Newsletter of the lnstitute of Social Science, University of Tokyo
ISSN 1340-7155

SocialScience

15
March 1999

Japan in the 1960s

Published by:
The Information Center for Social
Science Research on Japan
Institute of Social Science
University of Tokyo
Editorial Committee:
SAKAGUCHI Shôjirô (Chairman)
Robert HELLYER
Jonathan LEWISDistribution
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Cover Photo
Clashes between police andstudents, University of Tokyo,
January 1969.
From the “University of Tokyo
Graduation Album, 1969”. Used
with the permission of the Album
Editorial Committee, University ofTokyo.
Back Cover Photo
University of Tokyo students,
1968. From the “University ofTokyo Graduation Album, 1969”.
Used with the permission of theAlbum Editorial Committee,
University of Tokyo.
Editorial Notes
Personal Names
All personal names are given in
the customary order in the native
language of the person, unlessotherwise requested. Hence inJapanese names, the family nameis given first, e.g., HAYASHI
Masumi, and in Western names
the family name is given second,e.g., Jesse VENTURA.
Romanization
Due to software limitations
circumflexes are used in place ofmacrons, and omitted in most
personal and place names.
Copyright© 1999 by the Institute ofSocial Science, University ofTokyo, except where noted. All
rights reserved.

Page2

Following our March 1998 issue (SSJ 12) that examined Japan in
the 1950s, Social Science Japan continues our look at specificdecades of postwar Japan. This issue on the 1960s tries to moveaway from oft mentioned events of the decade such as the 1964
Tokyo Olympics and the continued LDP rule. Instead, we provide
articles that explore the Japan Socialist Party, student
demonstrations late in the decade, the stock market in the 1960s,
and connections between population flows and economic growthduring the decade. Two articles also give us fascinating looks at
two influential intellectual figures, MARUYAMA Masao and
YANAGITA Kunio, within the milieu of the 1960s. In addition,
we include an overview and summaries of two volumes of therecently published 20 Seiki Shisutemu [20th Century Global System],a six volume series edited by the Institute of Social Science,
University of Tokyo.
In closing, Social Science Japan bids a heartfelt farewell to Associate
Professor Jonathan LEWIS, who moves to Tokyo Denki University
beginning in April. Jonathan was largely responsible for getting
Social Science Japan off the ground five years ago and has remained
a steady, guiding force ever since. We will sorely miss him andwish him nothing but the best for the future.

Contents
Japan in the 1960s
Patricia G. STEINHOFF Student Protest in the 1960s …………………………………………p. 3
HASHIMOTO Jurô Unregulated Securities Companies and Panic in the Stock Market:
The Experience of the 1960s ………………………………………………………………p. 7
NAKAKITA Kôji The Japan Socialist Party in the 1960s:
Why were Structural Reformers Defeated? ………………………………………………p.10
YOSHIKAWA Hiroshi High Economic Growth in the 1960s ……………………………………p.13
HIRAISHI Naoaki The Lectures and Seminars of Maruyama Masao 1967-1968 ………………p.16
SATÔ Kenji The Research of Yanagita Kunio: The 1960s and Today …………………………p.20

New on the Bookshelves
The 20 Seiki Shisutemu series
HASHIMOTO Jurô The Death of Continuous Inflation:
An Overview of the 20 Seiki Shisutemu series ……………………………………………p.22
MORITA Osamu A Summary of 20 Seiki Shisutemu 2:
Keizai Seichô(I) Kijuku ……………………………………………………………………p.24
SUEHIRO Akira A Summary of 20 Seiki Shisutemu 4:
Kaihatsu Shugi …………………………………………………………………………p.26

Research Reports
Stephen BARKER Japan’s Drug Problem ……………………………………………………p.28
Mark JONES Children as Treasures:Childhood and the Middle Class in Early 20th Century Japan ……………………………p.32
Peter MATANLE The Salaryman and Japan’s Modernity ………………………………………p.36

Social Science Japan March 1999

Student Protest in the 1960s

Patricia G. STEINHOFF
Students participated heavily in the two waves of social protest that opened andclosed the decade of the 1960s. They are commonly known as 1960 Ampo and 1970
Ampo, because opposition to the Japan-United States Joint Security Treaty [Nichibei
Anzen Hoshô Jôyaku], or Ampo, provided a focal issue for protests, while thedecennial opening of the treaty for revision determined their timing. The student
protests of the late 1960s leading up to 1970 Ampo were far more extensive,
complex, and violent than those of 1960 Ampo and reached deeply into Japanese
universities, but they have received much less scholarly attention.
The Legacy of 1960 Ampo
The 1960 Ampo protests contributed three key elements to the student protests laterin the decade: political organizations through which students could be mobilized
for protest activities; a determination to overcome the failure of 1960 Ampo bybuilding a stronger protest campaign for 1970 Ampo; and a distinctive repertoire ofprotest tactics.
Student members of the Japan Communist Party had created the postwar system ofstudent self-government associations and initially controlled its national federation,
but in 1958 a majority of the federation’s top leaders left the JCP to form their own
independent New Left “party” and affiliated student organization. Together withanother independent group and part of the Japan Socialist Party-sponsored student Patricia G. STEINHOFF is aorganization, they comprised the Japanese New Left in 1960.
Professor of Sociology in the
Department of Sociology,
The New Left and the Old Left had national organizations with similar dual University of Hawaii and astructures in which an elite “party” of student and former student leaders provided Visiting Fellow at theideological direction and continuity for a larger mass organization based on
Institute of Social Science,
chapters in various university academic units. Each organization had a distinctive
University of Tokyo.
theoretical perspective from which it could formulate a position on virtually any
240 Social Sciences
political issue, and they competed vigorously by emphasizing their ideological andBuilding, 2424 Maile Way
stylistic differences. The student chapters sought control of local student
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 USA
government, which brought access to resources and a broader forum for mobilizing
steinhof@hawaii.edu
students.
In the aftermath of the failure of the 1960 Ampo protests to stop the ratification of
the revised treaty, all of the New Left student organizations struggled to draw
lessons for the future. This produced internal dissension and factioning, but theorganizations survived either intact or as separate factions. They re-emerged in the
mid-1960s to begin mobilizing a new generation of students, aiming to build
student activism through various protest campaigns leading up to 1970 Ampo.
Collectively these “sects,” as they came to be known, had developed a distinctive
repertoire of protest tactics in addition to the petitions, one-day strikes, and massstreet demonstrations that comprised the standard protest repertoire of postwar
Japan. The most widely known student tactic was the zigzag or snake-dancing styleof marching in street demonstrations. A second tactic was the secretly planned,
sudden occupation of a symbolic space such as Haneda Airport or the Diet➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

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Japan in the 1960s continued
compound, usually for a brief period. A third tactic was a willingness to escalate
demonstrations into violence by fighting with the police.
Student Protest in the Mid-1960s
Student protest in the mid-1960s developed along two separate fronts, often withthe same leaders and participants. In 1965 and 1966 students participated innational protests against the peace treaty between Japan and South Korea, and inprotests against the Vietnam War, both of which were viewed as feeding directly
into the long-standing grievances against the Japan-U.S. Joint Security Treaty. The
second arena for student protest emerged early in 1966 as students at Waseda
University carried out a 155 day all-school strike to protest tuition increases, andconflicts erupted at over forty other schools over local grievances.
Student protest in Japan is often protest against the state, but it is also an interaction
with the state, in which demonstrators clash directly with police as the agents ofstate control. The police response in the 1960 Ampo campaign was generally
restrained, with about 250 arrests over the entire campaign. The bulk of thosearrests came in one night of violent clashes in June 1960, in which several students
were injured and one University of Tokyo student was killed.
When student protest began to rise again in the mid-1960s, the New Left student
sects outfitted demonstrators with color-coded plastic helmets and wooden fighting
poles for encounters with similarly equipped riot police. In a major clash at Haneda
Airport in October 1967, violence surpassed the 1960 Ampo level. The toll for the
day was one Kyoto University student killed, about 600 students injured, and 75
arrested. The arrest toll for a second incident at Haneda in early November was 345,
surpassing the number for the entire 1960 Ampo campaign.
In 1960 the violence had peaked just as the single issue 1960 Ampo protest
campaign reached its natural end. By contrast, the same level of violence wasreached early in the run-up to 1970 Ampo, which was already a more complex,
multi-issue campaign. Still to come were protests against the reversion of Okinawa(the major issue of the 1970 Ampo treaty revision), the new Narita International
Airport, and a host of environmental issues.
Student Conflict in the late 1960s
As in the 1960 Ampo campaign, there was broad public sympathy with these
protest issues, and the students were protected by support from the major
opposition political parties despite their use of disruptive tactics. In addition to the
New Left groups, thousands of students demonstrated with the Old Left or withsingle-issue organizations. Most did not engage in any violence, but the nature of
student protest was increasingly defined by those who did. As violence escalated,
sympathy and support for the New Left began to evaporate, and student protest
came to be re-defined as criminal behavior. As violence escalated, that sympathy
and support began to evaporate and student protest came to be re-defined as
criminal behavior. Yet at the same time, students in Japan were well aware thatthey were part of a much larger wave of student protest that was sweeping across

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Social Science Japan March 1999

Europe and the United States, and their rhetoric resonated with the Chinese
Cultural Revolution and Third World revolutionary movements.
By the fall of 1968, student conflict in Japan had become more severe on both its oncampus and off-campus fronts. In addition to throwing stones and fighting with
poles, students began throwing Molotov cocktails in demonstrations. Arrests
escalated rapidly and became more indiscriminate, while injuries to both police andstudents mounted. In 1968, over 6,000 students were arrested for protest activity.
In campus conflicts the one-day strike and temporary penetration of symbolic space
hardened into indefinite strikes and student occupation of key campus buildings.
Additionally, the rivalry and factionalism in the New Left sects had degenerated
into violent internal conflicts in which students were injured and even killed.
In order to circumvent the problems of sect rivalry and mobilize unaffiliatedstudents for campus protests, students at Nihon University and the University ofTokyo developed a new horizontal form of student organization, the All-Campus
Joint Struggle Committee [Zengaku Kyôtô Kaigi, or Zenkyôtô], which welcomed all
students and operated on principles of mass democracy at open campus meetings.
This form of organization for on-campus conflict spread rapidly to campuses
throughout Japan, and the number of schools paralyzed by student strikes grewalmost daily. Campus protesters also adopted the technique popularized in the
Chinese Cultural Revolution and employed in denunciation sessions by the Buraku
Liberation League. They invited university officials to appear at mass meetings toface an angry student body demanding apologies for past conduct and majorchanges in university governance.
Even when the campus conflict was managed by an all-campus joint strugglecommittee, members of the New Left sects participated actively and often
controlled specific buildings. In addition, the student occupation of a campus on
strike provided a safe base and new resources for staging violent off-campus
protests. College campuses had long been considered off-limits to police unlessthey were invited by university officials. The heads of private universities did nothesitate to call in the police to clear buildings and lock out students, but national
universities were reluctant to compromise their independence by doing so.
The University of Tokyo conflict began early in 1968 as a protest by medical
students over the working conditions of interns. When they occupied the Yasuda
Auditorium clock tower, university officials promptly called in the riot police toremove them. This set off a major campus-wide conflict over the fact that the riot
police had been called in, along with a host of other grievances. By October the
Hongo and Komaba campuses were on strike, with students from various faculties
occupying a number of buildings including Yasuda Auditorium. Well aware thatthey were risking the elite future they had worked so hard to attain, the students
developed an ideology of self-denial and rejection of privilege to explain theiractions. As the crisis continued, Zenkyôtô students fought pitched battles withmembers of the JCP-led student organization, who were bitterly opposed to thestrike. On December 29, the university administration cancelled the 1969 entrance
examinations.

