Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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industry aimed to convert to A rticle 8 status under the Bank for International

Settlements. When a bank’s self-capital was between 4 and 8 percent, the bank was

required to draft and implement a business improvement plan. When its self-capital

stood at less than 4 percent, it was required to: make plans to increase its self-capital;

restrain or reduce total assets; refrain from entering new business operations and from

opening new branch offices; reduce the number of existing branch offices; downsize

the business operations of both domestic and overseas subordinate companies and

refrain from establishing new ones; restrain or prohibit payments of dividends;

restrain bonuses for senior mana gers; and restrain or prohibit high-interest deposit

services. When banks had no self-capital, they were required to cease their business

operations, with a few exceptions. The ‘‘Big Bang’’ was, in its effects, equivalent to or

more powerful than a deflationary monetary policy.

Evidence over the past ten years supports this view. Prior to the major actions taken

by the Hashimoto administration in 1996, the Japanese economy had in fact already

shown signs of recovery. Its growth rate in 1995 reached 2.8 percent. The recent

recovery of the Japanese economy, starting from the first half of 2003, provides

further support for this view. According to most accounts, Japan has so far not

undertaken substantial reforms which would, at least in theory, generate economic

recovery. Nevertheless, the recovery of the Japanese economy is a reality: in the fourth

quarter of 2003, the Japanese economy grew at a rate of 6.4 percent. There was, of

course, an important structural factor, the ‘‘China procurement’’: strong demand

from the overheated Chinese economy contributed to 80 percent of Japan’s increase

in exports in 2003. A conundrum emerges, however, when we compare the impact of

Chinese demand on the performance of the Japanese economy in 2003 with the

earlier instance of strong demand for Japanese products from the Unite d States in

1997–8. Throughout the second half of the 1990s, the United States, Japan’s top

trading partner, experienced an unprecedented economic boom (in the form of an

internet bubble). In contrast to the situation in 2003, however, strong exte rnal

demand from the US market in 1997–8 failed to stimulate an economic recovery in

Japan. Why?

An important difference between then and now is that in 2003–4, Japanese

consumers had regained a sense of certainty about their future. After several years

of consideration, and especially after the collapse of the internet bubble and the

events of September 11, 2001, the neo-liberalist ideology lost popularity in Japan

and the resistance to radical reforms gained more political support. Japanese con-

sumers now feel more confident that radical reforms (that threaten massive layoffs)

are unlikely to take place. Under such circumstances, they are responding to favorable

structural conditions and willing to increase their spending. This is why, when the

‘‘China proc urement’’ factor arose, the Japanes e economy was perceived positively by

the public, who, as a result, responded with increased spending. For the first time in

its history, consumer spending has become the major driving force in a recov ery of

the Japanese economy.

Throughout the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, Japan has continued to

face two conflicting goals in its economic policy: structural reform, and especially the

reduction of non-performing loans, versus economic recovery. Radical reforms always

create uncertainties in the expectations of economic actors and thus tend to depress

investment. Without investment, there can be no economic growth or recovery.

THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY 309

Thus, to promote economic recovery, radical structural reforms ha ve to be delayed.

When an econo my is in a deep downturn, the government needs to provide fiscal

stimulus instead of reducing public spending; banks should provide investment

capital for corporations rather than drastically eliminating non-performing loans;

corporations should avoid massive layoffs as they would seriously restrain consumers’

spending. All these measures could directly delay the structural reforms widely

perceived as indispensable in putting the Japanese economy back on the right track

for the long term.

The trend of emphasizing economic recovery over reform also suggests that Japan

is unlikely to become a liberal market economy, despite the fact that many of its

existing economic institutions are experiencing changes. Economic institutions are

resilient. Even when changes take place in the Japanese economy, they tend to be

path-dependent and incremental. As a result, the national variations between liberal

market economies and coordinated market economies will remain.

