The Enigma of Japanese Power (47 page)

The most notorious permanent threat of physical conflict in recent years has been the protest movement against Tokyo’s new Narita Airport. This protest began in 1966 when the farmers of Sanrizuka, the locality where the airport was to be built, discovered that they were being reimbursed with a mere pittance for the loss of their watermelon and peanut fields. A year later they were reinforced by members of Zengakuren, the then still mighty radical student movement. Between 1971 and 1978 the students built forts and towers, tunnels and underground bunkers. A trench war cost the lives of four riot police and two protesters. Many of the students began to work on the land and marry the farmers’ daughters. The hamlets in the area were connected by a network of action corps, including a troop of children. The movement split and became radicalised after losing its respected Christian leader in 1976.

The airport was opened seven years behind schedule and five years after the completion of buildings and runways. In March 1978, days before the planned official opening, the radicals managed to penetrate the control tower via the sewage system and destroy equipment, necessitating another postponement. A significant aspect of this event was that many ordinary Japanese admired the radicals for their achievement and privately cheered them on.

Since the opening of the airport there have been several heavy battles between the riot police and the radicals. It is ironic that visitors to the land of
wa
should arrive at what may be considered one gigantic monument to the Japanese inability to resolve conflict. The airport is Japan’s most heavily guarded institution, surrounded by several rings of tall electrified fences that continue deep into the ground to discourage tunnelling. All passengers and well-wishers are scrutinised and sometimes searched by the police when entering the airport grounds. Every several hundred yards there are watchtowers equipped with searchlights and manned around the clock. The road leading to the site has steel barricades in several places, and is dotted with the armoured vehicles and water-cannons of the more than 1,500-strong permanent police guard.

The country that I have described so far does not resemble the common portrait of Japan as a society in which human relationships are based on consensus. This is because the much vaunted consensus is a myth. Featured prominently in most popular and much serious foreign writing, and with many American commentators habitually referring to Japan’s ‘consensus-style democracy’, it is one of the most successful myths about Japan. Not surprisingly, administrators who deal with the external world have discovered that ‘consensus formation’ is a useful excuse for inaction.

The term ‘consensus’ implies positive support for an idea or a course of action. What is mislabelled ‘consensus’ in Japan, however, is a state of affairs in which no concerned party thinks it worth while to upset the apple-cart. Parties to a Japanese ‘consensus’ may, in fact, have very negative feelings about what they ‘agree’ to. Another phenomenon that passes for ‘consensus formation’ in the interpretations of many Westerners is complex calculations concerning the interpersonal obligations that are part and parcel of the
jinmyaku
system of each individual involved.

The Japanese term for the process used to arrive at ‘consensus’ is
nemawashi
(‘taking care of the roots’).
Nemawashi
involves talking with the concerned parties so as to prepare them to ‘accept’ a plan, as one prepares the ground for planting something. Such spadework does not invite ‘democratic’ objection (with the option of rejection), as a similar process would in the West. Japanese have adopted the word ‘consensus’ to describe what in their own society is made to appear to be genuine agreement, but often is not.

The notion that policy in Japan is collectively initiated is inaccurate. Japanese are reassuringly human in that, just like other people, they cannot invent by committee. In the meantime, as a former vice-minister once told me: ‘The more “consensus” you get, the less will be done.’ The process that leads to Japanese-style consensus has a strictly limiting function, whereby the members of a group are given the formal opportunity to object to a proposal that is generally presented as if it were anonymous, emanating from the group as a whole. Where ‘consensus’ has been established it means that nobody concerned wants to take the risk or the trouble of resisting what a stronger person or group wants to happen. When a face-saving procedure like
nemawashi
is omitted, or has been too quick, Japanese speak of ‘the dictatorship of the majority’. The distinction is significant for an understanding of the exercise of power in Japan. The strong have justice on their side so long as they do not implement their will brutishly.

On a company level, Japanese employees have no more say in matters that affect their working lives than employees in any other industrialised society. But the illusion is maintained that dissenting views they may have had on important matters have been duly noted. To create this illusion in companies or any other Japanese collectivity is generally not too difficult, since subjective individual views rarely if ever conflict with what their holders have perceived to be the objective drift of the situation. Japanese have been conditioned to sense this kind of thing very well and adjust their thinking accordingly.

In my experience Japanese groups generally do not appreciate minority opinion and remind their participants of that fact in subtle ways. Minority opinion is a hindrance to the feelings of solidarity within the group, and threatens the all-important show of unity. The leadership of the group must go through the motions of consulting with and getting permission from everyone, especially with important decisions. This process can be very elaborate, but by and large it consists of mere gestures reassuring all members that they are not unimportant. The actual convincing that takes place, the supposed process of consensus formation, leaves the potentially recalcitrant member little or no choice but to give his support. If his negative feelings are strong and he knows of others who share them, he is more likely to form a new faction than struggle within the main group.

