Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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Murakami in his later statement did argue that the state provision of social security

provides sufficient income security to enable most people to make lifetime plans

‘‘equivalent to having a certain level of ‘wealth’.’’ Thus he concluded that his

‘‘middle mass’’ was quasi-propertied.

Tominaga Kenichi, the third contributor to the discussion, was the key organizer of

the third SSM of 1975. He maintained that the ‘‘underlying structural principle’’ put

forward by Kishimoto was inadequate as a conceptual tool for sociological theory.

However, he also rejected as unsustainable Murakami’s view that because 75 or 90

percent of Japanese people regard themselves as ‘‘midd le class,’’ the blue and white

collar, self-employed, and non-self-employed constitute a homogeneous group. Ra-

ther, he picked up on the evidence of status inconsistencies. Applying the technique

called cluster analysis to data collected by the 1975 SSM, he argued that, ‘‘using six

status variables,’’ only 41 percent of the sample show status consistency – 11 percent

consistently high and 30 percent consistently low – thus about 60 percent fall in the

middle. According to Tominaga, this was not evidence of the homogeneity claimed

by Murakami, but rather of a ‘‘diverse middle class.’’

Thus far the controversy had remained mainly within Japan or the realm of Japanese

studies. Two studies undertaken at the end of the 1980s sought to use data generated

by the 1975 SSM to test hypotheses about the nature of the class structure and status

hierarchies in Japan. Thus the debate about the nature of class in Japan was brought

into the sociological mainstream. Ishida Hiroshi sought to test four hypotheses: First,

the homogeneity hypothesis put forward by Murakami that there are no longer any

fundamental differences in lifestyle between classes in contemporary Japan; second,

the bipolarity hypothesis that the distribution of various status characteristics is polar-

ized along the lines of the ownership of the means of production, as argued

by Kishimoto and in a more sophisticated form by Rob Steven;

third, the

status inconsistency hypothesis of Tominaga which suggests that classes will not be

characterized by either consistently high or consistently low status attributes;

and fourth, the dual structure hypothesis which su ggests that employees should be

differentiated not only by class position but also by firm size.

Ishida’s method

was to assess the distribution of status characteristics – occupation, education, in-

come, home ownership, and stock investment – among clas ses and to compare

the results for Japan with a similar analysis performed on an American data set.

Six classes were identified – employers, petty bourgeoisie, professional/managerial,

non-manual working class, skilled and non-skilled working class – on the basis of

control over the means of production and control over labor, one’s own and that

of others.

There is room here only to summarize Ishida’s conclusions. Firstly, he finds no

evidence to support the hypothesis either of homogeneity of status characteristics in

Japan or that Japanese classes are more status-homogeneous than American classes.

Secondly, Japane se class structure was found to be characterized by bipolarity at the

extremes: ‘‘the employer class occupies the most advantageous positions in

the distribution of most status attributes, while the manual working class are at the

bottom of all status hierarchies.’’ But he also found strong status inconsistency

among ‘‘classes which occupy partially dominant and contradictory locations in the

social relations of production,’’ that is, the professional management class and

the petty bourgeoisie. However, this same set of tendencies was also identified in

400 IAN NEARY

the American class structure, which does not support the claims of people like

Tominaga that status inconsistency is a generalized feature of Japanese social structure

or that it is more pronounced in Japan than in other societies. Finally, the dual

structure hypothesis – that em ployees in large firms have more favorable character-

istics than those in small and medium sized enterprises – was supported in the

Japanese data whereas in the United States firm size makes no difference in the status

composition of the manual working classes.

Ishida also took part in a study on intergenerational class mobility with

John Goldtho rpe and Robert Erikson. In a highly technical paper they sought to

explore whether the h ypothesis that industrial societies shar e similar rates of inter-

generational mobility could be applied to Japan. They pointed out that, on the

one hand, Nakane argued that within Japanese society the dominant structural

feature was ‘‘not that of horizontal stratification by class or caste but of vertical

stratification by institution or group of institution s.’’ If she was correct that basic

forms of traditio nal social structure have persisted through the course of industrial-

ization, ‘‘western concepts of social stratification and hypo theses from them

are unlikely to be applied with much success to the Japanese case.’’