Specifically, three mechanisms of institutional change shaped by structural fa ctors

may keep the Japanese economic system from being converted to a liberal market

economy. First, in the institutional changes experienced by the Japanese economy,

new forms of functional equivalence have often been created to replace old forms in

an effort to cope with a new environment. Thus, while deregulation is widely

perceived as one of the major indicators of Japan’s convergence, what is actually

happening in Japan is frequently not deregulation, but reregulation, with the state

establishing new rules for managing the increased economic freedom resulting from

freer flows of capital and commodities. Since there were considerable cross-national

variations in economic systems prior to deregulation, the outcomes of reregulation,

in combination with the liberalization pursued by advanced industrialized co untries,

including Japan, do not constitute convergence toward a single model of a liberal

market economy, but instead sugges t continuing distinctive national characteristics.

Second, institutional changes in the Japanese economy often take place at the

periphery while the core of the economic system remains resilient. In labor relations,

for example, employers and labor unions have continued to cooperate at the plant

level to maintain job security for core workers. The changes in the seniority-based

wage system are, in fact, not part of a larger process that will inevitably lead to the

collapse of the entire Japanese management system and its three pillars of permanent

employment, seniority-based wages, and company-based labor unions. Rather, the

changes in wage systems are a strategy to reduce labor costs in order to preserve

permanent employm ent. In other words, even if the seniority-based wage system

withers away, the practice of permanent employment will continue. One phenom-

enon, often overlooked in the neo-liberal argument for efficiency that predicts the

erosion of the Japanese management system, is the fact that increa sing inter national

competition and the development of global production networks have made corpor-

ations even more dependent upon predictability on the shop floor.

Third, hybridizatio n, rather than convergence, has often marked the institutional

transformation of the Jap anese economy amidst globalization. Under the strong

structural pressures created by the changing environment of international competi-

tion, Japan has adopted many measures to reform its corporate governance, including

lifting the ban on holding companies, changing the asset valuation from cost to

market value, strengthening banks’ monitoring roles over corporations, reducing

310 BAI GAO

stable cross-shareholding, and increasing the amount of direct finance through stocks

and corporate bonds. Nevertheless, these changes have not established the domin-

ance of sh areholders in cor porate governance. On the contrary, the shareholders’

voice has weakened, partly because institutional investors tend not to attend sh are-

holders’ meetings or intervene actively. Instead, such investors tend to use their voice

to promote better practices in accounting and board independence. While the labor

unions’ role in corporate governance is also weakening due to the reform, they still

play a significant role in advocating job security for core employees.

Conclusion

The globalization perspective sheds lights on the causal mechanisms behind the

movement of the postwar Japanese economy. It shows that the contemporary Japan-

ese economic system has been an outcome of two important periods, the period of

coping with the downturn of the last wave of globalization (in which a distinctive set

of institutions and mechanisms evolved in Japan to restrain market forces and pro-

mote social protection), and the period of adjustment to the upturn of the present

wave of globalization under the postwar international economic order represented by

the Bretton Woods system and GATT. It also shows that the Japanese economic

system, as a product of history, has institutional advantages and disadvanta ges in

different international environments, given its characteristics of strong coordination

but weak control and monitoring, and high stability but low capacity within the

system to upgrade the economic structure.

Under the postwar order sustained by the Bretton Woods system and GATT, the

Japanese economic system positioned itself within an international environment

favorable for an export-oriented development strategy. The excessive competition

in corporate investment and bank lending resulting from the efforts to strengthen

coordination led to high speed economic growth, while the total employment strat-

egy resulting from the efforts to maintain stability provided a solid political founda-

tion for econo mic expansion. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the oil

crises, the liberalization of fina nce, and the tension in international trade with the

United States profoundly changed the international environm ent of the Japanese

economy. Facing increasing investment risks under a floating exchange rate and the

free flow of capital, weak control and monitoring began to expose the limits of the

Japanese economic system and it experienced serious malfunctions. These eventually

gave rise to the bubble economy after the Plaza Accord in 1985.

