Which Way Japan?
HOOK, SIDNEY
Leftist-dominated Socialist party, backed by powerful trade-union movement, may attain power and embark on neutralist foreign policy Which Way Japan? By Sidney Hook The future of Japan depends...
...But it has been trying to drag Japan into hostilities ever since the U.S...
...One must compare the case for Communist China's admission and the case for Chiang Kai-shek...
...But when pressed, he admitted that China was no more of a democracy than the Soviet Union, and that deplorable as was their lot, the Japanese workers were both freer and better off than the workers in both of these "socialist" countries...
...had been and could be just as important to Japan's economy, but that this hardly justified a foreign policy based on demonstrable untruths...
...At this point Okado broke cover and insisted that China's intentions were peace-loving...
...You are gambling a great deal on a mere hope...
...Okado first replied that "Japan cannot fail to heed carefully the future importance of Communist China, with its tremendous and growing population, to the Japanese economy...
...I declared that the U.S...
...The more basic difference between them, he insisted, was on foreign policy—at least for the time being...
...If they acted on their sincerest convictions, the latter would be in the Communist camp...
...completely withdrew...
...I returned once more to what seemed to me to be the altogether disproportionate emphasis in his attribution of blame for the cold war and the failure of his democratic Socialism to show its democratic nature where Communist countries, especially Communist China, were concerned...
...Okado turned rather sullen, but as we went on smiles came breaking through...
...Why," I asked, "is the Japanese Socialist party always making excuses for Chinese aggression and referring to China as if she were being victimized by the U.S...
...He made no bones about his distaste for the Soviet regime, but like most Japanese Socialists he sought to distinguish between it and Communist China, whose achievements he praised without referring to their human costs...
...Would the policy of the Japanese Socialist party toward Communist China change if Mao Tse-tung or Chou En-lai died...
...I for one fear there wouldn't be two Japans but only one—all Communist...
...But so long as these extra-parliamentary tactics prove successful, they are not likely to be abandoned...
...The people demonstrating have no political understanding," he explained...
...no one could tell me...
...Carried on by a large fraction of more than half a million Japanese teachers, reinforced term-by-term and from class to class, this kind of political education is both effective and dangerous...
...Okado, in addition to being head of the Socialist party's International Bureau, sits in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet...
...My guess was that this was pretty much how most Americans felt...
...The left-wing Socialist party leadership was jubilant at discovering that it possessed a weapon which, with the help of SOHYO, could prevent the Diet from passing, or the Government from enforcing, any measure to which it was opposed...
...Okado laughed good-naturedly and then shifted the conversation to the injustice of keeping Communist China out of the United Nations...
...If, on the other hand, the Socialist party restricts itself to the normal processes of continued parliamentary opposition, sooner or later it will win political power even under the aegis of its left-wing leadership...
...It is a party of many paradoxes...
...The Socialist party is able to poll so many votes because it has the support of the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (SOHYO...
...Unless the Socialist party changes its course, which is not likely until the right-wing leadership bestirs itself with vigor and intelligence, there is a grave danger that the first casualties of a Socialist electoral victory may be Japanese national independence and all prospects of democratic Socialism...
...Communist China for them is an utterly sacred cow...
...and the Communist regime is exploiting it for all its political worth in an effort to weaken the present Government...
...Although the standard of living is increasing...
...He talked at length to justify his assertion that today Japan is an occupied country and is being used by the U.S...
...I interposed...
...Formally, the Socialist party distinguishes itself from the Communist party by its commitment to the use of parliamentary methods for coming to political power...
...started out on this peaceful path after the War...
...We do not like to criticize a neighbor with whom it is essential to deal later on...
...The British Labor party has shown how a party based on labor can speak in the national interest in a way that appeals not only to members of the proletariat but to other elements of the population...
...is not intent upon dragging Japan into war...
...Japan would not necessarily be lost...
...No," was Okado's emphatic reply...
...But despite its intransigence and purblind sectarianism, short of some colossal blunder which it is quite capable of making under its left-wing leadership, the Socialist party may come to power in the next few years...
...It needs the electoral support of considerable sections of the farmers, lower middle classes and white-collar groups...
...military forces are withdrawn...
...the aspirations for a still higher standard are increasing even faster...
...On that basis, the case for Communist China is good and warrants her admission to the UN now...
...as a base for military preparations against Communist China and the Soviet Union...
...I said I was opposed to immediate admission both on moral and political grounds, but that I might change my opinion if Communist China acted peacefully for a few years...
...As a class party, basing itself exclusively on the interests of the Japanese workers, the Japanese Socialist party is hardly likely to win a parliamentary majority...
...First, there are the normal dissatisfactions with a government which has held the reins of political power for a long time...
