A case in which there cannot be any suspicion of egoism illustrates this perhaps even better.  In the beginning of 1990, Gorbachev indicated that he was ready for a deal concerning the Kurile islands--the disputed territory that has been an obstacle to the signing of a Japan-Soviet peace treaty.  But the possibility for a major diplomatic advance was never explored seriously.  There was no discussion, no coordination, nothing to ensure that Japan would get maximum advantage out of Gorbachev's initiative.  Japan's government agencies were paralyzed in this as much as they were in the Gulf Crisis.

The Economic Juggernaut

THE ABSENCE of a center of political accountability, on the one hand, and the concerted efforts of the economic bureaucracies and corporations described by Hollerman, on the other, do not contradict each other.  Instead, the single-minded devotion to the policy of unlimited economic expansion seemed to camouflage the malfunctioning of Japan's political system.  Hollerman's ``collusive oligopoly'' is an acceptable term for the mainspring of Japanese economic power, and is certainly not at odds with my descriptions of it.  But what it labels does not constitute a ``summit of the Japanese pyramid,'' as Hollerman maintains, and his examples of central decision-making do not disprove my thesis.

Aside from its relentless economic growth--which has long ceased to have a positive effect on the quality of Japanese life--Japan is drifting.  The ``policy change'' of 1973 was not much of a policy change because ``the separation of economics from politics,'' in the phrase of Japan's officialdom, was (and is) less a separation than a subordination of the latter to the former.  The shift from ``export promotion'' to ``import promotion'' in foreign trade that Hollerman mentions was little more than an administrative endorsement of an existing trend, to a large extent exploited for public relations purposes.  Similarly, the liberalization of the Foreign Exchange Law in 1980 was well within the realm of politically unmediated bureaucratic decisions.

Hollerman's headquarters nation, striving to maximize its control over the world's economy, is the most recent outcome of Japan's politics of economic power that began with the rebuilding of its war-devastated industry.  Postwar reconstruction required no political discussion.  It could be left to the bureaucrats, who performed skillfully.  The occupation authorities, believing that bureaucrats were always servants of ruling politicians, inadvertently gave them greater power than they ever had before.

The strategy described by Hollerman emerged fairly spontaneously from policies that in their essence date from the 1950s.  Nothing comparable to parliamentary discussions in the United States or Europe concerning the desirability of welfare statism, of curtailing corporate power, or other non-economic national priorities took place in the intervening period.  Not long after 1955, when the Liberal Democratic Party was formed, politicians abdicated their responsibility for seriously thinking about the goals of the nation and the means of attaining them.  One could say that postwar reconstruction never stopped, it just phased into unlimited economic growth without attracting anyone's attention.  Further expansion was greatly aided by the extraordinary institutional memories of Japanese organizations, coupled with equally impressive institutional motivation.  The collective sense of shared traditions, of quasi-sacred purpose, and of the need to impress society with the merit of the institution can only be compared to that of an elite military organization, such as the United States Marine Corps.  The behavior of MITI, the Ministry of Finance, or the Keidanren must be seen in this perspective, with their activities that affect overseas markets complementing each other quite naturally.

As Japan's political elite single-mindedly pursued economic expansion, all the other things that countries are normally concerned with were subordinated to the expansionary goals of the oligopoly, or were not properly looked after.  Education is a good example: the schools cater to immediate industrial/bureaucratic needs in a way no other country, to my knowledge, has managed to arrange.

Japan has almost no independent foreign policy, beyond the purpose of helping to provide optimum international conditions for economic expansion.  The recent vast expansion of Japanese economic power in Southeast Asia is beginning to be accompanied by an effort to supply alternative non-Western viewpoints to Asians, in line with Japanese bureaucratic preoccupations.  But Tokyo's international initiatives--mainly concentrated in the ``peace-making'' sphere--are in practically every case gratuitous and will stop at the point where genuine commitments require adjustments by the stronger semi-autonomous domestic power groups.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs contains some first-class diplomats, but they tend to be highly frustrated, as their organization is to all intents and purposes a public relations agency.  Currently, one of its main tasks is to help prevent Americans from taking a second good look at Japan, lest Washington revise what is still, after all, an indulgent approach to Japan.