Ishida, Gold-

thorpe, and Erikson also wanted to test their hypothesis against the position taken

by Tominaga who argued, contra to Nakane, that traditional institutional forms

have been undermined and that in their place an open form of stratification

had developed, based not on family kinship or place of origin, but achieved attributes

of education, occupation, and income. If Japan were to be the ‘‘land of opportunity’’

described by Tominaga, the auth ors expected to find fluidity levels consistently higher

than the ‘‘co re’’ levels found in their other studies and also that the essential

features of the mobility regime would be difficult to represent in a fixed model.

Moreover, although the authors do not mention this, Tominaga’s view that contem-

porary Japan was characterized by a high degree of ‘‘status inconsistency’’

generated by ‘‘democratisation of the distribution criteria for social resources and

rewards’’

would also lead one to expect rather different results in Japan from those

generated by the author s’ previous studies of seven western and two eastern Euro-

pean societies.

Again to go straight to the conclusions: Ishida, Goldthorpe, and Erikson found

that the Japanese case did not create special problems for their hypothesis and they

found no support for any claim that Japan is either sui generis or possesses a quite

different form of social stratification to European societies. Contrary to what Nakane

might have led us to expect, class structure did indeed function ‘‘to generate a pattern

of unequal mobility chances.’’ However, they did not want to challenge the view that

class awareness was weakly developed. For their analysis this was not an issue. For

them class was less about how people viewed their world than what actually happened

to them in it. While the data suggested a degree of social fluidity above their ‘‘core’’

model and greater than some European societies, Japan could not be regarded as

radically different. Moreover they found no evidence of a steadily rising trend in social

mobility of the kind proposed by Tominaga. Finally, to the extent that they found any

exceptionalism it was within particular sets of class recr uitment. For example, to focus

on the working class, the proportion of industrial workers who we re sons of industrial

workers was only 21 percent, compared to the European range of 39–78 percent.

Meanwhile only 56 percent of the sons of working-class fathers were themselves

CLASS AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION 401

working class, unlike the 61–73 percent in Europe. With low self-recruitment and

low stability, both of which were quite easily explained by Japan’s late development,

the authors suggested it is no wonder that the Japanese working class has such a

poorly developed ‘‘demographic identity.’’ Having relatively few ‘‘hereditary’’ or

‘‘lifetime’’ proletarians may well be an important factor in explaining the relatively

weak working-class consciousness, although this conflicts with the findings of Odaka

in the early 1960s.

Class and Social Stratification in Contemporary Japan

So far we have dealt mainly with the class controversy of the 1970s. I want finally to

turn briefly to more recent contributions on class and social stratification. First of all

let us deal with the characterization of Japan as a middle-class or classless so ciety.

There is nothing uniquely Japanese about this. Table 22.1 demonstrates similar

results can be obtained from surveys in several other industrial countries and Ko

saka

Kenji quotes evidence that shows that approximately 90 percent of people also

described themselves as ‘‘middle class’’ in Brazil, India, South Korea, and the Phil-

ippines.

Using data from the 1995 SSM survey, Hashimoto Kenj i constructed a four-class

structure for Japan as follows:

. Capitalist class (9.2 percent of working population) Executives and dir-

ectors of enterprises of 5þ employees, independent proprietors and family

workers in business enterprises of the same scale. Economically privileged,

rich in both assets and consumer durables, satisfied with life and politically

conservative.

. New middle class (23.5 percent of working population) Employees en-

gaged in professional, administrative, and clerical work (except female cler-

ical workers). Intermediate in income and assets owned, but high level of

education. Corporate fringe benefits give them relatively high standa rds of

living but they are not automatically conservative, and if anything are

somewhat disaffected.