...As far as the U.S...
...Of the almost three million new votes cast by the younger voters, 1.9 million went to the Socialists-close to two-thirds...
...Further, the very contrast between the left-wing notion of a class party and the right-wing notion of a mass or people's party is misleading and questionable...
...Couldn't its critics say that it wanted to get the Americans out so as to make it easier for the Chinese and Russians to come in...
...roughly in the same quarter of the ideological compass as the British Labor party, and a sectarian Socialist party even more "left" than Pietro Nenni's Italian Socialist party of yesterday...
...At this...
...There is something in that...
...What will the U.S...
...In neither of the two interviews, of which the above account is a summary of the high points, did we discuss domestic issues at any length...
...Several factors in the situation are contributing to this eventuality...
...It was only thanks to these measures, my Socialist friends tell me, that the Socialist party was able to exist and flourish...
...During the '30s the revolt of the young army officers, full of chauvinistic zeal, destroyed the processes of parliamentary legitimacy which had begun to take root in the '20s...
...policy be toward Formosa after Chiang dies...
...How could Japan be so sanguine about another non-aggression treaty with the USSR in the light of its experience with the last non-aggression pact with the USSR, which, notwithstanding Stalin's kisses to the Japanese ambassador...
...But then, I protested, why was there no criticism of the terroristic praotices in the Soviet Union, and especially of China, in view of the fact that the Socialist party never lost an opportunity for the most vehement criticism of the Western democracies at the slightest breach of due process...
...There would be two Japans, like the situation in Germany and Korea...
...Okado grinned cheerfully and simply said, "I disagree with you...
...After great public disorder, the bill was withdrawn because the Socialist party, instead of contenting itself with normal parliamentary opposition, resorted to extra-parliamentary tactics which could not have been broken short of plunging the country into civil war...
...I am quoting from memory and notes subsequently written...
...He replied rather evasively that since these countries call themselves "socialist" it seemed simpler to take their characterization at face value than to challenge them...
...A close study of the election figures for 1958, which are mistakenly interpreted as a great Socialist defeat, will confirm this analysis...
...It is therefore of the first importance to analyze the present position of the Socialist party on foreign policy, since this directly affects the prospects of freedom in the world...
...The right-wing Socialists are being undermined and are mistaking the forms of political prestige for the substance of political power...
...Okado rejoined, "concerning the intentions of the USSR and Communist China...
...The present Socialist party was born of the merger a few years ago of a Social Democratic party...
...All this spells academic, white-collar and "intellectual" unemployment which must benefit the Socialist party...
...By Sidney Hook The future of Japan depends upon the future of the Japanese Socialist party...
...probably considerably less than the membership of the Communist party...
...Nor has it one approving word for Democratic Socialist opposition to Communist totalitarianism...
...if the U.S...
...Okado looked at me and shook his head...
...Nonetheless, the Socialist party cannot rely upon the Government's remaining politically unintelligent...
...was violated just as soon as it served the Kremlin's purposes...
...This seemed to me to be a red herring...
...I cited case after case in which it seemed clear that a principled Democratic Socialist would have trenchantly criticized China and the Soviet Union for their denial of elementary rights to workers and peasants, not to mention other elements in the population...
...particularly if Japan, under the influence of the Socialist party, persistently refused to rearm for purposes of defense...
...On the assumption that it wishes to come to power through the parliamentary process, its program and activities make little sense...
...And although we wrangled in a friendly way about the matter, I couldn't believe or make myself believe that he really believed there could be two Japans unless the United States forces were on the scene to protect free Japan from being swallowed up...
...In the future Premier Nobusuke Kishi or his successor may choose his ground more skillfully...
...More influential figures like Seuchi Katsumata and Shichiro Matsumoto are rabidly anti-American and pro-Communist...
...In order to understand its position, I had several discussions with some of its leading members, particularly with Soji Okado...
...Wouldn't this create a power vacuum," I inquired, "into which the two huge Communist powers, only a few minutes away from Japan, would naturally flow...
...These provoked the Japanese Teachers Union, encouraged and aided by SOHYO, to launch an organized opposition which made extensive use of violence...
...When I was in the U.S...
...In retaliation, the Kishi regime introduced its Police Reform Bill—a disastrous political error and one which went beyond the necessities of the situation...
...We do not believe that the power vacuum will be filled if U.S...
...Well, even if it came to the worst...
...He went on in this vein for some time...
...We would instead propose a non-aggression pact among Japan...
...Since he professed to believe that democracy was integral to socialism, I asked him why Japanese Socialists and the party so often referred to the USSR and Red China as "socialist democracies...
...Smiling blandly, Okado made some non-committal response...
...SOHYO remained silent at the time of Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy's execution...