Japan's extraordinary position in the world has been made possible by the United States.  There exists no historical precedent for their bilateral relationship as it evolved after the occupation.  For forty-five years now, the United States has protected Japanese interests, as defined by Japan's administrators.  Willingness to allow full-speed Japanese economic expansion at the expense of American industry has been especially beneficial.  American policy-makers, blinkered by a powerful ideology of free trade that prevented them from understanding the nature of Japan's extraordinary growth, created opportunities that Japanese planners were quick to exploit.  The United States has continuously provided a protective diplomatic and strategic shield.  All those things by which a state is externally recognized--diplomatic efforts, strategic-military efforts, and even the diplomacy safeguarding economic advantage--were carried out by American proxy.

Japan's dependence on the United States can hardly be exaggerated.  The protective shield made it unnecessary for the power-holders in Tokyo to worry much about their weakness in crisis management, which results from inherent disunity and pervasive mistrust among the clusters that share power.  Because of American protection, Tokyo has never been required to get involved in intricate international power acrobatics for the sake of its de facto policy of unlimited economic expansion.  The recent, popular argument that the relationship is in good shape because the United States and Japan see eye to eye on most foreign policy objectives betrays historical ignorance.  Japanese acceptance of American foreign policy cues has been an essential part of the bilateral arrangement throughout the postwar period.  The significance of the Japanese contribution to the Gulf effort, when it was finally settled on, was that it was aimed at nothing more than maintaining good relations with the United States.  During the entire crisis one could hardly ever detect a sign, in official pronouncements or in serious media commentary, that anyone in Japan was thinking of the events as having a direct bearing on Japan's national interest (this, despite the fact that Japan's industry is more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than is that of any other).  To the extent that a discussion took place at all, it was cast in terms of what Japan should do to keep an annoyingly demanding American president satisfied.

Japan's impairing of the industrial strength and its risking of the goodwill of the power on which it is so dependent is therefore all the more frightening a spectacle.

The Poverty of Japanology

WITH JAPAN becoming an increasingly intrusive power, the world faces a force it cannot readily understand, a force whose nature has so far defied enlightened discussion.  Part of the problem here is the lack of a proper vocabulary with which to discuss it.  What Japan represents internationally, what it has done economically, and what it appears to be doing now--for none of these can we rely on precedents to guide our thinking and language.

Japan obviously constitutes prodigious political might.  The frequently heard question as to when it is going to play a major political role is ill conceived.  Japan may be all but invisible diplomatically, but its power to cripple entire industrial sectors in other countries, its power over the international financial system, and the role of headquarters nation it is already playing for the rapidly growing ``subcontracted'' economies of Southeast Asia are political factors of the first order.  The problems between Japan and its trading partners are political problems, since neither market forces nor special economic measures will make them disappear.  They are problems requiring political solutions, and if these are not forthcoming, they will eventually cause political crises.

Twice this century, American resolve rescued the world from what most likely would have been utter political calamity.  The United States is now a puzzled bystander, as Hollerman aptly puts it, and does not understand what is happening.  Americans find it difficult to accept the notion that corporations can be motivated for long periods by a drive other than that of maximizing profits.  In the meantime the American industrial base is very seriously threatened, with major losses being virtually irretrievable.  To take only one example: by abandoning general consumer electronics--no longer profitable as a result of years of Japanese dumping on a massive scale--American industry has wounded itself in many places.  Even if Detroit, or a part of it, can be saved, between one third and one half of the value of the cars it will produce in the near future will come from imported electronics.  Moving back into abandoned sectors, once they become profitable again, is possible according to nineteenth-century economic theory; but in practice the barriers to reentry are prohibitively high.

Essay Types: Essay