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Japan in the 1960s continued
The standoff continued into the new year, with university officials under mountingpressure to end it. Finally, early on the morning of January 18, 1969, 8,500 riot
police sealed off the Hongo campus and began clearing the occupied buildings one
by one and arresting the occupants. Students from all over the country flocked to
the nearby Kanda-Jimbocho area and set up a “liberated quarter” with Parisianstyle street barricades where they fought with police in a supporting protest. On
January 19, students from various sects occupying different floors of the Yasuda
Auditorium clock tower fought all day with stones and Molotov cocktails as the riot
police tore down barricades and then cleared the building floor by floor, reaching
the last holdouts on the roof at dusk. In the two days of conflict 653 police, 141
students and 6 bystanders were injured, and 819 students arrested.
Following the conflict at the University of Tokyo, nearly 200 universities
throughout Japan formed Zenkyôtô organizations and went on strike. In July 1969
the Diet passed a University Control Law that permitted the Ministry of Education
to take control of any school that was unable to end a campus conflict within six
months. Under increased pressure from the new law, university administratorssought internal solutions but also resorted more readily to calling in the riot police.
By the spring of 1970, the wave of paralyzing student strikes had ended.
Off-campus conflict also continued to escalate throughout 1969, with injuries
mounting as students openly carried incendiary devices in demonstrations, andhomemade explosives proliferated. The total number of students arrested for groupprotests more than doubled in 1969, to 13,497. As the decade closed, the violence
had isolated the students, arrests and criminal prosecution had taken a severe tollon their futures, and it was clear that 1970 Ampo would fail to achieve its goals.

❑

Further
Reading

Page6

DOWSEY, Stuart. 1970. Zengakuren: Japan’s Revolutionary Students.
Berkeley, California: The Ishi Press.
HAVENS, Thomas R. H. 1987. Fire Across the Sea: The Vietnam War andJapan, 1965-1975. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
KURITA Nobuyoshi. 1993. Shakai Undô no Keiryô Shakaigaku teki Bunseki:Naze Kôgi Suru no ka. [A Quantitative Sociological Analysis of Social
Movements]. Tokyo: Nihon Hyôronsha.
Shakai Mondai Kenkyukai. 1969. Zengakuren Kakuha: Gakusei Undô Jiten
1960-1969 [Zengakuren Factions:A Student Movement Dictionary
1960-1969]. Tokyo: Futabasha.
STEINHOFF, P. G. 1984. “Student Conflict.” Pp. 174-213 in Conflict inJapan, edited by E. Krauss, T. Rohlen, and P. Steinhoff. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
STEINHOFF, Patricia G. 1996. “Three Women Who Loved the Left: Radical
Woman Leaders in the Japanese Red Army Movement.” Pp. 301-323 in
Re-Imaging Japanese Women, edited by A. E. IMAMURA. Berkeley/
Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press.
TAKAGI, Masayuki. 1985. Zengakuren to Zenkyôtô [Zengakuren andZenkyôtô]. Tokyo: Kodansha.
TAKAZAWA, Kôji. 1984. Zenkyôtô Graffiti. Tokyo: Shinsensha.
TAKAZAWA Kôji and Masayuki Takagi. 1981. Shinsayoku Nijûnenshi [ATwenty Year History of the New Left]. Tokyo: Shinsensha.
WHEELER, Donald Frederick. 1974. “The Japanese Student Movement:
Value Politics, Student Politics and the Tokyo University Struggle.”
unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York.

Social Science Japan March 1999

Unregulated Securities Companies and Panic in
the Stock Market: The Experience of the 1960s
HASHIMOTO JurôWith the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s, concern over the
instability of the financial system and systemic risk has increased. In thewake of repeated bank runs on financial institutions and numerous failuressince 1992, the Bank of Japan has repeatedly implemented special financing
based on Article 25 of the Bank of Japan law. Based on this special financing
measure, lending by the Bank of Japan has increased dramatically. 1
Article 25 of the Bank of Japan law is a provision that was adopted when thelaw was revised in 1942. It states that: “Upon receiving permission from theminister in charge, necessary measures for nurturing and preserving credit
stability may be implemented.” The article is clearly ambiguous and while
we may be apt to see this provision as one of the exceptional clauses tailoredto the wartime economy, it remains misleading. With the gold embargo of1932 and the move away from the gold standard, a managed currency
system had, in reality, already been introduced in Japan but legally cameinto effect only with the reform of 1942. “Necessary measures for nurturing
and preserving credit stability,” was designed to prevent the appearance offinancial systemic risks after the abolishment of the gold standard but it was
not clear how the kinds of risk were to be judged.

HASHIMOTO Jurô is a
For a quarter of a century, Article 25 was not invoked. During that period, Professor of Economics in
the Institute of Social
there was no crisis of the financial system that was deemed as requiring
Science, University of Tokyo.

special financing from the Bank of Japan. The first time special lending by
the Bank of Japan was executed was in 1965. Yet it was not banks thatreceived this financing but rather the securities firms, Yamaichi and Ôi. In
1997, Yamaichi became the only firm to twice receive special funding.

Institute of Social Science
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0033 JAPANhashimot@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Why was the Bank of Japan’s special financing directed toward securities
firms? The most direct causes were the continuing fall in stock prices andthe deteriorating performance of larger securities companies in the first halfof the 1960s. As the fall continued, along with receiving less in transaction
fees, securities firms incurred appraisal loses due to the drop in the price ofholding stocks. This created a crisis that saw numerous securities firms gobankrupt. Why was it not banks but a related sector of the financial
industry, securities firms, which received help? As the securities firms were
not supposed to receive this kind of assistance, there still remains doubt as
to whether preventing the failure of securities firms fell under the realm of“protecting and nurturing the credit system.” The answer is that 1960s
securities firms conducted business that was similar in nature to that ofbanks.

➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

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Japan in the 1960s continued

Notes
1

An OECD report focused ofattention on this issue.
OECD, Economic
Survey 1998, Japan.

In order to understand this answer, we must consider the three special
characteristics of securities firms in the 1960s. First upon orders from US
occupation authorities (GHQ), postwar reforms encouraged direct financing
in the market. Moreover, the United States stock market laws (directlytranslated into Japanese) were adopted for Japan as well. Based on thepremise that the system should allow freedom for parties to enter orwithdraw from the market, during the first stage of the period of higheconomic growth, the revenue of securities firms increased. With the
upward turn in stock prices during the late 1950s and early 1960s, many
securities firms became involved in the market, creating fierce competition.
The second special characteristic is that different from the United States, thelevel of accumulated assets in Japan was quite low with stable bank deposits
the preferred method of savings. However indirect financing, that is to saybank lending, became more prevalent and a low ceiling or low-upper limit
for growth in the stock market was created.
Thirdly, because large Japanese securities firms were competing with otherlarge firms from other industries to hire college graduates, they were forced
to hire employees under the common stipulation that the new hires would
not be made redundant and would be employed until retirement. As aresult, because labor costs were inelastic, the trading volume moved on alarge scale to broker services and dealer services, creating a trade-off withsecurities services.
In order to deal with these three factors, the larger securities firms
aggressively unearthed new list companies and increased investment toexisting list companies. The securities firms underwrote stocks on a large
scale, a practice that was intended to develop dealer business throughplanned, secure sales. However because of the restrictive legal stipulationsin the system (as noted above), in order to expand the amount of customers,
it was necessary to hold in reserve a certain amount of stocks. Moreover,because of the free entry provisions laid down by the GHQ, late comer firms
actively entered the market and pursued customers. In order to finance thestocks that were held for sale, firms followed the practice of unyô-azukari.
This system involved first the securities firms selling to customers
financier’s bonds issued by the long-term credit banks. The securities firms
would then pay the customer a fee to borrow these same bonds. The bonds
would then be placed in reserve in banks and using the bond as collateral,
securities firms would receive cash loans from the banks. Hence by paying
a fee to customers, along with promoting sales, the actual yield from bonds
increased and in turn, increased the amount of funds held in reserve forsecurities firms. The practice of unyô-azukari most closely resembled bank

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Social Science Japan March 1999

deposit service activities.
These planned large sales and the unyô-azukari system functioned well as
long as stock price continued to rise. However these practices in themselves
increased the supply of shares, creating one of the problems that led to adrop in stock prices. The most severe recession in postwar Japan that began
in late 1963 also led to a fall in stock prices. When the ability of securities
firms to pay the user fees to customers was also called into doubt, the unyôazukari system began to fall apart. This increased the default risk of
securities firms and it was believed that the banks that had made loans tothe securities firms in exchange for bonds were weakening and on the brinkof bankruptcy. In 1965, lines of people requesting the dissolution of unyôazukari began to appear in front of branch offices of securities firms.
Namely, the dissolution of unyô-azukari was in reality equal to the scale of abank run. As this point, the government and the Bank of Japan offeredspecial financing to the main banks that were associated with the failing
Yamaichi Securities.
In conclusion, the seeds of 1965 stock panic were sown by American
postwar reforms that helped to create an unsuitable financial system thatwas mismatched to the actual Japanese market. Hence a downturn inbusiness cycles led to a serious economic recession.

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

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The Japan Socialist Party in the 1960s:
Why were Structural Reformers Defeated?
NAKAKITA Kôji
In March 1960, EDA Saburo was elected Secretary General of the Japan
Socialist Party (JSP) at the 17th party congress. Six months later at the 19th
party congress, Eda and his followers introduced the theory of structuralreform, which soon became the official party line. Although the structuralreform advocated by Eda was a kind of Marxist theory with origins in the
Italian Communist Party (PCI), it represented a flexible, realistic andstrategic approach for the JSP. After gaining control over the party, Eda andhis followers were criticized as revisionists and his position within the party
weakened, leading to Eda‘s resignation as party leader at the 22 nd party
congress in November 1962 and the fall from prominence of the structuralreform group two years later. Many political scientists believe that the defeatof the structural reform group in the early 1960s led the JSP to became
merely an impotent “opposition party” without the will to form agovernment.
What factors led to the defeat of the structural reformers? Throughcomparative research of the JSP and the West German Social Democratic
Party (SPD), OTAKE Hideo contends that the theory of structural reform
was similar to the Bad Godesberg program of the SPD. He concludes that
NAKAKITA Kôji is an the structural reform group was defeated because the JSP‘s opposition to
Associate Professor inrearmament prevented the party from making an alliance with thethe Faculty of Law, Osaka
Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) that might have allowed it to form aCity University.
coalition government.1 However according to KIJIMA Masamichi, a JSP
Faculty of Law
official with close ties to Eda, the structural reformers were not attracted to
Osaka City University
Sugimoto 3-3-138, Sumiyoshi-ku
reform measures such as the Bad Godesberg plan.2 Rather, the group tried
Osaka-shi 558-8585 JAPANto make reformism consistent with Marxism in order to gain support fromnakakita@law.osaka-cu.ac.jp
party activists as well as from the general public. 3 I believe that thestructural reformers were defeated because the JSP organizational structure
did not allow the party to build a base of support among party activists andin the general public. Simply stated, the institutions of the party led to thedefeat of the structural reformers and hindered the JSP in the 1960s.4
The party institution, which was chiefly to blame for the defeat of thestructural reformers, had been constructed a few years earlier. At the 14th
party congress in February 1958, the JSP leadership began a dramatic reformof party institutions, establishing an institutional reform council composedof ten regional representatives and five party executives. Largely reflecting
the views of left wing activists in the party, the council was led by a JSP
official, KATÔ Nobuyuki. Eda, then chairman of the party‘s organizational
committee and a principal member of left wing Suzuki faction, supported
Katô.
Katô formulated his institutional reform plan based on the trustee system ofPage10Social Science Japan March 1999