Despite the apparent problems in Japan’s postwar economic system, transforming

it through radical reform has proved difficult, especially when economic recovery has

been a pressing priority. When radical changes were attempted in 1996, they quickl y

altered the expectations of economic actors: corporations could no longer expect

reliable supplies of industrial capital from banks, and Japanese consumers could no

longer count on reliable future income provided by the practice of permanent

employment. As government expenditure, corporate investment, and consumer

spending declined simultaneously, the Japanese economy suffered two years of nega-

tive growth in 1997–8. Only after the Japanese gradually regained confidence in their

economic system did the economy began to show signs of recovery.

THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY 311

NOTES

1 For a systematic presentation of this perspective, see Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma, ch.

2 Total employment is different from full employment in Keynesian economics. Full em-

ployment means that at the current wage level all those who want to work have a job. In

contrast, total employment means that all those who want to work have some kind of job,

but it suggests neither an optimal allocation of human resources nor wage satisfaction. For

more, see Nomura, Koyo

fuan.

3 For sources of these data, see Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma,p.1.

4 For the debate, see Gao, Economic Ideology, pp. 121–3.

5 Ibid., p. 129.

6 Gao, ‘‘Arisawa Hiromi.’’

7 Ibid.

8 Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma, ch. 4.

9 Gao, Economic Ideology, p. 123.

10 On the ‘‘1940 system’’ debate, see ibid.; Gao, ‘‘Globalization and Ideology.’’

11 Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle.

12 Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State.

13 Zysman, Governments, Markets, and Growth; Calder, Strategic Capitalism.

14 Gao, Economic Ideology; Murakami, An Anticlassical Political-Economic Analysis; Samuels,

‘‘Rich Nation, Strong Ar my.’’

15 Gerlach, Alliance Capitalism; Tilton, Restricted Trade; Uriu, Troubled Industries.

16 Dore, British Factory Japanese Factory; Dore, Taking Japan Seriously.

17 Aoki, ‘‘Monitoring Characteristics of the Main Bank System.’’

18 Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma.

19 Miyazaki, ‘‘Kado kyo

no ko

zai’’; Morozumi, ‘‘Sangyo

taiseiron.’’

20 Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma.

21 Mitsuhashi and Uchida, Sho

wa keizaishi, pp. 194–5.

22 Ibid., p. 201.

23 Facts and Figures of Japan, p. 46.

24 Brenner, ‘‘The Economics of Global Turbulence.’’

25 Katz, Japan: The System that Soured.

26 Pempel, Regime Shift.

27 Yamamura, ‘‘Germany and Japan in a New Phase of Capitalism.’’

28 Gao, ‘‘Globalization and Ideology’’; Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma.

29 Katz, Japanese Phoenix; Lincoln, Arthritic Japan.

30 For more details, see Gao, Japan’s Economic Dilemma, ch. 8.

31 Vogel, Freer Markets, More Rules

32 Thelen and Kume, ‘‘The Future of National Embedded Capitalism.’’

33 Jackson, ‘‘Corporate Governance in Germany and Japan.’’

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aoki, Masahiko. ‘‘Monitoring Characteristics of the Main Bank System: An Analytical and

Developmental View.’’ In Masahiko Aoki and Hugh Patrick, eds., The Japanese Main Bank

System. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Aoki, Masahiko, and Patrick, Hugh, eds. The Japanese Main Bank System: Its Relevance for

Developing and Transforming Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Arisawa Hiromi, ed. Sho

wa keizaishi. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1976.

312 BAI GAO

Brenner, Robert. ‘‘The Economics of Global Turbulence.’’ New Left Review 229 (1998): 1–

265.

Calder, Kent. Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial

Finance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Calder, Kent. Crisis and Compensation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Dore, Ronald P. British Factory Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Indus-

trial Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Dore, Ronald P. Taking Japan Seriously. London: Athlone Press, 1987.

Facts and Figures of Japan. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 1999.

Gao, Bai. ‘‘Arisawa Hiromi and His Theory for a Managed Economy.’’ Journal of Japanese

Studies 20 (1994): 115–53.

