Introduction

...Many Japanese, especially those intellectuals who enjoy the description of "progressive" (shimpoteki), would argue that violence was initiated not by the Socialists but by Kishi and the conservatives who wielded their "tyranny of the majority" in the Diet to oppose the real will of the country...

...As Kuroda points out, the disturbances last summer were no fortuitous misfortune, but the logical consequence of many unhealthy factors, not the least of which was complacency...

...In a broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) three months before Asanuma’s assassination, I said that the Socialists had sown a wind of violence and I ventured to predict that they might be the first to reap the whirlwind...

...Several of Japan’s leading non-Communist intellectuals have given their vocal support to the use of "direct action...

...to call in the police to restore order, however, must be condemned as unjustified violence, since it meant opposing the representatives of the "people’s majority...

...One conclusion, however, does emerge from this discussion: Neither we in the West nor the Japanese should become complacent about the country’s future...

...Just as most observers have, in my opinion, tended to take an unjustifiably sanguine view about the strength of democracy in postwar Japan, they have also been inclined to overrate the strength of the ties that bind Japan to the West...

...Banzai to the Emperor...

...In these circumstances, as he says, it is difficult to count on a wide body of fair and responsible public opinion in Japan...

...By espousing violence and disruption, by undermining popular respect for the parliamentary institution and the democratic system, the Socialists may be giving the Rightist groups exactly what they have been looking for during the past 10 years...

...Nothing could be more important for the future of Japanese democracy than the creation of a strong and responsible opposition...

...Indeed, I am quite willing to accept the suggestion that he and many other conservative leaders in Japan would be prepared to jettison the democratic system if that were the only way in which the Socialists or Communists could be prevented from assuming power...

...Then vast mobs of students and workers, often armed with ropes, stones and nail-studded poles, marched through the streets of Tokyo, fought the police, attacked the car carrying the American Ambassador and President Eisenhower’s representative, broke into the Prime Minister’s residence, forcibly prevented the Diet from holding proper sessions for seven weeks and in various other violent ways tried to impose their will on the Government...

...To interpret the events in this fashion is both to overestimate the influence of Communism in Japan and to underestimate the force of neutralism...

...The stabbing of Kishi followed directly on the recent Left-wing demonstrations against revision of the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty...

...his fatal stabbing is a somber reminder of where violence, once unleashed, can lead...

...When a government (like those in Turkey or South Korea) abuses the power of the police and deprives its citizens of legitimate, peaceful means of expressing their opposition, violence may be the only solution...

...Its weakness lies in the fact that it has been existing in an ideological and material vacuum...

...Such a situation does not exist in Japan...

...Clearly, a majority becomes a "tyranny" only when it is commanded by one’s political opponents...

...I see little justification for the type of rosy optimism expressed, for example, in a study by a group of American scholars where we read, ". . . under a conservative or a Socialist leadership, Japan will doubtless work out its own special form of representative institutions, a development which bodes well for the future of democracy in Japan and for its future cooperation with other free nations...

...Even this setback, however, was often explained away as being the work of a handful of Communists and professional anti-American agitators...

...The press, as Sadachika Nabeyama indicates in his article, with its constant references to "tyranny of the majority," its unanimously vitriolic attacks on the freely elected Government and its failure to condemn the use of violence until June 17 (when things really looked as if they were getting out of hand), also bears a very definite responsibility for the unfortunate events of last summer...

...As Kikuo Nakamura points out in his article, recent events have combined to lower respect for parliamentary democracy...

...The Left-wing resort to force was the direct impulse for the murderous attacks by Right-wing extremists...

...Furthermore, by associating itself with disruption and violence, it has alienated those very elements of the population whose backing is essential if it is ever to come to power by legal, democratic means...

...It is clear, too, that in Japan, as elsewhere, one of the characteristics shared by the two extremes is their readiness to resort to violence...

...some of them, as Kazuo Kuroda points out in his article, have even criticized the Communist party for not taking stronger action at the time of the demonstrations...

...If we are willing to learn, the recent succession of Left-wing and Right-wing violence in Japan could serve us a timely lesson...

...Instead it has concentrated on class struggles and has continued to derive almost all its support from urban labor, youth and intellectuals...

...The present "one-and-a-half-party" system is utterly unsatisfactory...

...A further ineluctable conclusion from any study of recent events is that democracy has not taken root in Japan nearly to the extent that many observers, both there and in the West, have been suggesting...

...Japan Between East and West, New York, 1957...

...Recent violence in Japan, however, certainly has not been confined to the traditionalistic Right wing...

...Economic conditions in Japan are on the whole favorable and this has been a strong preservative factor, which as much as anything else prevented the recent demonstrations from developing into a revolutionary movement...

...Asanuma, with his insistence that the United States was the "common enemy" of Japan and China, his encouragement of the student rioters who broke into the grounds of the Diet building and his constant calls for "struggles," was probably responsible more than any other single person for the breakdown of law and order in Japan last spring and summer...

...It is quite clear now that both Kishi himself, and the American Ambassador and his advisors, did underestimate the strength of neutralist sentiment and the ability of the Left to exploit it...

...From all this, and from the five articles in this supplement, the conclusion inescapably emerges that in Japan democracy is still widely regarded as a foreign import, that it is inadequately understood and respected by the very people who should be its most stalwart defenders and that its continuance is precarious...

...The extreme Right in Japan is by no means a dead force...

