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Japan Community and Leadership
Certain distinctive features of Japanese politics can
be
identified, although this is not to say that they are
unique to
Japan. Rather, qualities also found in other political
systems,
such as the importance of personal connections and
consensus
building, played an extraordinarily important role in
Japanese
politics. These features have deep historical roots and
reflect
values that pervade the society as a whole.
In both the feudal and the modern eras, a major problem
for
Japanese political leaders has been reconciling the goals
of
community survival and the welfare and self-respect of
individuals
in an environment of extreme scarcity. In recent
centuries, Japan
lacked the natural resources and space to accommodate its
population comfortably. With the exception of Hokkaido and
colonial
territories in Asia between 1895 and 1945, there was no
"frontier"
to absorb excess people. One solution was to ignore the
welfare of
large sectors of the population (poor peasants and
workers) and to
use force when they expressed their discontent. Such
coercive
measures, common during both the Tokugawa and the World
War II
periods, largely, although not entirely, disappeared in
the postwar
"welfare state" (for example, farmers were evicted from
their land
to construct the New Tokyo International Airport at
NaritaSanrizuka in the 1970s after long negotiations had
failed). But
noncoercive, or mostly noncoercive, methods of securing
popular
compliance had developed to an extraordinary degree in
social and
political life.
The most important such method is the promotion of a
strong
sense of community consciousness and group solidarity.
Japanese
individuals are often characterized as having a strong
sense of
self-sacrifice and community dedication. Historians and
sociologists note that both traditional and modern
Japanese
communities--the buraku, the feudal domain with its
retinue
of samurai, the large commercial houses found in Edo (the
future
Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto before 1868, and modern
corporations and
bureaucracies with their cohorts of lifetime
employees--have
striven to be all-inclusive. Such groups serve a variety
of
functions for the individual, providing not only income
and
sustenance but also emotional support and individual
identity.
Japanese called such community inclusiveness the
"octopus-pot way
of life" (takotsubo seikatsu). Large pots with
narrow
openings at the top are used by fishermen to capture
octopuses, and
the term is used to refer to people so wrapped up in their
particular social group that they cannot see the world
outside its
confines.
The "group consciousness" model of Japanese social
life,
however, has been overstressed at times. A person may
often go
along with group demands because they serve self-interest
in the
long run (for example, political contributions may help
secure
future favors from those in office). Historically,
democratic
concepts of individual rights and limited government have
been
deeply appealing because they, too, promise protection of
individual autonomy. Despite very different ethical and
political
traditions, the Japanese people were very receptive to
imported
liberal ideas both before and after 1945. John Stuart
Mill's essay
On Liberty, for example, was extremely popular
during the
Meiji era.
Because individual, usually passive, resistance to
group
demands occurrs, Japanese leaders have found the creation
of a
strong community sense to be a difficult and
time-consuming task.
Harmony (wa), that most prized social value, is not
easily
attained. One mechanism for achieving wa is the use
of
rituals to develop a psychological sense of group
identity.
Political parties and factions, the offices of national
and local
governments, businesses, university departments, research
groups,
alumni associations, and other groups sponsor frequent
ceremonies
and more informal parties for this purpose. A group's
history and
identity are carefully constructed through the use of
songs and
symbols (often resembling, in miniature, the Meiji
government's
creation of symbols of kokutai in the late
nineteenth
century). Often, an organization's founder, especially if
deceased,
is regarded as something of a Confucian sage or a Shinto
kami (deity). Group members, however, may find that
pervasive ritualism allows them to "go through the
motions" (such
as the chanting of banzai! (ten thousand years!) at
the end
of political rallies, without having to make a deeper
commitment to
the group.
A second mechanism to promote community solidarity is
the
building of hierarchical relationships. In this practice,
the
influence of premodern ethics is readily apparent. In what
anthropologist Nakane Chie calls Japan's "vertical
society," human
relationships are defined in terms of inequality, and
people relate
to each other as superiors and inferiors along a minutely
differentiated gradient of social status, not only within
bureaucratic organizations, where it might be expected,
but also in
academic, artistic, and, especially, political worlds.