Gao, Bai. Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931 to

1965. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Gao, Bai. ‘‘Globalization and Ideology: The Competing Images of the Contemporary Japanese

Economic System in the 1990s.’’ International Sociology 15 (2000): 435–53.

Gao, Bai. Japan’s Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins of Prosperity and Stagnation.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Gerlarch, Michael. Alliance Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Jackson, Gregory. ‘‘Corporate Governance in Germany and Japan.’’ In Kozo Yamamura and

Wolfgang Streeck, eds., The End of Diversity? Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–

1975. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982.

Katz, Richard. Japan: The System that Soured. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998.

Katz, Richard. Japanese Phoenix: The Long Road to Economic Revival. Armonk, NY: M. E.

Sharpe, 2003.

Lincoln, Edward. Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform. Washington DC:

Brookings Institute Press, 2001.

Mitsuhashi T adahiro and Uchida Shigeo. Sho

wa keizaishi. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1994.

Miyazaki Yoshikazu. ‘‘Kado kyo

no ko

zai.’’ In Ko

sei Torihiki Kyo

kai, ed., Kokusai kyo

dokukinho

. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1963.

Miyazaki Yoshikazu. Nihon keizai no ko

to ko

. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo

, 1985.

Miyazaki Yoshikazu. Fukugo

fukyo

. Tokyo: Chu

ronsha, 1992.

Morozumi Yoshihiko. ‘‘Sangyo

taiseiron: tsu

sansho

gawa no ichiteian.’’ In Morozumi Yoshi-

hiko, Minoso

Hitoshi, Kodo

Rikuzo

, Masada Tadashi, and Chiyu Yoshihito, eds., Sangyo

taisei no saihensei. Tokyo: Shunju

sha, 1963.

Murakami Yasusuke. An Anticlassical Political-Economic Analysis: A Vision for the Next Cen-

tury, trans. Kozo Yamamura. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Nomura Masami. Koyo

fuan. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998.

Okazaki Tetsuji and Okuno Masahiro, eds. Gendai nihon keizai shisutemu no genryu

. Tokyo:

Nihon Keizai Shibunsha, 1993.

kurasho

. Sho

wa zaiseishi. Tokyo: To

Keizai Shinpo

sha, 1991.

Pempel, T. J. Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy. Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Samuels, Richard. The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and

Historical Perspective. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Samuels, Richard. ‘‘Rich Nation, Strong Army’’: National Security and the Technological

Transformation of Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Thelen, Kathleen, and Kume Ikuo. ‘‘The Future of National Embedded Capitalism.’’ In Kozo

Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck, eds., The End of Diversity? Prospects for German and

Japanese Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

THE POSTWAR JAPANESE ECONOMY 313

Tilton, Mark. Restricted Trade: Cartels in Japan’s Basic Materials Industries. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1996.

Uriu, Robert. Troubled Industries: Confronting Economic Change in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cor-

nell University Press, 1996.

Vogel, Steven. Freer Markets, More Rules. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Yamamura, Kozo. ‘‘Germany and Japan in a New Phase of Capitalism.’’ In Kozo Yamamura

and Wolfgang Streeck, eds., The End of Diversity? Prospects for German and Japanese

Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Zysman, John. Governments, Markets, and Growth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

FURTHER READING

For an overview of the postwar Japanese economy and the Japanese debates over

economic policy issues, see Bai Gao’s Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial

Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For an overview of the

institutional configuration of the Japanese econo mic system and its postwar evolution

up to the end of the 1990s, see Bai Gao’s Japan’s Economic Dilemma (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2001) and T. J. Pempel’s Regim e Shift (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1998). Readers can also find useful data in Richard Katz’s

Japan: The System that Soured (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998). For an overview of

the Japanese economy published in Japanese, the two companion volumes of Sho

keizaishi, the first volume edited by Arisawa Hiromi (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbun-

sha, 1976), and the second volume coauthored by Mitsuhashi Tadahiro and Uchida

Shigeo (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1994), are highly recommended. Chal-

mers Johnson’s MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press, 1982) is the classic study of Japanese industrial policy. For the debate on

Japanese industrial policy, Richard Samuels’s The Business of the Japanese State (Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1987) and Kent Calder’s Crisis and Compensation

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) are important contributions. Mura-

kami Yasusuke’s An Anticlassical Political-Economic Analysis (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-

ford University Press, 1996) provides a theoretical interpretation of Japanese

developmentalism. On the debate over the ‘‘1940 system,’’ see Okazaki Tetsuji and

Okuno Masahiro, eds., Gendai nihon keizai shisutemu no genryu

(Tokyo: Nihon

Keizai Shinbunsha, 1993).