Table 22.1 International comparisons of ‘‘middle class’’ consciousness

Country Upper Upper middle Middle middle Lower middle Lower Total middle

Italy 2.2 12.5 70.5 10.8 3.0 93.8

France 1.8 10.8 61.2 18.9 6.3 90.9

Germany 0.9 15.9 53.7 21.5 3.4 91.1

Holland 11.2 32.5 44.4 6.5 3.8 83.4

UK 0.4 7.2 53.6 28.1 8.1 88.9

USA 1.5 16.7 54.4 21.6 5.2 92.7

Japan 1.1 10.9 53.6 26.9 5.4 91.4

Source: HashimotoKenji, Class Structure in Contemporary Japan (Melbourne: TransPacific Press,2003), p. 31.

402 IAN NEARY

. Working clas s (45.2 percent of working population) Employees other than

the new middle class (but including female clerical workers). Economically

underprivileged with a low standard of living; 75 percent of them identified

themselves as working class but, despite dissatisfactions with life, they do not

seek change through political action or involvement.

. Old middle class (21.9 percent of working population) Owners of enter-

prises with fewer than 5 workers, self-employed proprietors, and family

workers in small-scale enterprises. The farming sector of this group is

gradually giving way to self-employed traders. Comparatively asset-rich,

although individual income not large; politically conservative.

Overall, Hashimoto concludes that, although these four classes overlap somewhat,

each inhabits a quite different world. He is in no doubt that Japan is a class society.

However, the existence of classes might not be as significant if there were mobility

between them. Up to the early 1990s there was no clear evidence to support a

‘‘decreasing mobility hypothesis’’ but Hashimoto suggests that analysis of the 1995

data give it credibility. He concludes that each class remains separated by barriers that,

while not insurmountable, continue to present significant difficulties for intergenera-

tional mobility.

Class and social structure in the first part of the twenty-first century are likely to

be influenced by two factors: globalization and the related changes in the Japanese

employment system. Global forces have persuaded transnational corporations to

relocate their production facilities overseas. Those employees who remain based

in Japan are either the well-educated new middle class involved in high te chnology

and/or in company headquarters, or those engaged in sales, services, and transpor-

tation, working-class employment that cannot be ‘‘exported’’ as it needs to be

located close to consumers. These trends are likely to increase disparities between

classes.

The postwar constitution decisively eliminated the influe nce of command power

within Japanese society but it was not as easy to remove the status and class elements

of social stratification. Despite claims to the contrary, Japan, just like any other

capitalist society, has recreated a stratification structure based on class and to a lesser

extent on status. While older forms of status stratification seem to be fading, new

ones based on nationality or ethnicity may be taking their place. Demographic change

poses challenges for Japan and the number of foreign workers has increased. What

impact has this had on the class and social stratification system? What impact will the

decade of economic recession have had on people’s assessment of their status and

class position? What will future SSM surveys reveal?

NOTES

1 Scott, Stratification and Power, p. 192.

2 Halliday, A Political History, p. 10.

3 Ibid., p. 11.

4 Totman, A History of Japan, p. 223.

5 Ibid., p. 226.

6 Ibid., p. 228.

CLASS AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION 403

7 Nakai and McClain, ‘‘Commercial Change and Urban Growth,’’ p. 526.

8 Bolitho, ‘‘The Han,’’ pp. 189–90.

9 Wakita, ‘‘The Social and Economic Consequences,’’ p. 125.

10 Nakai and McClain, ‘‘Commercial Change and Urban Growth,’’ p. 573.

11 Ibid., p. 594.

12 Shively, ‘‘Sumptuary Regulation and Status Regulation,’’ p. 156.

13 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice, p. 78.

14 Ibid., pp. 200–6.

15 W. Lloyd Warner, Social Class in America (1949), quoted in Scott, Stratification and

Power, p. 115.