A common decision-making method that also creates the illusion of consensus is the so-called
ringi
system. Under this system, plans drawn up by lower officials circulate among other officials at ever higher levels, receiving their seals of approval. The appearance of full participation is served, and those who are not in favour of the plan can sabotage it to a certain extent by allowing dust to gather on the
ringi-sho
, the circulated document, before affixing their seal. Officials can indicate implicitly their degree of dissatisfaction with a plan by adjusting the time they wait before passing the document on to the next person. Hence,
ringi
is also known as the ‘piling-up system’.
³⁴

The
ringi
system is a superb mechanism for diffusing and finally obfuscating all responsibility. Not only the bureau director but the entire chain of lower officials have no more than a slight sense of being ‘responsible for the result’. The makers of inappropriate decisions are nowhere to be found. The system tends to hamper leadership from the top. A plan conceived by a middle-echelon official is sometimes best launched through informal discussion with a low-ranking official, who drafts an outline that percolates upwards, taking in the desk of the initiator on the way. Some bureaucrats think this system absurd, but a superior who systematically refuses to adhere to it may risk his position.
³⁵
Another frequent effect is to make clear what the officials concerned should not do rather than what they should do.
³⁶
One of Japan’s best-known students of the bureaucracy sees the
ringi
system not as a product of the pseudo-family relations in Japanese administrative institutions, but as a mechanism that compels such relations.
³⁷

The
shingikai
, the consultation institution described in Chapter 5, helps work up a sense of national consensus concerning bureaucratic decisions that seem likely to cause problems with interest groups.
Shingikai
attempt to bring together representatives of those concerned and make them party to what will be presented as a harmonious mutual adjustment.
³⁸
Occasionally they may evolve a fresh – or a first – approach to a pressing issue, but mostly they are symbolic expressions of ‘consensus’, a proof that the public has been served by having a variety of the best minds thoroughly mull over a course of action.

But the teeth and claws are well hidden. Coercion is kept in check by coercion from other parties who fear a diminution of their own power, and is moderated to some extent by layers of ritual. Open displays of power evoke fear in Japan. In the language of Western constitutionalist democracies, there are few ‘checks’ in Japan, but very special ‘balances’. The manifest presence and often the active intervention of a variety of groups are always necessary to keep the System from going out of kilter. All organisations with some power constantly contain the power of others. The balance among the components that make up the Japanese System is achieved by continual intervention by one or more of them to ensure that none will grow so strong and ambitious as to be capable of dominating the rest. What popular influence and legal restraints cannot accomplish must be achieved by a continual grand balancing act. A clique or an individual whose power grows so fast that it cannot smoothly be accommodated by the existing structure will engender a reaction reminiscent of white blood corpuscles converging on an alien substance in the body. What befell former prime minister Tanaka Kakuei is one of the best examples of this. Hence the suspicion, too, of Nakasone when he tried to strengthen the office of prime minister.

The administrators are extraordinarily sensitive to fluctuations of the power balance in their respective realms. An astonishing example is the prosecutors’ office and its attitude towards the left. When leftist activists raised a great outcry against corruption, the prosecutors saw the value of their traditional enemies as a cleansing agent acting on the business world and political circles. Although political corruption is ‘structural’, and the prosecutors would not dream of trying to eliminate it, the System must be guarded against extremes; and with the gradual decline in importance of leftist forces the prosecutors felt that they had to act as a counterbalance and bring more corruption cases to light.
³⁹

The possibility of countering coercion has left the Japanese political order oddly vulnerable to any non-domesticated group that can bring force to bear on it. In other nations, established ruling elites can refer to universally accepted laws and convincing political theory to justify their dominance. The Japanese power-holders cannot. What the shogun could claim, detractors of the shogun’s power could claim as well. Political leadership in the past, therefore, had to deal continuously with troublesome, half-autonomous, smaller powers – to fight them, to rally other lords to help keep them in their place, to bargain with them and to some extent to accommodate them.

Intimidation of the various shogunates and of the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa governments was effective where the intimidator was powerful in his own right. The Meiji rulers exercised control in the name of a restored cosmic order fused in the person of a divine emperor. But this introduced a major threat by making it possible for anyone to invoke the ‘imperial will’ as justification for changing the political order, and opportunities for intimidation increased tremendously.
⁴⁰
Intimidation is similarly effective within the System today. One important reason why the Self-Defence Forces remain controversial and a source of fear is the absence of a credible institutional check on their power; if Japan’s military grows bigger, it will become a body that is capable of much intimidation.

We have already seen two ways in which the System counteracts this curious vulnerability. One is the permanent campaign it wages to co-opt, absorb or emasculate all social elements and forces that vie with it for the ultimate loyalty of the Japanese people. The second is the use of propaganda on behalf of the political status quo.

