Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture
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174 Takashi Inoguchi
Portraying Japanese political culture as observed in the 1930s through
the 1950s and branding it as the authoritative, eternal version of Japanese
political culture is a little excessive.
27
Some noted political culture studies
stem from the selective fixation on the observations made during this period,
ranging from Kunio Yanagida, Ruth Benedict and Masao Maruyama to Chie
Nakane.
International comparison of Japan’s political culture
Organising the myriad threads of political culture in an international context
is a daunting task. This section deals mostly with those propositions that
have been systematically and empirically tested with a significant number of
observations. Many theories on modern Japanese political culture have been
presented without empirical foundations, and this tendency has contributed
to the blossoming of unfounded nihonjinron (debates on the key features
of Japanese and Japanese culture). The ensuing discussion endeavours to
consciously conduct a ‘reality-check’ on a number of propositions about
modern Japanese political culture and to restrict itself to those propositions
that are related to the linkage between citizens and the state.
28
After all, this
chapter deals with political culture.
Identity, trust and satisfaction
How one relates to the nation/state is one of the key questions underlying
political culture. What is the individual citizen’s primary identity? In other
words, when people think about themselves, what do they think makes
them truly themselves? Or what do they think resonates especially well
with them? It is not surprising to see that some 20 per cent of respondents
in the Asia-Europe Survey selected the ‘don’t know’ category. Why? It may
be because Japanese are hesitant to answer questions that do not contain
some concrete and contextual information.
29
It may be because they really
do not know what to say about their primary identity. It is a small sur-
prise, however, to see that of all 18 countries surveyed, nine in Asia and
nine in Europe, the Japanese respondents scored the lowest percentage in
identifying themselves with their country, Japan. It seems that Japanese are
intrinsically hesitant to identify themselves with the state/nation. Reasons
vary from one person to another, an obvious one perhaps being their strong
pacifism. The state that brought its citizens sacrifice and humiliation dur-
ing the war cannot be easily pardoned. This is why the decision to have
the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces fuel the military aircraft for the
Political culture 175
Afghan war efforts of the United States, the United Kingdom and Pakistan
on the Indian Ocean is not viewed very positively, even though it is the
safest and most cost-effective cooperation Japan could undertake in the
implementation of the Afghan war. Further, Japanese do not seem to want
to place much confidence in the state for another reason. Whenever a prime
minister has expressed the possibility of a consumption tax hike, he has
faced close to 100 per cent chance of being forced to resign because citizens
are vehemently adamant about this issue; at least they have been during
the 1978–2007 period.
30
After all, the state had eliminated all government
bonds by 1945. More recently the Social Insurance Agency pocketed some
of the insurer’s pension payments.
31
Popular distrust in this bureaucratic
agency is registered as high, for obvious reasons. If distrust in a bureaucratic
agency is so high, one cannot envisage citizens identifying strongly with the
state/nation. They remain hesitant in this regard.
What about other identities? Asian identity is obviously an interesting
question to pose. Like national identity, Asian identity is not very strong in
Japan in comparison to other Asian states, such as the Philippines, Thailand
and South Korea.
32
Japanese have ambiguous feelings about Asia. It is some-
what like English difficulties in placing England on the same level as the
European continent. In an extreme sense, expressions such as, ‘fogs over
the channel isolated Europe’, is broadly accepted in England.
33
Japanese
acknowledge their civilizational debts to the Asian continent since time
immemorial. Yet they feel that keeping the relationship at arm’s length
might be the best and safest approach to take.
In close relation to this ambivalence about Japan’s Asian identity, two
partially competing ideas exist on how Japan posits itself in the world. The
maritime and commercial school of thought argues that it is best for Japan
to be part of the maritime coalition in the Pacific and beyond, because
Japan’s survival depends on the defence of the free sea and free trade. In
contrast, the continental and neighbourly school of thought argues that
Japan is part and parcel of Asia and its survival cannot be separated from
it for defence and commercial reasons. In surveys conducted on this issue
over many years, 60 per cent of respondents supported the former view and
40 per cent supported the latter, if the ‘don’t know’ and ‘other’ responses are
omitted.