the Austrian Socialist Party (SPö). To make the party organization stronger
both quantitatively and qualitatively, he proposed a dual party membershipsystem consisting of popular members and activist members. Popularmembers would be obligated to pay only a party membership fee, while theactivist members, selected from the pool of party members, were expected
to play a more active and committed role in party affairs. He also proposed
weakening the power of Diet members within the party organization byeliminating their automatic right of representation at party congresses.
While left wing activists welcomed Katô’s plan, it came under attack fromother party factions and/or party-affiliated groups. SAKISAKA Itsuro, anorthodox Marxist and a leader of the Socialist Association, was opposed toeasing restrictions on party membership. However he supported
strengthening the power of activists while weakening the role of Diet
members in the party structure. ASANUMA Inejirô, Secretary General of the
JSP and a leading member of right wing KAWAKAMI faction, was opposed
to increasing the power of activists and weakening the role of Diet members
power. He did, however, approve of plans to ease restrictions on party
membership. In the end, both Sakisaka and Asanuma stood against the
proposed dual party membership system and Katô’s plan was not
approved.
Thereafter the council, largely reflecting the views of left wing activists,
decided to strengthen the power of activists, to weaken the role of Diet
members in the party, and to refrain from easing restrictions on party
membership, moves supported by Katô and Eda. Asanuma at first opposed
these decisions, but changed his mind after the party’s defeat in the June
1959 House of Councilors’ election. Consequently, at the 16th party Congressin October 1959, the party removed the automatic right of Diet members to
be represented at party congresses, although it delayed its implementation
for two years. While institutional reform followed the plan of Sakisaka, it
was initiated and implemented by Katô and Eda. The structural reformgroup thus emerged from the movement for institutional reform and cameto gain support from activists in the party.

Notes
Hideo OTAKE, “Defense
Controversies and OneParty Dominance: The
Opposition in Japan andWest Germany,” in T.J.
PEMPEL, ed., Uncommon
Democracies: The OneParty Dominant Regimes.
(Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1990), 128-161.
2
Adopted in 1959, this was a
new general plan for the
SPD that completely
expunged any taint of
Marxist ideology fromthe party platform anddeveloped a newframework based onreformist socialism.
3
KIJIMA Masamichi, Kôzô
Kaikaku Ha: Sono Kako
to Mirai [The Structural
Reform Faction: Its Past
and Future] (Tokyo:
Gendai no Riron Sha,
1979).
4
A similar party institutional
analysis was conductedby Thomas A. KOELBLE,
The Left Unraveled:Social Democracy and
the New Left Challengein Britain and West
Germany (Durham:
Duke University Press,
1991).
1

Disassociating himself from the SASAKI faction (formerly the SUZUKI
faction), Eda became the leader of the structural reformers and ascended tothe office of Secretary General of the JSP in March 1960. Eda and his group
had initiated institutional reforms that strengthened the role of activists inthe party. Because their reform measures were consistent with Marxism
theories, like-minded party activists gave their support. As a result, thestructural reform group became the leading group in the JSP.

➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

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Japan in the 1960s continued

Notes(continued)
5

In January 1964, Narita
pointed to three areas of
JSP weakness: 1) noconsistent, daily politicalactivity 2) a party
dominated by Diet
members 3) dependence
upon support from labor
unions.

Further Reading
NAKAKITA Kôji. “Sengo
Nippon ni okeru
Shakaiminshushugi
Seitô no Bunretsu to
Seisaku Kyori no
Kakudai: Nippon
Shakaitô (1955-1964
Nen) o Chûshin to shite”[The Fragmentation andPolarization of Social
Democrats in Postwar
Japan: The Japan
Socialist Party, 1955-64]
Kokka Gakkai Zasshi
Vol.106, No.11/12,(December 1993), 65118.
JOHNSON, Stephen.
“Strategies for
Realignment: Japanese
Opposition Politics
Under a One Party
Dominant Regime 19551993,” unpublished,
Ph.D.Dissertation,
Oxford University, 1995.

Page12In the spring of 1961, the Sasaki faction began to attack the structuralreformers. In response, the structural reformers formed their own Diet
members‘ faction which in turn, decreased support for the group among
activists. In July 1962, Eda proposed “the Eda Vision” of a future socialist
society based on the high living standards of the United States, the highsocial security levels of the Soviet Union, British Parliamentary democracy,
and the “peace” constitution of Japan. It seemed to many activists that “theEda Vision” was reformism which merely aimed to flatter the generalpublic. Under pressure, Eda resigned his position as secretary general and
NARITA Tomomi, another leader of the structural reform group, succeeded
him at the 22nd party congress in November 1962.
Although structural reformers maintained a dominant position over the
Sasaki faction (which consisted mostly of members of the Diet), the Socialist
Association continued to mobilize activists who opposed the reformist
stance of the structural reformers. Attracting activists rapidly after the Miikemine dispute in 1959-60 and as result of the controversy over structuralreform, the Socialist Association transformed itself from a coterie of theorists
into a vibrant activist organization. While its penchant for orthodox Marxist
theory was not shared by the general public, activists found the group‘smessage especially appealing. Hence, Sakisaka‘s institutional reform
program eventually led the Socialist Association to achieve great power
within the JSP. As a result, left wing factions, in cooperation with theSocialist Association, gained control of the JSP at the 24th party congress in
December 1964.
Eda and Narita, the two leaders of the structural reformers, took different
political paths after their defeat. Eda gradually changed his thought from
Marxism to social democratic reformism in hopes of gaining greater support
from the general public. The structural reform group became the Eda
faction, consisting mostly of Diet members. Narita, however, remained asolid Marxist, organizing activists and building a party organization
centered on “Narita‘s three points.”5 Working in cooperation with theSocialist Association, Narita maintained a dominant position in the JSP until
1977. Given his strong commitment to Marxist theory and the generalpublic‘s lack of interest in that theory, it was inevitable that the Narita-led
JSP would gradually lose support in the general elections of the 1960s and1970s.

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

High Economic Growth in the 1960s

YOSHIKAWA Hiroshi
Amid the long recession of the 1990s, we Japanese nostalgically recall the
1960s. Back in those days, the economy enjoyed 10% annual growth andwas hailed as a miracle. Growth changed Japan so much that today, it israther difficult to imagine how Japan looked before the period of higheconomic growth began. For example, in 1950 almost half of Japan’s labor
force worked in agriculture and even in 1960, one out of three workers was
still a farmer. High growth in the 1950s and 1960s transformed Japan into
the nation we know today. What led to such a high level of growth? Amid
the many explanations, I have my own theory. It emphasizes population
flows and household formation as fundamental factors that sustained higheconomic growth.
The Japanese economy in the 1950s and 1960s was a two-sector economy
consisting of a rural agricultural sector and an urban manufacturing sector.
In the process of economic growth, population began to flow from thecountryside into urban areas. The dual structure of the economy enabled
the manufacturing sector to hire labor at a level of real wages which, given a
degree of ‘disguised’ unemployment in the agricultural sector, was lower
than the marginal product in the industrial sector. Growth in the
manufacturing sector, therefore, led to high profits in that sector rather thanan increase in real wages. The high profits in turn were supposed to induce
a high rate of investment. All of this, of course, is what Arthur LEWIS(1954) described as a typical process of growth in an underdeveloped dual
economy.

YOSHIKAWA Hiroshi is a
Professor of Economics in
the Faculty of Economics,
University of Tokyo.
Faculty of Economics
University of Tokyo
The Lewis model has been successfully applied to the century-long Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
development of the Japanese economy by a number of economists such as Tokyo 113-0033 JAPANOHKAWA and ROSOVSKY (1973). In the Lewis model, however,
population flow between two sectors is taken to be solely the result of thegrowth of the modern manufacturing sector. Many economists demonstratethat internal migration was in fact quite sensitive to the growth of the
manufacturing sector; more people left rural agricultural areas for urban
industrial cities in booms, and vice versa. Yearly fluctuations of population
flow were therefore a result of industrial growth. In the Lewis model, thekey factor behind this industrial growth is the low real wages made possibleby the existence of disguised unemployment in the agricultural sector.
However, in contrast to the Lewis model, I believe that, in the case of the
post-war Japanese economic growth (1955-70), population flows between
two sectors comprised the major factor generating high demand for
products of the industrial sector. In my view, population flow was a cause as
well as a result of economic growth.

➪Social Science Japan March 1999

Page13

Japan in the 1960s continued
Lewis’s theory does not actually hold for many developing countries. The
basic problem with the theory is that it suggests that growth of the modern
industrial sector is sustained by high profits guaranteed by repressed real
wages, while demand for products in the modern industrial sector isassumed to emerge automatically as production grows. In reality, however,demand does not automatically emerge. Furthermore, we must explain
how demand is generated.
The growth of the Japanese economy from 1955 to 1970 was basically led bydomestic demand, and in this process, population flow and household
formation played a crucial role. Because of the large-scale population flows,
the number of households dramatically increased during the period of higheconomic growth. We should pay particular attention to the fact that in thisperiod the growth rate of households formed a hump shape at a high level,
while the growth rate of population was quite stable at a much lower levelof about 1%. As a result, for two decades beginning in 1955, the populationof Japan increased by 20% from 90 million to 110 million, while the numberof households increased by 80%. In particular, the number of traditional,
three-generation merged households hardly increased at all. Instead, “core”
or “nuclear” households, consisting of a married couple, possibly withunmarried children, and unmarried single households dramaticallyincreased, particularly in urban industrial areas. When three generations offamily members lived in a traditional single household in rural villages,
each such household needed only one refrigerator, television set, washingmachine, and car. When young people left their rural villages for urban
industrial areas, they formed new households. Each of these newhouseholds necessarily generated additional demand for houses, consumer
durables, and electricity. In this way, the rural-urban population flow
sustained high domestic demand in the period of high economic growth
between 1955 and 1970.
Along with the creation of a larger number of households, the high growth
period saw the diffusion of newly available consumer durables. Anyone
who lived in those happy days should be able to vividly describe how somany consumables came to be a part of the Japanese home. The diffusion
was facilitated by the steady decline in prices of those products over time on
the one hand, and an increase in incomes on the other. Electric washingmachines, for example, first appeared in the Japanese market in 1949; at thattime, a machine cost 54,000 while the average annual labor income wasabout 50,000. Understandably, only 20 machines were sold per month!
However only six years later, the price of washing machines had fallen to
20,000 while the average annual income had risen to above 200,000.
About a third of households could then afford to own washing machines.
The same story holds for other consumer durables as well. What is more,

Page14Social Science Japan March 1999

this process accelerated in the 1960s. Since it was the cities that led this
diffusion process, urbanization led not only to the creation of newhouseholds but also to a sustained high demand for consumer durables. By
the end of the 1960s, however, most of the then available consumer durables
had saturated the domestic market.
This whole process of domestic demand-led high economic growth during
1955-70 can be summarized as follows. By raising the demand for labor
capital accumulation in the industrial sector, a population flow from theagricultural areas to the cities was created. In addition to these widely
recognized channels, I want to emphasize another oft neglected but very
important fact. By creating new households and thereby raising thedemand for consumer durables and electricity, the population flow in turnultimately sustained the profitability of investment in the manufacturingindustry. I also believe that the role of newly available consumer durables
was not confined to demand for those products themselves. Through the
input-output interrelationship, they augmented the demand forintermediate goods such as steel and electricity, and accordingly encouraged
high levels of investment in those sectors.

