Mr. Bisson and the Japanese Cartels

...Bisson's assumptions raise serious questions...

...it was the task of the Japanese themselves to make the best use of the opportunity...

...There were, he holds, only two courses available to us: dissolution of the Zaibatsu into effectively competing units or nationalization...

...In part designed to punish the "beneficiaries" of Japanese military aggression, the dissolution program also reflected the wartime philosophy that Japan's aggressiveness was rooted in her undemocratic institutions...

...Once the fascists had seized power through their assassinations (usually of Zaibatsu politicians) and usurpations...

...Bisson then asks: Given the objective of dissolving the Zaibatsu and developing a competitive economy, did the Occupation carry through a program to further that end...

...Bisson is among the pessimists on this score, the fact is that the Occupation released new forces, hitherto suppressed, into the mainstream of Japanese politics, and, for a long period of time, supported a situation which artificially altered the relation of forces in favor of the emergent democratic elements...

...Reviewed by Herbert Passin" Department of Sociology and Anthropology, ohio State University The dissolution of the Zaibatsu --the great family combines that dominated Japan's economy until the end of World War II--was a controversial part of the American Occupation's reform program...

...in fact, they utterly despised it...

...Bisson, and the only way that could have engaged some popular and political support, was nationalization...

...But the fateful course of action which led to the war was initiated by militarist-fascist elements which were in no sense the instruments of that "decadent plutocracy...

...I have discussed some of them above...

...The Zaibatsu may have been cowardly and opportunistic, but...

...Experience in many countries--including that of the American New Deal and the Labor Government in England--shows that there were more ways of weakening the "private collectivism" of the Zaibatsu than falling to the Scylla of competitive inefficiency on the one hand or the Charybdis of statism on the other...

...This could not, however, have been expected to continue indefinitely...

...However one may disagree with some of his conclusions, he has raised most of the important questions and conscientiously marshalled the evidence bearing on them...

...the enfranchisement of women by women's groups, Socialists, liberals and intellectuals...

...It followed from this that, in order to transform Japan into a "peace-loving" nation, it was necessary not only to destroy her military structure but to eliminate the institutions, customs and ideologies which underlay it...

...Bisson gives us in this book the first full-dress evaluation of our Zaibatsu program...

...The Occupation can be criticized for its failure to consider a wider range of alternative solutions, but not, I suggest, for failing to socialize the Zaibatsu enterprises...

...In spite of this thoughtful analysis, several of Mr...

...Nor is it self-evident that the only two alternatives for action against the Zaibatsu were some form of nationalization or a free competitive economy on the American model...

...The only realistic way to break the power of the Zaibatsu in the interests of the nation, according to Mr...

...Few people today will accept without qualification the simple thesis of Zaibatsu guilt--avariant of the view that capitalism is the "cause" of war--on which the punitive aspects of the dissolution program were based...

...in a modern integrated state, they could not avoid being "closely tied to the military-bureaucratic elements...

...There were, first, the pressures emanating from the United States...

...But if the policing of a free competitive economy is difficult in the United States--as our experience with anti-trust legislation shows--it is well-nigh impossible in a country like Japan, where all the economic, sociological and psychological forces are against it...

...Later, however, this influence was displaced by that of American "Big Business," which was very closely associated with the Zaibatsu...

...But the fact is that the power of the Zaibatsu in Japan today, though it has recovered somewhat, is limited by the challenge of countervailing forces which give every appearance of being viable (if a membership of over 5,000,000 in the unions and a 30-per-cent Socialist vote are any indication...

...Japanese big business certainly derived many benefits from the war, at least in its early stages (as did, in a sense, the Japanese people...

...Bisson suggests, by bringing about a shift in the emphasis of Occupation policy from reform to economic reconstruction, also retarded a serious anti-Zaibatsu program...

...The cold war, Mr...

...A more profitable line of inquiry would be not whether the Occupation "completed" its reform programs, but the extent to which it contributed to the development of "countervailing" power in Japan...

...If other Occupation reforms have had some success, it is because they affected the vital interests of some group which was willing to defend them in the clash of political forces in post-Occupation Japan...

...Zaibatsu industry, like everything else of importance to the war machine, was converted into an instrument of the expansionist policy...

...Thus, the labor reforms are jealously guarded by Socialists, unionists and intellectuals...

...Bisson demonstrates clearly that it was the Occupation's failure to relate the dissolution program to the felt needs of any one sector of the population that finally doomed it...

...land reform by the farmers...

...Perhaps the book's most valuable contribution, however, is its analysis of the subtle resistance of the traditional forces of familial relation, feudal obligation, and hierarchy to all the measures taken against the Zaibatsu...

...In the early period of the Occupation, Headquarters thinking was heavily influenced by American traders, who, as competitors of the Zaibatsu trading firms, were naturally hostile to them...

...Although Mr...

...Criticisms can be made that the Occupation could have done better...

...But the Zaibatsu reform had no friends: The traditional "interests" were against it, and the anti-traditional forces could not get excited over an American-type competitive economy when what they wanted was some form of nationalization or socialization...

...The Zaibatsu trusts and cartels, the author contends, shared the responsibility for Japanese aggression, and they also lie close to the heart of the feudal, undemocratic structure that it was America's obligation to destroy...

...The rest of the book, which carries the reader expertly--if a trifle laboriously--through the intricacies of holding-company dissolution, liquidation of securities, deconcentration, the economic purge, and antitrust legislation, is a long negative answer...

...But this "policy alternative" was automatically excluded by the nature of the United States as a capitalist country and by domestic American political pressures...