34
Islamic countries, like Indonesia and Malaysia, are torn in a way
between Islamic and Asian identity. Normally, Islamic identity is chosen
after national identity and Asian identity comes in third place. Culturally,
Chinese societies, like Taiwan and Hong Kong, show ambivalence as to
whether cultural Chineseness comes first or second in the hierarchy of
176 Takashi Inoguchi
identification. Singaporeans are largely untroubled by their predominantly
cultural Chineseness. At any rate, of the Asian countries that do not have
‘cultural Chinese’ or Islamic identity, Japan has the lowest percentages in
the Asian identity category.
Shifting away from identity with the state/nation, we move to issues
of confidence/trust. Do the Japanese have confidence in the state and its
institutions? The empirical findings show that their confidence in the state
is not high. The two major reasons for their relatively low confidence have
been touched on above: wars brought about humiliation and disaster; wars
devastated livelihoods. The majority of Japanese do not want to be involved
in wars again. That is why Japanese sent troops to Iraq only after President
Bush declared victory in that country. It is also the reason that the main
opposition party opposes the legislation on fuelling US and UK aircraft on
the Indian Ocean. State taxation is visibly detested, whether it is personal
income tax, consumption tax, local residence tax or legal entity tax. As
noted above, a prime minister has a good chance of being forced to resign
if he/she proposes a tax hike. Since Japanese citizens have continued to say
‘no’ to increased taxation, the government has accumulated an astronomical
amount of deficit. Although Japanese are hesitant to place their money in
toto for use by the state, they are not necessarily hesitant to keep their
money in postal savings accounts, the world’s largest savings account. Nor
are they hesitant to purchase Japanese government bonds en masse.
What about the Japanese public’s confidence in government institutions?
Their pattern of confidence is not very different from other Asian citizens
or, for that matter, from that of European citizens. First, publics in these
countries exhibit a high level of confidence in the police and the military
(in this order in Asia, and in the reverse order in Europe). In terms of
confidence, public institutions come next, where recruitment is meritocratic
and assigned tasks are technocratic. These institutions embody the legal and
court system and government agencies. At the bottom, in terms of degree
of confidence, the Japanese place democratic institutions: political parties
and the parliament. This pattern of confidence is more or less universal.
35
Only the position of mass media, big business and international institutions
varies from country to country. While Japan is no exception to this pattern,
it may represent an extreme case of low confidence in democratically elected
politicians and parliament. The six-month period of disarray of the Japanese
government under Prime Minister Abe and his statement that he resigned
from his office because of illness, led one, at least, to joke that in Japan the
state might have withered away as Karl Marx predicted long, long ago. Akio
Political culture 177
Kawato
36
argues that instead of coercion and legislation, communitarianism
of a kind different from that envisioned by Marx might have prevailed
in Japan. Irrespective of the vacuum of power at the highest level of the
government, Japan seems to sail on serenely.
What about citizens’ satisfaction with the state? Are they satisfied with
its performance? The Japanese state boasts a great combination of achieve-
ments, such as the zero combat death of soldiers, the meticulous rise from a
country devastated and lying in ashes to a country ranked number two for
GNP in the world, and the miraculous transformation of the military-led
authoritarianism of the war period to the mature democracy of the last
60 years. Yet, Japanese citizens are generally somewhat hesitant to praise
the state and sceptical of its achievements.
37
One seemingly strong answer to the question as to whether Japanese
are satisfied is a post-materialist response.
38
Since lifestyle differs from
one person to another, their degree of satisfaction depends on a myriad
of factors and circumstances in which they find themselves. They may be
most interested in their performance in their senior golf club’s contest. Their
happiness may come from seeing their grandchildren from afar. At any rate,
they belong to the same club of not particularly satisfied peoples among the
rich men’s clubs of South Korea, Taiwan and Luxembourg.
Aside from the overall satisfaction with the state’s performance, citi-
zens are area-specific about their satisfaction. Not unexpectedly, many are
attentive to domestic policies, especially social policy. They are not very
satisfied with the state’s policy on pensions, medical insurance, welfare,
metropolitan-local income gap and gender equality. Nor are they satisfied
with education, crime and corruption. Japanese are divided about foreign
policy in that some are positive about sending troops abroad while others
are not. The same can be said about the issue of Constitutional revision.