Further Reading
LEWIS, W. Arthur.
“Economic
Development with
Unlimited Supplies ofLabour,” Manchester
School of Economic andSocial Studies, May
1954.
OHKAWA, K. and H.
ROSOVSKY. Japanese
Economic Growth.
Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1973.
YOSHIKAWA, H.
Macroeconomics andthe Japanese Economy.
Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.

In this virtuous circle for high economic growth, low real wages were not as
instrumental as Lewis (1954) contended. Rather, it was the growth ofdomestic demand that sustained the profitability of investment. And for a
growth in consumption demand, a steady rise in real wages, rather than acontinuing low wage, is a contributing factor. A steady rise in real wages
sustained effective demand in the post-war Japanese economy because thekey product was consumer durables, which, having not yet achieved
international competitiveness, had to find outlets in the domestic market.
This provides an important lesson for today’s developing countries. In
contrast, the pre-war Japanese economy was, like today’s newly
industrialized economies, a typical export-led economy. The key industry
was cotton, and low real wages were critical for its international
competitiveness.
The high economic growth during the 1960s ended around 1970. By then,the pool of the ‘disguised’ unemployed in the agricultural sector had been
largely exhausted. Therefore, population flow from the rural sector and theassociated urban household formation both sharply declined. At the sametime, the producers of consumer durables were faced with a saturation of
the domestic market. In this way, the domestic-demand-led virtuous circleof high economic growth was lost. In closing, we should note that thisstructural change occurred around 1970, a few years in advance of the firstoil embargo in 1973.

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page15

The Lectures and Seminars of Maruyama Masao,
1967-1968HIRAISHI Naoaki
In the winter term of the 1967 school year, I first attended Professor
MARUYAMA Masao’s open lectures, “The History of Political Thought inJapan” at the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo. I was also able toparticipate in Professor Maruyama’s seminar on the same topic. These
lectures and seminars had a profound influence upon me, and have directed
the path of my research as a scholar. Professor Maruyama’s fresh
perspectives and deep insights on issues were made all the more interesting
because they were interwoven with humorous anecdotes. His lectures andseminars were without fail, a distinct pleasure. I experienced an intellectual
thrill and I remember at times being inspired as if an electrical current had
surged through me. By reaching back to remember the atmosphere of thosedays, I hope to leave a useful record of those spirited days.

HIRAISHI Naoaki is a
Professor of JapaneseIntellectual History in theInstitute of Social
Science, University ofTokyo.
Institute of Social Science
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0003 Japanhiraishi@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

This article was originallypublished in Japanese in the
Maruyama Masao-shû Geppô,volume 12 (August 1996),
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996.

Page16

The Lectures
Upon finding a full room on the first day of his lectures, Professor
Maruyama joked, “So all you boys and girls have come to see ‘theMaruyama.’” Before diving into his first topic, he explained the reasons
why he had chosen the pre-modern period as the main topic for the lecture
sessions. He then proceeded to introduce collections of documents andother reference material to be used in the course. He stressed that thehistory of political thought in Japan was still a new field with many areasthat had not yet been explored. Professor Maruyama also advised students
to review their readings before class and to take notes that would
summarize the main points of the lectures.
To make sure that he would keep to the time allotted for the lecture, heremoved his watch and placed in on the desk. Changing to his bifocal
glasses, he sat down behind the podium, opening his lecture notes and a file
stuffed with historical documents chosen from various sources. During thecourse of the lecture, he often wrote on the blackboard quotes from thesources used in that session. Writing quickly, I was able to take down inshorthand most of what Professor Maruyama said, in the process filling twolarge, college ruled notebooks. On the left page, I jotted down my lecturenotes, leaving the right page open so that I could add details about otherrelated sources I studied outside of class.
Overall Professor Maruyama’s lectures focused on three key factors ofdifferent origins in the pre-modern periods. He reconstructed the ideal typeof these intellectual factors and discussed how they influenced one another.
As he explored these three key factors, he emphasized that the processes ofinteraction between the three formed the intellectual history of earlymodern Japan. First, he tried to formulate a “prototype” of the ancientJapanese way of thinking and ancient value judgements which was basedon the myths of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. He argued that “prototype” hadSocial Science Japan March 1999

three aspects: historical consciousness, political thought and conceptions ofmorality. Second, he analyzed the principles of rule that were the basis of
the bakuhan system (the political relationship that formed the Japanese stateof the Edo period). He suggested that the leaders of the period consciously
developed a system of rule based on the principles of “isolation anddiscrimination” along with “imitation.” Third, he discussed the Confucianworld-view, which constituted the “aspect structure” for Japanese in theearly modern period. Using the Chinese classics and the works of Chinese
philosophers from the Song period (960-1279), he examined the key
Confucian concepts of the mutual relationship between heaven and man,the virtuous king vs. the hegemon, the distinction between the civilizationof the middle kingdom and barbarians, and the concept of the realm (tenka).
He also pointed to some of the contradictions in Confucian thought, such as
loyalty to the king vs. filial piety. While he stressed the importance of thepolitical-economic processes, he emphasized that we would focus on“intellectual history proper.” Professor Maruyama suggested theintellectual history of early modern Japan should be understood as a process
whereby various elements of the three intellectual factors connected andcollided with one another. Needless to say, he was using the methods of
Max WEBER in this analysis.
In his lectures, for the first time I was exposed to the concept of “prototype.”
I also learned about explanations of rule that were based on adapting to thetimes, namely a view of history in which “immanent energy” (ikiohi)
developed, “situationalism,” and the “joint rule” theory embodied in theterm matsurigoto. Particularly interesting for me was Professor Maruyama’s
analysis of early modern Japanese political thought. Based on researchamassed after the publication of his 1952 work, Nihon Seiji Shisô shi Kenkyû1[Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan], he demonstrated asystematic and comprehensive analysis that represented a fresh historicalinterpretation of Tokugawa thought. For me this represented the starting
point for my future research. At that time it seemed like an enormous
intellectual wall towering over me that I would never be able to climb.
In the closing weeks of the term, Professor Maruyama focused on“Nativism (kokugaku) as an Intellectual Movement.” As was shown in the
structure of the lectures, Professor Maruyama saw MOTOORI Norinaga as athinker who restored the idea of “prototype” to Japanese thought after
many centuries. Because of this achievement, Professor Maruyama saw
Norinaga as a key figure in the history of political thought in Japan. I still
remember how in the last lecture, Professor Maruyama stressed that
Norinaga was “truly great.” It seemed that for Professor Maruyama,

Professor Hiraishi as a Tôdai student
in 1967.

➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

Page17

Japan in the 1960s continued
Norinaga was the intellectual opponent that he respected the most.

Notes
The English translation ofthis work is: MARUYAMA
Masao, Studies in theIntellectual History of
Tokugawa Japan trans.
by Mikiso Hane (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo
Press, 1974 [pdk.1989]).
2
UMEMOTO Katsumi, SATO
Noboru and MARUYAMA
Masao, Gendai Nihon no
Kakushin Shisô. (Tokyo:
Kawaide Shobô, 1966).
3
There is also an English
translation of thisimportant work.
FUKUZAWA Yukichi, An
Outline of a Theory of
Civilization, translatedby David A. Dilworth and
G. Cameron Hurst(Tokyo: Monumenta
Nipponica Monographs[ Sophia University],1973).
4
Maruyama Masao, Bunmeiron no Gairyaku o Yomu
[Reading the Outline ofa Theory of Civilization](Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1986).
1

We were allowed to use our notes during the exam in February of thefollowing year. We were instructed to compare the differences in thearguments surrounding political legitimacy in Japan contained in thewritings of YOSHIDA Shôin, YAMAGATA Taika and Norinaga. It was aremarkable question. Years later when I asked Professor Maruyama aboutthat question, he laughed and said, “If it was now, I would not assign such adifficult question.”
The Seminars
As many students wished to enroll in the Maruyama seminar, all wererequired to write a short essay describing why they wanted to participate. I
wrote how I had just read and been inspired by the themes in the book,
Gendai Nihon no Kakushin Shisô, a three way discussion by Professor
Maruyama, UMEMOTO Katsumi and SATÔ Noboru.2 Those who met theentrance qualifications were then required to read the course text,
FUKUZAWA Yukichi’s Bunmeiron no Gairyaku [An Outline of a Theory of
Civilization]3 during the summer holiday. I well remember how boring it
was to read Fukuzawa’s book during the dog days of summer.
The list of those attending the seminar that year included graduate students,a research associate from a University of Tokyo research institute, andtwenty-eight undergraduate students. The twenty-eight of us were divided
into eight groups and we would begin each session by practicing reading
the text out loud. The presenter for that week would then provide a tenminute summary of the week’s reading and then for an additional twentyminutes, would offer points for discussion. This would be followed by aperiod of discussion. I also remember that Professor Maruyama stressedthat as another aspect of our training, we must keep within the thirty
minutes allotted for our presentations. Although the seminar was supposed
to end at around 5PM, it often went much later. Not a morning person,
Professor Maruyama seemed to grind through the morning lectures but
enjoyed the afternoon seminars. However after 5PM the students’ stomachs
began to rumble. As they paid increasingly less attention, I think theymissed Professor Maruyama’s remarkable flow of ideas. While I tookcopious notes during the lectures, I too was not always able to remain
attentive during the seminars. As I regretted this, I was pleased when
Professor Maruyama published Bunmei-ron no Gairyaku o Yomu [Reading theOutline of a Theory of Civilization]4 which in a sense allowed me to review theideas expressed during the seminars.
I was happy that participating in the seminar allowed me to practicereading the classic works of Japanese intellectual history. While I was boredPage18Social Science Japan March 1999

reading Fukuzawa alone during the summer break, I soon learned thatwhen the book was placed in the hands of Professor Maruyama, it camealive and we could see the fantastic power of the work. One by one, thewords took on greater meaning and Fukuzawa himself seemed to speak to
us from between the lines. I cannot forget the strong impression the seminar
made on me. For the first time I learned how to analyze the inherent aspectsof the classics of Japanese intellectual history.
Looking back on those days, I realize that the lectures and seminars
combined show Professor Maruyama’s basic approach to the history ofpolitical thought in Japan. It is suggestive of Professor Maruyama’s own
intellectual approach that we discussed the Gairyaku in the seminar while inhis concluding lectures, he focused on Norinaga. It goes without saying thatFukuzawa was a hero for Professor Maruyama and he saw him as the mostinfluential critic of Japanese civilization. During our last session (held inMarch 1968 at the Seminar House in Hachiôji), Professor Maruyama told usthat in a short six-month seminar, we had not even scratched the surface ofthe rich and challenging intellectual thought contained in the Gairyaku.
Professor Maruyama had read the Gairyaku fourteen times (although it
might be sixteen) and each time had discovered something new. He wanted
all the “boys and girls” to read it again and again.
In the lectures, we covered the ancient and early modern periods andconcluded with Norinaga. In the seminar, we were given an overview of theorigins of modern Japan. He generously provided us with the knowledge
he had gained of his “erudite opponent” and “greatest hero.” They were thebest lectures and seminar sessions I have ever experienced.

❑

Professor Hiraishi is one of the editors of a seven volume series of thelectures of Maruyama Masao. The latest volume is a compilation ofProfessor Maruyama’s lectures for the 1967-1968 academic year.
Maruyama Masao kôgi roku, [7] Nihon Seiji Shisô-shi. [The Lectures ofMaruyama Masao 1948-1967, vol. 7 On the History of Political Thought
in Japan] Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1998.

