The impact of the American occupation years on
Japan was momentous. The victor was admired
and America’s national sport, baseball, and
clothes and manners were widely copied, espe-
cially by the young. The occupiers found it hard
to believe that this was the enemy that only
recently had fought so fiercely and cruelly. To all
outward appearances Japan was adapting quickly
to a new image of ‘Made in America’. A brand
new constitution in 1947 introduced ‘democracy’
and was based on the finest ideals of the West, a
mixture of Jefferson and Montesquieu. It pro-
vided for a parliament with an upper and a lower
house elected by universal suffrage, political
parties, a prime minister and Cabinet dependent
on a majority in the lower house, and an inde-
pendent judiciary. The emperor became a mortal,
a national symbol rather than a divinity. The
changes were for real, but this Western model of
democratic institutions had a very traditional
Japanese orientation. Western and Japanese atti-
tudes fused to create something different from
the constitutional governments of the West but
also from the autocratic military-dominated
regime of pre-war Nippon.
The traditions survived of a hierarchical society
that placed great emphasis on personal relations
between the leader and the led, each knowing his
place. Japanese society tends to be organised in
groups, each with its own charismatic leader – the
‘parent’ groups begetting ‘child’ groups, thus
building up powerful ‘families’. Policies are
decided by the manoeuvres of the leading groups.
Group thought prevails. Democracy, with its
emphasis on the individual, does not sit very easily
with such an ethos. Another weakness of Japanese
democracy was that one party dominated Japan-
ese politics for nearly half a century after the
Second World War; patronage and corruption
became so widespread, they were practically insti-
tutionalised.
An important feature of Japanese government
is the role of the bureaucracy, of the leading per-
sonalities who guide the ministries and work in
close association with business. They are not civil
servants in the Western sense, simply carrying out
the instructions of politicians, their elected
masters; rather, Japanese mandarins built up an
independent network, providing constant guid-
ance and exchange of information with the busi-
ness elites. This role is not laid down in the
constitution, but conforms to Japanese traditions.
The prime minister and ministers rely on the
bureaucracy not only for carrying out policies but
frequently for initiating them. So the bureaucrats
are in practice legislators themselves, and the pro-
ceedings of the Diet, or Assembly, no more than
a formality. In relations with the citizen they also
provide gyosei shido, or ‘administrative guidance’,
which does not have the character of legislation,
and they enjoy a close relationship with members
of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. It takes
prime ministers of exceptional strength and ability
to impose their wills on the bureaucracy, and of
Chapter 59
THE PROSPEROUS PACIFIC RIM I
JAPAN, TAIWAN, HONG KONG, SINGAPORE
AND SOUTH KOREA