16 Ninomiya, ‘‘An Enquiry.’’

17 DeVos and Wagatsuma, eds., Japan’s Invisible Race, p. xx.

18 Nagahara, ‘‘The Medieval Origins,’’ p. 401.

19 Ibid., p. 400.

20 Groemer, ‘‘The Creation of the Edo Outcaste Order,’’ p. 288.

21 Ibid., p. 292.

22 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice, p. 278.

23 Ibid., pp. 292, 304.

24 Ibid., p. 267.

25 McCormack, ‘‘Prejudice and Nationalisation,’’ pp. 72–7.

26 Kitaguchi, An Introduction to the Buraku Issue.

27 Bodiford, ‘‘Zen and the Art of Religious Prejudice,’’ p. 18.

28 Davis, ‘‘Blurring the Boundaries,’’ p. 111.

29 Ibid., p. 120.

30 Ibid., p. 118.

31 See, for example, Hashimoto, Class Structure, p. 133.

32 Halliday, A Political History, pp. 57, 62–3.

33 For more detail, see Ko

saka, Social Stratification, pp. 12–16; Hashimoto, Class Structure,

pp. 86–8.

34 Odaka, ‘‘Middle Classes in Japan,’’ p. 542.

35 Ibid., p. 544.

36 Ibid., p. 551.

37 Nakane, Japanese Society, p. 90.

38 Ko

saka, Social Stratification, p. 14.

39 Murakami, ‘‘The Reality of the New Middle Class,’’ p. 1.

40 Ibid., p. 3.

41 Murakami, ‘‘The Age of New Middle Mass Politics,’’ pp. 33–4.

42 Kishimoto, ‘‘Can the New Middle Class Theory be Sustained?,’’ p. 6.

43 Murakami, ‘‘The Age of New Middle Mass Politics,’’ pp. 38–9.

44 Tominaga, ‘‘An Empirical View,’’ p. 11; see also Ko

saka, Social Stratification,

pp. 49–52.

45 Steven, Classes in Contemporary Japan.

46 Ishida, ‘‘Class Structure and Status Hierarchies,’’ pp. 65–6.

47 Ibid., pp. 71–8.

48 Ishida, Goldthorpe, and Erikson, ‘‘Intergenerational Class Mobility,’’ p. 958.

49 Tominaga, ‘‘An Empirical View,’’ p. 1.

50 Ishida, Goldthorpe, and Erikson, ‘‘Intergenerational Class Mobility,’’ p. 984.

51 Ko

saka, Social Stratification, p. 110.

52 Hashimoto, Class Structure, pp. 88–95, 111.

53 Ibid., p. 134.

404 IAN NEARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Personality, rev. edn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

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Nagahara Keiji. ‘‘The Medieval Origins of the Eta/Hinin.’’ Journal of Japanese Studies 5:2

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Nakai Nobuhiko and McClain, James. ‘‘Commercial Change and Urban Growth in Early

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10 (1933): 47–154.

CLASS AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION 405

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FURTHER READING

A different perspective on Japan’s elite structures can be found in Albrecht Rotha-

cher’s The Japanese Power Elite (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), and Karel van

Wolferen’s The Enigma of Japanese Power (New York: Knopf, 1989) provides a

stimulating if rather less academic analysis of Japan’s ruling elite and social structure.

Ian Neary gives a now slightly dated account of the situation and challenges faced by

burakumin but in a volume which contains chapters about the key min ority groups in

Japan, Michael Weiner, ed., Japan’s Minorities (London: Routledge 1997). Perhaps

the biggest challenge facing the Japanese social structure in the twenty-first century is

posed by the arrival of migrant workers from Southeast Asia and South America.

Discussion of related issues can be found in such works as Mike Douglass and Glen da

Roberts, eds., Japan and Global Migration (London: Routledge, 2000).

406 IAN NEARY

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Japan in Asia

Leo Ching

Introduction

‘‘Japan in Asia’’ is not a fact but a geopolitical proposi tion. It is an enunciation and

qualification that signals a desire to inscribe the putative unity of Japan into an equally

putative unity of Asia. That we don’t often hear the phrases ‘‘China in Asia’’ or

‘‘Korea in Asia’’ – for those stipulations seem unnecessary, if not oxymoronic – only

accentuates the particu lar relationship not only of Japan in Asia, but also between

Japan and Asia. The proposition itself speaks to the aporia of Japan’s historical

positionality vis-a

-vis Asia: it is simultaneously a part of, and apart from, Asia.