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page19

The Research Yanagita Kunio
The 1960s and TodaySATÔ Kenji
YANAGITA Kunio died in the early 1960s. Yanagita, a unique and prolificresearcher of customs, was subsequently termed the founder of research on
rural life in what has come be known as Japanese ethnology. It is often
stated that as a scholar of social history, Yanagita extracted only the
traditions of the oldest layers of society while omitting the customs of today.
This view is quite mistaken. If Yanagita had not been keenly interested inmodern times, he would not have written about daily life (clothes, food, andhomes) in Meiji-Taisho-shi seso-hen [The History of the Meiji and Taisho
periods: Social Conditions] and Momen izen no koto [Things Before Cotton].
Nor would he have examined the Japanese language in Kokugo-shi shingohen [The History of New Words in Japanese].
It is said that before his death, Yanagita strongly opposed collecting his
books into a complete edition and there are still many who attest to this.
However late in his life, Yanagita’s collected works had already begun to be
published in the form of Teihon Yanagita Kunio shû [The Selected Original
Works of Yanagita Kunio]. In the 1960s not only scholars of ethnology but
also scholars of history, politics, literature, and sociology, have started to
become aware of the value of anthropology to their research. While wecannot say that it became an academic trend, in many respects a “Yanagitaboom” developed. This basis of this was actually the Teihon Yanagita Kunio
shû that were being published in the 1960s.
SATÔ Kenji is an
Associate Professor in
the Department of
Sociology, Faculty of
Letters, University ofTokyo.
Department of Sociology
Faculty of Letters
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0033 JAPANsatoken@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp

The common assumption that intellectual trends are created by theappearance of the collected works of one author is somewhat misleading.
While the arrival of a collected work causes an impact, it is not on the scaleof the social impact produced by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics or the boost to
intellectuals’ historical consciousness in the wake of the “Meiji centennial”
of 1968. However, it is important to note that before the Teihon was
published, few readers were aware of the broad perspective that Yanagita
explored in his works. In many respects, Yanagita was the eloquent
historical sociologist whom everyone had heard about but nobody had read.
His combined works included well over one hundred separate volumes,
and a bibliography of studies in magazines that numbered more than 4000
works. However it is not the sheer volume but rather the scope of his work,that is most impressive. His complicated array of intellectual pursuits
ranged from agricultural economics and discourses on the Japanese
language, to religion and folk songs. To the extent that a Yanagita Kunio“discourse” existed, the 18,376 page Teihon functioned as the base structureor Unterbau.
There were also various readers of the Teihon edition. Some were Marxists
who had failed in their drive for an intellectual revolution. Others were
populists who had grown weary from recent political struggles and foundin Yanagita ideas that soothed liked a medicated bath. It is often pointed
out that the “Nihon Bunka-ron” of the 1960s was tinged with a sense ofcompensation, and the movement was intended to restore Japanese selfconfidence lost in World War II. The analysis of the special characteristics of
one’s own culture is represented in the terms “vertical society,” “Japanesestyle management,” “the anatomy of dependence” and “interpersonalism”(kanjin-shugi). These are ideas that went beyond asceticism and were
popularized, leading to the birth of a positive, original mystique. This is the

Page20Social Science Japan March 1999

popular ideology of the “Nippon-jin ron.” The “Nippon-jin-ron” scholars
liked to quote Yanagita and as a result, Yanagita’s words became a part ofthis wave of cultural nationalism. In these quotes, Yanagita appeared as arespected elder scholar, describing an inherent spirit, explaining themeaning of ethnology that had been forgotten. The fact that Yanagita was aperson who continued to ask questions was buried and instead, he became
someone who answered the question: “What is Japanese culture?” Yanagita
was a critic of history. Yet because he is continually quoted as the authority
on lost traditions, it has become difficult to see his radicalism as scholar ofwhat is today called the “creation of tradition.”
Conversely, today opinions have shifted, with Yanagita being described as ahidden advocate of colonialism, a tactical orientalist who worked like aplotting, intellectual bureaucrat. Namely he has been painted as a fabricatorof the idea of Japan as a mythical and cultural center, and his hidden belief
in a national ideology exposed. However in the end, this criticism was an
impatient response to the incomplete, coarse praise of the late 1960s and the1970s. As the motives of this criticism were based in groundless suspicion
and because the arguments become entangled in their own rhetoric, theyshould be ignored.
It is a waste of time to continue the ideological disputes concerning thespecial characteristics of the Unterbau in the Teihon edition. For close to forty
years, basic research on Yanagita has stagnated and at last today, a newedition of the complete works of Yanagita is being compiled. Although it isdifficult to describe the work of forming the complete works in a few words,
its main focus is to present the real works of Yanagita. In other words, tobring to the surface the process of producing the texts. The organization by
themes has given way to a principle that places these studies in selected
time frames.

Further ReadingSATÔ Kenji, Dokusho-kukan
no Kindai [Modernity in
the Realm of Reading]Tokyo: Koubundo, 1987.

Yanagita Kunio Zenshû
[Complete Collected
Works of Yanagita
Kunio], Tokyo: Chikumashobô, 1997.
Chikuma began thisseries in October 1997
and has alreadypublished sixteen
volumes. This zenshû
project sets new
standards both in thebreadth of the contents
and the style ofcompilation.

For example as is the case with Karl MARX’s Das Kapital, the final form is
not the complete form. I do not agree with Hegelianism that concludes thatthe final text implicitly includes the most complete form. The texts of
Yanagita Kunio do not integrate one unified thought. The Teihon edition
published in the 1960s make evident both areas in the original text where
Yanagita’s writing remains unclear and his corrections. If we suppose that
Yanagita was deified, then based on the clearly recorded diversity of the text
in the new complete works, we should expect numerous interpretations by
the readers. Actually since the 1960s in the Yanagita Kunio debate, one
Yanagita has been unjustly deified and publicized. In the text there isanother Yanagita that no one has hijacked. By moving ahead with the
project, “the possibility of Yanagita Kunio” that Yanagita himself could not
develop will be able to appear in the text of his complete works.
In the history of publishing, the practice of producing collected works is stilla relatively new enterprise that began less than a hundred years ago. Today
its importance has not diminished. Before writing a single volume ofcriticism or a critical biography, research needs to first be conducted fromthe most basic level. Such an approach will allow us to make use of theinheritance of the 1960s, and will surely move research ahead in the future.

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page21

New On The Bookshelves
20 Seiki Shisutemu [The 20 th Century Global System]
A six volume series edited by the Institute of Social Science,
University of Tokyo (in Japanese)
HASHIMOTO Jurô
The Death of Continuous Inflation
An overview of the series
Edited by the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, the six volumeseries, 20 Seiki Shisutemu [The 20th Century Global System], focuses on theinternational political-economic system of this century that we have termed“the 20th Century Global System.” These volumes are a collection of researchthat seeks to understand how and when the system formed as well as theways it continues to change today. Different from the usual approach ofsocial science that is based upon theoretical and empirical research on
narrowly focused topics, we try to examine the “big question.”
Strictly speaking, we look at the 20th century after World War I, when men
sought to create a blueprint of a political-economic system that would
reconstruct the world order. Overall, the residents of the White House andKremlin had the most profound influence on this blueprint.
HASHIMOTO Jurô is a Professor of
Economics in the Institute of Social
Science, University of Tokyo.
Institute of Social Science
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0033 JAPANhashimot@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

In order to create this system, several problems had to be solved. First, themost evident was the disaster of World War I. Realizing that international
conflicts of the 19th century had ultimately been resolved by war, leaders
searched for a system that would use other means of conflict resolution.
The problem lay in how to actually develop this system. Specifically, how tofind a plausible means to replace war as the primary means of resolution forlarge-scale international conflicts.
At the same time, the designers of the world system also had to solve
domestic economic problems. Specifically, in order to prevent large-scale
unemployment it was necessary to restructure networks of free trade thatcollapsed during World War I and to stabilize currency rates.
Concerning these problems, three ideas came to the forefront after WorldWar I. First in the United States and Britain a plan developed and wasrevised, eventually coming to fruition in the form of the Bretton Woods
system of the 1940s. In the end, this would become the world system.
Second, France and other continental nations looked to return to the oldpolitical-economic system of the nineteenth century. Third, after theRussian Revolution, the Soviet Union visualized a world wide socialist
revolution. If we look broadly at the course of 20th century history, the idea
to return to the 19th century system prevailed for a time immediately afterWorld War I. In the end however, the Bretton Woods system became central
and after being shaped by various types of opposition, it developed into arevised form that became the 20th century economic system. Continually

Page22Social Science Japan March 1999

facing outside pressure, the Soviet bloc was also created. 20 Seiki Shisutemu
1: Kôsô to Keisei [The 20th Century Global System 1: Design and Formation]
examines system formation and aspects of the process such as security andthe international monetary system.
The 20th century system did not develop as expected. Economically, two
factors had a decisive influence on how national economic systems werereorganized. On one hand, the system was based upon large managerial
corporations that were able to set the prices of their products on the market.
At the same time, large, powerful labor unions were able to gain increases inreal wages through negotiations with management. However the lack offree competition on the market caused problems. As wages and in turn,productivity increased, so did labor costs. This cost increase was shifted toprices, thereby creating a system that controlled price competition. The
response to this cost-push inflation mechanism of the economy dependedon control of demand and big governments. However in the United States,
the center of the 20th century global system from the late 1930s, prices
continually increased.
If we take 100 with the data prices of 1913, then price fluctuations between
80 and 120 in the period from the beginning of 19th century to the beginningof the 20th century would equate to a stable price level. If we compare this tothe price fluctuations from the 1930s to the 1980s, we see the clear contrast.
After the 1930s, prices continued to increase and reached the high level of
900 by 1980. We can view this continual price increase as a representativeindex of the development of the 20th century economic system. However by
the end of the 20th century, the continuous rise in prices came to an end. The
death of continuous inflation suggests a transformation of the 20th century
system. Examined from various angles, this transformation is the topic of 20
Seiki Shisutemu 6: Kinô to Henyô [The 20th Century Global System 6: Function
and Transformation].

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page23

New On The Bookshelves
20 Seiki Shisutemu 2: Keizai SeichIô (I) Kijiku[The 20th Century Global System 2 Economic Growth I: Core Systems]
IBSN 4-13-034112-X

MORITA Osamu
A SummaryIn this volume, we examine the 20th century not as a period of crisis, but oneof growth. To this end, we focus on American style production methods
that made possible economic growth on a worldwide scale.
If we first look at production capacity from the perspective of the goods
produced, then it follows that we must next examine the production system
and ask how technological levels are related to the people involved in the
production process. How did the American production process originate
from American manufacturing methods? Additionally, we need to analyze
how the prototype of the American production system, “Fordism,” matured
into the polished, mass production method known as “Sloanism.” In thisvolume, we illustrate the human side of the production process in the areasof production strategy, labor relations and management organization.