Hierarchy expresses itself along two dimensions: first,
an
internal community differentiation of rank by seniority,
education,
and occupational status; and second, the distinction
between
"insiders" and "outsiders," between members and nonmembers
of the
community, along with the ranking of whole groups or
communities
along a vertical continuum. Although internal hierarchy
can cause
alienation as inferiors chafe under the authority of their
superiors, the external kind of hierarchy tends to
strengthen group
cohesion as individual members work to improve their
group's
relative ranking. The Japanese nation as a whole has been
viewed as
a single group by its people in relation to other nations.
Intense
nationalism has frequently been a manifestation of group
members'
desire to "catch up and overtake" the advanced
("superior") nations
of the West, while the rights of non-Western nations, like
China or
Korea, often viewed as "inferior," have been ignored.
Like group consciousness, however, the theme of
hierarchy has
been overstressed. Contemporary Japanese politics show a
strong
consciousness of equality, and even traditional
communities, such
as rural villages, were often egalitarian rather than
hierarchical.
Citizens' movements of the 1960s and 1970s differed from
older
political organizations in their commitment to promoting
intragroup
democracy. In addressing the nation, Emperor Akihito used
colloquial Japanese terms that stressed equality, rather
than the
formal, hierarchy-laden language of his predecessors.
Two mechanisms for lessening the hierarchy-generated
tensions
are the seniority principle and early retirement. As men
or women
grow older, gaining seniority within an organization, they
acquire
authority and higher status. The seniority principle is
reinforced
by the traditional reluctance to place younger persons in
positions
of authority over older ones. The institution of early
retirement
(top-ranked businesspeople and bureaucrats commonly
retired at age
fifty-five or sixty) helps to the keep the promotion of
others
smooth and predictable. The system also helps to enable
talented
individuals to succeed to the most responsible positions
and
prevents a small group of older persons (what the Japanese
call
"one-man leaders") from monopolizing leadership positions
and
imposing increasingly outmoded ideas on the organization.
Elite
retirees, however, often continue to wield influence as
advisers
and usually pursue second careers in organizations
affiliated with
the one from which they retired.
The circulation of elites that results from the
seniority and
early retirement principles ensures that everyone within
the upper
ranks of the hierarchy has a turn at occupying a
high-status
position, such as a cabinet post in the national
government. This
principle, in turn, enables people to reward their
followers. There
has been, for example, a regular turnover of LDP leaders.
No
individual has served as party president (and prime
minister)
longer than Sato Eisaku, the incumbent between 1964 and
1972. The
average tenure of party presidents/prime ministers between
1964 and
1987 was slightly more than three years. Frequent cabinet
reshuffling meant that the average tenure of other cabinet
ministers in the same period was a little less than a
year. Japan
has not been beset with leaders in their seventies and
eighties
unwilling to give up their powerful positions.
Another mechanism reducing intragroup tensions is the
strong
personal, rather than legalistic or ideological, ties
between
superior and subordinate. These ties are typically
characterized in
terms of fictive familial relationships, analogous to the
bonds
between parents and children (the
oyabun-kobun
relationship). The ideal leader is viewed as a
paternalistic one,
with a warm and personal concern for the welfare of his
followers.
For followers, loyalty is both morally prescribed and
emotionally
sustained by the system. In the political world,
oyabun-
kobun relationships are pervasive despite the
formal
commitment to universalistic, democratic values. At the
same time,
younger people find such relationships less appealing than
their
elders. The so-called shinjinrui (new human
beings), born in
the affluent 1960s and 1970s, were often criticized by
older
Japanese for being self-absorbed, egoistic, and "cool."
The younger
generation is inclined to view with disdain the emotional
expression of paternalistic ties, such as in the 1989
television
broadcasts of former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's
supporters
weeping profusely over his political retirement.
Data as of January 1994
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