39
Family values
Family values constitute one of the key components of modern Japanese
political culture, as they are closely related to political authoritarianism.
There are many threads that make up the composite picture of Japanese fam-
ily values.
40
Still, these threads can be grouped into ‘sets’ of values. There
is a ‘traditional’ set of values that includes such principles as filial piety,
honesty, diligence, harmony, modesty, achievement, integrity and humble-
ness. Ruth Benedict added authoritarianism to this list. Thus, blind compli-
ance to authoritarian-crafted consensus and excessive cults of guilt among
groups are often said to be inculcated in families, the bastion of Japanese
178 Takashi Inoguchi
traditional values and virtues. However, the ‘modern’ set of Japanese family
values and virtues seems to depart from tradition to a considerable extent.
Most emphasised among the qualities that parents seek to nurture at home
is mindfulness (omoiyari and yasashisa). This could be translated as tol-
erance, benevolence, thoughtfulness and care. Omoiyari stands above all
other desirable qualities among Japanese respondents by 60 per cent.
This response makes Japanese unusual among East Asian respondents.
Respondents from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and
Hong Kong more or less uniformly depict the following three qualities
as priorities at home: self-strength (self-standing, self-sustainability), dili-
gence and honesty. All three qualities concern the self, not other social
beings. Although honesty is also about relations with others, here it pri-
marily means being honest to oneself. One must survive and stand alone.
Conversely, Japanese respondents single out mindfulness or omoiyari.This
quality concerns others in society. It may suggest that Japanese are more
post-materialist, whereas other East Asians show the tenacious nature of
materialism in which survival is the key virtue. Further, among the other
East Asians there are many varieties of responses. In addition to the East
Asian trinity of self-strength, diligence and honesty, South Korean respon-
dents place more emphasis on deference to their elders than the rest; Viet-
namese respondents give more weight to compliance than the rest; and
Taiwanese, Singaporean and Hong Kong respondents exhibit more variety
than the rest.
Related to family values is the authoritarian vision of pupils in the class-
room. This view tends to portray Japanese pupils as obedient, compliant,
consensual and deferential. A comparative study of school classrooms by
Merry White
41
reveals quite vividly that Japanese children are characterised
by a mix of cooperation and consensus on the one hand, and competition
and intervention on the other. The latter is no less significant. Once guidance
is given, pupils often take good initiatives. The style of running classrooms
and the way in which teaching is conducted may also take into account this
type of cultural difference.
A good example may be the American style of learning English (e.g.
a subject is posed by a teacher and the debate is conducted, more or less
freely). This method sometimes baffles some East Asian students; many of
them do not necessarily ask questions, and many of them do not necessarily
volunteer answers to teacher’s questions. They expect the teacher to first
provide careful and rich instructions on how to go about formulating an
answer. If this level of instruction is provided, the pupils achieve quite a
Political culture 179
lot. One of the applications of this insight is that a number of parents in
Asian countries send their children to Singapore to learn English rather than
to the US, and that Singaporean-made English teaching kits are popular in
China.
42
Using this method, children are able to learn much more each week
in the same time-frame. Singaporean pupils are similar to Japanese pupils in
that they combine obedience and competition.
Conclusion
Japanese political culture is rich. A single chapter cannot do justice to this
rich and still largely unexplored subject. Instead of summarising what has
been described, I would like to provide two short notes on two important
subjects relevant to the study of political culture. First, Japanese political
culture arguably has an enormous degree of malleability. Neither excessively
stressing individualism or collectivism, nor single-mindedly highlighting
competition or compliance, nor extremely underlining trust or distrust,
Japanese political culture transforms itself according to endogenous and
exogenous changes. Therefore, the study of culture in general and political
culture in particular should not be conducted as if it were a DNA of people
living over years in a given set of units often called the national cultural
unit. Second, in studying political culture, language plays an important
role. Language is part of culture. To better understand political culture,
one had better know language as much as possible. Further, the inherently
obtrusive and intrusive nature of interviewing in survey research when
studying political culture needs to be kept in mind and, if possible remedied.