MORITA Osamu is an Associate
Professor in the Faculty of Law,
University of Tokyo.
Faculty of Law
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0003 JAPANosamu@j.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Overall, we analyze the historical development of the “whole,” not merely
the “structure” which is strictly bounded by the rules of history. We discussa “system” that was introduced as a blueprint for the political-economic
integration of the world. However as a concept of a new world order thisblueprint did not develop along the lines envisioned by its designers. We
explain how the “real structure” came into being, the actual historicalcircumstances that produced it, the resistance to the system and how ittransformed itself into a “definable structure.” In order to present theprocess where “concepts are transformed into structures through struggles”
we use the word “system.” Specifically, we aim to use “system” to focus ona point in time where historical trends and possibilities for restructuring
intersected.
As the United States is taken as the central nation in this volume, we focus
on American style production and how it grew into a system of industrial
technology and production. Moreover, we look at the basic infrastructurethat developed to support the system, tracing how competition between
ideas solidified the system. We also emphasize the excessively politicalnature of the market system that grew from Sloanism in distribution
practices, while also tracing American labor relations within the process ofstructural development. Through both we can see a fascinating view of thesystem and its history through the lens of these combative relationships.
In this same way, we trace the American style production system and thesub-systems that developed to support it. This process included thefollowing three aspects: ①almost all parts of the American method
developed simultaneously during World War II, ②during the wartime
mobilization, aspects of the system were strengthened by wartime
restrictions, ③with the end of wartime mobilization, the system matured
and for a short time, produced a social and economic balance. (“The Golden

Page24Social Science Japan March 1999

1950s”).
Yet even with prosperity, key factors were already beginning to disturb thatbalance. ①Due to polished, large scale production methods, the dealerfranchise system, and organized industrial labor unions, large scale
production industries were systematized. Also under the Wagoner Law,collective bargaining was stifled.②The impact of the wartime system onmass production methods was diluted because of changes in industrial
technology and organization. ③The end of wartime mobilization caused astall in demand that hurt the automobile industry. The response to thesefactors and the subsequent impact upon organizations brought the system
into balance. Furthermore, the outbreak of numerous labor disturbances andinterventionist labor laws pushed the development of “transactional
unionism.” Analysis of changes in the financial system, especially thetransitional effects brought by World War II, indicates that federal financesin the postwar period continued to be based on the wartime tax system.
This favorable economic climate supported the American version of thewelfare state.
We hope that this volume will make clear the historical process behind thedevelopment of “the American model” and how it spread to other parts of
the world. That worldwide diffusion and the process by which “concepts
are transformed into structures through struggle” are dealt with in 20 Seiki
Shisutemu 3: Keizai Seichô (II) Juyô to Taikô [20th Century Global Systems 3
Economic Growth (II): The Spread of the System and Counter-Responses].

❑

Table of Contents
20 Seiki Shisutemu 2: Keizai Seichô (I) Kijiku
The 20th Century Global System 2: Economic Growth (I) Core Systems
Part 1 Theory and the History of Economic Growth
1. “The Era of Rapid Economic Growth” HASHIMOTO Jurô
2. “Theories of Economic Growth and Japan’s Rapid Growth”
OTAKI Masayuki
Part 2 American Style Production Methods
3. “The Formation of Mass Production System in the United States: The
Creation of the Automobile Industry” DAITO Eisuke
4. “Universality and Special Characteristics in Mass Production System:
The American Automobile Industry” SUZUKI Naotsugu
Part 3 Aspects of American Style Production Methods
5. “The Establishment of an American Style Competitive Order: the 1956
Automobile Dealer Law” MORITA Osamu
6. “The Establishment of American Style Labour-Management Relations”
NITTA Michio
7. “The Role of the United States Federal Government: Guns and Butter”
SHIBUYA Hiroshi

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page25

New On The Bookshelves
20 Seiki Shisutemu 4: Kaihatsu Shugi[The 20th Century Global System 4: Developmentalism: The Drama of Emerging Players]
IBSN 4-13-034114-6

SUEHIRO Akira
A SummaryWhen considering developing countries in the postwar period, “economic
development” or “development” are words that quickly come to mind. If
we also consider the move toward a market system by socialist countries insecond half of the 1980s as a broad plan for development, we realize thatdevelopmentalism is a fundamental theme in the 20th century global system.
In this volume, we aim to unpack the concept of developmentalism bythoroughly examining the formation and processes related todevelopmentalism in a number of developing countries.

SUEHIRO Akira is a Professor of
Economics in the Institute of Social
Science, University of Tokyo.
Institute of Social Science
University of Tokyo
Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0033 JAPAN{asuehiro@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp}

Developmentalism has taken two forms. First, there are the “late-comer”
states, developing nations where the government takes an active role in theeconomy and society in order to quickly industrialize (the “catch-up model”
of industrialization). Consequently, these states have come to be known as
examples of “late industrializers.” Second in the ideologically charged
world of the cold war, some states created centralized, authoritarian,political systems that promoted development in order to oppose domestic orinternational communism. In other words through the political lens,developmentalism can be understood as a crisis management system.
Indeed developmentalism is often used in connection with authoritarianism,for example with the terms “repressive developmental state” and“developmental dictatorship.” Developmentalism has also come to beconnected with state-led industrialization or is seen as synonymous with the
Asian model of economic development (which includes Japan).
However defining” developmentalism” as part of an authoritarian politicalsystem is not sufficient. We still need to uncover why many developing
countries came to accept the ideology of “development.” To that end, thisvolume discusses how developmentalism grew from “economic systemcompetition” between the superpowers in the areas of economic growth,
technological progress and economic aid. In the cold war system, states had
to choose between economic systems in order to realize economic growth.
For the United States, economic aid to developing countries became an
important tool in its diplomatic strategy. For developing countries, successin economic development became a means for unifying the nation. The
ideology of development came to permeate the nation state, creating asituation where it became necessary for regimes to continue to promote
developmentalism to remain in power.
In order to support development, states pursued social policies thatinvolved concentrating political power, manipulating currency exchange
rates and intervening in the labor market. Governments also implemented
agrarian reforms and income distribution programs. However the end of

Page26Social Science Japan March 1999

the cold war led to movements for greater democratization. Oppositiongroups voiced their displeasure with repressive, centralized politicalsystems and government intervention in labor markets. Economic
liberalization and the globalization of national economies also made it moredifficult for governments to implement monetary source allocation and tomanipulate currency rates and trade flows.
As a result developmentalism has entered a transitional period that has
produced a discourse on “post-developmentalism.” However thecontributors to this volume contend that as long as growth-oriented
ideologies exist in the collective consciousness of societies throughout theworld, development will remain an integral part of economic and social
systems.

❑

20 Seiki Shisutemu 4: Kaihatsu Shugi[The 20th Century Global System 4: Developmentalism: The Drama of Emerging Players]“Introduction: What is Developmentalism?” SUEHIRO Akira
Part 1 Ideology of “Development” and it’s Foundation
1. “Developmentalism in Developing Countries” SUEHIRO Akira
2. “The Economics of Development and International Organizations”
ESHO Hideki
3.”Nationalism, the Cold War and Economic Development in Asia”
FUJIWARA Kiichi
Part 2 Comparative Studies of Developmentalism
4.”Developmental Regimes in East and Southeast Asia: Origins,
Development and Transformation” IWASAKI Ikuo
5.”Political Origins of Economic Development: A Comparison of South Korea and Mexico”
TSUNEKAWA Keiichi
6. “The Two Developmental Regimes of China and Taiwan: the Communist
Party and the Kuomintang” TAJIMA Toshio
7. “Developmental Regimes and Etatism in the Middle East”
NAGASAWA Eiji
Part 3 Japan as a Developmental Regime
8.”Relations between the Center and Regions in Late Industrialization: The Japanese Experience in
the Meiji period” NAKAMURA Hisashi
9.”Economic Development Policy and Private Corporations: The
Japanese Experience in the Postwar Period” KIKKAWA Takeo

How to order volumes of the 20 Seiki Shisutemu series(Each volume is priced at ￥3,800).
By phone:81 3-3811-8814 (in Japanese)
81 3-3812-6958 FAX
Via the Internet:
http://www.bookservice.co.jp/
Social Science Japan March 1999

Page27

Research ReportJapan’s Drug Problem

Stephen BARKER
The surprise decision by Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) torush through approval of Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction therapy drug, Viagra,
has refocused attention on pharmaceutical regulation in Japan. Particularattention has been paid to the fact that almost forty years after it went onsale in the United States, the low dose contraceptive pill is still not approvedin Japan.
Although the approval of a new drug takes on average about two years, thegovernment decided to fast track the approval of Viagra in less than six
months. The Ministry of Health and Welfare defends this decision on the
grounds that Japanese are already obtaining the drug through the Internet
and other avenues. They contend that this dangerous, unregulated use canbe prevented by making Viagra officially available. As evidence of theperils of unregulated use the MHW points to the cardiac-related death of a63-year-old Japanese man who received Viagra through unofficial channels.

Stephen BARKER is ahealthcare analyst with
Warburg Dillon Read anda Ph.D. Candidate in the
Research Center for
Advanced Science andTechnology, University ofTokyo.
Warburg Dillon Read
East Tower, Otemachi First Square
Otemachi 5-1-1, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-0004 JAPANrakutenka@yahoo.com

Critics have been quick to highlight the irony of the MHW’s decision todeny a safe and effective form of contraception to women, while rushing
through approval of a sex aid for men. A closer analysis of the MHW’s
reasoning behind both decisions serves to further illuminate the incongruityof the ministry’s stance on these issues.
For many years, the MHW stressed that they were withholding approval
because of doubts about the safety of the pill. However in 1992 the MHW
gave ground on the safety issue, finally admitting in the face ofoverwhelming evidence, the safety of the product. However they continued
to withhold approval on public health grounds. In light of the AIDS
epidemic in other countries, the MHW argued, the pill should not beapproved for fear that it might contribute to a potential future epidemic in
Japan. Eventually the MHW’s own public health committee decided in June
1997 that the pill had not contributed to the spread of disease in othercountries. Members of the deliberating committee nevertheless said thatprescription of the pill should be conditional on regular tests for sexuallytransmitted diseases. In its deliberations over Viagra, the MHW made no
mention of STDs or ever suggested that men taking the product should beforced to undergo lectures or examinations.
In March 1998 another barrier to approval appeared in the form of apetition from an environmental group, the Network of Ecology and Women,
which claims that hormone excreted in urine of women on the pill may
upset the ecological balance. The MHW eagerly latched onto this pseudoscientific claim, which has absolutely no basis in evidence, as another excuse
to delay approval.

Page28Social Science Japan March 1999

Critically examining the MHW’s claim to be protecting the health ofwomen, it is well to consider that an estimated 20,000 women in Japan,
denied access to the mini-pill, are instead taking high and medium dose
estrogen pills for contraceptive purposes. High dose pills, which areavailable in Japan, carry a higher risk of cancer and circulatory disease thanmore advanced, low dose products. For this reason, the US Food and Drug
Administration forced high dose products off the market in 1988.
Any discussion of the pill’s safety cannot be made without reference to thehigh rate of abortion in Japan. Statistics gathered by local authorities record
300,000 abortions each year in Japan but this is thought to underestimate thetrue number by about half. Abortion is clearly big business in Japan.
Turning our attention to Viagra for a moment, we may consider that it has
been on the market for less than one year and has already been connected tomore than 133 deaths in the United States alone. The pill, by contrast, hasbeen marketed for almost 40 years and has been taken by more than 300
million women. A recently published twenty-five year study of 46,000
women in the United Kingdom found that ten years after the arrival of thepill, the chances of dying from cancer and other diseases was the same forwomen who had never taken an oral contraceptive.
Because proceedings of the Central Pharmaceutical Affairs Council andother MHW committees are not open to the press or public, it is very
difficult to determine the true motivating forces behind the ministry’s stanceon the pill. Everyone from condom manufacturers eager to protect sales to acabal of right wing pressure groups afraid of women’s independence anddeclining birth rates have been blamed for the stalemate. But the pecuniary
interest which doctors have in maintaining a high abortion rate, and thestrong representation which they enjoy on the MHW’s councils means
doctors and their representatives attract a great deal of suspicion.
The lack of transparency in the MHW’s regulatory processes certainly
suggests that decisions are open to manipulation by well placed pressuregroups. To illustrative how a powerful interest group can influence policy,
let us examine the part the Japan Medical Association (JMA) has played in
the debate over reforms to Japan’s medical and pharmaceuticalreimbursement system.
This JMA, currently chaired by TSUBOI Eitaka, wields enormous influencewith the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), mainly because of the large
financial contributions the JMA makes to the party. Although informationon the source, size and ultimate destination of political contributions is➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

