Probing the Japanese Body Politic

SEIDENSTICKER, EDWARD

Probing the Japanese Body Politic GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN By John M. Maki Praeger. 275 pp. $6.00. Reviewed by EDWARD SEIDENSTICKER Department of Asian Languages, Stanford...

...This is the view of someone preoccupied with political forms and indifferent to the moral values behind them...
...The initial statement of post-surrender policy in Japan is described as "one of the truly great state papers of American foreign policy...
...But he would have done well to go more deeply into the extent to which the two parties share a similar ideology...
...I differ from him, however, in thinking that Japanese society is much sicker than his description implies, and in believing that the ultimate course of the malady is still in doubt...
...It is not easy to believe, however, that they have also given up the Socialists and their minions in the labor unions and the Teachers' Union...
...There were still other mistakes, and of almost equal moment...
...Hence there are ailments in the moral and intellectual body of post-Occupation Japan which, though they may not necessarily prove fatal, should not be overlooked...
...The process of decay in Japan continues, and the perfection of Western-style democracy is far from being generally recognized as the ultimate goal...
...As for General MacArthur, Maki claims "he did not commit a single major error in his command of the Occupation...
...that despite a tradition of civic violence the electorate has shown remarkable stability...
...Reviewed by EDWARD SEIDENSTICKER Department of Asian Languages, Stanford University...
...There was considerable Japanese awareness of democracy, but there was also a considerable tendency to dismiss it as "bourgeois...
...that infringements upon the election laws have really not been as important as the Left proclaims them to be...
...1870-95, the founding of a national society and the consequent emergence of a new structure of government and new patterns of politics...
...Well, we were all vindictive in those days, and it is understandable that the policy statement should have been vindictive as well...
...Among them are that the centralization of the police since the Occupation has not resulted in anything approaching the "police state" so loudly proclaimed by the Japanese Left...
...My own view is considerably more pessimistic than the author's, but the book is in some ways wise and in many ways useful...
...If the Russians have in fact abandoned the Japanese Communists, one can only admire their astuteness...
...Who will defend democracy against them if they turn out to be cynics who use democratic rights toward non-democratic ends, or if they are so deluded as to fail to see that "reaction" is not the only threat to democracy...
...author, "Japan" Professor John M. Maki has written an optimistic book...
...To cite some examples, Professor Maki says of the Constitution: "The greatest danger is that the revision [of Article 9] might be tied to an alteration of the entire Constitution, which would entail tampering with far more important provisions.' Alas, the greatest danger at the moment is that the Left will prevent any amendment of the Constitution at all, until in the end it is dead and fossilized, to be treated with no more respect than other arid bones...
...The platform of the Socialist party is equivocal in its assurance that the conservatives, once voted out of power, would be given another try, as the Socialists and Communists have repeatedly been given other tries in the past decade...
...Very early in the book, however, Maki's analysis seems to me to go somewhat astray...
...He makes some very strong claims for American policy and for General MacArthur and his Occupation...
...Those years were marked by the progressive decline of the system of values inherited from pre-modern Japan...
...If Professor Maki, in seeming to ignore it, is but showing his unlimited confidence in the powers of the body politic to resist, let us hope that he is right, though his vastly oversimplified analysis does not inspire confidence...
...Yet that great thorn in Japanese-American relations, Article 9 of the Constitution, which forbids Japanese rearmament, certainly had his approval, even if its original authorship is obscure...
...Here is his view of the road traveled by Japan up to the 1945 surrender: "The fundamental processes of Japanese history between 1850 and 1945 can be roughly dated and described as follows: 1850-70, the disintegration and final collapse of the centuries-old patterns of feudal society...
...There are also very concise and useful descriptions of such institutions as the courts, the bar, the police and the little-known Prime Minister's Office...
...Again, to describe the period 1895-1945 as the "development of authoritarianism" is to ignore certain crucially important facts: Japan was fundamentally a united country when the Emperor Meiji moved to Tokyo in 1868 and the great Meiji Period began, despite the crisis of leadership that was to bring the Satsuma Rebellion a decade later...
...For all their defects, the conservatives who rule the country are far more reliable custodians...
...True, the tasks of the Occupation were complex...
...What is true of the intellectuals is also true of their political organ, the Socialist party...
...Once more, though, the analysis seems too pat...
...But to one who believes that the significance of political forms is determined by such values, the really important process during the century before 1945 does not lend itself to being chopped into convenient periods...
...If, then, the Occupation took over a country in a fairly advanced stage of moral decay, its tasks were both easier and more difficult than Maki believes them to have been...
...Of the intellectuals, Maki writes: "By and large, it is they who have been the most vociferous defenders of democracy and the bitterest opponents of all moves that have smacked of retrogression to the predemocratic era...
...But can we really trust the defenders...
...Its general thesis is that an authoritarian society built up in the half century before the Japanese surrender was changed in the brief years of the American occupation into a working democracy, about whose future -barring economic disaster-one can feel sanguine and secure...
...and that, although post-Occupation Japan has never had a non-conservative government, it cannot be said to have a one-party system...
...Nor do I think it should be ignored...
...The heart of the problem, very briefly, is this: It is very well to congratulate all those Japanese who profess to be defending civil rights against attempts to revive the old...
...Their principal commitment thus far has been to a sort of watered-down Marxism...
...that while the Japanese may not be the wealthiest people in the world, they are by far the wealthiest in Asia...
...Maki rightly plays down the potentialities of the Communists as an overt political force...
...Things may change, may indeed be changing, but today democracy would be in great danger if left in the hands of its "defenders...
...But however violent may be their feelings about "retrogression," the intellectuals are by no means committed to the defense of democracy...
...Only by a complete denial of all rights and freedoms could the voice of the intellectual be stilled...
...And despite Maki's optimism, there are few signs that in the near future they will cease to do so...
...Maki says a number of things that needed to be said, though perhaps more to a Japanese audience than to the American audience for which it is intended...
...Moreover, after his departure the labor unions and the schools were left in the hands of people who could scarcely be called friendly to democracy, and for this the Occupation must surely bear a major part of the responsibility...
...I agree with Maki in not seeing revolution on the horizon...
...It was still a united country when the Chinese and Russians were defeated-the one at about the middle and the other toward the end of that period-but it was a country already torn by economic and ideological strife when the military adventures and the assassinations of the 1930s got under way...
...But this vindictiveness led to a narrowness of vision and to mistakes that have provided a great arsenal of ammunition for those who today seem to be speeding the moral decay on and, coincidentally, opposing the American alliance...
...In a word, it becomes too pat...
...1895-1945, the development, temporary success, and final collapse of authoritarianism...

Vol. 45 • October 1962 • No. 22


 
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