Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture

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344 Takashi Inoguchi

more than half a century of ‘free trade’ regimes during its earliest stages of

industrialisation. The bitterness of this erosion of national economic and

political sovereignty was played down, because it was seen as the price that

must be paid for enlightenment, innovation, wealth, and a strong army:

catching up with the West had the highest priority at that time. Nation-

wide improvements in nutrition, sanitation, irrigation and literacy occurred

during the Tokugawa era (1603–1867), paving the way for the Meiji lead-

ers to make advances in their subsequent modernisation endeavours.

The

imposed free trade regime exposed Japan to external competition and con-

sequently enabled the country to become industrialised by the eve of the

First World War.

Thanks to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, in which the goal of parliamen-

tary monarchy was proclaimed, Japan also moved steadily and steadfastly

toward democracy during this period. In the 1880sand90s the birth of

political parties and local assembly elections and the promulgation of the

Imperial Constitution ﬁrst took place; the ﬁrst House of Representatives

election was held. The opening of the Imperial Diet followed this. In the

1910sand20s parliamentary democracy further consolidated, with a two-

party system and male universal suffrage. In the 1930s the advance of social

democratic forces in the House of Representatives was achieved. It appeared

as though Japan were treading its Westernising path correctly and was fast

becoming the ﬁrst non-Western nation-state.

But in the 1930sand40s, Japan suddenly turned from that democratising

path to a militant one. Japan’s defeat in the Paciﬁc War liquidated the

military cliques that had brought about calamities not only to the nation

but also to Japan’s neighbouring states. By 1952, as an independent state,

Japan returned to the path of democratisation and industrialisation. Since

then, it has trod the most peaceful, prosperous and democratic course in the

non-Western world. This is a mainstream view of modern Japanese history,

that dominates the current domestic cultural-nationalist discourse, and is

roughly in accord with the view expressed by such American academics of

modernisation theory as WW Rostow and Edwin Reischauer, who acted as

important policymakers in the Kennedy Administration.

Korea

After 1953, a post-liberation Korean Peninsula evolved along two altogether

difﬁcult and divided paths: the Soviet Union held the northern half while the

US occupied the southern half. After independence was granted from these

respective powers, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK,

Globalisation and cultural nationalism 345

colloquially, ‘North Korea’) pursued an ‘autonomous policy line’ while

the Republic of Korea (ROK or ‘South Korea’) followed an ‘associated

developmental policy line’.

The ROKs ‘associated’ approach to development signiﬁes its close ﬁnan-

cial, technological, economic and political ties with Japan, under the more

global umbrella of US hegemony. This has on occasion generated domestic

ideological discomfort within the ROK. For South Koreans, Japan has come

to represent two negative symbols. First, it was a former Imperial colonist.

This was a deep insult to Koreans, who ranked Japan lowest on the Sinicised

Confucian ladder in East Asia, with Choson Korea at the top, and Qing

China, ruled by ‘uncivilised’ Jurchens (Manchus), in the middle. Jurchens

and Japanese were not fully Confucianised – therefore civilised – nations in

the Korean view.

Second, South Korean military leaders have often been

regarded as being overly pro-Japanese. Therefore they had to act in a more

anti-Japanese fashion than would have been the case otherwise. Further-

more, the ROK’s democratisation and developmental achievements have

seeded further domestic anti-Japanese nationalism. Democratisation has

enabled left-wing forces to take power. Developmental success has brought

about deep ties with Japan. The Asian ﬁnancial crisis brought the ROK

temporarily under the control of the International Monetary Fund, which

led to the further enhancement of foreign capital in the Korean economy.

All these factors have intermittently generated anti-Japanese sentiment.

