I | INTRODUCTION |
Japan, island nation in East Asia, located in the
North Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Asian continent. Japan comprises the
four main islands of Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, and Shikoku, in addition to
numerous smaller islands. The Japanese call their country Nihon or
Nippon, which means “origin of the sun.” The name arose from Japan’s
position east of the great Chinese empires that held sway over Asia throughout
most of its history. Japan is sometimes referred to in English as the “land of
the rising sun.” Tokyo is the country’s capital and largest city.
Mountains dominate Japan’s landscape, covering
75 to 80 percent of the country. Historically, the mountains were barriers to
transportation, hindering national integration and limiting the economic
development of isolated areas. However, with the development of tunnels,
bridges, and air transportation in the modern era, the mountains are no longer
formidable barriers. The Japanese have long celebrated the beauty of their
mountains in art and literature, and today many mountain areas are preserved in
national parks.
Most of Japan’s people live on plains and
lowlands found mainly along the lower courses of the country’s major rivers, on
the lowest slopes of mountain ranges, and along the seacoast. This concentration
of people makes Japan one of the world’s most crowded countries. Densities are
especially high in the urban corridor between Tokyo and Kōbe, where 45 percent
of the country’s population is packed into only 17 percent of its land area. An
ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation, Japan has only a few small
minority groups and just one major language–Japanese. The dominant religions are
Buddhism and Shinto (a religion that originated in Japan).
Japan is a major economic power, and average
income levels and standards of living are among the highest in the world. The
country’s successful economy is based on the export of high-quality consumer
goods developed with the latest technologies. Among the products Japan is known
for are automobiles, cameras, and electronic goods such as computers,
televisions, and sound systems.
An emperor has ruled in Japan since about the
7th century. Military rulers, known as shoguns, arose in the 12th century,
sharing power with the emperors for more than 600 years. Beginning in the 17th
century, a powerful military government closed the country’s borders to almost
all foreigners. Japan entered the 19th century with a prosperous economy and a
strong tradition of centralized rule, but it was isolated from the rest of the
world and far behind Western nations in technology and military power.
When Western nations, eager to trade with
Japan, forced the country to open its borders in the mid-19th century, Japan’s
shogun was ousted in a coup that restored the emperor to power. Under the rule
of the Meiji emperor(1868-1912), Japan began a crash program of modernization
and industrialization, as well as colonial expansion into Korea, China, and
other parts of Asia. By the early 20th century, Japan had won a place among the
world’s great powers.
Japan fought on the side of the Axis powers in
World War II (1939-1945). By the time the war ended with Japan’s defeat, most of
the country’s industrial facilities, transportation networks, and urban
infrastructure had been destroyed. Japan also lost its colonial holdings as a
result of the war. From 1945 to 1952 the United States and its allies occupied
Japan militarily and administered its government. Under a revised constitution,
the emperor assumed a primarily symbolic role as the head of state in Japan’s
constitutional monarchy. During the postwar period, Japan rapidly rebuilt its
economy and society. By the mid-1970s the country had established a lucrative
trade with the United States and many other nations, and was well on its way to
its present status as a top-ranking global economic power.
The portion of the Asian mainland closest to
Japan is the Korea Peninsula, which is 200 km (100 mi) away at its nearest point
(in South Korea). Japan does not share a land border with any other country, but
nearby are far eastern Russia, located to the northwest across the Sea of
Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan (East Sea); South Korea and North Korea, to the
west across the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan; and China and Taiwan, to the
southwest across the East China Sea.
The introduction to this article was
contributed by Roman Cybriwsky.
II | LAND AND RESOURCES |
According to legend, the Japanese islands
were created by gods, who dipped a jeweled spear into a muddy sea and formed
solid earth from its droplets. Scientists now know that the islands are the
projecting summits of a huge chain of undersea mountains. Colliding tectonic
plates lifted and warped Earth’s crust, causing volcanic eruptions and
intrusions of granite that pushed the mountains above the surface of the sea.
The forces that created the islands are still at work. Earthquakes occur
regularly in Japan, and about 40 of the country’s 188 volcanoes are active, a
number representing 10 percent of the world’s active volcanoes.
Japan’s total area is 377,837 sq km (145,884
sq mi). Honshū is the largest of the Japanese islands, followed by Hokkaidō,
Kyūshū, and Shikoku. Together the four main islands make up about 95 percent of
Japan’s territory. More than 3,000 smaller islands constitute the remaining 5
percent. At their greatest length from the northeast to southwest, the main
islands stretch about 1,900 km (about 1,200 mi) and span 1,500 km (900 mi) from
east to west.
Japan’s four main islands are separated by
narrow straits: Tsugaru Strait lies between Hokkaidō and Honshū, and the narrow
Kammon Strait lies between Honshū and Kyūshū. The Inland Sea (Seto Naikai), an
arm of the Pacific Ocean, lies between Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. The sea
holds more than 1,000 islands and has two principal access channels, Kii Channel
on the east and Bungo Strait on the west.
Japan also includes more distant island
groups. The Ryukyu Islands (Nansei Shotō), made up of the Amami, Okinawa, and
Sakishima island chains, extend southwest from Kyūshū for 1,200 km (700 mi). The
Izu Islands, the Bonin Islands, (Ogasawara Shotō), and the Volcano Islands
(Kazan Rettō) extend south from Tokyo for 1,100 km (700 mi).
Japan also claims ownership of several
islands north of Hokkaidō. These include the two southernmost Kuril Islands,
Iturup Island (Etorofu-jima) and Kunashir Island (Kunashiri-jima), as well as
Shikotan Island and the Habomai island group. The Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) took control of these islands from Japan after World War II
ended in 1945. Since the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia has administered the
disputed islands.
A | Natural Regions |
A spine of mountain ranges divides the
Japanese archipelago into two halves, the “front” side facing the Pacific Ocean,
and the “back” side facing the Sea of Japan. High, steep mountains scored by
deep valleys and gorges mark the Pacific side, while lower mountains and
plateaus distinguish the Sea of Japan side. The country is traditionally divided
into eight major regions: Hokkaidō, Tōhoku, Kantō, Chūbu, Kinki, Chūgoku,
Shikoku, and Kyūshū and the Ryukyu Islands.
A1 | Hokkaidō |
Hokkaidō is Japan’s large northern
island. Most of the island is mountainous and heavily forested. Hokkaidō has a
number of volcanoes, including Asahi Dake, which stands 2,290 m (7,513 ft) high
in the Ishikari Mountains and is the island’s highest peak. Hokkaidō also holds
one of Japan’s largest alluvial plains, the Ishikari Plain. The island’s fertile
soils support agriculture and provide the vast majority of Japan’s pasturelands.
In addition, Hokkaidō contains coal deposits, and the cold currents off its
shores supply cold-water fish.
Winters are long and harsh, so most of
Hokkaidō is lightly settled, housing about 5 percent of Japan’s population on
approximately 20 percent of its land area. However, its snowy winters and
unspoiled natural beauty attract many skiers and tourists. Hokkaidō is thought
of as Japan’s northern frontier because Japanese people settled it only after
the middle of the 19th century. Most of the remaining Ainu people, who populated
Hokkaidō before the arrival of the Japanese, live on the island. The island of
Hokkaidō forms a single prefecture. Its capital, Sapporo, is an important
commercial and manufacturing center.
A2 | Tōhoku |
The northern part of Honshū island is the
region known as Tōhoku, meaning “the northeast.” Like Hokkaidō, Tōhoku is
mountainous, forested, and generally lightly settled, although its population
density is about twice that of its northern neighbor. Tōhoku’s most important
flatland is the Sendai Plain, located on the Pacific Ocean side of the region.
Despite a short growing season, Tōhoku is an important agricultural area. During
the cold winters, many of Tōhoku’s farmers move to Tokyo and other cities for
seasonal work in construction and factories. Many young people move away too,
often permanently, to enter the labor market and build careers in other regions.
Consequently, Tōhoku has been one of Japan’s slowest growing regions. Tōhoku
includes the prefectures of Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Yamagata, Miyagi, and
Fukushima. Its principal city is Sendai.
A3 | Kantō |
South of Tōhoku on Honshū island is the
Kantō region, the political, cultural, and economic heart of Japan. It centers
on Japan’s capital city, Tokyo, in east central Honshū. Kantō’s main natural
feature is the Kantō Plain. Japan’s largest flatland, the plain covers 13,000 sq
km (5,000 sq mi), or about 40 percent of the Kantō region. Hills and mountains
surround the plain on the east, north, and west sides, while the south side
opens to the Pacific Ocean. Covering most of the southern part of the plain is
the Tokyo metropolitan area, which contains many small cities and satellite
towns. Major nearby cities—Yokohama, Chiba, and Kawasaki—merge with Tokyo,
creating one large urban-industrial zone. The population of Kantō is the largest
of any of Japan’s regions. Most of the farms that once covered the Kantō Plain
have been replaced by residential, commercial, and industrial construction. The
prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Chiba, and the Tokyo
Metropolis make up the Kantō region.