...Having been repeatedly and overwhelmingly defeated at the polls, the Socialist party (or at least an important part of it) decided to cooperate with the Communists and with extreme Left-wing labor and student groups in resorting to violence to prevent ratification of a treaty to which they were opposed...

...It seems very doubtful, however, that the Socialist party, as it is presently constituted, is qualified for the role...

...To kidnap the Speaker of the Diet was justified violence since he was brandishing the tyranny of a Parliamentary majority in defiance of the "people’s majority...

...Clearly emotionalism still plays a great part in Japanese political life and violence is never far beneath the surface...

...Anyone familiar with prewar politics in Japan is bound to be reminded of the series of killings and attempted killings that made the 1930s a period of "government by assassination...

...The great task to which the Socialist party should have devoted itself during the past years was to build up support in the rural and provincial districts, which remain overwhelmingly conservative and where political apathy and immaturity are still widespread...

...Then, as now, the assassins were men of the extreme Right and their victims were the country’s political leaders, whom they regarded as unpatriotic and self-seeking...

...The recent deluge of comforting platitudes, inspired by the centennial celebrations of American-Japanese relations, should not be allowed to obscure the reality of the situation...

...In the years to come this appeal is likely, if anything, to increase...

...Asanuma died almost immediately from his wounds...

...The fiasco of President Eisenhower’s visit was a direct consequence of their mistake...

...There are certain instances in which the type of violence that we have seen in Tokyo is justified...

...It is not my aim to whitewash Kishi or to extol him as a champion of Western-style democracy...

...As to the respect which the Socialists themselves would accord the opposition should they ever come into power, we have the assurance of their leading theoretician, Professor Itsuro Sakisaka, that once the Socialist party assumes the reins of government and starts to build a socialist state in Japan it will not allow its work to be undone by the "seesaw process" of politics such as occurs in England and other Western democracies...

...Recognizing and understanding the difficulties is the first essential step on the way to doing something about them...

...There is a strong tendency toward apathy on one hand and extremism on the other...

...Once violence has been let out of the bottle it is hard to put it back, especially in a country with Japan’s traditions...

...JAPAN TODAY Introduction By I. I. Morris On October 13, newspaper readers all over the world were shocked to see the photograph of a slim young man in a black student uniform about to plunge a foot-long sword into the corpulent body of Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japanese Socialist party...

...The fact remains that until now this has not been the only way, and that violence, insofar as the term has any concrete meaning, was brought into Japanese politics during the past year by the Socialists and their allies, not by the conservatives...

...but, as he indicates, this does nothing to lessen its emotional appeal in a country where insularity still encourages so much naivete and wishful thinking...

...Even the suicide of Asanuma’s assassin had a strongly traditional flavor, and his final note (scrawled with a tube of toothpaste on the wall of his prison cell) belongs to an emotional world that many observers thought had disappeared: "To serve one’s country for seven lives...

...Less than three months earlier Nobusuke Kishi had been stabbed in the thigh by an elderly fanatic wielding a Japanese Navy knife...

...When one of the two main political parties in a country and an important segment of its intellectual leaders, supported in many cases by the press, openly encourage violence in order to oppose the policies of a freely elected majority in Parliament, we are justified in concluding that democracy is either insufficiently understood or insufficiently respected, or both...

...Effective support for democratic principles and institutions in Japan is not forthcoming from many of the principal sources where we should expect to find it...

...In the case of a major economic crisis, however, accompanied by large-scale unemployment, falling standards of living and widespread anxiety and bitterness, there is a very real danger that the precarious structure could break down and be followed by an authoritarian regime of the Left or (more likely in my opinion) of the Right, with appalling consequences for the West...

...Kishi’s assailant was less vigorous, and the former Prime Minister is now in good health...

...According to this argument, the Socialists, who alone represent the "people"s majority," were simply meeting force with force...

...If one is prepared to believe this, one can believe anything...

...If this analysis is correct, we are confronted with a unique phenomenon: In one election after another approximately two-thirds of the population votes in favor of a party which in the outstanding issues of foreign policy has consistently advocated and carried out policies opposed by the majority of the people...

...The fundamental illogicality of the neutralist position in Japan is clearly set forth in the article by Kiyoshi Nasu...

...Coupled with the unremitting pressure from the Communist powers, which is described in the article by Kosaku Tamura, and with the ever-growing attraction of Communist China, especially for the youth of the country, it will make Japan’s continued adherence to the Western alliance far more precarious than is often imagined...

...The following statement by an American expert in the study cited above is typical: "The Japanese people will contribute unsparingly to the common defense of our two nations when they come to believe that they are moving, together with the American people, towards a commonly perceived destiny...

...Many conclusions may be drawn from this unhappy series of events...

...The demonstrations and riots were bound to come as something of a shock to those who imagined that Japan was securely and enthusiastically linked to the West...

...In organizations and membership it is at least as strong as before the war...

...This was not an isolated incident...

...The trade union movement, which in so many countries acts as a responsible stabilizing force, was one of the main elements participating in the recent resort to violence, and Kuroda points out the overwhelming strength of the extreme Left-wing General Council of Japanese Trade Unions (Sohyo) as compared to that of the moderate Japanese Trade Union Congress (Zenro...

...It would be beyond the scope of this introductory essay to suggest any solutions to the various difficulties that have been outlined...

...And a few months before these rampages, thousands of student demonstrators had burst into the precincts of the Diet and shown their attitude toward Parliament by indulging in mass urination against the stately white walls of the building...