China

China has a history of being humiliated, exploited and disrespected by

foreign powers. Since the Opium War of 1842, Westerners led by Britain

coerced Qing China and Republican China alike to open their ports, mar-

kets, and country to Western trade and culture, rendering China a semi-

colony. China’s pride as a civilised country endowed with all kinds of mate-

rials and knowledge was shattered, and it ceased to be master of its own

land and destiny. Japan was one of the principal aggressors. After liberation

from Japanese occupation and Kuomintang rule, China opted for a one-

sided policy line against the US. This, coupled with the strongly self-reliant

developmental policy line, effectively sealed China off from the world econ-

omy until the late 1970s. Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power in 1978 triggered

complex forces in the Japan-China equation.

From a departure point of

world-standard underdevelopment, Chinese development exploded.

First, China suffered massive dependence on foreign capital and tech-

nology. Chinese workers were kept at low wage levels, as a policy line of

346 Takashi Inoguchi

exporting massive amounts of manufactured products abroad at an exchange

rate exceedingly favourable to Chinese exports was maintained. During this

period, Chinese society remained in a constant turmoil of disruption and

dislocation due to the absence of vigorous improvements to: (1) domestic

ﬁnancial services; (2) levels of industrial and social infrastructure com-

mensurate with the speed of annual economic growth rates; and (3) levels

of social policy and the social safety net. Improvements in any or all or

these areas would have helped alleviate the high costs of adjustments in

the process of labour demand and supply in a two-digit growth per annum

economy. This is fertile ground for domestic anti-globalisation protest. Sec-

ond, China being an authoritarian society, anti-party and anti-government

voices are not well received by the governmental hierarchy. When a sig-

nal to act eventuates, discontent tends to erupt. Whether this originates

from local ofﬁcials’ misconduct or from highly ranked leaders’ mistakes

does not matter very much. Furthermore, discontents can be manipulated

and mobilised in many directions, whether anti-party or anti-globalisation.

Third, as development deepens, the links between China and Japan intensify

simply because China is signiﬁcantly dependent on Japan for infrastruc-

tural technology and product components, while Japan is mutually reliant

on China for its cheap and abundant labour and favourable conditions.

This deepening interdependence is irreversible, especially since the lifting

of economic sanctions against China in 1991–92 accelerated China’s march

to global power. In Maoist parlance, deepening internal contradictions in

China prompts leaders to occasionally divert the attention of the discon-

tented towards anti-foreign and anti-Japanese directions, particularly when

Japanese discontent rises in tandem with the growing dominance of China

and Korea.

Since 1991,Japan’s15-year recession has coincided with China’s eco-

nomic renewal. This has led many Japanese business ﬁrms to shift produc-

tion into China. This action has escalated the effects of this transnational

phenomenon. When faced with large scale restructuring and redundancies

at home, a sizable portion of the Japanese public has become apprehensive

of China’s rise. Discontent has spilled over within Japan.

In the wake of the terrorist acts of 11 September 2001, the Japanese

government opted to support the US-led ‘War on Terror’.

In the lead-

up to spring 2003, and for some time thereafter, the Tokyo market chan-

nelled money into the large-scale purchase of US Treasury bonds. (How-

ever, it should be noted that purchasers were largely non-government, and

Globalisation and cultural nationalism 347

that Chinese purchases far surpassed Japanese in this regard.) Japan’s Self

Defense Forces sent support ships into the Indian Ocean to refuel US and

UK ﬁghter aircraft in their initial ﬁghting in Afghanistan. To support post-

war peace reconstruction, Japan sent its Self Defense Force troops into

Samawa, Iraq, after the declaration of victory by the US. After the with-

drawal of troops from Samawa, Japanese aircraft were stationed in Kuwait,

shipping materials, vehicles, food and medicine into Baghdad. The trans-

parent cruelty of the War on Terror and the difﬁculty of gaining victory in

Afghanistan and Iraq have led many Japanese to rethink the nature of the

nation’s alliance with the US. Yet at the same time they also feel that the US-

led alliance is a destiny of a sort from which one cannot so easily disengage.

This has generated ambivalent anti-Americanism amongst many Japanese.