The absence or presence of power in any setting is very quickly understood by Japanese, and any perception of a shift tends immediately to be reflected in their behaviour. They tend to admire strength and vigour in whatever context it may occur, and for whatever purpose it may exist.

One of the keenest observers of pre-war Japan, Kurt Singer, summed it up succinctly: ‘they are peculiarly sensitive to the smell of decay, however well-screened; and they will strike at an enemy whose core appears to betray a lack of firmness’.
⁴¹
This should always be kept in mind by foreigners dealing with Japan. In the 1980s Americans have tended to humble themselves before the Japanese in connection with the relatively poor performance of their own economy. Japanese have immediately sensed the weakness and exploited it.

Intimidation is used within trade associations to maintain their hierarchy. The prominent members have much power over the lesser ones and can even, in extreme cases, organise a bankruptcy through the leverage they have over subcontractors, distribution channels and creditors.

There are various ways at the disposal of bureaucratic components of the System to make firms realise their place in the scheme of things. Upstart companies may be taught a lesson for being too aggressive, or for having irritated dominant firms in the industry. One example is Kyocera, a relatively new, adventurous and very successful firm led by a true entrepreneur. It is not part of the established hierarchy of corporations and is therefore particularly vulnerable to manifestations of official displeasure. In June 1985 it was ordered by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to suspend production for thirty-five days, on the grounds that it had been selling (perfectly good) ceramic joints and bones to hospitals for five years without official permission. In fact, the Japanese bureaucracy confronts industry with such a plethora of regulations and official restrictions that no firm can keep complete track of them. The strictness with which they are enforced depends on
jinmyaku
relations and the firm’s power within the industrial hierarchy. Under these circumstances, measures such as those against Kyocera are taken only if a lesson has to be taught. The press helps teach the lesson, and the president of the firm in question is obliged ceremonially to beg society’s forgiveness.

Far from being abhorred, intimidation is accepted as an inevitable aspect of social and political life; inevitable because the informal, non-legal relations that characterise the System lead very naturally to dependence on informal coercion (i.e. intimidation) to maintain order and safeguard the power of power-holders. The highly valued conformity in Japan is to a large extent enforced by intimidation; until the recent outcry, teachers in many schools encouraged their pupils in bullying practices. For the administrators, intimidation is preferable to legally enforceable normative values, and is widely used to maintain control.

The freedom and
de facto
support that gangsters enjoy is another example of how intimidation helps to operate the System. The fact that they exist and are strong automatically means that they are accepted. Their intimidation has made them ‘acceptable’. They may intimidate ordinary people with impunity; the police and most of the courts remain unsympathetic to the victims’ plight. As we have seen in Chapter 4, respectable, highly placed people in the System sometimes use them for intimidation purposes.

That intimidation is a preferred alternative to legal sanctions is illustrated by official toleration of the activities of the Burakumin Liberation League (BLL). The denunciation tactics of this group have made it very powerful when it confronts publishers, authors, journalists, editors and teachers. Any of these who says anything about the
burakumin
minority that contradicts BLL ideology runs the risk of being forced to undergo denunciation sessions. These can become fairly unpleasant, with the victims taken against their will to a meeting place where, in the presence of other ‘representatives of society’, they are given a dressing down by a succession of denunciators. They may be held until they offer their profound apologies. The result is that most references to
burakumin
in books and magazines are cut by editors. The System has attained a
modus vivendi
with the BLL, and both the System and the BLL are opposed to
burakumin
groups affiliated to the Communist Party, which emphasises court action in instances of open discrimination.

It is understandable that government agencies should prefer this type of intimidation to the litigation that some of the
burakumin
under communist guidance initiate. Intimidation can be held in check far better than the creation of new normative rules. Large-scale litigation and the establishment of legal precedents help consolidate norms that can be appealed to by other disadvantaged people and groups and that circumvent the social-control privileges of the administrators.
⁴²
In the field of labour relations, too, virulent conflicts are settled in ways that do not leave precedents as a standard whereby subsequent conflicts can be resolved, and at the same time narrow the scope of action available to the administrators.
⁴³
This means that in Japan there are fewer standards by which to judge the appropriateness of the use of force in labour disputes.

