By the early 1950s, then, Japan had regained at least partial
control over its own destiny. Although it was linked
closely to the United States through the new security
treaty and the new U.S.-drafted constitution, Japan was
now essentially free to move out on its own. As the world
would soon discover, the Japanese adapted quickly to the
new conditions. From a semifeudal society with autocratic
leanings, Japan rapidly progressed into one of the
most stable and advanced democracies in the world today.
The Allied occupation administrators started with
the conviction that Japanese expansionism was directly
linked to the institutional and ideological foundations of
the Meiji Constitution. Accordingly, they set out to
change Japanese politics into something closer to the pluralistic
approach used in most Western nations. The concepts
of universal suffrage, governmental accountability,
and a balance of power among the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches that were embodied in the constitution
of 1947 have held firm, and Japan today is a stable
and mature democratic society with a literate and politically
active electorate and a government that usually
seeks to meet the needs of its citizens.
Yet a number of characteristics of the current Japanese
political system reflect the tenacity of the traditional political
culture. Although postwar Japan had a multiparty
system with two major parties, the Liberal Democrats and
the Socialists, in practice there was a “government party”
and a permanent opposition—the Liberal Democrats
were not voted out of office for thirty years. The ruling
Liberal Democratic Party included several factions, but
disputes were usually based on personalities rather than
substantive issues. Many of the leading Liberal Democrats
controlled factions on a patron-client basis, and decisions
on key issues, such as who should assume the
prime ministership, were decided by a modern equivalent
of the genro oligarchs.
That tradition changed suddenly in 1993 when the
ruling Liberal Democrats, shaken by persistent reports of
corruption and cronyism between politicians and business
interests, failed to win a majority of seats in parliamentary
elections. Mirohiro Hosokawa, the leader of one
of several newly created parties in the Japanese political
spectrum, was elected prime minister. He promised to
launch a number of reforms to clean up the political system.
The new coalition government, however, quickly
split into feuding factions, and in 1995, the Liberal Democratic
Party returned to power. Successive prime ministers
failed to carry out promised reforms, and in 2001, Junichiro
Koizumi (b. 1942), a former minister of health
and welfare, was elected prime minister on a promise that
he would initiate far-reaching reforms to fix the political
system and make it more responsive to the needs of the
Japanese people. His charisma raised expectations that he
might be able to bring about significant changes; so far,
however, he has had little success.
One of the problems plaguing the current system has
been that it continues the centralizing tendencies of the
Meiji period. The government is organized on a unitary
rather than a federal basis; the local administrative units,
called prefectures, have few of the powers of states in the
United States. Moreover, the central government plays
an active and sometimes intrusive role in various aspects
of the economy, mediating management-labor disputes,
establishing price and wage policies, and subsidizing vital
industries and enterprises producing goods for export.
This government intervention in the economy has traditionally
been widely accepted and is often cited as a key
reason for the efficiency of Japanese industry and the
emergence of the country as an industrial giant.
In recent years, the tradition of active government involvement
in the economy has increasingly come under
fire. Japanese business, which previously sought government
protection from imports, now argues that deregulation
is needed to enable Japanese firms to innovate as a
means of keeping up with the competition. Such reforms,
however, have been resisted by powerful government
ministries in Tokyo, which are accustomed to playing an
active role in national affairs.
A third problem is related to the fact that the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party has long been divided into fac-
tions that seek to protect their own interests and often resist
changes that might benefit society as a whole. This
tradition of factionalism has tended to insulate political
figures from popular scrutiny and encouraged the susceptibility
to secret dealing and official corruption. A
number of senior politicians, including two recent prime
ministers, have been forced to resign because of serious
questions about improper financial dealings with business
associates. Concern over political corruption was undoubtedly
a major factor in the defeat suffered by the Liberal
Democrats in the summer of 1993, and the issue continues
to plague the political scene.
Last but certainly not least, minorities such as the eta
(hereditary outcastes in traditional Japan, now known
as the Burakumin) and Korean residents in Japan continue
to be subjected to legal and social discrimination.
For years, official sources were reluctant to divulge that
thousands of Korean women were conscripted to serve as
“comfort women” (prostitutes) for Japanese soldiers during
the war, and many Koreans living in Japan contend
that such condescending attitudes toward minorities continue
to exist. Representatives of the “comfort women”
have demanded both financial compensation and a formal
letter of apology from the Japanese government for
the treatment they received during the Pacific War. Negotiations
over the issue are under way.
Japan’s behavior during World War II has been an especially
sensitive issue. During the early 1990s, critics at
home and abroad charged that textbooks printed under
the guidance of the Ministry of Education did not adequately
discuss the atrocities committed by the Japanese
government and armed forces during World War II.
Other Asian governments were particularly incensed at
Tokyo’s failure to accept responsibility for such behavior
and demanded a formal apology. The government expressed
remorse, but only in the context of the aggressive
actions of all colonial powers during the imperialist
era. In the view of many Japanese, the actions of
their government during the Pacific War were a form of
self-defense. When new textbooks were published that
openly discussed instances of Japanese wartime misconduct,
including sex slavery, the use of slave labor, and the
Nanjing Massacre (see Chapter 6), many Japanese were
outraged and initiated a campaign to delete or tone down
references to atrocities committed by imperial troops during
the Pacific War.
The issue is not simply an academic one, for fear of the
potential revival of Japanese militarism is still strong
elsewhere in the region. The United States has not
shared this concern, however, and applauded a recent decision
to enhance the role of Japanese self-defense forces
in dealing with potential disturbances within the region.
This issue has provoked vigorous debate in Japan, where
some observers have argued that their country must begin
to adopt a more assertive stance toward the United States
and play a larger role in Asian affairs. In the spring of
2000, a parliamentary commission was appointed to look
into the matter.
World History
