yukio, 77; and Okinawa, 281; see also Zengakuren, Zenkyōtō

373

study abroad: and the Japanese feminist movement, 231, 234, 237, 239 suffrage, women’s, 232–33; International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 233 Sumitomo zaibatsu, 24, 27 Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Headquarters: and colonial subjects, 13–15 passim; and currency, 21, 22, 29; and the Dodge Line, 31–32; and economic reform during Occupation, 20–46 passim; and the reverse course, 10; and the Yasuda Plan, 25; and zaibatsu dissolution, 27 Suzuki, Hitoshi, 219 Suzuki, Zenkō, 112 Swift Show Wagon, 211 synthetic textiles, 184

T Takahashi, Keizō, 214 Takahashi, Tetsuya, 348–49, 352, 353; debate with Katō Norihiro, 353, 361 n12 Takeshita, Noboru: and bubble economy, 79; and Recruit scandal, 79 “talentology” (tarentorogī), 217, 218, 220 Talent Scout (Tarento sukauto), 211 Tamaki, Denny, 287, 288 Tanaka, Kakuei: 1970s leftward shift, 77; and Constitution of Japan, 112; political influence in 1980s, 78; and pork barrel politics, 75, 81; resignation (from prime ministership), 59 Tanaka, Mitsu, 237 tarento, 209–25 passim Teijin Limited, 184 Television Tarento Center (TTC), 213, 217, 222 n39 “televisual synthesis”(terebi teki sōgō), 215 territory / territorial disputes, xxv, 229, 266, 292–306 passim Thatcher, Margaret, 112, 115 Tōhō Studios, 212, 214, 221 n23 Tokoro, Mitsuko, 237 Tokyo Bank, 150; see also Yokohama Specie Bank Tokyo Olympic Games (1964), 357, 358, 359 Tokyo Sanitation Bureau, 150 Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 332, 336, 353, 358, 359 Toray Industries, Inc., 184 Tōyama, Shigeki, xvii, 11

374

translation: and Japanese feminism, 230, 232, 237 Trinity Reforms, 116 Tsuda, Umeko, 231 Tsurumi, Shunsuke: and manga, 310, 315; and philosophy of ordinary people, 218

U Ueki, Hitoshi, 214 Uemura, Chikako, 234 Ui, Jun, 149, 150 United Nations, 14, 230, 238, 239, 265, 266, 301, 357 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 150 United States Aid Counterpart Fund, 32, 34 United States Army, 14, 15, 22, 26, 28 United States dollar (USD), 22, 37 n7 United States-Japan relations, 261–75 passim United States military bases, 111, 262, 296, 302; and end of postwar era, 347, 355, 358, 359; and Okinawa, 267, 277, 279, 280, 282, 285–86, 288; pollution from, 335 United States Treasury, 21, 31 US-Japan Security Treaty: 1960 protests against, xvii, xx, 90, 91, 94, 147, 218, 236, 284, 309; background to, 71, 73, 304 n8; and end of postwar era, 347, 354; and territorial claims, 299

V victim consciousness, 8, 90, 92, 101 victims, war, 96, 99–100, 102, 333 Vietnam War, 298, 299, 338 and Okinawa, 284 opposition to, 73, 90, 111, 218, 236, 335 vinyl tunnels (biniru hausu), 182, 183

W Wall Street, 34, 39 n36 War Bereaved Association (Izokukai), 333–34, 337 war criminals: Class A, 72, 301, 330 war harm / war damage, 89, 90, 97, 98, 99 War on Terror, 262, 265, 266 war weariness, 89, 90, 91 Wartime Finance Bank (WFB), 23

Handbook of Japanese Women Writers

Welker, James, 236, 237, 313 wide show, 214, 222 n46 Willoughby, Charles A., 36 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 232, 233 women’s liberation movement, 244 Women’s and Minor’s Bureau, 233 World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 92, 93 World Economic Forum (WEF), 127, 128, 140

Y Yamamoto, Akira, 214 Yamamoto, Naozumi, 220 Yamamuro, Tamiko, 234 Yara, Chōbyō, 281, 284, 286 Yasuda Plan, 24–28 passim Yasuda zaibatsu, 27 Yasukuni Shrine, 81, 301, 329, 330–34 passim, 337, 338–39 yen: and Allied Occupation, 21–22, 29–30, 31, 32, 33, 35; exchange rate with US dollar, 72, 74, 78, 82, 154, 155, 351 Yokohama Specie Bank, 22, 23 Yomiuri shinbun, 10, 51, 152, 153 Yoshida, Shigeru, 10, 11, 29, 30, 49, 53, 58, 70, 109, 110, 167, 261, 262–63, 268, 269 Yoshimi, Shun’ya, 148 Yoshiya, Nobuko, 231

Z zaibatsu, see Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Shibusawa, Sumitomo and Yasuda zaibatsu Zengakuren 71, 74, 309; see also student movement Zenkyōtō 74, 77; see also student movement

Index

375