A4 | Chūbu |
Chūbu, meaning “central region,”
encompasses central Honshū west of Kantō. This region contains some of Japan’s
longest rivers, its highest mountains, and numerous volcanoes. The Japanese Alps
run through the center of Chūbu, dividing the region into three districts. The
central district, known as Tōsan, contains the three parallel mountain ranges
that make up the alps: the Hida Mountains (Northern Alps), the Kiso Mountains
(Central Alps), and the Akaishi Mountains (Southern Alps). At least ten peaks in
the Alps exceed 3,000 m (10,000 ft). The highest peak is Kita Dake, which stands
at 3,192 m (10,474 ft) in the northern Akaishi range. Most inhabitants of the
district live in elevated basins and narrow valleys scattered among the
mountains. Silk traditionally has been produced in Tōsan’s valleys, although
that industry has declined in recent decades.
West of the alps lies the Hokuriku
district on the Sea of Japan. It receives heavy winter snowfalls, and its
rapidly flowing rivers provide bountiful hydroelectric power. Extensive rice
fields cover Hokuriku’s plains, while its main cities are important
manufacturing centers.
Tōkai, the district east of the alps on
the Pacific coast, is sunnier and warmer. Most of Japan’s tea is produced there.
Chūbu’s biggest city, Nagoya, is located on the Nōbi Plain, a densely populated
agricultural and industrial region. Also located in Tōkai is Japan’s highest
mountain, Fuji, a remarkably symmetrical volcanic cone that rises to 3,776 m
(12,387 ft). Referred to in Japan as Fuji-san, the mountain is beloved by many
Japanese and appears often in art and as a symbol of the country. Fuji last
erupted in 1707. During the July and August climbing season, thousands of
climbers ascend the mountain each day. Many spend the night in order to see the
sun rise the next morning from the horizon on the Pacific Ocean.
Chūbu encompasses the prefectures of
Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui, Yamanashi, Nagano, Gifu, Shizuoka, and
Aichi.
A5 | Kinki |
The Kinki region lies west of Chūbu in
west central Honshū. Kinki spans Honshū from the Sea of Japan to the Inland Sea,
and occupies the Kii Peninsula, a large thumb of land with heavily indented
coasts jutting south into the Pacific Ocean. Coastal plains edge Kinki’s
mountainous interior. The largest of these is the Ōsaka Plain, which faces Ōsaka
Bay on the Inland Sea and contains Ōsaka, the region’s largest city. Japan’s
second-most populous region, Kinki holds the Hanshin Industrial Zone, noted for
heavy industry and chemical manufacturing. The region is also historically and
culturally important as the location of the former capital cities of Nara and
Kyōto. The prefectures of Ōsaka, Hyōgo, Kyōto, Shiga, Mie, Wakayama, and Nara
make up the Kinki region.
A6 | Chūgoku |
Chūgoku, which means “middle country,”
lies between the Inland Sea and the Sea of Japan at the western end of Honshū.
The Chūgoku Mountains run from east to west through the center of the region.
The zone south of the mountains along the Inland Sea, called San’yō or “the
sunny side,” has a mild climate and a relatively high population density. Its
warm coastal plains support rice fields, citrus orchards, and vineyards. Also
located on these plains are several major industrial and port cities, including
the region’s principle city, Hiroshima. The Sea of Japan coast, called San’in or
“the shady side,” is colder, lacks natural harbors, and is less urbanized. The
Sea of Japan traditionally has been important for fishing and aquaculture (water
animal and plant cultivation), but these activities have declined due to
industrial pollution. The Chūgoku region encompasses the prefectures of
Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori, and Yamaguchi.
A7 | Shikoku |
The Shikoku region consists of Shikoku,
the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, and many small surrounding islands.
Relatively low but steep mountains cover most of Shikoku island. The tallest
peak on the island (and in the region) is Mount Ishizuchi at 1,982 m (6,503 ft).
Shikoku’s mountainous terrain has limited settlement primarily to coastal plains
on the northern shore along the Inland Sea. There, the towns of Matsuyama and
Takamatsu serve as important regional commercial and industrial centers. The
Kōchi Plain, a zone of mild winters in the southern part of Shikoku island,
supports citrus fruits and various vegetables. The opening of three separate
bridge systems between Shikoku and Honshū since 1988 has reduced the region’s
isolation. Shikoku includes the prefectures of Kagawa, Tokushima, Ehime, and
Kōchi.
A8 | Kyūshū and the Ryukyu Islands |
The region of Kyūshū and the Ryukyu
Islands consists of Kyūshū, the third largest of Japan’s four major islands;
many small surrounding islands; and the Ryukyu Islands, located south of Kyūshū.
Kyūshū’s interior is mountainous with numerous volcanoes, some of which are
active. A notable example is Mount Aso in central Kyūshū. Its huge caldera
(round or oval-shaped low-lying area that forms when a volcano collapses)
measures 80 km (50 mi) in circumference. The volcanic cone on Sakurajima, a
volcanic island off Kyūshū, has erupted more than 5,000 times since 1955. The
tallest mountain on Kyūshū is Kujū, measuring 1,788 m (5,866 ft). Kyūshū’s
volcanic mountain scenery and the resorts built around its thermal hot springs
attract many tourists.
Coal deposits in northern Kyūshū have
made the area an important industrial center, specializing in the production of
iron, steel, chemicals, and machinery. In addition to rice and vegetables,
Kyūshū’s farmers grow subtropical fruits and raise cattle. The island is
connected to the mainland by a bridge and several tunnels, including one for
Japan’s high-speed train, the Shinkansen. Kyūshū’s largest city is Fukuoka.
The Ryukyu chain’s larger islands are
volcanic, while the smaller ones are coral formations. Farmers grow sugarcane
and pineapples in the islands’ frost-free climate. The bathing beaches of
Okinawa, the largest and most populated of the Ryukyu Islands, make it an
especially popular tourist destination.
The prefectures of Fukuoka, Nagasaki,
Ōita, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Saga, Kagoshima, and Okinawa make up the Kyūshū and
Ryukyu Islands region.
B | Earthquakes |
Japan lies in a zone of extreme geological
instability, where four tectonic plates—the Pacific plate, the Eurasian plate,
the North American plate, and the Philippine plate—come together. As the plates
push against one another, they cause violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
As many as 1,500 earthquakes occur in Japan each year. While most of these are
minor and cause no damage, typically several of them rattle buildings enough to
cause dishes to break and goods to topple from shelves. Occasionally earthquakes
are severe enough to cause widespread property damage and loss of life. Japan’s
largest earthquakes in the 20th century were the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923,
in which more than 140,000 people died in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolis, and the
1995 earthquake in Kōbe that killed more than 6,400 people. The Kōbe quake also
caused massive damage to buildings, highways, and other infrastructure in Kōbe
and its vicinity. An earthquake centered offshore may cause a potentially deadly
ocean wave called a tsunami. Earthquakes pose such danger to the country that
Japan has become a world leader in earthquake prediction, earthquake-proof
construction techniques, and disaster preparedness by both civil defense forces
and the general public.
C | Coastline |
Japan has a long and irregular coastline
totaling some 29,751 km (18,486 mi). The coastlines of Hokkaidō and western and
northern Honshū are relatively straight. The most prominent features of
Hokkaidō’s coastline are the Oshima Peninsula at the south end of the island and
the Uchiura and Ishikari bays, which flank the peninsula on opposite coasts. The
western coast of Honshū on the almost tideless Sea of Japan possesses Japan’s
largest sandy beaches and its tallest dunes. The only conspicuous indentations
in this coastline are Wakasa and Toyama bays and one major peninsula, the Noto
Peninsula. The eastern coast of Honshū north of Tokyo has few navigable
inlets.
By contrast, the coastlines of eastern
Honshū south of Tokyo and of Kyūshū contain deep indentations resulting from
erosion by tides and severe coastal storms. Japan’s most important bays are all
on the irregular Pacific coast of central and southern Honshū: Tokyo Bay at
Tokyo and Yokohama, Ise Bay near Nagoya, and Ōsaka Bay at the Kōbe-Ōsaka
metropolis. All of these bays have major harbors. The eastern coast of central
and southern Honshū also contains several of Japan’s most prominent peninsulas:
the Chiba, Izu, and Kii peninsulas. Kyūshū’s coastline is marked by the Satsuma
and Nagasaki peninsulas and Kagoshima Bay.
The economic importance of Japan’s
coastline is seen in its hundreds of towns and villages given to fishing,
whaling, and aquaculture, as well as in its several major international ports
and many huge industrial complexes. Most of Japan’s urban centers are located on
or near the coast. In many urban-industrial areas, the coastline has been
extended by reclamation projects to create new land for sprawling factories, oil
storage tanks, expanded harbor facilities, airports, and other uses.
D | Rivers and Lakes |
Most of Japan’s rivers are relatively
short and swift flowing. Only a few are navigable beyond their lower courses.
Japan’s longest river, the Shinano, arises in the mountains of central Honshū
and flows for 367 km (228 mi) to empty into the Sea of Japan. Other major rivers
are the Tone River in the northern Kantō Plain and the Ishikari River in
Hokkaidō.
Rivers in Japan often have low water
levels during dry seasons but may flood during rainy periods and after winter
snows melt. Except in the highest mountains, the courses of almost all rivers
have been altered by flood control measures such as artificial channels and
levees. In addition, many rivers have multiple dams and chains of reservoirs to
regulate water flow and to supply cities and farms downriver with water for
industry, irrigation, and domestic use. The dams also generate electric power.
Japan’s largest dam is the Kurobe Dam, standing 186 m (610 ft) high, on the
Kurobe River in Toyama Prefecture.