In order not to fuel further anti-Americanism, past Japanese Prime Minis-

ter Junichir

o Koizumi moved swiftly, paying a visit to the Yasukuni shrine,

purportedly as a private citizen, with the sole purpose of soothing the souls

of the war dead. This act was probably intended to placate an increasingly

vocal extreme right wing at home, which criticised the Japanese government

for leaning too closely to the US and for not being tough enough against

China and Korea. But the act backﬁred in China and Korea. In 2005,large-

and small-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations broke out in both China and

Korea. Both these governments issued harsh statements against the Japanese

government. Prime Minister Koizumi rejected all criticism, saying that he

was open to any kind of meeting with Chinese and Korean leaders any-

where and anytime, but that interference in internal affairs by China and

Korea was inappropriate. These interactions resulted in a stalemate on the

issue, which was only resolved by his successor, Prime Minister Shinz

Abe, through his visits to China and Korea upon his ascension to power in

October 2006.

The region

The span of this discussion so far includes many good examples of the

dynamic interaction between globalisation and cultural nationalism. Glob-

alisation has taken hold frighteningly fast in East Asia, as these economies

are very dynamic. Domestic economies are rapidly becoming closely inter-

linked regionally and with the rest of the world. Whereas the European

combined economy took more than 50 years to achieve an intra-regional

trade ﬁgure of 60 per cent, the East Asian economy surpassed the 50 per

centlevelinamere15 years.

At the same time, dislocation at home

348 Takashi Inoguchi

has become more rampant, especially since the start of the ‘anti-terrorist’

war led by the US. Naturally, East Asian leaders have wanted to enhance

regional economic links only when domestic discontent and dissent are

managed reasonably well. Otherwise they have had to cajole, placate, and

suppress domestic dissent. Cultural nationalism is a last resort under these

circumstances, reminding the domestic populace of the historical memories

of humiliation, anger, pride and self-esteem.

Globalisation and cultural values

We have dealt with cultural nationalism as confronted by the tide of globali-

sation. But, in daily life, rather more mundane changes in cultural values are

visible. Individuals uphold cultural values related either to the homogenis-

ing forces of globalisation or to the indigenising forces of culture. The

AsiaBarometer Survey aims in part to learn how the daily experiences of

globalisation might inﬂuence the changes in East Asian cultural values.

Results of our empirical investigations are provisional, as this is one of the

very few empirical examinations testing such relationships.

This chap-

ter focuses on the following three values as representative of East Asian

cultural values of past times: (1) generally, people can be trusted; (2)ifa

person who needs a government permit is told, ‘Just be patient and wait’,

he or she instead ventures to use connections to obtain the permit; and

(3) mindfulness is a signiﬁcant quality that children are encouraged to learn

at home. The survey, using two-level logit regression models, determined

that these values are each regressing via the daily experiences of globalisa-

tion.

Responses from the survey’s East Asian participants show us how

the values and daily experiences of globalisation may be positively or neg-

atively related. The daily experiences of globalisation have four variables:

(1) support for globalisation; (2) digital connectivity across borders; (3)per-

sonal contacts across borders; and (4) English language ﬂuency. On the ﬁrst

variable, in measuring respondents’ support for globalisation, the survey

asked them to express their views verbally on the beneﬁts or disadvantages

of globalisation. The reasoning that underlies the relationship between the

experiences of globalisation and the East Asian cultural values that we are

testing here are as follows:

1. Attitudes toward globalisation reverberate either positively or negatively

with these cultural values.

2. Globalisation generates exposure to a variety of cultures. This is bound

to increase distrust, suspicion or dissonance – at least in the short term.

Globalisation and cultural nationalism 349

Therefore, the increase in daily experiences of globalisation is counter to

the cultural value that ‘people can be trusted’.

3. Globalisation calls for broad connectedness and makes parochial con-

nections less useful. Therefore an increase in globalised daily experi-

ences is negative to cultural values such as ‘use connections to obtain a

permit’.

4. Globalisation promotes competitiveness, strength and sustainability

along with connections, negotiation and trans-cultural trafﬁc. This

increase in daily globalised experiences is negative to the cultural value of

‘be mindful of other persons’.