Hence, the proposition is less about physical geography than it is concerned with

what Edward Said has called an ‘‘imaginative geography’’ and discursive ideology. It

is a series of modern colonial spatializations that serve to demarcate and calibrate

difference and sameness between Japan and Asia, East and West through various

discourses of culturalism, racialism, and nationalism. Is Japan an Asian nation? What

political claims are being made when Japan is positioned either within Asia or

without? The self-knowledge of Japan is predicated on the complex and contradictory

processes of different iation, identification, and subjugation of Asia. The question of

Asia therefore is a question of Japan’s self-identification. The totality of Japan’s

relation to Asia (whether in or and), however, is intelligible only in contradistinction

to another putative unity, that is, the West. The impulse and exigency to construct

Asia as an epistemological category – in social, cultural, economic, and political terms

– and Japan’s real and ima gined relation to it, is both a reaction and a co mpensation

to Western colonial design and Japan’s own imperialist endeavor. Despite centuries of

intra-regional trafficking and exchange in the Sinocentric imperium, the question of

Japan in/and Asia is a decidedly modern one, dating only to the late nineteenth

century. It is also a specifically Japanese problematic and preoccupation as Asia

constituted the referential point and coordinates to which Japan’s role as the only

non-Western, non-white colonial power is to be defined and articulated. ‘‘Japan in/

and Asia’’ thus has its historical condition of possibility in the interstices of modern-

ity/coloniality.

As the sole non-Western imperialist power with a contiguous empire in Asia, modern

Japanese identity is continuously and constitutively constructed in the vacillating

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

imaginative geographies between Asia and the West. It is an internalization of a

Eurocentric model of the world where the West is represented as modern, progressive,

and therefore superior whereas Asia is represented as premodern, stagnant, and therefore

inferior. The superior–inferior hierarchy can be reversed, however, by asserting the

non-modern or trans-modern qualities of Asian culturalism and spirituality vis-a

-vis the

West’s militarism and materialism, predicated on Japan’s unique and superior position-

ality within Asia. This Japan-led Asianist identity remains trapped in Eurocentric thinking

because the overturning of the qualitative values does not refute the binary construction

of East and West and tacitly accepts the essentialization of the incommensurability

between East and West that made value judgments possible in the first place. Whereas

Japan may attempt to relocate its identity between Asia and the West, Eurocentrism

continues to allocate meanings and undergird the process of Japan’s self-identification.

The shifting relationship of Japan to Asia in the Western dominant world system

can be heuristically organized into three paradigmatic moments: the modern/colo-

nial, postwar/cold war and post-cold-war/globalization. The modern/colonial mo-

ment marks the initial reflection on the question of Japan in Asia in the context of

Western encroachment and emerging Japanese imperialist desire. The postwar/cold

war moment is characterized by the subordinat ion of Japan under the US hegemony

in Asia where questions of decolonization and war responsibilities over Asia are

repressed in the interest of political conservatism and economic development. The

post-cold-war/globalization moment signals the beginning of a new regional eco-

nomic and cultural configuration where the relationship between Japan and Asia

is rekindled by the rapid economic development in East Asia and the recurring

questions of Japanese colonialism and war responsibilities at the end of the East–

West conflict. The three moments outlined below are not intended to be static and

self-contained. They are not meant to convey an evolutionary narrative towards some

kind of resolution or progress. They represent dominant tendencies characterizing

Japan’s relationship to Asia and the West in the modern era. Like any historical

characterizations, they are necessarily incomplete, selective, and partial. Japan’s mod-

ern identity and self-definition has been predicated on the inferior position of Asia

in relation to the West in the world system. The East–West configuration is under-

going some systemic shift with the unp recedented econo mic development in Asia,

especially in East and Southeast Asia, in the last two decades. The emergence of China

as both a political and an economic power in the region has potential ramifications for

Japan’s self-prescribed super iority in the region. (There have never been two super-

powers in the history of modern Asia.) While Japan continues to ally itself to the

West, especially with the United States, an increasingly multilateral Asia will undoubt-

edly change the relationship between Japan and Asia: a new historical horizon where

the proposition ‘‘Japan in Asia’’ might cease to be the dominant paradigm in Japan’s

self-definition.

