Air University Review, March-April 1981

Japan: The Student Becomes the Teacher

In 1853 and again in 1854 American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry anchored in Tokyo Bay. Perry had been sent by the United States government to open trade relations with Japan. The signed treaty opened two Japanese ports to American trade and ended Japan’s isolation from other countries. Of the signing of the agreement on 31 March 1854, Perry’s chronicler offered this account:

It was now sunset, and the Japanese prepared to depart with quite as much wine in them as they could well bear. The jovial Matsusaki threw his arms about the Commodore's neck, crushing, in his tipsy embrace, a new pair of epaulettes, and repeating, in Japanese, with maudlin affection, these words as interpreted into English: ‘‘Nippon and America, all the same heart.’’¹

Four score and seven years later, the Japanese and Americans were at war.

An American Naval officer, Perry, helped to bring Japan into the family of nations in 1854. In 1867, Emperor Mutsuhito regained his power—the so-called Meiji Restoration—from the Shogun, the military governor of Japan whose warrior class had held power since 1192. During this post-Perry period of enlightened rule, Mutsuhito and his successors eliminated the feudal system, ended the samurai or warrior class, proclaimed Japan’s first constitution in 1889, generally modernized the country, and increasingly entered into international trade. In fact, the samurai had given way to the zaibatsu, the financial moguls who helped to develop, in the late nineteenth century, some of the firms which are today internationally known. By 1930, however, a major power struggle had thrown Japan into political turmoil. The assassination of Prime Minister Yuko Hamaguchi, in November 1930, led to the seizure of power by his rivals, the militarists, who invaded Manchuria the next year. Japanese expansion continued. The Japanese militarists strengthened their hold on the government, and in late 1941 General Hideki Tojo became Prime Minister.

An American Army officer, MacArthur, helped restore Japan to the family of nations after World War II. Allied Military Occupation of Japan began in late August 1945 and officially continued until 28 April 1952, when the Japanese peace treaty went into effect. During the occupation, Japanese war criminals were tried—seven were executed— and a remodernization and democratization of Japan were begun. On 3 May 1947 the new Japanese constitution went into effect; the emperor’s divinity was renounced; the army and navy were essentially dissolved, and war was abjured as an instrument of statecraft. Serious and substantial reforms were introduced into practically every aspect of Japanese life.

When the occupation ended, Japan’s total production was about one-third that of Britain or France. By the late 1970s, her gross national product was as large as that of Britain and France combined and more than half that of the United States. Ezra Vogel, chairman of Harvard’s Council of East Asian Studies and author of Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, points out that if Japan were an American state it would rank fifth in geographical size, following Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana.* Its 115,000,000

people live in that fairly compact archipelago, making it the most densely populated major country in the world. About thirty percent of its food supplies must he imported, and about eighty-five percent of its energy resources must also be obtained from foreign suppliers. Given their rather exigent circumstances, one can see why the Japanese have turned, with astonishing success, to international business and commerce. President Charles de Gaulle of France once rather peremptorily dismissed a Japanese prime minister as a "transistor salesman," But as Herman Kahn and Thomas Pepper point out,** "Japan is almost certain to become. . . the largest. . .trading nation in the world." Japan, says Kahn, is very likely "to become a superpower as well as a superstate."² Some transistor, some salesman!

* Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979, $12.50), 272 pages.

**Herman Kahn and Thomas Pepper, The Japanese Challenge: The Success and Failure of Economic Success (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979, $10.00), 162 pages.

Ezra Vogel’s book is readable, informative, and provocative. He wonders in print whether a Western nation can learn from the East. Vogel does not look on Japan as a utopia, but he contends that "Japan has dealt more successfully with more of the basic problems of postindustrial society than any other country. It is in this sense . . . that the Japanese are number one.’’ It is incorrect, Vogel asserts, to regard Nippon (meaning "source of the sun’’) simply as ‘‘Japan, Inc.’’ Vogel contends that the Japanese economic powerhouse is, in part, the product of a relatively homogeneous society in which "communitarian values" provide purpose, cohesion, and loyalty. Although Vogel praises Japanese social purpose, he admits that the strong pressure for conformity could help restrict dissent and stifle individualism. He doubts, however, that there is any prospect of a return to power of a totalitarian dictatorship.

Vogels book, which may be read with high profit by both Asian specialists and general readers, is particularly optimistic about Japan’s politics.³ "If the term ‘democracy’ is used to signify the expression of diverse interests in the political arena and the capacity of the government to satisfy those interests,’’ Vogel writes, ‘‘it could he argued that Japan is now a more effective democracy than America.’’ Japanese parliamentary democracy, institutionalized in the bicameral Diet, appears to be remarkably stable and strong.⁴ Emperor Hirohito performs ceremonial duties as head of state; the prime minister is chosen by the Diet and is, as head of government, particularly accountable to the 511-member House of Representatives. The Liberal Democratic Party has been the chief political actor in Japanese politics, but its domination seems no longer assured.⁵ The Japanese Communist Party is politically weak and, according to the forecast of Rodger Swearingen, the JCP seems to be "insinuating itself into the ranks of Eurocommunism."* In short, Japanese political institutions and procedures appear resilient and mature.

*Rodger Swearingen, The Soviet Union and Postwar Japan: Escalating Challenge and Response (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1978, $14.95), 340 pages.