314 BAI GAO

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Postwar Society and Culture

Wesley Sasaki-Uemura

During the postwar period, various segments of Japanese society sought to redefine

their culture against constantly shifting political and economic contexts. While the

structures and cultural attributes of societies are often described in relatively static

terms, this essay focuses on the postwar shifts in demographics, the effects these shifts

have had on the composition of communities and social movements, and the changes

that migrations and social transformations have had on the Japanese sense of identity.

We should also note that the postwar period has extended till it is now longer than

the Meiji and Taisho

eras combined and that Japanese society has undergone tre-

mendous transformations during this time. Yet the Japanese still continue to place

themselves, perhaps anachronistically, within the postwar framework despite the

government’s proclamation in its 1955 Economic White Paper that the era had

passed. The statement that ‘‘it was no longer the postwar’’ (mohaya sengo de wa

nai) referred specifically to surpassing the highest levels of production in the prewar–

wartime period. But the econo mic prosperity that followed was linked in the public’s

memory to the foundational na rrative of 1945 in which the country was reborn and

inexorably bound to its former enemy, the United States.

Concentrating on this

bilateral relation has meant that the stat e offered no final and satisfactory settling of

accounts from the war, resolving the issues of Japan’s colonization of and aggression

toward the rest of Asia in particular, and these ghosts still haunt Japan’s postmodern,

post-Fordist, globalized consumer society.

Since the narrativ e threads of postwar social and cultural trends do not conform

well to imperial chronologies or neat demarcation according to decades, I suggest an

alternate scheme of periodization. To set the broad political and economic contexts

for this discussion of society and culture, I have loosely divided the postwar era into

three periods, keeping in mind that different topics follow different timelines.

The first period was one of recovery from the war and socioeconomic expansion

from 1945 to the early 1970s. Japan had to deal with exhaustion from the war effort

and revamp its political and social infrastructu re. The official system of value bound

up in the body politic or national essence (kokutai) was supplanted by the exploration

of carnality (nikutai) and existentialism. The long American-led occupation both

constitutionally empowered previously suppressed social elements and firmly com-

mitted Japan to the Western bloc in the developing cold war. The Korean War

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

(1950–3) spurred industrial retooling with US procurement orders and hastened the

end to the occupation in exchange for a mutual security agreement that placed Japan

under US military hegemony.

In 1955, significant new political formations set the stage for political confronta-

tion that peaked in 1960. The socialist parties merged and in response the conserva-

tive prewar Liberal and Democratic parties joined together to secure a majority of

legislative seats and create the one-and-a-half-party system that dominated politics

until the 1990s. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) made high profile efforts to

undo occupation-era reforms and met with enormous resistance in the protests

against the renewal of the US–Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) and the labor strike at

the Miike coal mines in Kyu

shu

, both in 1960. As a result, the LDP got rid of its party

head and focused its rhetor ic on improving the economy through a highly successful

‘‘income-doubling’’ plan. The construction boom around the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,

including the Bullet Train (Shinkansen), were emblematic of Japan’s modernization

that was celebrated in Expo ’70 in Osaka. At the same time, Japan’s involvement in

the Vietnam War and the environmental problems that developed from its industri-

alization again sparked strong opposition and protest.