Japan’s largest lake, Biwa, lies in
central Honshū’s Shiga Prefecture. It measures 670 sq km (260 sq mi) and is 104
m (341 ft) deep at its deepest point. Biwa is a popular scenic attraction, an
important source of freshwater fish, and a local transportation artery. Japan’s
second-largest lake is Kasumiga-ura, located in the central Honshū prefecture of
Ibaraki. It measures 168 sq km (65 sq mi) and is an important source of eel,
carp, and other freshwater species. Lake Kussharo in Hokkaidō is an example of a
caldera lake. It measures 80 sq km (31 sq mi) and has an island in its center
formed by a volcano. The waters of this lake are acidic and barren of fish.
E | Plant and Animal Life |
More than 17,000 species of flowering and
nonflowering plants are found in Japan, and many are cultivated widely. Azaleas
color the Japanese hills in April, and the tree peony, one of the most popular
cultivated flowers, blossoms at the beginning of May. The lotus blooms in
August, and in November the blooming of the chrysanthemum occasions one of the
most celebrated of the numerous Japanese flower festivals. Various types of
seaweed grow naturally or are cultivated in offshore waters, adding variety to
the Japanese diet. The most common varieties of edible seaweed are laver (a
purple form of red algae also known as nori), kelp (a large, leafy brown algae
also called kombu), and wakame (a large brown algae).
Forests cover 66 percent of Japan’s land
area. Forests are concentrated on mountain slopes, where trees are important in
soil and water conservation. Tree types vary with latitude and elevation. In
Hokkaidō, spruce, larch, and northern fir are most common, along with alder,
poplar, and beech trees. Central Honshū’s more temperate climate supports beech,
willows, and chestnuts. In Shikoku, Kyūshū, and the warmer parts of Honshū,
subtropical trees such as camphors and banyans thrive. The southern areas also
have thick stands of bamboo. Japanese cedars and cypress are found throughout
wide areas of the country and are prized for their wood. Cultivated tree species
include fruit trees bearing peaches, plums, pears, oranges, and cherries;
mulberry trees for silk production; and lacquer trees, from which the resins
used to produce lacquer are derived. Potted miniaturized trees called
bonsai are popular among hobbyist gardeners in Japan and are a highly
evolved art form.
Japanese animal life includes at least 140
species of mammals; 450 species of birds; and a wide variety of reptiles,
amphibians, and fish. Mammals include wild boar, deer, rabbits and hares,
squirrels, and various species of bear. Foxes and badgers also are numerous and,
according to traditional beliefs, possess supernatural powers. The only primate
mammal in Japan is the Japanese macaque, a red-faced monkey found throughout
Honshū. The most common birds are sparrows, house swallows, and thrushes. Water
birds are common, as well, including cranes, herons, swans, storks, cormorants,
and ducks. The waters off Japan abound with fish and other marine life,
particularly at around latitude 36º north, where the cold Oyashio and warm
Kuroshio currents meet and create ideal conditions for larger species.
F | Natural Resources |
Japan has had to build its enormous
industrial output and high standard of living on a comparatively small domestic
resource base. Most conspicuously lacking are fossil fuel resources,
particularly petroleum. Small domestic oil fields in northern Honshū and
Hokkaidō supply less than 1 percent of the country’s demand. Domestic reserves
of natural gas are similarly negligible. Coal deposits in Hokkaidō and Kyūshū
are more abundant but are generally low grade, costly to mine, and
inconveniently located with respect to major cities and industrial areas (the
areas of highest demand). Japan does have abundant water and hydroelectric
potential, however, and as a result the country has developed one of the world’s
largest hydroelectric industries.
Japan is also short on metal and mineral
resources. It was once a leading producer of copper, but its great mines at
Ashio in central Honshū and Besshi on Shikoku have been depleted and are now
closed. Reserves of iron, lead, zinc, bauxite, and other ores are negligible.
While the country is heavily forested, its
demand for lumber, pulp, paper, and other wood products exceeds domestic
production. Some forests in Hokkaidō and northern Honshū have been logged
excessively, causing local environmental problems. Japan is blessed with
bountiful coastal waters that provide the nation with fish and other marine
foods. However, demand is so large that local resources must be supplemented
with fish caught by Japanese vessels in distant seas, as well as with imports.
Although arable land is limited, agricultural resources are significant. Japan’s
crop yields per land area sown are among the highest in the world, and the
country produces more than 60 percent of its food.
G | Climate |
Japan’s climate is rainy and humid, and
marked in most places by four distinct seasons. The country’s wide range of
latitude causes pronounced differences in climate between the north and the
south. Hokkaidō and other parts of northern Japan have long, harsh winters and
relatively cool summers. Average temperatures in the northern city of Sapporo
dip to –5°C (24°F) in January but reach only 20°C (68°F) in July. Central Japan
has cold but short winters and hot, humid summers. In Tokyo in central Honshū,
temperatures average 3°C (38°F) in January and 25°C (77°F) in July. Kyūshū is
subtropical, with short, mild winters and hot, humid summers. Average
temperatures in the southern city of Kagoshima are 7°C (45°F) in January and
26°C (79°F) in July. Farther south, the Ryukyu Islands are warmer still, with
frost-free winters.
The climate of Japan is influenced by the
country’s location on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and by its proximity to the
Asian continent. The mountain ranges running through the center of the islands
also influence local weather conditions. The Sea of Japan side of the country is
extremely snowy in winter. Cold air masses originating over the Asian continent
absorb moisture as they pass over the Sea of Japan, then rise as they encounter
Japan’s mountain barriers, cooling further and dropping their moisture in the
form of snow. The heaviest snows are in Nagano Prefecture, where annual
accumulations of 8 to 10 m (26 to 30 ft) are common. By contrast, Pacific Japan
lies in a snow shadow on the sheltered side of the mountains and experiences
fairly dry winters with clear skies.
From June to September this pattern
reverses. Monsoon winds from the Pacific tropics bring warm, moist air and heavy
precipitation to Japan’s Pacific coast. A month-long rainy season called
baiu begins in southern Japan in early June, traveling north as the month
progresses. Baiu is followed by hot, humid weather. In late August and
September, the shūrin rains come to much of the country, often as
torrential downpours that trigger landslides and floods. During this period,
violent storms called typhoons come ashore in Japan, most often in Kyūshū and
Shikoku. Japan’s distant tropical islands also suffer typhoon damage. Meanwhile,
throughout the summer the Sea of Japan coast is protected from the Pacific
influences by the mountains and is relatively dry. Northern Honshū and Hokkaidō
receive relatively little summer precipitation. Average annual precipitation in
Sapporo is 1,130 mm (45 in), while in Tokyo it is 1,410 mm (55 in) and in
Kagoshima it is 2,240 mm (88 in).
Autumn and spring are generally pleasant
in all parts of Japan. The season when cherry blossoms open (typically late
March to early May, depending on latitude and elevation) is particularly
festive.
H | Environmental Issues |
Japan experienced severe environmental
pollution during its push to industrialize in the late 19th century and again
during the rush to rebuild the economy after World War II. Some of the worst
pollution incidents caused great human suffering. One of the first episodes
began in the late 19th century, when copper mining operations released effluents
that contaminated rivers and rice fields in the mountains of central Honshū,
sickening much of the local population. Crusading legislator Tanaka Shōzō led
citizen protests that represented an important first step in the creation of a
Japanese environmental movement. Nevertheless, more environmental disasters
followed. In the early 20th century cadmium poisoning caused an outbreak of a
painful bone disease, called itai-itai, in Toyama Prefecture. From the
1950s to the 1970s, mercury contamination in fishing waters caused Minamata
disease, an affliction of the central nervous system named after the town in
Kyūshū where thousands became ill and hundreds died. Smog, arsenic poisoning,
and polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) poisoning produced by industry in the 1970s caused
other health problems.
Since that time, Japan has enacted some of
the world’s strictest legislation for environmental protection. The government
took important steps to improve environmental quality in the late 1960s and
early 1970s in response to pressure by citizens’ groups. It passed successive
laws to combat pollution and compensate victims of pollution. In 1971 it
established the Environmental Agency to monitor and regulate pollution. The
Nature Conservation Law of 1972 requires that all natural ecosystems be
inventoried every five years.
Significant environmental problems remain,
however. Pollution of bays and other coastal waters is a continuing threat to
the fishing and aquaculture industries. Emissions by power plants and heavy
industry have resulted in acid rain (a type of air pollution) and increasing
acidity of freshwater lakes. Smog continues to plague traffic-choked urban
areas. Despite successes in promoting recycling and reuse, the total amount of
garbage produced per person has increased sharply since the mid-1980s. Waste
disposal is a mounting problem in Japan’s urban areas, and the country faces a
severe shortage of landfill sites. In addition, the country’s high reliance on
nuclear energy poses some environmental hazards. Risks are involved with nuclear
waste storage, importation of nuclear fuel, and export of spent fuel for
reprocessing. In September 1999 Japan’s worst nuclear accident occurred at a
uranium processing plant in Tokaimura when human error caused an uncontrolled
nuclear chain reaction and leak, exposing nearly 70 workers to high doses of
radiation. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency reported that
the incident did not cause any lasting harm to the surrounding population and
environment.