Initial empirical results point to the following: ﬁrst, pro-globalisation atti-

tudes are negatively correlated to the three investigated cultural values out-

lined above. Second, digital connectivity consolidates the three cultural val-

ues; after all, all kinds of connectivity may be harmonious whether they are

digitally mediated or not. Third, personal contacts with those abroad erode

the three cultural values. Fourth, English language ﬂuency undermines two

of the three cultural values: trust and mindfulness. It is still useful, perhaps

in some centres necessary, to employ connections when seeking a permit

from government. All in all, however, it appears that the daily experience of

globalisation overall stands in the way of the preservation of these selected

cultural values.

Conclusion

Globalisation and cultural nationalism are seemingly antithetical. How-

ever, we have observed in this chapter that both globalisation and cultural

nationalism contain forces running in opposite directions. Globalisation

enables the homogenisation and self-afﬁrming indigeneity of local groups.

In order for globalisation to penetrate locally, it needs to accommodate

local forces and structures. In a similar vein, cultural nationalism enables

inward-looking resistance and outward-looking transcendence. Cultural

nationalism’s strength for local coherence comes from a self-transcendence

across borders toward a broader and more universal appeal to causes

such as justice, peace, equality and compassion.

More speciﬁcally, we

have observed that in select aspects, Japanese cultural nationalism allows

the selective absorption of the global diffusion of foreign ideas, institu-

tions and technologies in a facile and nonchalant fashion, but does not let

these penetrate society easily. Japanese culture’s deep traditions normally

350 Takashi Inoguchi

stand in the way of globalisation’s penetrating processes. In East Asia, the

galloping speed of interdependence forged by globalisation often brings

about a collision of neighbours. Cultural nationalism stands salient in this

context.

To sum up, while globalisation diffuses into Japanese society and trig-

gers cultural nationalism in the process of adaptation, the results of these

processes seem to suggest that Japanese society tends to be accommoda-

tive of foreign ideas, technologies and institutions to a great extent but that

their direct penetration tends to be moderated by the tenacity of endogenis-

ing forces coming from Japanese cultural nationalism. At the dawn of the

21st century, Japan’s nationalism has not exploded externally in aggressive

military action nor has it imploded internally to face the relentless tide of

globalisation violently. It is a sign of maturity and adaptability of Japanese

nationalism today that it is expressed mainly in cultural terms.

Notes

1. O’Brien (1992).

2. Friedman (1999); Guehennot (2000). See also Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s imaginative works

on Japan and globalisation (1998; 2000; 2004).

3. Morris-Suzuki (1998; 2004). See also Inoguchi (2007f: 240–258).

4. The AsiaBarometer Survey is an annual survey conducted by Takashi Inoguchi

and his team since 2003, focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people. See www.

asiabarometer.org. See especially Inoguchi and Fujii (2008) and Inoguchi (2007g).

BBC, CNN and Chicago Council of Global Affairs have posed similar questions to

the AsiaBarometer Survey.

5. Hsiao and Wan (2007).

6. Kawakatsu (2006).

7. Liker (2003).

8. Inoguchi (2007c: 266–89).

9. Inoguchi (2005a; 2005b).

10. Itami (2002).

11. Pyle (2007); Samuels (2007).

12. Hanley (1999).

13. Sugihara (2005).

14. Rostow (1991).

15. Song (2003); Eberstadt (2007).

16. Bell and Hahm (2003).

17. MacFarquhar (1997

18. Inoguchi

(2005a: 49–50).

19. Inoguchi (2003).

20. Inoguchi (2007g).

21. Inoguchi (2007g).

22. See Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) and Inoguchi (2007d).

Globalisation and cultural nationalism 351

23. Inoguchi, Mikami and Fujii (2007).

24. The argument for the positive path cultural nationalism might be able to tread is fully

advanced in

Osawa (2007).

Further reading

Acemoglu, Daron and James A Robinson (2006), Economic Origins of Democracy and

Dictatorship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guehennot, Jean-Marie (2000), The End of the Nation-State, St Paul: University of Min-

nesota.