A new stage of affluence and tighter centralized control began from the early 1970s

to the mid-1980s. The first ‘‘oil shock’’ of 1973 and the preceding ‘‘Nixon shocks’’

reinforced a sense of fragility regarding Japan’s position in the world. By the early

1970s, US concern about a growing the trade deficit with Japan and other nations

prompted President Richard Nixon to unilaterally end fixed currency exchange rates,

making Japanese goo ds more expensive. Politically, he began rapprochement with

China without consulting or advising Japan, which the government took as an affront

to its political stature. These shocks prompted the government to engage in new

contingency planning and administrative restructuring as it pushed major state pro-

jects such as the new Tokyo airport at Sanrizuka.

The 1973 oil shock, as well

as the growing number of residents’ movements against environmental pollution,

prompted the state and big business to turn towards high-tech and tertiary (service

sector) industry and to start moving heavy and chemical industries offshore.

The

intimate ties between government and big business were evident in the political

scandals that forced Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei from office, although he con-

tinued to be the king-maker behind the scene s for the next several administrations.

The perception of illegitimate advantages from government–corporate ties and a

growing trade deficit exacerbated trade frictions with the United States and Japan-

bashing mounted in the 1980s. Japanese conservatives grew more defensive and

countered with the ir own rhetoric of superior cultural traits (Nihonjinron, that is,

who we are as Japanese), but the Japanese government also accommodated some US

demands. When Nakasone Yasuhiro became prime minister in 1982, he began efforts

to privatize state-run enterprises and to revise the constitution and remilitarize Japan.

It was in this context that plans for a ‘‘managed society’’ (kanri shakai) were revised.

A third phase of postwar history started from the latter half of the 1980s in which

the ‘‘bubble economy’’ took off and the slogan of ‘‘internationalization’’ (kokusaika)

was touted. During this period, the Japanese state sought to revise its role on the

world stage, both economically and militarily. The call for a general settling of

accounts from World War II was to pave the way for Japan’s new role, although the

second history textbook controversy in 1986 indicated that the thrust of this effort

316 WESLEY SASAKI-UEMURA

was to erase elements of a ‘‘regrettable’’ past from official memory.

When Hirohito,

the emperor whose reign spanned wartime and postwar Japan, died in 1989, neither

the state nor the emperor had yet uttered a clear public apology to other Asian

countries for colonial rule and wartime aggression. Japan’s participation in the Gulf

War in 1991 was another occasion when the LDP attempted to expand Japan’s

military. Malfeasance scandals plagued the ruling LDP from 1989, and in 1993 the

party finally lost its legislative majority and had to form a coalition government. By

this time the bubble had burst and Japan entered a prolonged recession. C ompound-

ing those problems, the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the religious cult Aum Shinri-

kyo

’s Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system showed the persistence of

problems in Japan’s infrastructure and the government’s inability to respond to

emergencies. Japan’s energy dependence on the Middle East has compelled it once

again to become involved in US military efforts there, but in the 1990s, the slogan of

‘‘internationalization’’ meant that Japan both continued economic expansion abroad

and also internalized foreign elements in ways it had not anticipated.

Shifting Population

The demographic profile of Japan’s postwar society has changed dramatically. The

population has grown by over 50 million since the end of World War II when there

were 72 million Japanese.

The population is expected to have peaked at around 128

million in 2005 and Japan’s population density has exceeded 330 persons per square

kilometer for the past decade. This figure is over 100 persons per square kilometer

more than in 1950. Moreover, if one considers only the amount of habitable land in

these calculations, the concentration of people nearly quintuples.

Demographers were already speaking of Japan’s overpopulation crisis in the 1930s,

so in the immediate postwar years the government was concerned that the country

would be unable to support a baby boom. Therefore, they passed a Eugenics Law in

1949 that allowed for abortion based on econo mic necessity and engaged in a

campaign to reduce fertility. As a result, Japan’s fertility rate dropped from 4.5

children per woman in 1947 to 2.0 by 1960. The rate hovered around the replace-

ment level (2.1) during the 1970s, dipping to 1.75 by 1980 and dropping a tenth

each decade afterwards. Thus, Jap an’s population will drop to ro ughly 100 million by

2050 according to current United Nations projections.