The Japanese are passionate about their
country’s natural heritage. Per capita domestic visits to national parks are
among the highest in the world. Japan has 28 major national parks and more than
350 lesser parks, covering more than 14 percent of the country. An extensive
series of wildlife preserves and special wildlife sanctuaries covers more than 8
percent of the land. At least 28 marine parks have also been established.
The Land and Resources section of this
article was contributed by Roman Cybriwsky.
III | PEOPLE AND SOCIETY |
Japan ranks as the world’s ninth most
populous nation, with a population of 127,288,420 (2008 estimate). It is also
one of the most crowded, with an average population density of 340 persons per
sq km (880 per sq mi). The population is distributed unevenly within the
country. Densities range from very low levels in the steep mountain areas of
Hokkaidō and the interior of Honshū island to extraordinarily high levels in the
urban areas on Japan’s larger plains. The most crowded area is central Tokyo,
where overall population density is about 13,000 persons per sq km (about 33,000
per sq mi). About 66 percent of Japan’s people are concentrated in urban areas,
making Japan one of the most heavily urbanized nations in the world.
Although Japan is one of the world’s most
populous and crowded countries, it is also one of the slowest growing. At
present, the annual population growth rate is -0.14 percent. The slow rate of
increase is due to low birthrates (7.9 births per 1,000 people in 2008) and a
relatively low rate of foreign immigration. Birthrates are now less than
one-third what they were in Japan before the 1950s, when it was common for
couples to have three or more children. The average number of children per
couple in Japan is now less than 1.5. The total population of the country is
expected to begin declining soon because Japan’s net reproduction rate has been
below 1.0 for a number of years (meaning that the Japanese population is not
replacing itself). Projections call for population totals of about 118 million
in 2025 and about 94 million in 2050. The prospect of such significant decline
raises worries in Japan about whether the country will have a sufficient labor
force to meet economic needs and enough people of working age to support the
growing proportion of the population that is elderly.
The age structure of Japan’s population has
changed tremendously in recent decades. The segment of the population between
the ages of 0 and 14 declined from 35.4 percent in 1950 to 15.2 percent in 1998,
while the number of people aged 65 or older increased from 4.9 percent to 16.0
percent. In 1995 Japan’s elderly outnumbered its youth for the first time in the
country’s history. Life expectancy increased over the same period, largely due
to improved health conditions, and is now 86 years for females and 79 years for
males, in both cases the highest expected longevity in the world. The number of
people in Japan aged 85 or over increased from 134,000 in 1955 to an estimated
4.3 million in 1998.
A | Principal Cities |
Japan’s largest city is Tokyo, the
national capital. Tokyo ranks as the most populated metropolitan area in the
world, with about 35 million inhabitants in 2003. In addition to being the
center of government, Tokyo is Japan’s principal commercial center, home to most
of the country’s largest corporations, banks, and other businesses. It is also a
leading center of manufacturing, higher education, and communications. Japan’s
second largest city is Yokohama, located near Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Originally a small fishing village, the settlement became a major port and
international trade center after it was opened to foreign commerce in 1859. It
grew quickly and continues to be Japan’s largest port, a busy commercial center,
and along with Tokyo and neighboring Kawasaki, a hub of Japan’s preeminent
Keihin Industrial Zone (an area of industrial concentration). The third largest
city in the country is Ōsaka. Even in Japan’s feudal era, Ōsaka was an important
commercial center and castle town, and it was known as “Japan’s kitchen” because
of its role in warehousing rice for the nation. Today it is the leading
financial center of western Japan and the principal city of the Hanshin
Industrial Zone.
Other major cities are Nagoya, the focus
of the Chūkyō Industrial Zone and a major port on Ise Bay; Sapporo, Hokkaidō’s
capital and an important food-processing center; and Kōbe, a major port and
shipbuilding center. Kyōto, Japan’s seventh-largest city, is especially famous
as an ancient capital of Japan and the site of many historic temples, shrines,
and traditional gardens. It is also known for manufacturing silk brocades and
textiles.
Most of these major cities are crowded
into a relatively small area of land along the Pacific coast of Honshū, between
Tokyo and Kōbe. This heavily urbanized strip is known as the Tōkaidō
Megalopolis, named for a historic highway that connected Tokyo with Kyōto. The
cities are now interconnected by expressways and Japan’s high-speed Shinkansen
railway.
B | Ethnic Groups |
The overwhelming majority of Japan’s
population is ethnically Japanese. Closely related to other East Asians, the
Japanese people are believed to have migrated to the islands of present-day
Japan from the Asian continent and the South Pacific more than 2,000 years ago.
The Ainu are Japan’s only indigenous ethnic group. Japan is also home to
comparatively small groups of Koreans, Chinese, and residents from other
countries. All told, the non-Japanese portion of the population totals no more
than 2 percent, making Japan one of the most homogeneous countries in the world
in terms of ethnic or national composition.
Although the origins of the Ainu are
uncertain, traditional belief holds that they descended from the earliest
settlers of Japan, who arrived long before the first Japanese. Their physical
characteristics suggested to early anthropologists that they were Caucasoid
(ultimately originating in southeastern Europe) or Australoid (originating in
Australia and Southeast Asia). More recent scholarship suggests that they are
related to the Tungusic, Altaic, and Uralic peoples of Siberia. The Ainu once
inhabited a wider area of northern Japan but are now concentrated in a few
settlements on Hokkaidō. Of the current population of about 20,000 native Ainu,
very few native speakers of the Ainu language remain. The Ainu have a distinct
language and religious beliefs, and a rich material culture. Many engage in
agriculture, fishing, and logging, or in tourism in their distinctive
villages.
Koreans are the largest nonnative group
in Japan. When the Japanese colonized Korea in the early 20th century, they
forced many Koreans to move to Japan to work in Japanese mines and factories.
Many Koreans living in Japan today are the children of these unwilling
immigrants. They have permanent resident status in Japan and most rights of
citizenship, but they face roadblocks to full citizenship and often suffer
discrimination. Koreans make up more than 51 percent of all foreign residents in
Japan. The next-largest group is the Chinese, some of whom were likewise
forcibly relocated during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Sizable communities of Brazilians, Filipinos, and
Americans also live in Japan. Since the 1980s workers from Asian countries such
as China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran have come to Japan on
temporary visas to work in construction and industry doing so-called 3K jobs
(kitsui, kitanai, and kiken, or “difficult, dirty, and dangerous”)
that Japanese workers avoid. These foreign workers often live in inferior
conditions and are generally shunned by many Japanese.
C | Language |
Japanese is the official language of
Japan. The Japanese language is distinctive and of unknown origin. However, it
has some relation to the Altaic languages of central Asia and to Korean, which
may also be an Altaic language. Linguists also find similarities between
Japanese and the Austronesian languages of the South Pacific.
Japanese has a number of regional
dialects. Standard Japanese, the form heard most commonly on national television
and radio, is traditionally the dialect of educated people in Tokyo but is now
understood everywhere in Japan. Although standard Japanese has begun to replace
some regional accents, many of these remain quite strong and distinctive. For
example, dialects spoken in southern Japan—most notably on Kyūshū and
Okinawa—are virtually incomprehensible to speakers of other dialects. Residents
of western Japan around Ōsaka, Kyōto, and Kōbe also speak with distinctive
accents.
Japanese speech is sensitive to social
relationships. Several degrees of politeness and familiarity exist to
distinguish between superiors, equals, and inferiors based on factors such as
age, sex, and social status.
Japanese was solely a spoken language
before the Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan in about the 5th
century. By the 9th century, Japanese people had adapted Chinese writing to
their own language and assimilated many Chinese words. Modern Japanese writing
combines Chinese characters (kanji) with two syllabaries (alphabets in
which each symbol represents a syllable), hiragana and katakana.
Kanji are used to write native Japanese nouns and verbs, as well as the many
Japanese words that originated in Chinese. Although there are tens of thousands
of kanji, the government has identified about 2,000 for daily use. The hiragana
syllabary is used for grammatical elements and word suffixes, while non-Chinese
foreign words are written using katakana. Japanese includes many such loan words
taken from Portuguese, Dutch, German, and, increasingly, English. An example
from English is kompūtā, the Japanese word for computer. The Roman
alphabet also is used commonly in advertisements and for emphasis and visual
impact. It is not uncommon to see kanji, katakana, hiragana, and roman letters
all used in the same sentence.
Japanese is usually written vertically
and from right to left across a page. Thus, the first page of a Japanese book is
what readers of English would normally think of as the last page. In modern
times, Japan has adopted the Western style of writing horizontally and from left
to right for some publications, such as textbooks. Written or printed Japanese
has no spaces between words.
Ainu is Japan’s only other indigenous
language. It is apparently unrelated to Japanese and is now nearly extinct.
Korean and Chinese residents of Japan usually speak Japanese as their first
language. Many Japanese students study foreign languages, most commonly English.
D | Religion |
Japan is primarily a secular society in
which religion is not a central factor in most people’s daily lives. Yet certain
religious traditions and practices are vitally important and help define the
society, and most Japanese people profess at least some religious
adherence.