Only armed with cultural sensitivity and linguistic thoroughness can one
hope to grasp political culture.
43
Notes
1. See Almond and Verba (1963); Pye (1982); Rich (2007).
2. Lasswell (1990).
3. Easton (1979).
4. See Inoguchi (2007d) and Inoguchi and Fujii (2008).
5. See Inoguchi and Marsh (2008: 280–310). Also available online at www.
asiaeuropesurvey.org. See also Blondel and Inoguchi (2006); Inoguchi and Blondel
(2008).
6. See, for instance, Subramanian and Kawachi (2006: 116–22); Lochner, Kawachi, Bren-
nan and Buka (2003: 797–805); Subramanian, Kim and Kawachi (2002:S21–34).
7. The relationship between concerns about human rights and health in Asian people
has been examined by Yasuharu Tokuda and his associates. See Tokuda, Fujii and
180 Takashi Inoguchi
Inoguchi (unpublished 2007 manuscript). The relationship between social capital and
public policy performance at local levels in Italy has been well examined by Robert
Putnam (1994).
8. Putnam (1994)
9. These generational differences are well documented by the National Character Survey
of the Ministry of Education’s Institute of Statistical Mathematics from the early
1950s through 2000s(T
¯
okei S
¯
uri Kenky
¯
ujo Kokuminsei Ch
¯
osa Iinkai 1961; 1970;
1975; 1982a; 1982b). See also Chikio Hayashi (2001); Yoshino (2007).
10. Watanuki (1979).
11. Richardson (1974).
12. Yasusuke Murakami (1982: 29–72).
13. Kabashima and Takenaka (1988).
14. Tachibanaki (2006); Shingo Hayashi (2005). GINI index is one of the ways to measure
the degree of income gaps among the population concerned.
15. Tokuda and Inoguchi (forthcoming).
16. Inoguchi (1997: 104–14; 2007b: 1–19; 2007e; 2008).
17. McAllister (2007: 571–88).
18. Ikegami (1995).
19. Ikegami (
2005).
20. Rizzolatti
and Arbib (1998: 188–94).
21. Inoguchi (2005a; 2005b; 1999: 19–28).
22. Inoguchi (2005a; 2005b; 1999: 19–28).
23. Inoguchi (2007e); Anderson (1975).
24. Pilling (2007).
25. Mann (1986).
26. Although absolutism was not generated outside Europe, it was transplanted onto the
rest by colonialism. See Duland (2007).
27. Kunio Yanagita may have been unwittingly used for this purpose. Especially those
social scientists like Masao Maruyama, Takeyoshi Kawashima, Jiro Kamishima, and
Junichi Kyogoku might have presented such a picture of Japanese political culture.
28. Inoguchi and Blondel (2008).
29. Unfortunately, this linguistic-methodological inquiry has not been systematically and
empirically tested.
30. Tax-hike related resignations include Masayoshi
¯
Ohira, Yasuhiro Nakasone, Noboru
Takeshita and Morifumi Hosokawa. Most prime ministers avoided policy choices
which would lead them to increase taxes. Junichir
¯
o Koizumi was spectacularly suc-
cessful in shirking from a tax hike for as long as five years of his tenure in power. One
of the consequences was that it led many administrations to issue a huge amount of
government bonds and without raising tax revenue – the government has accumulated
a literally astronomical amount of government deficit over 30 years.
31. Inoguchi (2007a).
32. Inoguchi (2004).
33. Thakur and Inoguchi (2003).
34. The phrasing of questions makes a difference. These figures are my ‘guesstimates’,
based on my reading of such questions over the years.
35. Inoguchi (2004).
36. Kawato (2008).
37.
Inoguchi and Blondel (2008).
Political culture 181
38. Inglehart (1993).
39. Yomiuri Shimbun (2002).
40. Inoguchi (2006).
41. Merry White (1993).
42. Minister Ong of the Singapore Embassy in Tokyo, September 21 (2007).
43. Inoguchi and Fujii (2008).
Further reading
Blondel, Jean and Takashi Inoguchi (2006), Political Cultures in Asia and Europe: Citizens,
States and Societal Values, London: Routledge.