Page29Japan’s Drug Problem continued
notoriously poor in Japan, the JMA makes no secret of the power they wieldover the government.
In order to understand the dynamics of medical/pharmaceutical policy
reform it is necessary to understand the medical lobby’s vested interests. In
particular it is necessary to understand the concept of yakkasa, “drug pricegap,” and the role it plays in hospital revenues. The yakkasa is the difference
between the centrally set reimbursement price paid to doctors by the
National Health Insurance system, and the discount price at which drugs
are actually purchased. The yakkasa, which currently averages about 10%,provides an economic incentive to prescribe more drugs. Unlike doctors inother OECD countries, Japanese doctors commonly dispense as well asprescribe pharmaceuticals.
Although the average price of individual drugs is generally lower in Japan
than in the United States, spending on pharmaceuticals as a proportion of
total medical spending is higher in Japan. This, the MHW acknowledges, ispartly accounted for by the higher volumes dispensed to Japanese patients.
The structural incentive for higher prescribing volumes provided by thecurrent reimbursement system has meant that all attempts by thegovernment to control the over consumption of drugs in Japan have been
actively opposed by the JMA.
In 1996, the MHW, alarmed by the impending bankruptcy of the healthinsurance system, suggested that more should be done to control spending
on pharmaceuticals, which was thought to be out of line with other OECD
countries. One way of doing this, they suggested, was to charge patients anadditional fee for the cost of their prescriptions. The LDP’s coalition
partners agreed to an increase in the burden on patients on the condition
that the pricing system for pharmaceuticals would also be revised, with aview to reducing what were seen as unreasonably high profits by theindustry.
The JMA lost no time in voicing its opposition to increasing patient copayments, claiming that it would limit people’s access to care, particularly
for older people. Although they did manage to dilute the original proposal,
new pharmaceutical co-payments were introduced in September 1997, alongwith an increase in the co-payment for medical services in general.
The original proposal called for all patients, including the elderly, to be
charged a fixed percentage of their medical expenses. But pressure from the
JMA resulted in a 2,000 yen per month cap on senior citizen’s co-payments.
The JMA evinced further consternation last December when they extracted apledge from the LDP to abolish the pharmaceutical co-payment for senior

Page30Social Science Japan March 1999

citizens. According to local media reports, this deal was struck behindclosed doors and made by the LDP in return for the JMA’s support in an
upcoming by-election. Under the current National Health Insurance
financing arrangements, the working population is being left to cover theballooning medical costs of the elderly who are entirely insulated from thecosts they incur. Some politicians, including former Prime Minister
HASHIMOTO, have recognized the unfairness of this situation. Yet theenormous political influence and prestige of the JMA that champions thesepolicies, combined with the political apathy of younger generations, thehigh turnout of seniors and the demographic skewing which gives thesenior lobby progressively more political power, all indicate that change isunlikely.
An inter-party committee, chaired by former LDP Minister of Health andWelfare, NIWA Yuya, was established in 1996 to debate changes in thepricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals. In September 1997 they
released details of their proposal which called for the introduction of areference pricing system. Under reference pricing, pharmaceuticals would
be grouped into categories based on therapeutic area or pharmaceuticalaction, all of which would be reimbursed at the same level. The patient
would cover the difference between the reimbursement price and the actual
price.
The JMA, while supporting a reduction in pharmaceutical spending, cameout strongly against this proposal. Although once again dressing up theiropposition in terms of defending patients’ rights, protection of their revenue
is the more likely motive. Throughout 1998 the issue of pharmaceuticalpricing was widely debated, but at present it seems unlikely that reference
pricing will be introduced. The relevant LDP committees have failed to
examine the MHW’s latest proposals meaning that a bill is not likely to be
drafted before the Diet resumes later this year.
The resulting stalemate in reform of the medical insurance systemguarantees ballooning deficits with no solution in sight. While no simple
panacea exists for this and other complex issues, greater openness ingovernment would facilitate a rational determination of trade-offs,
something which will become increasingly important as Japan’s society ages
and the economy matures.

❑Social Science Japan March 1999

Page31

Research Report

Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle
Class in Early 20th Century JapanMark JONESWorld War II casts a long, dark shadow over the Japanese past, preventing
many historians from imagining children in prewar Japan as anything morethan the “little citizens” (shôkokumin) of an emerging nation-state. However,
the origins of Japan’s modern version of childhood lie less in the political
history of the Japanese nation-state and more in the socio-cultural history of
the middle class, including the following three important, yet understudied
constituent parts: child professionals, social reformers, and middlingfamilies. From the 1890s through the 1920s, the child expert, in search of aprofessional identity and social influence, and an emerging stratum of social
reformers and middling families, in search of a new cultural identity, joined
together to create a “new child’s world,” a world that, after World War II,
spread to become a nationwide ideal and Japan’s modern version ofchildhood.

Mark JONES is a Ph.D.
Candidate in the
Department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures,
Columbia University anduntil recently, was a
Visiting Researcher at theInstitute of Social
Science, University ofTokyo.
Department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures
407 Kent Hall, Mail Code 3907
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027 USA
maj9@columbia.edu

In order to understand the modern nature of Japan’s version of childhood, it
must be placed alongside similar histories in the United States and Europe,
not as an example of Western influence and Japanese imitation, but as astory of comparisons and commonalties in modern social experience within
and across national borders. Moreover, the story of the making of modern
childhood must be written using overlapping and interwoven narratives
and told in the context of changing social experience. My study is a social
history of ideology, which explores both the evolving debates on the “child’sworld” and the palpable changes these debates wrought in the lives of an
emerging middle class, including its children and adults. Finally, by placing
the history of modern childhood in its rightful place alongside the history of
the middle class, one can glimpse important parts of the still largely
incomplete social history of Japan’s modern transformation in the years
before 1945.
During the crucial time from 1890 through 1930, the middle class placedchildren at the center of its strategic employment of culture to create andmaintain its social position. This process, which historians of the middle
class call “culture-building,” is defined by Sharon STEPHENS in the book
Children and the Politics of Culture as “the production and reproduction ofcollectively held dispositions and understandings.” Through the making of
the child’s world, the middle class built a new adult world upon thefollowing ideals and practices: meritocratic achievement, scientific living,
nostalgia, and leisure. In both their rise to cultural power (1890-1910) andconsolidation of cultural hegemony (1910-1930), social reformers, childexperts, and middling families emphasized the necessity of distinguishing
between the world of child and adult and yet, at the same time, built a new
culture where childhood became increasingly central to the world of the
middle class adult.
From 1890 through 1910, a middling stratum rose to prominence in Tokyo,

Page32Social Science Japan March 1999

Osaka, and other urban centers, invoking the new ideals of scientific living,
meritocratic achievement, and Smilesian self-help. This rising class, eager toestablish the means to reproduce its new social position, looked to its
children as the “future adults” of the next generation of a middling sort.
During this time, childhood became serious in the extreme as aspiring
parents turned the child’s educational success into a measure of a family’s
intrinsic talents and social worth and also into a means of class
reproduction. Middling homes of the mid and late Meiji period were
infected not only by educational fevers but also by educational anxieties,
such as those surrounding the question of when to start the child’s
education or the problem of the child’s future beyond elementary school.
Beginning as early as the 1890s, aspiring families subscribed to newmagazines like Yonen zasshi [Child’s Magazine], Shojo sekai [Girl’s World],
and Shôkokumin [Little Citizens] to supplement and complement the child’s
elementary school education. As new mappers of the child’s world, mid
and late Meiji children’s magazine editors like ISHII Kendô and IWAYA
Sazanami placed all children, boys and girls, in the category of “future
adults” and interpreted childhood as a training ground for adulthood.
Taking a leaf—complete with content, illustrations, and layout—fromcontemporary American and British children’s magazines, new publishingventures like Hakubunkan and Gakureikan offered young readers tales ofadult heroes like Benjamin FRANKLIN and NINOMIYA Sontoku, moralistic
fables, and countless recipes for worldly success. During the first decade of
the 20th century, the growing importance of education as a passport to future
success forced families to consider the potential benefits of pre-and postelementary education. Child experts and parents debated the educational
and psychological merits of sending a child to kindergarten and later,
sparked by the 1917 publication of KIMURA Hisashi’s book Sôkyoiku totensai [Early Education and Genius], located the potential origin ofeducational success in the child’s pre-school years. At the same time,families subscribed to magazines such as Shôgaku fukushu to juken[Elementary Review and Exam Preparation], built children’s rooms within
the home, and consulted with professional educators and psychologists, allefforts to guarantee the child’s successful entry into middle school/girl’shigher school and, ultimately, the adult world beyond.
In its ascent to cultural power, the middle class in Japan, not unlike themiddle classes in the United States and Europe and the time, strategicallyeschewed the use of class-based language and presented its new culture,especially the world of childhood, as modern living based on universal
values and norms. Central to their creation of a modern lifestyle was the
adoption of scientific child rearing first popularized in the early 20th century
by child psychologists, pediatricians, and educators. In professional
journals like Jidô kenkyû [Child Study], books like Katei kyôshi to shite no haha➪Social Science Japan March 1999

Page33

Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early 20th Century Japan continued[The Mother as Family Educator] and Oya no tsutome [The Parent’s Duty]
and lectures at local women’s clubs, scientific child experts like
TAKASHIMA Heizaburo and KUBO Yoshihide explored, created, andmarketed a new child’s world based on an understanding of what theyclaimed were the child’s standard, universal needs and desires. Strongly
influenced by G. Stanley HALL’s child study movement in the UnitedStates, this new professional class urged parents, particularly mothers, andeducators to indulge the child’s natural playfulness and imagination inorder to produce a disciplined, responsible adult. Attracted by science’s
claim to universal truth and its promise to produce better “future adults,”
middle class families and social reformers like HANI Motoko and HIBI
Osuke solicited the knowledge of child experts and, through women’s andfamily magazines such as Hani’s Katei no Tomo [The Family Companion] andShufu no tomo [The Housewife’s Companion] and the Mitsukoshi
department store’s wildly successful children’s exhibitions (1908-1921),
thrust the child expert and the new child’s world further into publicprominence.
However during the 1910s and 1920s, in response to both a dissatisfaction
with the singular pursuit of worldly success and a fear of imitation by the
upwardly mobile lower orders, the middle class turned its eyes away fromthe future, to the present, and to a version of childhood that I call the “childlike child” (or anti-adult). While never able to abandon its concern with thereproduction of status, the middle class in Japan, similar to its counterpartsin the West, grafted onto its cultural identity a concern with nostalgia andleisure in an effort to consolidate its social position through an apparent
neglect of the future. In its embrace of a new type of children’s literatureand the idea of the child’s right to play, the middle class redefined itself by
asking children not only to “become” future adults but also to “be” a childlike child.
Through its subscription to neo-romantic children’s magazines like SUZUKI
Miekichi’s famous Akai tori [Red Bird] and OGAWA Mimei’s Dowa
[Children’s Stories], middling families strove to cultivate a concern for
emotional well-being, to raise their children in a more humane manner, andat the same time, strengthen their social position. A nostalgic longing for a
simpler and purer existence and a therapeutic desire to return to the worldof childhood served to differentiate, in their minds, a true middle class fromlower orders who sought from life only advancement and success. In thisnew literature, writers and poets like Suzuki, Ogawa, and KITAHARA
Hakushu wrote children’s stories and children’s songs, exchanged letters,
and penned essays apotheosizing the childlike child as the embodiment ofqualities judged absent from the modern world, including purity, goodness,
innocence, and emotional spontaneity. Magazines like Akai tori publishedadult-authored children’s stories as well as essays, poems, and artwork by