The dominant religions in Japan are
Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto is native to Japan. Generally translated as “the Way
of the Gods,” Shinto is a mixture of religious beliefs and practices, and its
roots date back to prehistory. It was first mentioned in 720 in the Nihon
shoki, Japan’s earliest historical chronicle. Unlike most major world
religions, Shinto has no organized body of teachings, no recognized historical
founder, and no moral code. Instead, it focuses on worship of nature, ancestors,
and a pantheon of kami, sacred spirits or gods that personify aspects of
the natural world. From 1868 to 1945, under the Japanese imperial government,
Shinto was Japan’s state religion. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the
occupation government separated Shinto from state support.
Buddhism originated in India, arriving in
Japan in the 6th century by way of China and Korea. In the centuries that
followed, numerous Buddhist sects took root in Japan, among them Zen Buddhism.
Zen was introduced from China in the 12th century and quickly became popular
among the dominant warrior class under the rule of Japan’s first shogunate
(military government), the Kamakura. Today the largest Buddhist sect in Japan is
the Nichiren school.
Shinto and Buddhism have been intertwined
in Japanese society for centuries, and a majority of the population identify
themselves as members of one or both of these religions. Indeed, most Japanese
blend the two, preferring attendance at Shinto shrines for some events—such as
New Year’s Day, wedding ceremonies, and the official start of adulthood at age
20—and Buddhist ceremonies for other events, most notably Bon (a
midsummer celebration honoring ancestral spirits) and funerals. Confucianism and
Daoism, which came to Japan from China by way of Korea, have also profoundly
influenced Japanese religious life.
More than 20 million Japanese are members
of various shinkō shūkyō, or “new religions.” The largest of these
are Sōka Gakkai and Risshō Kōseikai, offshoots of Nichiren Buddhism, and
Tenrikyō, an offshoot of Shinto. Most of the new religions were founded by
charismatic leaders who have claimed profound spiritual or supernatural
experiences and expect considerable devotion and sacrifices from members.
Although it is very small in comparison to other religions, one of Japan’s new
religions, Aum Shinrikyo, gained considerable notoriety when some of its members
released nerve gas into the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing 12 people and
injuring more than 5,000.
Japan also has a significant minority of
Christians, constituting about 4 percent of the population. Portuguese and
Spanish missionaries introduced Christianity to Japan in the 16th century. The
religion made strong inroads there until the Japanese government banned it as a
potential threat to the country’s political sovereignty from the mid-17th
century to the mid-19th century. Today, about two-thirds of Japan’s Christians
are Protestants, and about one-third are Roman Catholics. Small communities of
followers of other world faiths live in Japan as well.
E | Education |
With an adult literacy rate exceeding 99
percent, Japan ranks among the top nations in the world in educational
attainment. Schooling generally begins before grade one in preschool
(yōchien) and is free and compulsory for elementary and junior high
school (grades 1 through 9). More than 99 percent of elementary school-aged
children attend school. Most students who finish junior high school continue on
to senior high school (grades 10 through 12). Approximately one-third of senior
high school graduates then continue on for higher education. Most high schools
and universities admit students on the basis of difficult entrance examinations.
Competition to get into the best high schools and universities is fierce because
Japan’s most prestigious jobs typically go to graduates of elite
universities.
About 1 percent of elementary schools and
5 percent of junior high schools are private. Nearly 25 percent of high schools
are private. Whether public or private, high schools are ranked informally
according to their success at placing graduates into elite universities. In 1998
there were 604 four-year universities in Japan and 588 two-year junior colleges.
Important and prestigious universities include the University of Tokyo, Kyōto
University, and Keio University in Tokyo.
The school year in Japan typically runs
from April through March and is divided into trimesters separated by vacation
holidays. Students attend classes five full weekdays in addition to half days on
Saturdays, and on average do considerably more homework each day than American
students do. In almost all schools, students wear uniforms and adhere to strict
rules regarding appearance.
In addition to their regular schooling,
some students—particularly students at the junior high school level—enroll in
specialized private schools called juku. Often translated into English as
“cram schools,” these schools offer supplementary lessons after school hours and
on weekends, as well as tutoring to improve scores on senior high school
entrance examinations. Students who are preparing for college entrance
examinations attend special schools called yobikō. A disappointing score
on a college entrance examination means that a student must settle for a lesser
college, decide not to attend college at all, or study for a year or more at a
yobikō in preparation to retake the examination.
The early history of education in Japan
was rooted in ideas and teachings from China. In the 16th and early 17th
centuries, European missionaries also influenced Japanese schooling. From about
1640 to 1868, during Japan’s period of isolation under the Tokugawa shoguns,
Buddhist temple schools called terakoya assumed responsibility for
education and made great strides in raising literacy levels among the general
population. In 1867 there were more than 14,000 temple schools in Japan. In 1872
the new Meiji government established a ministry of education and a comprehensive
educational code that included universal primary education. During this period,
Japan looked to nations in Europe and North America for educational models. As
the Japanese empire expanded during the 1930s and 1940s, education became
increasingly nationalistic and militaristic.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the
educational system was revamped. Changes included the present grade structure of
six years of elementary school and three years each of junior and senior high
school; a guarantee of equal access to free, public education; and an end to the
teaching of nationalist ideology. Reforms also sought to encourage students’
self-expression and increase flexibility in curriculum and classroom procedures.
Nevertheless, some observers still believe that education in Japan is
excessively rigid, favoring memorization of facts at the expense of creative
expression, and geared to encouraging social conformity.
F | Social Structure |
A largely homogeneous society, Japan does
not exhibit the deep ethnic, religious, and class divisions that characterize
many countries. The gaps between rich and poor are not as glaring in Japan as
they are in many countries, and a remarkable 90 percent or more of Japanese
people consider themselves middle class. This contrasts with most of Japan’s
previous recorded history, when profound social and economic distinctions were
maintained between Japan’s aristocracy and its commoners. Two periods of social
upheaval in the modern era did much to soften these class divisions. The first
was the push for modernization under the Meiji government at the end of the 19th
century; the second was the period of Allied occupation after World War II.
Among the most profound of the transformations that took place in the modern era
was the empowerment of individuals rather than extended families and family
lines as the fundamental units of society. As a result of this change, Japanese
men and women experienced greater freedom in making personal decisions, such as
choosing a spouse or career.
Nevertheless, some significant social
differences do exist in Japan, as evidenced by the discrimination in employment,
education, and marriage faced by the country’s Korean minority and by its
burakumin. Burakumin means “hamlet people,” a name that refers to the
segregated villages these people lived in during Japan’s feudal era. Burakumin
are indistinguishable from Japanese racially or culturally, and today they
generally intermingle with the rest of the population. However, for centuries
they were treated as a separate population because they worked in occupations
that were considered unclean, such as disposing of the dead and slaughtering
animals. Despite laws to the contrary, their descendants still suffer
discrimination in Japan. The number of burakumin is thought to be about 3
million, or about 2 percent of the national population. They are scattered in
various parts of the country, usually in discrete communities, with the largest
concentrations living in the urban area encompassing Ōsaka, Kōbe, and
Kyōto.
Despite the shift toward individual
empowerment, Japanese society remains significantly group-oriented compared to
societies in the West. Japanese children learn group consciousness at an early
age within the family, the basic group of society. Membership in groups expands
with age to include the individual’s class in school, neighborhood,
extracurricular clubs during senior high school and college, and, upon entering
adulthood, the workplace. All along, the individual is taught to be dedicated to
the group, to forgo personal gain for the benefit of the group as a whole, and
to value group harmony. At the highest level, the Japanese nation as a whole may
be thought of as a group to which its citizens belong and have obligations. The
form of character building that instills these values is called seishin
shūyō.
Most groups are structured
hierarchically. Individual members have a designated rank within the group and
responsibilities based on their position. Seniority has traditionally been the
main qualification for higher rank, and socialization of young people in Japan
emphasizes respect and deference to one’s seniors.
G | Way of Life |
Historically, most Japanese people lived
in agricultural villages or small fishing settlements along the coast. Now, most
of the population resides in metropolitan areas. Japan’s agricultural
population, which has been declining since the 1950s, constituted only about 5
percent of the total population in the early 2000s. A disproportionate fraction
of the population that has remained to live and work in Japan’s agricultural
areas is elderly because the majority of migrants to cities are young.
Everyday life for most urban Japanese
involves work in an office, store, factory, or other segment of the metropolitan
economy. Daily commutes by bus, train, or subway are typically long,
particularly in Tokyo. The commute is also extraordinarily crowded. During rush
hours, some commuter lines employ “pushers” to shove riders into jam-packed
train or subway cars before the doors slide closed.
Most houses and apartments are small in
comparison to those in many other developed countries because of the country’s
high population density and costly land. Nevertheless, many Japanese enjoy a
high standard of living and comforts such as the latest fashions in clothing,
new appliances and electronics, and new models of automobiles. Sundays are the
busiest shopping days in Japan. During the afternoon hours, department stores
and shopping malls are jammed with crowds of bargain hunters. Japanese also
enjoy travel and often go abroad or to popular domestic resorts during holidays.
Between 1968 and 1994 the number of Japanese traveling abroad each year
increased from 344,000 to 13.5 million. Among the most popular destinations are
Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States, New York City, Australia, Hong
Kong, and the major capitals of Europe.