...In indulging in extra-parliamentary tactics, in which the judicious use of violence is a part, the Socialist party is therefore playing with fire...
...The tradition of parliamentary democracy has always been a very frail plant in the political soil of Japanese life...
...I then posed the question of American military withdrawal from Japan...
...The Government on Formosa was a legitimate one and the U.S., I hoped, would protect its territorial and political integrity against Communist aggression as long as its help was desired...
...The lure of the Red China market remains...
...to promote democratization in Japanese life and thought...
...Discontent is continually fanned by the Japanese press, which appears to believe that freedom of the press means a constant fire of criticism must be kept up against the Government on all issues...
...In addition to discussions with intellectual and political leaders, Professor Hook addressed many university audiences throughout the area on problems of philosophy, science, history and politics in the 20th century...
...Yet its actual membership is only 60,000...
...Don't postwar Japanese-United States relations provide evidence that the U.S...
...But wasn't the change in American policy the direct result of the aggressive posture and threats of the USSR in Eastern Europe, and the overt aggression of Communist China and Communist North Korea in the Far East...
...Today the left wing is far and away more dominant than the right...
...It is not officially Communist, but its position on foreign policy reads Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Graduate Philosophy Department at New York University, has just returned from a six-months tour of Asia, including Japan, India, Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines...
...The only reason there are two Koreas and two Germanys is that American military forces have not been withdrawn from these regions...
...The most striking paradox of all is that despite itself it may very well come to power in the next election, or the one after, provided it has aot by then destroyed, by its own actions, the structure of parliamentary democracy...
...1 said something to the effect that it was not the Communist governments which were suffering but their peoples and primarily at the hands of their own government...
...But even in the unlikely event that Red China agrees to resume trade negotiations, after some initial sales of strategic goods, nothing much is likely to be sold to a country where the Government is systematically starving its people of the consumption goods which Japanese industry is so well geared to supply...
...After all, Chiang won't live forever...
...I was not very well informed about the details of the American occupation of Okinawa: but I asked, on the basis of stories in the Japanese English press, how he squared his account with the demonstrations against the United States dismantling of various military installations there...
...Okado accused the Kishi regime of attempting to steal the Socialists' domestic program...
...Would there now be even an independent Japan...
...I found him altogether likeable and charming...
...I repeat...
...Already there are signs that the youth is turning to it, either out of resentment and in protest or as an expression of desperate hope for something better...
...Without a blink, he said "Yes...
...I am not sure of the exact words the translator used—Okado himself occasionally spoke some broken English and German—but 1 am quite sure of the sentiments expressed...
...and although leading individual Socialists like Soji Okado denounced this crime, the Socialist party officially did not...
...Memories of favors denied or discontinued are stronger and more lasting than memories of favors granted...
...In assessing the significance of Okado's remarks, it is noteworthy that although he belongs to the left-wing, he is perhaps the most reasonable and the least fanatical among its leaders...
...We do not agree with you...
...The Japanese Communist party, which in 1949 won three million votes and 35 seats in the Diet, is today lying low, not attempting to make a political comeback but concentrating on colonizing the Socialist left wing and SOHYO with its newly-trained cadres...
...If this proportion continues, and it may even increase, it heralds a landslide for the Socialist party in the calculable future...
...I added that such sufferings were more likely to be alleviated by forthright criticism on the part of Democratic Socialists than by silence...
...The Japanese people have often found it easy to reconcile themselves to a fait accompli...
...SOHYO is infantile leftist in orientation, with conceptions of trade unionism as an instrument of political revolutionary education and action reminiscent of Communist theory and practice in the Twenties...
...Communist China, the Soviet Union and the U.S...
...For different reasons and from a different point of view, the left-wing leadership of the Socialist party of Japan is digging a grave for Japanese democracy in which—together with other potentially valuable and promising elements of Japanese life—it may bury itself...
...If the Socialist party is foolish enough to continue its extra-parliamentary oppositional tactics, which are often indistinguishable from organized violence, the existing regime may move in for a kill with a sufficient appearance of legitimacy to carry public opinion with it...
...The Communist party is making no move to take over the Socialist party because at the moment the left-wing leadership, especially on foreign policy, is doing such splendid work for the Communist cause...
...We saw what happened in Korea when the Americans withdrew...
...and the systematic efforts of the U.S...
...in the severest way even though it is essential for Japan to deal with her economically in the future...
...as if it were plagiarized from the official Communist analysis of the international scene, with its division of the world into the peace-loving nations headed by the Communist bloc and the war-mongering nations led by the U.S...
...Some right-wing leaders of the Socialist party have privately expressed their disquiet at the party's tendency, abetted by SOHYO and sometimes at the instigation of SOHYO, to circumvent the democratic rules of the game in order to gain a short-term political advantage...