The Modern/Colonial Moment

Fukuzawa Yukichi and Okakura Kakuzo

constitute the two paradigmatic approaches

to Japan and Asia in the modern/colonial moment. Fukuzaw a’s ‘‘Datsu-a ron’’ (‘‘On

Leaving Asia’’) (1885) and Okakura’s The Ideals of the East (1903), with their

408 LEO CHING

seemingly opposite methods of envisioning Japan’s relation to Asia, emerged as

two pivotal points of departure for thinking about Japan/Asia that all subsequent

theorization must invariably attend to. Fukuzawa’s text warns of the inevitable

coming of Western civilization to the East and the prudent decision Japan needs

to make in this time of crisis: ‘‘For those of us who live in the Orient, unless we want

to prevent the coming of Western civilization with a fi rm resolve, it is best that we

cast our lot with them. If one observes carefully what is going on in today’s world,

one knows the futility of trying to prevent the onslaught of Western civilization. Why

not float with them in the same ocean of civilization, sail the same waves, and

enjoy the fruits and endeavors of civilization?’’ Fukuzawa, however, is not uncritical

of the West as he likens the movement of Western civilizat ion to the spread of

measles. While the communicable disease could be damaging and fatal, the

spread of civilization is accompanied by benefits that outweigh its disadvantages.

Without confronting the incoming wave of Western civilization and pursuing the

necessary sociopolitical changes, Fukuzawa argues, Japan may lose its national inde-

pendence.

The desire to join the ranks of the Western civilization necessitates a radical shift in

Japan’s attitude towards Asia, specifically China and Korea. Fukuzawa puts it suc-

cinctly: ‘‘Our basic assumptions could be summarized in two words: ‘Leave Asia’

(datsu-a).’’ To take leave of Asia also meant to shed any resemblance to China and

Korea in the eyes of ‘‘civilized Wester ners.’’ Despite similarity ‘‘nurtured by Asiatic

political thoughts and mores,’’ there are significant differences (race, heredity, edu-

cation, etc.) marki ng the Japanese from the other two peoples who have much more

in common. More importantly, both China and Korea are stubbornly holding on to

their ancient and stagnant ways. The spread of Westernization has a force akin to that

of measles and China and Korea continue to ‘‘violate the natural law of its spread.’’

Therefore, in Fukuzawa’s view, they cannot survive as independent nations. Despite

the noticeable difference between Japan’s and China and Korea’s reactions to West-

ern civilization, their geographical promixity might lead Westerners to misperceive

and therefore misjudge Japan accordingly. Fukuzawa compares Japan’s place in Asia

to ‘‘the case of a righteous man living in a neighborhood of a town known for

foolishness, lawlessness, atrocity, and heartlessness. His action is so rare that it is

always buried under the ugliness of his neighbors’ activities.’’ The only reasonable

path for Japan to follow is to ‘‘leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with

civilized nations of the West,’’ and to treat China and Korea in the same manner as

the Westerners do. Japan must ‘‘simply erase from our minds our bad friends in

Asia.’’

If Fukuzawa advocates that Japan take leave of Asia amidst the onslaught of

Western civilization, Okakura seems to take a diametrically opposed approach. Writ-

ten in English and intended for a Western readership, The Ideals of the East begins

with the following famous dictum:

Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilizations, the

Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of

the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad

expanse of love for the Ultimate and the Universal, which is the common thought-

inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the

JAPAN IN ASIA 409