Japanese life blends traditions from the
past with new activities, many borrowed from other cultures. The Japanese diet,
for example, emphasizes rice, seafood, and other items that have been staples in
the society for centuries, but also includes international cuisine such as
Italian and Chinese dishes, and American-style fast-food hamburgers and French
fries. Likewise, Japanese sports fans give equal weight to sumo, Japan’s
traditional style of wrestling, as to baseball, imported from the United States
in the late 19th century. Contemporary weddings in Japan often combine
traditional Shinto ceremonies, such as ritual exchanges of sake (rice
wine), with Western-style exchanges of wedding bands. Arranged marriages, common
in Japan before World War II, have declined in favor of so-called love marriages
based on a couple’s mutual attraction. Nevertheless, the tradition of family
involvement in selecting a mate endures, and arranged marriages still
occur.
Major holiday celebrations in Japan
include Bon, a traditional midsummer honoring of ancestral spirits, and the New
Year, when people eat special foods, visit Shinto shrines, and call on family
and friends. When Japan’s cherry trees blossom, signaling the arrival of spring,
people celebrate with picnics under the trees. Each year on May 5 the Japanese
celebrate Children’s Day, when families with young boys fly giant carp (a symbol
of success) made of cloth or paper from the roofs of their houses. Adult’s Day,
on January 15, is celebrated to honor all young people who turned 20 in the past
year, and Respect for the Aged Day is observed on September 15. The emperor’s
birthday is also a national holiday. During Golden Week, a time in late April
and early May when several holidays come together, many Japanese enjoy travel
and leisure activities, such as golf, tennis, and hiking.
Japanese engage in ritual gift giving
during New Year’s and at midsummer. Strong social obligations dictate who must
give gifts to whom, and selecting a gift involves elaborate rules and customs
about what kinds of gifts are appropriate in the precise situation. The total
cost of gifts exchanged is high, causing the gift-giving tradition to become a
significant financial support for Japan’s manufacturing sector, the country’s
retail enterprises, and its package delivery services.
H | Social Issues |
For the most part, Japan is a stable
country with a high degree of domestic tranquility. Yet the country faces a
number of social problems, some of them new and worsening, others long-term and
slowly improving. Some of the most difficult recent troubles arose from the
economic recession that began in Japan in the 1990s. Until recently,
unemployment was virtually unknown in Japan to all but the oldest citizens who
lived through the economic chaos of the years immediately after World War II.
However, during the 1990s unemployment rose as companies and financial
institutions that were once thought to be financially solid cut back on their
workforces or closed altogether. Lifetime job security, once a hallmark of
Japan’s economy, no longer exists in many companies, and experienced workers now
find themselves competing for inferior jobs with younger people looking for
entry-level positions. The younger generation in turn is finding it hard to
enter the economy because jobs that were once plentiful for high school and
college graduates are now in short supply.
The prolonged recession is one of the
chief causes of an increase in homelessness in Japan. Tokyo and other cities
have thousands of homeless people, mostly middle-aged and older men. Quite a few
of them were brought to these circumstances by alcoholism or mental illness, but
the number of people who are homeless because of unemployment has risen.
Sometimes people who lose their jobs or suffer the failure of a business feel
too ashamed to face their families in Japan’s tradition-bound society. These
people exile themselves to one of the many communities of newly homeless
people.
Crime is another growing problem.
Although Japan is one of the safest countries in the world, Japanese are greatly
concerned about recent increases in violent crime and crimes against property.
Some fault the growing number of foreigners in Japan for rising crime, but most
attribute the problem to the combination of economic recession and the high
desirability of consumer goods among the younger generation. A particularly
disturbing aspect of the problem reported widely in the Japanese media has been
the large increase in prostitution among high school girls. These girls are
seeking money for the latest clothing fashions, expensive concert tickets, and
other desired items. Organized crime by mobsters known as yakuza
continues to be a strong force in Japan, controlling prostitution, pornography,
and gambling.
An important long-term social problem in
Japan concerns the status of women. The Japanese constitution forbids
discrimination on the basis of sex, and Japanese law affords women the same
economic and social rights as men. Nevertheless, fewer women than men attend
four-year universities, and in general women do not have equal access to
employment opportunities and advancement within the ranks of a company or along
a career path. Efforts to increase women’s opportunities have enabled more women
to succeed in business or professions. However, the attitude that women should
stay home to be wives and mothers remains more pervasive in Japan than in many
other industrialized countries and is a roadblock to many women who opt for
other challenges.
I | Social Services |
Japan has a well-developed social welfare
system designed to protect the quality of life of legal residents against a
broad range of social and economic risks. The system has four principal
components. First, through public assistance it provides a basic income for
people unable to earn enough on their own for subsistence. Second, it provides
citizens with social insurance in the form of health and medical coverage,
unemployment compensation, and public pensions. Most social insurance programs
are funded by contributions from employers and employees, as well as by
subsidies from government funds. Third, the system provides social welfare
services to address various special needs of the aged, the disabled, and
children. And finally, it provides public health maintenance to attend to
sanitation and environmental issues and to safeguard the public from infectious
diseases.
The cost of social welfare has risen in
Japan and accounted for nearly 20 percent of the national budget in 1995. The
recession of the 1990s, which added to the number of people receiving public
assistance, has posed major challenges for Japan’s welfare system. Furthermore,
with the country’s rapidly aging population, providing for the needs of the
elderly is becoming harder for the government. Subsidized nursing homes, regular
health examinations, low-cost medical care, home care, and recreational
activities at community centers are services for the elderly that may be
impossible to provide in the future. The problem is made worse because the
time-honored tradition of family members taking care of aged relatives is
declining in Japan, putting more of the burden for care on government.
The People and Society section of this
article was contributed by Roman Cybriwsky.
IV | ARTS AND CULTURE |
Japanese cultural history is marked by
periods of extensive borrowing from other civilizations, followed by
assimilation of foreign traditions with native ones, and finally transformation
of these elements into uniquely Japanese art forms. Japan borrowed primarily
from China and Korea in premodern times and from the West in the modern age.
A | Historical Development |
Cultural imports began to arrive in Japan
from continental East Asia around 300 bc, starting with agriculture and the
use of metals. These new technologies eventually helped build a more complex
Japanese society, whose most remarkable and enduring structures were huge,
key-shaped tombs. Named for these tombs, the Kofun period endured from the early
4th to the 6th century ad.
In the middle of the 6th century, Japan
embarked on a second phase of extensive cultural borrowing from the Asian
continent—largely from China. Among the major imports from China were Buddhism
and Confucianism. Buddhism was particularly important, not only as a religion
but also as a source of art, especially in the form of temples and statues.
Although Buddhism eventually became a major religion of Japan, some evidence
indicates that the Japanese initially were drawn more to its architecture and
art than to its religious doctrines.
In Japan’s first state, the arts were
almost exclusively the preserve of the ruling elite, a class of courtiers who
served as ministers to the emperor. For most of the 8th century the court was
located at Nara, the first capital of Japan, which gave its name to the Nara
period (710-794). At the end of the 8th century the capital moved to Heian-kyō
(modern Kyōto), and Japan entered its classical age, known as the Heian period
(794-1185). By the beginning of the 11th century, the emperor’s courtiers had
developed a brilliant culture and lifestyle that owed much to China but was
still uniquely Japanese. Poetry flourished especially, but important
developments also took place in prose literature, architecture (especially
residential architecture), music, and painting (both Buddhist and secular).
As the Heian court reached its height of
cultural brilliance, however, a class of warriors (samurai) emerged in the
provinces. In the late 12th century the first warrior government (known as a
shogunate) was established at Kamakura. Japan entered a feudal era of frequent
wars and samurai dominance that would last for nearly four centuries, first
under the Kamakura and then under the Ashikaga shoguns.
The culture of the Kamakura period
(1185-1333) is noteworthy particularly for its poetry, prose, and painting.
Although the Kyōto courtiers lost their political power to the samurai, they
continued to produce outstanding poetry. Warrior society contributed to the
national culture as well. Anonymous war tales were among the major achievements
in prose. Painters produced narrative picture scrolls depicting military and
religious subjects such as battles, the lives of Buddhist priests, and histories
of Buddhist temples and of shrines of Japan’s native religion, Shinto.
The Kamakura shogunate ended with a brief
attempt to restore imperial rule. Then in 1338 the Ashikaga shoguns established
their seat near the emperor’s court in the Muromachi district of Kyōto. During
the reign of the Ashikaga (known as the Muromachi period), which lasted until
1573, Japan again sent missions to China. This time they brought back the latest
teachings of Zen Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, as well as countless objects of
art and craft. Zen Buddhism, which had been introduced to Japan during the
Kamakura period, contributed to the development of Muromachi-period artistic
forms. Chinese monochrome ink painting became the principal painting style.
Dramatists created classical nō theater, performed for the upper classes of
society. And beginning in the 15th century, the tea ceremony, a gathering of
people to drink tea according to prescribed etiquette, evolved. The poetic form
of renga, or linked verse, also developed at this time. The linked verse
style, in which several poets take turns composing alternate verses of a single
long poem, became popular among all classes of society.
In 1603 a third warrior government, the
Tokugawa shogunate, established itself in Edo (present-day Tokyo), and Japan
entered a long period of peace that historians consider the beginning of the
country’s modern age. During this era, known as the Tokugawa period (1603-1867),
Japan adopted a policy of national seclusion, closing its borders to almost all
foreigners. Domestic commerce thrived, and cities grew larger than they had ever
been. In great cities such as Edo, Ōsaka, and Kyōto, performers and courtesans
mingled with rich merchants and idle samurai in the restaurants, wrestling
booths, and brothels of the areas known as the pleasure quarters. These
so-called chōnin, or townsmen, the urban class dominated by merchants,
produced a new, bourgeois culture that included 17-syllable haiku poetry, prose
literature of the pleasure quarters, the puppet and kabuki theaters, and the art
of the wood-block print.