Inoguchi, Takashi (2005), Japanese Politics: An Introduction, Melbourne: Trans Paciﬁc

Press.

ross mouer and craig norris

Exporting Japan’s culture: From management

style to manga

Thinking about Japan’s cultural exports

For well over a century Japan has been exporting aspects of its culture.

Toward the end of the 19th century, World Fairs in Paris and elsewhere

offered Japan an early opportunity to take that which was ‘Japanesque’ to

the Western world. The ﬁrst half of the 20th century saw Japanese culture –

especially the Japanese language, various technologies and ideas about

architecture, archaeology, infrastructure and how to run government –

disseminated throughout the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan and large parts of

China. In the early years following the Second World War, overseas interest

in Japan’s martial arts and, not unrelated, in Zen Buddhism emerged and

came to have a marked impact abroad on philosophy, poetry, ﬁlm and the

arts.

A half century later, Brown

noted that anime’s global popularity had

resulted in Japan having an added presence in global markets, one which is

as much cultural as it is economic. Over 25 years earlier Vogel’s

volume on

learning from Japan came to symbolise a new way of thinking about Japan.

In drawing attention to Japan’s across-the-board successes in creating a

society of highly motivated citizens, Vogel argued that Americans should

take a proactive interest in reversing the commonly accepted pattern for

culture to ﬂow ‘from the West to the rest’. He argued that many Western

societies, particularly America, might do well to adopt social institutions

and to learn cultural habits of the mind from Japan. This perspective gave

way to the idea of ‘reverse convergence’ – the idea that, after a century

of modernisation premised on ‘catching up’ with the West, further global

convergence might occur ‘in reverse’ as the Western world adopted Japanese

ways.

Exporting Japan’s culture 353

The learn-from-Japan campaign in the 1980s focused mainly on man-

agement techniques, and the number of English language articles and books

about Japanese-style management rose sharply. During that decade many

ﬁrms sent senior managers on fact-ﬁnding missions to the Japan Produc-

tivity Centre and other organisations in Japan to learn the secrets of Japan’s

superior economic performance. However, when Japan’s economic bubble

burst in the early 1990s amidst much hype about the next century being

‘the Japanese Century’, this interest seemed to vanish as suddenly as it had

emerged in the late 1970sandearly1980s. Cynically, one might reﬂect on

this period and conclude that the interest was not in Japanese culture, but

only in institutions that were seen to have an instrumental value in running

corporations overseas. While arguing that much of the trade in Japanese-

style management techniques focused on structures underpinning Japanese

manufacturing, this chapter also considers some of the more lasting changes

in the way work organisation has been conceived outside Japan. In doing so

it brieﬂy considers why the interest in Japanese-style management waned

so remarkably in the early to mid-1990s. To gain a fuller understanding

of that phenomenon, the second part of the chapter reﬂects on the export

of popular culture which began to become conspicuous in the mid-1990s,

grew immensely over the next decade, and shows no signs of abating more

than ﬁve years into the 21st century.

This chapter addresses a simple question: Why has the export of

Japanese-style management declined while the export of Japanese popular

culture has ﬂourished? Clues to answering this question might be found in

Kassalow’s

prognosis for the future of Japanese-style management shortly

after the learn-from-Japan boom had been launched. In his survey of the

rise and fall of various models of industrial relations over a period of about

100 years, Kassalow suggested that any given society’s ways of conducting

and thinking about life would become a standard for other societies only

if: (1) that society’s national economy generated surpluses over an extended

period of time; (2) there was consensus among members of the exporting

society that their model was a good one; and (3) leaders in the originating

society were willing and wanting to export it.

Although Kassalow was skeptical as to whether the second two condi-

tions had been met, the ﬁrst was well met at the time in terms of Japan’s

mammoth balance of payments surpluses and improved standard of liv-

ing. When enthusiastically endorsing Japan’s success in generating surplus,

many pundits simply assumed that the other two conditions were also met.

Observers both inside and outside Japan encouraged Japanese leaders to be