How much we in the United States—with our federal, presidential, pluralist political system—can learn from the Japanese unitary, parliamentary system can be debated.⁶ Increasingly, however, American businessmen are turning to their Japanese counterparts to study Japanese industrial practices. As Vogel put it: "No structure in the West compares with the Japanese firm in its capacity to introduce rapid change and to provide identification for a substantial part of the population." In this connection, Rodney Clark’s book is essential.* The book is a clear, concise, and relatively complete study of management practice in contemporary Japan. Clark agrees with Vogel that the term Japan, Inc. is incorrect. Although Clark’s book will be of interest primarily to the close student of international economics or of comparative business management, the generalist will find Clark’s chapter "The Company, Society, and Change" to be useful for its insight into the nature of authority, the sociological background of company structure, and the principal organizational differences between American and Japanese firms. This book, in conjunction with Kahn and Pepper’s, will be valuable reading for anyone whose goal is to understand the procedures and prospects of the mercantile Japanese.

*Rodney Clark, The Japanese Company (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, $17.50), 282 pages.

The student of international affairs will want to read Swearingen’s book, which is a lucid treatment of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Japan. World War II ended formally between Japan and the

U.S.S.R. in 1956, when they agreed to sign a peace pact; Japan entered the United Nations the same year. But Swearingen contends that there remain "fundamental issues" to be resolved between the U.S.S.R. and Japan. His book is a coherent catalogue of difficulties in the Russo-Japanese relationship, dating particularly from the war of 1904-1905 (which was ended, of course, at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his efforts). For example, questions still exist about Sakhalin Island, about the Kuril Islands, about certain other islands across the Nemuro-kaikyo Strait at 44 N° and 146 E°, and about other matters which appear intransigent. Complicating things is the question of China. Swearingen uses a Chinese Communist military document, which was intended to assure cadre and soldiers that China’s tilt toward the United States was merely tactical and temporary (p. 169), as a basis for his conclusion that the Asian strategic situation is increasingly complex---and perilous.

Despite Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution--- the "MacArthur Constitution" ---the Japanese appear to be embarking upon a "substantial course of limited rearmament, dictated, it would seem, in no small measure by the alarming Soviet naval buildup in the Pacific area and the increasingly military stature of the People’s Republic of china and of North Korea concomitant with decreasing U.S. commitments in Asia." (p. 203) Swearingen’s conclusion: "All of this suggests, rather ominously, that---Moscow’s policy of détente notwithstanding---we may be witnessing only the first stage of the escalating Soviet challenge in Northeast Asia and of the increasingly vigorous Japanese response." (p. 220) Valuable, too, are 80 pages that give the texts of 38 treaties between the U.S.S.R. and Japan from 1956 to 1977.

The Japanese have much to teach us in the West. As Kahn and Pepper put it, the Japanese have learned to combine the machine and the garden. They write that ". . . Japan is the quintessential example of a country that consciously sought a marriage of traditional and modern, native and foreign, East and West. The slogans of the Meiji era---for example, ‘Western knowledge, Eastern morals’ ---show a deep-rooted belief in synthesis." (p. 32) Perhaps it is time, at least in some areas of politics and business, for the Japanese to become the teachers and for us, the countrymen of Perry and MacAruther, to become the students. Then, perhaps it can again be said, as it was in 1854: "Nippon and America, all the same heart."

1. Quoted in Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, seventh edition (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964), p. 310.

2. This quotation may be found on p. xii of the Kahn and Pepper book. To pursue this subject, see Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1970).

3. Readers may be interested also in Frank Langdon, Politics in Japan (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), and Warren M. Tsuneishi, Japanese Political Style (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). For dramatic comparison, see "The Swarming Lobbyists," Time, August 7, 1978, pp. 14-22; and Kevin Phillips, "The Balkanization of America," Harper’s, May 1978, pp. 37-47.

4. The student of government will be impressed at the comparisons to be made between the Bonn government in the Federal Republic of Germany and the post-World War II Japanese government. The former employs a federal system, a parliamentary system with a bicameral parliament (Bundestag and Bundesrat), a ceremonial presidency, and a chancellorship. The latter employs a unitary system, a parliamentary system with a bicameral Diet (House of Representative and House of Councilors), a constitutional monarchy with the emperor as ceremonial head of state, and a prime minister. Both nations use a variation of proportional representation in electing legislators and both nations seem to have accepted the fundamentals of democracy in political cultures which, before 1945, probably would have correctly been called "authoritarian."

5. At the time of writing, Prime Minister Ohira had been defeated in a surprise no-confidence vote. He had dissolved the house of Representatives and set 22 June 1980 as the date for general elections. The Japanese were also scheduled to choose half of the 252 members of the House of Councilors on the same day. Ohira died on 12 June 1980.

6. The term unitary is often misused. A unitary state is one in which regional or local governmental institutions do not have legal or constitutional guarantees of autonomy. Although Japan does have nine "large regions," forty-seven "prefectures," and a "metropolis" (Tokyo), its government is unitary, as is that, say, of Great Britain. By contrast, the American, Swiss, West German, Australian, or Canadian governments are "federal" because their states, cantons, laender, or provinces have certain assurances of limited autonomy. That a country chooses a unitary structure of government by no means indicates that it is not democratic or pluralistic.

James H. Toner (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of Government at Norwich University and a fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. He was assistant professor at Notre Dame, where he taught international relations. Dr. Toner served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1972. In 1973, he was selected as a General Douglas MacArthur Statesman Scholar. His articles and reviews have appeared in Army, Military Review, Review of Politics, International Review of History and Political Science, and Naval War College Review. Dr. Toner is a previous contributor to the Review.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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