Japan’s seclusion policy ended when
Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States sailed into Edo Bay in 1853 and
established a treaty with Japan the following year. The Tokugawa shogunate was
overthrown in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and Japan entered the modern world.
During the early years of the new order, known as the Meiji period (1868-1912),
Western culture largely overwhelmed Japan’s native heritage. Ignoring many of
their traditional arts, the Japanese set about adopting Western artistic styles,
literary forms, and music. By the end of the Meiji period, however, the Japanese
not only had resuscitated many traditional art forms but also were making
impressive advances in modern styles of architecture, painting, and the
novel.
Since the beginning of the 20th century,
Japan has moved steadily into the stream of international culture. Japan’s
influence on that culture has been especially pronounced since the end of World
War II (1939-1945). Japanese movies, for example, have received international
recognition and acclaim, and Japanese novels have been translated into English
and other languages. Meanwhile, traditional Japanese culture has flowed around
the world, influencing styles in design, architecture, and various crafts, such
as ceramics and textiles.
B | Literature |
Throughout most of their history, the
Japanese people have written poetry and prose in both Chinese and Japanese. This
section deals mainly with literature written in the Japanese language.
Japan’s earliest literary writings are
simple poems found in the country’s oldest existing books, the Koji-ki
(Records of Ancient Matters, 712) and the Nihon shoki (Chronicles
of Japan, 720) of the early Nara period. The mid-Nara period witnessed the
compilation of Manyōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), an anthology
of some 4,500 poems written in the 7th and 8th centuries. Courtiers wrote most
of the poems in Manyōshū, the great majority of them in the 5-line,
31-syllable waka (or tanka) form. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, the best
known of the poets, also wrote in a longer form that makes up a small percentage
of the poems in the anthology. Some of the poems are celebrations of public
events, such as coronations and imperial hunts, but even at this early time
Japanese poetry was primarily personal. Its two main subjects were the beauties
of nature, especially as found in the changing seasons, and heterosexual
romantic love.
During the Heian period, court poets,
using the waka form exclusively, reduced the range of poetic topics. Proper
subjects had to meet the poets’ ideal of courtliness (miyabi) and
demonstrate a sensitivity to the fragile beauties of nature and the emotions of
others, an aesthetic known as mono no aware. The Kokinshū
(Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, begun in 905) set the standard for all
future court poetry. Meanwhile, the invention of the kana syllabary (in
which each symbol represents a syllable) enabled the Japanese to write freely in
their own language for the first time. (Previously, most writing was in
Chinese.) The invention of kana also stimulated the development of a prose
literature. Court women took the lead in writing prose, using forms such as the
fictional diary and the miscellany, a collection of jottings, anecdotes,
lists, and the like. The two greatest Heian prose writings were the work of
court women: Makura no sōshi (Pillow Book), a miscellany by Sei
Shōnagon;, and Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji, 1010?) by Murasaki
Shikibu, a lengthy novel evoking court life during the mid-Heian period.
The early Kamakura period saw the
production of two great works of literature: Shin kokinshū (New
Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 1205?) and Hōjōki (An Account of
My Hut, 1212). Shin kokinshū, which ranks with Kokinshū as
the finest of the court poetry anthologies, stresses achieving “depth” in verse
through the application of aesthetic values such as yūgen (mystery and
depth). Hōjōki describes the attempts of its author, former courtier and
priest Kamo no Chōmei, to divest himself of all but the most minimal material
possessions to prepare himself, upon death, to enter the Pure Land paradise of
the Amida Buddha (see Pure Land Buddhism).
The Heike monogatari (Tale of the
Heike, begun 1220?) recounts the story of the war between the Taira clan (also
known as the Heike) and the Minamoto clan during the late 12th century. It ranks
second only to the Tale of Genji among the great Japanese prose writings
of premodern times. The tale evokes the lives of both the warrior and the
courtier elites during the transition from the ancient courtly age to the feudal
age. The product of more than a century and a half of textual development,
Heike monogatari was not completed until the late 14th century.
One of the most important literary
developments of the middle and late Muromachi period was linked verse poetry
(renga). As the creative potential of the classical waka declined, linked verse
gained great popularity. Renga masters, such as Sōgi in the late 15th
century, became famous not only for their poetry but also as traveling teachers
who spread the linked verse method throughout the country.
In the Tokugawa period, townsmen living
in the great cities produced most of Japan’s major literature. Haiku, consisting
of just the first seventeen syllables of the waka, became a means for expressing
emotional insights, or enlightenments, especially when composed by a
master such as Bashō. Even today, haiku enjoys enormous popularity in Japan, and
over the years countless non-Japanese have tried their hands at composing haiku.
The last years of the 17th century and the first years of the 18th century saw
an epoch of cultural flourishing known as the Genroku period. Much of Genroku
culture focused on the pleasure quarters of the great cities. Prose writer
Saikaku gained fame for his stories about the affairs of the pleasure quarters,
especially about courtesans and prostitutes and the merchants and samurai they
entertained.
Although the modern age has seen
important developments in poetry, the novel is the literary medium that has
enjoyed the most artistic success. Since Futabatei Shimei published Ukigumo
(The Drifting Cloud, 1887-1889), considered Japan’s first modern novel,
Japanese writers have steadily gained international prominence. Inspired both by
their native literary traditions and by writings in European languages,
including English, French, German, and Russian, Japanese writers have created a
corpus of fine novels. One of Japan’s most acclaimed novelists is Tanizaki
Jun’ichirō, author of Sasameyuki (1943-1948; translated in English as
The Makioka Sisters, 1957), a re-creation of the life of an Ōsaka family
in the years just before World War II. Another is Kawabata Yasunari, winner of
the Nobel Prize for literature. In his novels, Kawabata draws heavily on
traditional Japanese literary styles, and his own style has been characterized
as haiku-like. Prominent late 20th-century writers include Ōe Kenzaburō, the
second Japanese recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, and Abe Kōbō.
See also Japanese Literature.
C | Art and Architecture |
Japan’s oldest indigenous art is handmade
clay pottery, called Jōmon, or cord pattern, pottery. Produced beginning about
10,000 bc, it marked the beginning
of a rich ceramic-making tradition that has continued to the present day. During
the Kofun period, sculptors fashioned terra cotta figurines called haniwa
that depicted a variety of people (including armor-clad warriors and shamans),
animals, buildings, and boats. The figurines were placed on the tombs of Japan’s
rulers.
When Buddhism arrived in Japan, its
architecture and art profoundly influenced native styles. Hōryūji temple, built
near Nara in the early 7th century, has the world’s oldest wooden buildings, as
well as an impressive collection of Buddhist paintings and statues. During the
Nara period, many new temples were erected in and around the city. The most
famous temple is Tōdaiji, where an approximately 16-m (53-ft) Daibutsu (Great
Buddha) statue is housed in the world’s largest wooden building. Possibly
inspired by the temples of Buddhism, a distinct style of Shinto architecture
began to develop. Drawing on native traditions such as raised floors and
thatched roofs with deep eaves, Shinto produced artistically fine structures
such as the Ise Shrine and the Izumo Shrine.
After the emperor’s court moved to
Heian-kyō in 794, the construction of Buddhist temples continued. Many were now
built in remote areas, where they were designed to blend harmoniously with their
natural settings. The esoteric Shingon sect of Buddhism arrived from China
creating a demand among Heian courtiers for the visual and plastic arts of
Shingon. These included mandalas (diagrams of the spiritual universe used for
meditation) and paintings and statues of fantastic beings, sometimes fierce with
extra limbs or heads. Beautifully appointed residences (called shinden
residences) also began to appear at this time. These rambling structures opened
onto raked-sand gardens, which featured ponds fed by streams that often flowed
under the residences’ raised floors. Although no examples of shinden residences
exist today, narrative picture scrolls from the late Heian period depict these
residences of the courtier elite. These scrolls, known as emakimono,
represent one of the first forms of indigenous, secular painting in Japan. One
of the most impressive examples of emakimono is an illustrated version of the
11th century prose epic, the Tale of Genji.
During the early Kamakura period,
Nara-era traditions of realistic sculpture inspired a sculptural revival that
produced dynamic, individualized figures. But probably the finest products of
Kamakura art were narrative picture scrolls. Indeed, with the notable exception
of the earlier Tale of Genji scroll, most of the finest surviving
emakimono date from the Kamakura period. These include the Ippen scroll,
which depicts the journeys of Ippen, an evangelist of Pure Land Buddhism. The
scroll portrays landscape scenes, towns, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines
throughout Japan.
Architecturally, the Muromachi period is
best remembered for the construction of Zen temples. Notable examples are the
so-called “Five Mountains” temples of Kyōto, which were situated mainly around
the outskirts of the city to take advantage of the mountain scenery that borders
Kyōto on three sides. These temples became the settings for most of the best dry
landscape gardens (waterless gardens of sand, stone, and shrubs) constructed in
Muromachi times. Two of Japan’s most famous buildings, the Golden and Silver
pavilions, are on Zen temple grounds. The creation of the tea ceremony
accompanied the development in the 15th century of the shoin style of
room construction, featuring rush matting (tatami) for floors, sliding
doors, and built-in alcoves and asymmetrical shelves. In painting, the Muromachi
period is best known for a monochrome ink style that originated in China during
the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The landscape paintings of masters such as Shūbun
and Sesshū exemplify the adaptation of the style in Japan.