Ikegami, Eiko (1995), The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making
of Modern Japan, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
White, Merry (1993), The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America,New
York: Free Press.
hideo aoki
10
Buraku culture
Burakumin as a genealogical minority
Japan is a mosaic society coloured by manifold layers of dominant and
minority cultures. The representative ethnic minorities include the Ainu,
Okinawans and Zainichi Koreans (Koreans living in Japan). This chapter
deals with the so-called burakumin,
1
arguably the largest minority group
in contemporary Japan.
While burakumin are Japanese both ethnically and in terms of national-
ity, they are discriminated against on the basis of belief about their descent:
that they are real or purported ‘descendants of outcastes’ (eta or hinin)
2
of the status system which the feudal Tokugawa regime institutionalised
about four centuries ago to implement its divide-and-rule policy.
3
The
burakumin category was instituted in order to direct peasants’ discon-
tent over the heavy land tax they were required to pay away from the
Shogunate and the local lords and towards the burakumin. Until today,
many burakumin have lived in secluded communities and maintained a
considerable degree of genealogical continuity. To be precise, burakumin
constitute a modern social status group that forms a genealogical minority
in contemporary Japan.
According to a 1993 survey, the most recent nationwide study avail-
able, there are 4442 areas in which burakumin live.
4
These areas have a
total population of 2 158 789, of whom 892 751 are burakumin. However,
the burakumin population far surpasses these figures. Some areas were not
surveyed. There are burakumin who have left the designated areas to live
elsewhere. There are some who do not know that they are burakumin
because their parents did not disclose their descent to them. These people
Buraku culture 183
find out that they are burakumin when they experience discrimination.
5
Accordingly, it is a near impossibility to get an accurate count of the
burakumin population.
To locate burakumin in the context of other minorities in Japan, it
would be helpful to provide a brief description of the Ainu, Okinawans
and Zainichi Koreans in contrast with the burakumin, the focus of the
analysis of this chapter.
The Ainu is an indigenous ethnic group from the northern areas of East
Asia. In the past, hunting and fishing were their primary means of subsis-
tence, and they continue to possess their own unique culture (animistic faith,
Ainu language, and oral tradition). In 1999, there were 23 767 Ainu
6
living
in Hokkaid
¯
o and a few thousand Ainu in Kant
¯
o region, though the exact
population number is unknown. The Ainu were attacked by what they call
the wajin or shamo (dominant Japanese), and finally yielded to their colo-
nial rule in the 15th century. With the establishment of the Meiji regime in
Tokyo in the latter half of the 19th century, the Ainu were incorporated into
the Japanese nation, had their land taken by force, were forbidden to pass
on their traditions to the next generation, and were compelled to assimilate
with the wajin. With the recent rise of multiculturalism, cultural revival
movements were beginning to emerge towards the end of the 20th century,
raising ethnic awareness among the Ainu. In 1997,alawwasenactedto
‘promote Ainu culture’. In 2008, the Japanese parliament passed the motion
to recognise the Ainu as an indigenous group for the first time,
7
though
such issues as land ownership, underground resources, autonomy, language
and race, are still swept under the carpet.
The Okinawans (people from the Okinawan islands) also possess their
own unique culture (Okinawan Shinto, language, and custom).
8
The Oki-
nawans founded their own state (the Ry
¯
uky
¯
u Kingdom) in the 15th century.
However, it was attacked during the Edo era by the Satsuma [Kagoshima]
domain in the south of Ky
¯
ush
¯
u, after which it became a dependent ter-
ritory. In 1872, the Meiji government annexed it into Japan, after which
the Okinawans suffered from discrimination and poverty under Japan’s
colonial policies. Towards the end of the Second World War, one third of
Okinawans were killed during the Battle of Okinawa, which took place
between the Japanese and United States armies. After the war, Okinawa
was placed under US administration, and later ‘returned’ to Japan in 1972.
However, US military bases remained concentrated in Okinawa, and the
Okinawans suffer from higher levels of unemployment and poverty than
Japan’s mainland due to the dependency of the economy on the military