The dramatic rise and fall of the postwar population is accompanied by a major shift

in its age composition. Life expectancy has risen by nearly thirty years since the end of

World War II. In 1947, it was 50 for men and 54 for women. By 1960 this figure had

risen to over 65 for men and over 70 for women and it steadily increased so that by

2000 it was nearly 78 for men and 84.6 for women.

One reason for the increase in

life expectancy was the precipitous drop in infant mortality from a high of 77 per

1,000 live births in 1945 to 3.3 in 2002, the lowest in the world.

Maternal mortality,

moreover, is now virtually nil. Public health education, a system of national health

insurance, and the dissemination of modern medicine were part of concerted efforts

by the government and private organizations to improve pre- and post-natal care.

One effect of these efforts has been an amazing reversal in attitudes about where one

ought to give birth. In 1950, nearly everyone gave birth at home, but by 1960 only

POSTWAR SOCIETY AND CULTURE 317

half of Japanese mothers delivered at home and since about 1975 almost everyone has

given birth in institutional settings.

The population pyramid at the end of the war in fact looked like a pyramid, but as

life expectancy continued to rise and the birth rate dropped, the base of those aged 14

and younger has shrunk, while the percentage of working-aged persons (defined as

ages 15–64) has bulged. The number of elderly persons (65 and over) has more than

doubled in the last two decades and by the year 2000 was greater than the num ber of

youths. The percentage of the elderly is expected to rise to nearly 27 percent of the

total population by 2025 and to over one-third by 2050. This would make Japan the

‘‘oldest’’ industrialized nation within two decades.

The shift in Japan’s age composition has generated considerable debate about the

problems of its ‘‘graying’’ society, with some experts making dire predictions about

the country’s ability to take care of its elderly, provide adequate pe nsions and health

care, and maintain the economy as the proportion of younger workers shrinks. In

the early 1970s, Ariyoshi Sawako’s novel, The Twilight Years ( Ko

kotsu no hito),

brought to light how the task of caring for the elderly basically fell to the wife

given the attitudes about family gender roles, the gendered structure of employment,

and the paucity of public care facilities at that time. Improvements, however, have

been slow to come.

The aggregate figures for household composition in the postwar period indicate

some important trends in Japan’s population shifts. The nuclearization of households

is an oft-noted trend but the total percentage of nuclear households has held at

around 60 percent since 1955, varying by only a few percentage points.

Within this

category, however, the percentage of households having only a mar ried couple has

nearly doubled since 1970 from 11 percent to around 20 percent while that for

married couples with children has fallen by slightly more than 10 percent in the same

period to 32.8 percent in 2000. The percentage of three-generation households has

fallen by a comparable proportion. Meanwhile, single-person households have

swelled to roughly one-quarter of the total in 2000. The rise in the percentage of

households consisting of only a married couple is one indicator of Japan’s aging

society. Nearly 14 percent of all ho useholds are composed of only elderly people and

this points to the problem of depopulation in rural areas, where the number of

households has remained relatively constant due to farm landholding but the children

have left for urban areas. The rise in longevity means that the elderly continue to

occupy these households at least until the death of one spouse.

Households with married persons have also started later than in the early postwar

period. From the 1950s into the early 1970s, the mean age at first marriage has held

relatively steady at about 27 for men and 24 for women, but by 1980 the respective

means had risen to 27.8 and 25.2. In the year 2000 it was 28.8 for men and 27 for

women. Since Japan tends toward patterns of an age-grade society, a preponderance

of people do the same things at the same stage in life. Thus, the mean age at first

marriage is more a typical situation than an average of a broad statistical range. Up to

the 1990s, a popular riddle asked why wom en were like Christmas cakes. The answer

was that up until Christmas day, Christmas cakes are highly sought commodities but

quickly lose their value afterwards. Similarly, women up to age 25 were hig hly sought

on the marriage market, but after that age had difficulties finding partners.

But

more and more women have chosen to delay the life-stage of marriage and the joke

318 WESLEY SASAKI-UEMURA