Page34Social Science Japan March 1999

children in an attempt to liberate what they called “the human spirit.”
At the same time, the middle class created and promoted a culture ofleisure, represented by the figure of the child at play, in order to promote theimage of itself as a class no longer rising but as a class arrived, able to enjoy
the present while letting the future take care of itself. Nonetheless, parents’and child experts’ references to play as the child’s universal right to be“child-like” and to express its spontaneous and energetic nature hide thenonetheless class-specific nature of the child’s culture of play. Oftenreferring to play as the “child’s work,” child psychologists and professional
educators advocated the importance of play to the child’s physical,
emotional, and mental development. In the early 20th century, department
stores, child experts, and toy producers moved quickly to turn new ideas
into children’s goods, as the 1911 founding of the Tokyo Toy Association by
toy producers and Mitsukoshi’s child experts makes clear. The resulting
educational toy boom of the 1910s and 1920s produced toys classified
according to the child’s age, gender, and personality, advice books entitled
How to Select and Give Toys to Children and a new middle class interest in toys
as objects whose value, according to the child psychologist, Takashima, lay
in their regard for “practicality, education, hygiene, exercise, price,
aesthetics, technology, safely and durability.”
The creation of a new child’s world from 1890 to 1930 was nothing less thanthe creation a new, middle class adult world. A social and cultural historyof prewar Japanese childhood illuminates the neglected topic of classformation in the prewar era, revises the notion of the birthplace of the
middle class as the postwar 1950s and, by reconnecting the prewar to thepostwar, ends the artificial separation of Japan’s 20th century into two easily
distinguishable halves.

❑

Social Science Japan March 1999

Page35

Research Report

The Salaryman and Japan’s Modernity

Peter MATANLE
Introduction
If we wish to contrast and compare different manifestations of modernity
and understand the pace and direction of their evolution we must examine
the institutions and organisations which constitute modern society.
Moreover, we also need to examine the needs, goals, and values of theindividuals within these organizations, specifically how those individuals
interact with each other and the institution or organisation. Such an analysis
will allow us to begin to understand the nature of modernity and toconstruct some ideas about the nature of the relationship between theindividual and modern society.
One of the pivotal institutions of late-twentieth century Japan is the“salaryman,” 1 working in a large and complex business enterprise. While itis simplistic and reductionist to speak in terms of stereotypes, we clearlycannot avoid him, his values, and the institutions of his employment if we
seek to find some answers as to the nature, direction, and pace of Japan’s
development.

Peter MATANLE is a Ph.D.
Candidate in the Schoolof East Asian Studies,
University of Sheffield
and until recently, was a
Visiting Researcher at theInstitute of Social
Science, University ofTokyo.
School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield
Floor 5 Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield S10 2TN United Kingdom
JAP96PCM@sheffield.ac.uk
peter_matanle@yahoo.com

This paper is a summary of an investigation conducted in Japan in 1998 into
Japanese male white-collar university graduates’ work values and therelationship of the ‘salaryman’ with the system of employment in large
Japanese corporations. I hope that the data produced by this study will help
to improve our knowledge of the development of Japanese institutions andorganisations and to refine our understanding of Japan’s experience ofmodernity.
Theoretical Background
While the issues of modernisation and convergence are complex and fraught
with difficulty, outlined below is an introduction to some of the ideas thatform the foundation of this research project. In his survey of value systems
in 43 societies, Ronald INGLEHART (1997) suggests that a major
generational change, or paradigm shift, has occurred in industrial societies.
He calls this a change from materialist to post-materialist values. Moreexplicitly, and echoing MASLOW’s (1970) hierarchy of needs, he describes
this shift as a move from the need for security and material comfort to adesire for self-expression and quality of life. Claiming not to be determinist
or teleological in his conclusions, he declares that certain consequences forvalues are likely if a society develops in a particular direction.
BERSTEIN (1997), MATHEWS (1996), and SUGIMURA (1997) concur with
Inglehart that a major shift towards the desire for self-fulfillment has takenplace. Bernstein’s historical overview of work values in the United States
describes a long-run development from their Lutheran-Calvinist origins,through a period of material opportunity and psychological alienation in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the modern quest for individual selffulfillment. Mathews, in comparing American and Japanese beliefs about
what makes life worth living, suggests that American and Japanese societies
are in a similar state of late-modernity. He describes a parallel and non-Page36Social Science Japan March 1999

converging development from the certainty of transcendental belief
structures, through a fragmentation of belief and loss of meaning, to theconstruction of a “late-modern pragmatism” of self-definition in the present.
Sugimura concentrates more narrowly on Japanese work values andspeculates about a collapse in the spirit of diligence that brought Japan suchrapid and sustained economic success. He links this collapse to wider social
developments such as the growth of knowledge-based industries and saysthat work has become more than an economic activity. He describes a quest
for self-realisation where the individual seeks to develop himself and his
talents freely while contributing to the organisation’s success. Thus,
Sugimura’s Japanese company employee is more social than Bernstein’s
American; self-realisation is not possible outside the organisational context.
Anthony GIDDENS (1990 and 1991) provides us with an intriguing andtheoretically important link between the institutions of modernity and value
systems. He claims we are experiencing a radicalised and globalised “highmodernity” characterised by a thouroughgoing individual and institutionalreflexivity. The traditional, pre-determined life-roles have disappeared,
leading to fundamental problems of ontological security and existential
anxiety which require a “Reflexive Project of the Self” to generate
programmes of actualisation and mastery for which the individual is solely
responsible. In other words, he argues, in conditions of late-modernity wecontemporaneously aspire to, and are compelled to seek self-fulfillment.
However, Giddens does not deal in depth with the issues of the pace anddirection of the development of late-modernity across societies, implyingthat the very idea of a national society is becoming squeezed between thecomplementary forces of globalisation and individuation.

Notes
1

While the term salaryman
originated in the 1920s
and has come to havevarious overtones,
depending on one’s
perspective, it is stillwidely used in Japan.
The 1990s Japanesesalaryman, narrowly
defined for the purposesof clarity, is a male, whitecollar, university graduate,
core employee of a large
Japanese corporation.

Perhaps the most hotly debated work on the issue of the pace of Japan’s
development, its links to value systems, and institutional convergence isthat of Ronald DORE (1990 [1973] and 1987). He contended that the “latedevelopment effect” and the Confucian, or communitarian, work ethic hadallowed Japan to leap ahead of the UK in its industrial development, andalthough Japan had to some extent converged on the industrial institutionsof the West, henceforth the UK would converge on Japan. LINCOLN and
KALLENBERG (1990) partially confirm Dore’s thesis, though they credit thevalues of Japanese employees to management’s implementation of welfare“corporatism”, saying that this is the foundation of the critical difference
between Japan and the US, that of the quality of Japanese labour.
Research Method
This project is a qualitative investigation of three large Japanese
corporations. One is a manufacturer of high technology products employing
7,000 people, the second a financial institution employing 12,000 people,
and the third a regional utility provider employing 20,000 people. The
companies were chosen with the following considerations in mind:
・Each company should be a large corporation.

➪
Social Science Japan March 1999

Page37

The Salaryman and Japan’s Modernity continued

・Manufacturing, financial services, and miscellaneous services should be
represented.
・A range of exposure to global and domestic competition should be
represented.
The study took the form of:・A set of semi-standardised interviews with a variety of male university
graduate employees of each company.
・A set of semi-standardised interviews with a personnel manager and aunion leader from each company.
・Collection of company documentation.
・Interviews, information, and documentation from related organisations
and institutions.
Results and Conclusions
Japanese labour institutions seem to be experiencing a gradual and steadyyet extensive marketisation and rationalisation. At the national level there
is growing evidence that a mature labour market, as the term “market” iscommonly understood to mean, is in the intermediate stages of formation.
The external market for university graduates is undergoing a structuraladjustment to a more fluid and complex structure. In addition, intermediate
institutions such as the government, personnel placement and dispatchingagencies, and headhunters are playing a more active role in facilitating andextending this marketisation and rationalisation.
At the organisational level the internal labour market in large corporations
is also undergoing a structural adjustment. The flow of information on job
vacancies within the firm is becoming increasingly rationalised and lessunidirectional. Thus the so-called “internal labour market” is for the firsttime coming to resemble a market in its most commonly understood
manifestation. Moreover, there is a steadily increasing amount of attention
being played not only to ability, but increasingly, performance, at theexpense of age and seniority, as a method for evaluating remuneration,
promotion and even continuing employment. Consequently, more flexible
and flatter employment hierarchies are emerging within corporations.
However, the degree of exposure to competition may influence the pace of
these developments; meaning that the greater the intensity of competition
the faster a corporation might rationalise and marketise its labour
institutions.
At the level of the individual, although material and psychological security
are still much sought after in the 1990s, employees are not as confident as
their predecessors that they have secure long-term employment. Thus someare examining their own experience and training and seeking to upgrade
their skills and knowledge as an insurance against unexpected events, aswell as to make themselves more attractive in the external labour market.
There does, also, seem to be a greater emphasis being placed on individual
self-fulfillment among younger employees. But, employees’ desires, needs,
values and motives seem to be more fragmented and differentiated than

Page38Social Science Japan March 1999

previously.
Based on the above, one might conclude that Japanese labour institutions
are converging on the West (by “the West” I mean a stylised AngloAmerican model). However marketisation and rationalisation might also bea function of the development of a society and economy into a period of“high-modernity”. In this sense, Japan’s elites, in what MARUYAMA Masao(1965) terms “purposive development”, chose a path for development for
which there have been certain consequences. No doubt, with thedevelopment of global media and information systems, the ineluctable
expansion of world trade, and the adoption of similar technologies andinstitutions, there has been some convergence in consciousness andinstitutions at a superficial level. However, at a deeper level, what Japan isexperiencing now is not so much convergence, or westernisation, but
continuing modernisation. One of the consequences and causes of thistransformation into “high-modernity” at the level of individual
consciousness is the emergence of the “Reflexive Project of the Self”. Once
more, this, I believe, is not a convergence on western value systems, but, in
Giddens’s (1990) words, a consequence of Japan’s modernity. Thus, the main
conclusion to this study is that Japan and the West are developing along
parallel paths in a similar direction, with Japan roughly following theWestern example. However, Japan’s circumstances (as does her society)remain particular to Japan.

❑

References
BERNSTEIN, Paul. 1997. American Work Values: Their Origin and Development, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
DORE, Ronald. 1990 [1973]. British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial
Relations, Berkeley: University of California Press.
________. 1987. Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues, London: The
Athlone Press.
GIDDENS, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
________. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
INGLEHART, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in
43 Societies, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
LINCOLN, James R. and KALLENBERG, Arne L. 1990. Culture, Control, and Commitment: A Study of Work
Organization and Work Attitudes in the United States and Japan, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
MASLOW, Abraham H. 1970. Motivation and Personality (2nd edition), New York: Harper and Row.
MARUYMA, Masao. 1965. “Patterns of Individuation and the Case of Japan: A Conceptual Scheme,”
Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, Marius B. Jansen (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
MATHEWS, Gordon. 1996.What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of their
Worlds, Berkeley: University of California Press.
SUGIMURA, Yoshimi. 1997. Yoi Shigoto no Shisou: Atarashii Shigoto no Rinri no Tame ni, Tokyo: Chuko
Shinsho.

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