Intimidation works in Japan, no matter where it originates. It worked when the Chinese government made Japanese newspaper correspondents promise never to write anything critical about Mao Tse-tung, the Cultural Revolution and other controversial subjects. It works when Arab countries ask Japanese companies not to trade with Israel. Japan is the only major country in the Western alliance that religiously observes the Arab economic boycott of Israel. No Japanese or economic delegation has ever visited Israel, while the path to the Arab countries is well trodden.
⁴⁴
No ship flying the Japanese flag has ever entered an Israeli port. Japanese banks do not extend long-term financing for exports of investment goods to Israel, and Toyota has never sold a car in Israel. When New York Mayor Ed Koch criticised this policy at a press briefing, none of the two hundred Japanese journalists present got one line about this in his newspaper.
⁴⁵
The controversy in the West over the broadcasting of films that could be construed as critical of Arab social practices is unthinkable in Japan, where such films are taken out of circulation at the slightest sign of Arab displeasure. The bureaucracy applies pressure to corporations to stick to such policies, believing that Japan’s national security is at stake.

Any foreign country can participate in the Japanese political tug of war by applying
gaiatsu
, or pressure from the outside. Ministries, in the context of their battles with other ministries, have on several occasions been known to encourage foreigners to use
gaiatsu
.
⁴⁶

As we have seen, the laws drafted by the bureaucrats for bureaucratic control are purposely left vague. When law and policy come into conflict, officialdom tends to adjust the law to fit the policy, in what is called ‘interpretation of the law’.
⁴⁷
The threat of applying laws in instances where they are not usually applied gives government agencies great powers of intimidation.

This is one reason for the vehement opposition to the anti-espionage bills that have been introduced, unsuccessfully, on a number of occasions, with vague clauses about national security that could be interpreted in a variety of ways. A member of the editorial staff of the
Asahi Shimbun
sums it up:

It is not that we would be arrested or sentenced to death for what we write in our paper. What those who promote the bill expect is not to arrest us immediately but to make us restrain ourselves. . . . Many correspondents would choose the clever way not to take risks under [the anti-spy law]. As to articles on diplomacy and defence, only authorised ones or scoops within the safety zone would be printed. In this way, a ‘desirable environment’ for those in executive positions would be created. . . . And the courageous minority would be suppressed.
⁴⁸

As for business corporations, their relationship with the bureaucracy is not normally antagonistic, but in such instances of conflict as do occur – when the two parties differ on the details of policies – the companies normally have no option but to comply with bureaucratic wishes. In fact, the bureaucratic technique of ‘administrative guidance’ that has drawn so much attention from Western observers is itself a species of coercion by intimidation.

‘Administrative guidance’ is effective because of the leverage bureaucrats have over businesses. The power to withhold licences is an obvious one. Government officials are responsible for approval of applications for almost every conceivable business activity. If they do not like an applicant, for whatever reason, they can hold off a decision on that person’s applications. Although there is no legal obligation for a business to abide by the guidance, all abide by it simply because they want to continue to function. This is one of the keys to Japanese bureaucratic control. Official theory notwithstanding, administrative guidance is compulsory.
⁴⁹

The coercion is sometimes more straightforward. A high MITI official told me that, since all companies have done something shady at one time or another, they fear exposure if they do not follow MITI’s directions. The collecting of information useful in such blackmail is done at the assistant-section-chief level, and the information comes from direct investigations, competitors, clients, the police, enemies in the business community and disgruntled employees. My informant estimates that more than half of all cases of corporate wrongdoing known to the police and MITI bureaucrats are covered up. The main leverage this gives MITI is the fear, not of legal action against the company, but of ‘social punishment’. For it is considered most damaging to a firm if its name is disclosed in connection with any kind of scandal.

For the bureaucrats, it is very important that an illusion of voluntary cooperation be maintained, so officials nearly always prefer to approach a potentially recalcitrant company informally, and offer it freedom from ‘red tape’ in return for compliance with government wishes, even where there is a law regulating the issue at hand.
⁵⁰
The parties on the receiving end of administrative guidance consider it more salutary for their prestige to cooperate than to invite (informal) compulsion.
⁵¹
And ministries dole out favours such as tax privileges and financial help in return for obedience to administrative guidance.

Of the three main tools that bureaucrats use to get their plans implemented – legislative measures, budgetary measures and administrative guidance – they much prefer the last, because it is effective and readily available for quick action. They could in most cases find a law to suit their purpose, but ‘administrative guidance’ maintains the fiction of voluntary co-operation. When the Ministry of Finance forces the commercial banks to buy government bonds, it refers to this as ‘co-operation’. Administrative guidance also provides much greater scope for specific adjustments in consultation with the recipient than would the application of standardised legal regulations. Also, administrative guidance is more effective than legal action, since the laws are less easily enforceable.

The economic ministries have great power to harass firms and banks that do not toe the line. The trump card used by the bureaucrats is the claim that what they ‘suggest’ is less what they want than what the industry . wanted all along. This approach is often used in tandem with bureaucratic manipulation of the power that associations of firms have to enforce conformity, in a strategy whereby the recalcitrant firm is forced to fall in line by threat of ostracism from the community of its competitors. A famous example of this is the way Sumitomo Metals in Osaka was forced to go along with a production cut ordered by MITI in 1965.