...These tend to become cumulative...
...The Government was compelled to climb down...
...To some extent, recollection of the days when the press was government-controlled accounts for this conspicuous display of hyper-criticism...
...whom I met twice for several hours, once formally and once informally...
...I found this perplexing in the extreme...
...How would a free, democratic and/or Socialist Japan defend itself against expansion on the part of the Soviet Union and Communist China...
...Otherwise, how explain the disarmament program of the occupation, the constitutional provision against Japanese war-making...
...Only laymen will dismiss the effects of skillful classroom indoctrination upon impressionable and idealistic youths who in a few years will be voters...
...It not only numbers 104 to 67 in the Diet, it is increasing its influence and power daily...
...It came as rather a shock to me that Okado and his fellow-Socialists (I am confident that this is not the view of the right wing) seemed perfectly willing to settle for two Japans rather than to accept defensive rearmament...
...NL, November 24, 1958...
...The course of events in Korea", replied Okado with unwonted sharpness, "was decided by MacArthur's march to the Yalu...
...On questions of foreign policy, the Socialist party differs most violently with the present Government...
...said Okado...
...The third, and in my opinion the most important, reason why the Socialist party of Japan, despite its ideological narrowness, may come to power is the campaign of massive political indoctrination being waged in Japanese secondary schools and colleges...
...Would there now be an independent South Korea if the U.S...
...It was the perception of the danger it faced from this source which led the incumbent Liberal-Conservative coalition Government to initiate measures for educational reform...
...Despite Korea and the shelling of Quemoy...
...policy in the Far East goes, one has only to view the terrible things going on in Okinawa to understand its real nature...
...He is a genial person with an avuncular manner, benign appearance and a shrewd and quick mind...
...Second, and more important, the Japanese economy is not expanding at a rate sufficiently rapid to absorb the numerous and eager young men and women its high schools and colleges and universities are graduating by the hundreds of thousands...
...I asked...
...had withdrawn...
...They took seriously the UN condemnation of the Communist regime as an aggressor...
...And it did some good in the beginning...
...has abandoned its peaceful policy...
...Viewed from the perspective of a genuinely democratic Socialist movement, the fusion of the left-wing Socialists and the right-wing Socialists a few years ago was a disastrous political mistake...
...SOHYO has not uttered one critical word against either the foreign policy or the domestic policy—terror and forced labor—of Communist China and the Soviet Union...
...The Socialist left-wing leadership works hand-in-glove with the SOHYO leadership, which insists that the Socialist party consider itself not a mass or people's labor party with a national program, but a class party with a class program prepared to fight the class struggle through until victory is achieved and the dictatorship of the proletariat established...
...He participated in the Ninth International Congress for the History of Religions, held in Tokyo, and the Conference on Science and Civilization, at Nikko, Japan...
...I told him that unfortunately I didn't determine United States foreign policy, but that in my view the principal and principled issue didn't depend upon Chiang's life or death...
...Okado was not satisfied...
...I remarked that I very much feared that the Japanese Socialist party laid itself open to the charge that it was really indifferent to preserving Japanese national independence...
...Isn't there some reason to believe that the same thing might happen to Japan, which militarily is even weaker than South Korea was...
...The consequence is to reinforce the feeling that it is time the Government was turned out...
...That's old history...
...which I favor, provided some method of defense can be found to preserve its independence...
...In effect, just as the Socialist party is an opposition party without any sense of responsibility for proposing constructive measures in the public interest, so the press is an opposition press, never giving the existing regime the benefit of any doubt...
...Would the Japanese Socialist party be willing for Japan to rearm itself for purposes of defense in such an eventuality...
...We are not sure who was the aggressor in Korea...
...During the last general election in 1958, the Socialist party was able to garner more than 13 million votes...
...The right-wing Socialists have really more in common with the left-wing liberals like T. Ishibashi (who does not basically belong to the Kishi regime) than with the left-wing Socialist party leadership...
...It seems unaware of the fact that its strong-arm tactics and extra-legal methods of opposing unpopular political measures have struck a shattering blow at the institutions of parliamentary democracy...
...It is militantly organizing the membership of the Socialist party behind the backs of the right wing, seeking not without success to isolate the latter in the hope of crushing it or eliminating it entirely by the time the next election comes along...
...We are loath," he replied, "to criticize countries which have suffered so much...
...Perhaps the U.S...
...The postwar economic boom has died down as the different markets for Japanese products have either been closed off for political reasons or lost to competitors...
...Yes, but forgive me for repeating that this doesn't prevent you from criticizing the U.S...
...I described the details of this campaign in my article on "Education in Japan...
...was Okado's astonishing answer...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 6