Many schools of painting flourished
during the Tokugawa period, including one that used Western techniques such as
shading and foreshortening to produce the illusion of space and depth. The most
popular by far, however, was genre art, or art depicting people at work and
play. From mid-Tokugawa times, the most popular medium for genre art was the
wood-block print. Artists often used the wood-block print technique to create
ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world” (referring to the pleasure quarters
of Japan’s great cities). Among the favorite subjects of ukiyo-e artists were
courtesans and kabuki actors. The artist Utamaro is particularly known for his
tall, willowy courtesans, while Sharaku famously captured the spirit and
emotions of kabuki actors. In the late Tokugawa period, genre art was dominated
by two artists, Hokusai and Hiroshige. Hokusai became famous throughout the
world for The Wave (1831), a view of Mount Fuji through a huge, curling
wave. Hiroshige created the print series Fifty-three Stations of the
Tōkaidō (1833), which is considered a masterpiece and is well known outside
Japan.
One of the greatest architectural works
of the Tokugawa period was the Katsura Detached Palace, built in the 17th
century. Its clean, geometric lines had a powerful influence on post-World War
II residential architecture in many foreign countries. By contrast, the
mausoleum of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu at Nikkō, built during the same period,
is extraordinary for its elaborate decoration.
Among Japan’s best-known modern
architects are Tange Kenzō, Ando Tadao, and Isozaki Arata. All have won
international fame. Tange’s buildings include the Hall Dedicated to Peace at
Hiroshima and the main Sports Arena for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Ando, who is
largely self-taught and a prolific theorist, is best known in the United States
for his Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Isozaki, who studied under
Tange, designed the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art and museums in Nice,
France, and Cairo, Egypt. See Japanese Art and Architecture.
D | Music and Dance |
The earliest reported form of music and
dance in Japan was gigaku, imported from China by a Korean performer
sometime in the early 6th century. In gigaku, masked dancers performed dramas to
the accompaniment of flute, drum, and gong ensembles.
The ancient music and dance of Shinto is
called kagura. In kagura, performers danced for the pleasure of the gods
and expressed prayers asking for prolonged or revitalized life. Drums, flutes,
and sometimes cymbals provided music, and as in gigaku, the dancers often wore
masks.
The ritual music of the emperor’s court,
gagaku, accompanied dancing called bugaku. In addition to the
instruments already mentioned, gagaku employed a type of double-reed pipe
or oboe (hichiriki) and a mouth organ (shō). Of all the musical
sounds of Japan, the exotic tones of these two instruments are probably the most
unusual to Western ears.
Sometime in the late 16th century,
Japanese musicians began playing a three-stringed, banjolike instrument called
the samisen, which had originated in the Ryukyu Islands. Both the kabuki
and puppet theaters adopted the instrument as an accompaniment, and it was also
played frequently by geisha, a class of professional female entertainers that
emerged in Tokugawa times. No sound is more symbolic of the Tokugawa “floating
world” than the notes of the samisen. Even today it commonly accompanies
classical dance recitals.
In the modern era the Japanese
wholeheartedly embraced Western classical music. Japan has produced some of the
world’s leading classical performers, conductors, and composers. Well-known
Japanese musicians of the 20th century include Ozawa Seiji, an internationally
renowned conductor, and Tōru Takemitsu, who gained fame for composing modern
music using traditional Japanese instruments. Modern Japanese dance draws on
both traditional and Western styles, and includes the avant-garde butō dance
form. See also Japanese Music.
E | Theater and Film |
Theater developed in close conjunction
with music and dance in premodern Japan. Thus gigaku, bugaku, and kagura were
early forms of theater. Later, various other elements were added to Japan’s
theatrical repertoire, including juggling, acrobatics, and magic. By the
Kamakura period, two major forms of theater incorporating all of these elements
had evolved: sarugaku and dengaku. In the late 14th century the
classical drama form of nō (meaning “ability”) was created out of the dramatic
elements of sarugaku and dengaku. Historians attribute this transformation
largely to the efforts of two dramatists, Kan’ami and his son Zeami. Kan’ami and
Zeami changed the straightforward, plot-oriented style of earlier dramatic forms
into a style of performance emphasizing symbolic meanings and graceful
movements.
A nō play has been described as a
dramatic poem that is based on remote or supernatural events and centers on a
dance by the main actor. The movements and dance in nō are highly stylized, even
ritualistic. Actors frequently use masks and wear resplendent robes, presenting
a sumptuous visual display to audiences. Nō plots are usually very simple. There
is little of the conflict between characters that is a cornerstone of Western
theater. Rather, the emotional or psychological problems of the main character
provide the theme of most nō plays. For example, in a typical play, a person
from the past returns as a ghost, and a Buddhist priest assists him or her in
overcoming worldly passions and achieving salvation in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land
paradise. The main character might be a warrior still fighting ancient battles
or a court lady from the Heian period still agonizing over a lost love. A small
orchestra of flutes and drums accompanies the actors, and a chorus narrates the
story and shares dialogue with the actors.
Kyōgen (“mad words”) are
humorous, fast-paced prose plays that developed along with nō. The earliest
kyōgen served as interludes in nō plays to provide background information about
the characters and their settings. But actors also performed kyōgen as unrelated
comical or farcical skits. In contrast to nō, which is usually serious and
gloomy, kyōgen skits provided medieval audiences with at least a measure of
broad, slapstick humor. In a common kyōgen plot, clever servants outwit their
warrior masters.
The townsman culture of the Tokugawa
period produced two new forms of theater, kabuki and puppet theater, in the 16th
and 17th centuries. Kabuki means “off balance” and was used to describe novel or
eccentric behavior. Although it drew upon the traditions of nō and kyōgen,
kabuki evolved primarily out of dances and skits performed by troupes of female
actors. Women performers were later banned from kabuki for engaging in
prostitution, and kabuki became all male. This led to the creation of the
onnagata, a man who plays women’s parts. Kabuki plays are composed of
numerous episodes and feature spectacular fights and dances, quick costume
changes, heroic sacrifices, and star-crossed lovers. The text of the plays is
less important than the acting, and kabuki actors embellish or alter scenarios
as they see fit. To reveal emotions, they display exaggerated facial expressions
and strike dramatic poses.
Japanese performers have used puppets to
entertain audiences at least since the Heian period. However, puppet theater
developed its characteristic form in the 16th century. In this form, puppet
theater brings together puppets that enact stories, chanters who narrate the
stories, and the playing of the samisen as accompaniment to the performance.
Puppet theater reached its high point in the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon,
whose best-known works focus on the conflict between duty and human feelings.
One plot, for example, follows a love affair between a merchant, already
committed by his family to another woman, and a prostitute. Often the lovers in
such plays commit double suicide. See also Japanese Drama; Asian Theater.
Japan has a vital modern theater, which
often combines elements of traditional Japanese dramatic forms with Western
themes and theatrical devices. Yet contemporary Japanese drama has probably
achieved its greatest success in film. Japan produced its first movies in the
1890s, and in the 20th century the Japanese film industry evolved into one of
the most prolific and respected in the world. Japanese film reached its golden
age in the period immediately before and after World War II. Among the
masterpieces of that time are the films of director Akira Kurosawa, whose most
famous films include Rashomon (1950) and The Seven
Samurai (1954). The quintessential Kurosawa actor was Mifune Toshirō,
who made 16 films with the director. Toshirō also performed in several American
movies.
Whereas Kurosawa is probably best known
for his samurai stories, including some based on Shakespeare such as Ran
(1985; the story of King Lear, set in 16th-century Japan), other Japanese
directors have gained fame for the aesthetic qualities of their work. One of the
finest such directors was Mizoguchi Kenji, whose beautiful film Ugetsu
monogatari (1953; Ugetsu, 1954), the story of an enchanted romance in
medieval Japan, earned wide acclaim and was one of the first films to draw
international attention to the quality of the Japanese film industry.
F | Museums and Libraries |
For a country of its size, Japan has a
large number of museums, with important collections in virtually every major
city. Two of the country’s finest museums are located in Tokyo: the Tokyo
National Museum, specializing in traditional Japanese art, and the National
Museum of Modern Art, housing both Japanese and foreign art. The Kyōto National
Museum, another of Japan’s major museums, contains Chinese and Japanese fine
arts, handicrafts, and archaeological items. The great variety of other Japanese
museums include archaeological, ethnographic, and ceramics museums. Moreover,
many Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines maintain collections of art.
Tokyo outranks all other Japanese cities
in number of major libraries. Among the most important is the National Diet
Library, Japan’s national library. It serves as an international book exchange
and an information center for Japan. Among the important university libraries in
Tokyo are the University of Tokyo Library, Meiji University Library, and Nihon
University Library. Major collections are housed in the libraries of the
provinces, such as the Ōsaka Prefectural Nakanoshima Library and the Kōbe City
Library. There are also many important university libraries outside of Tokyo,
such as the one at Kyōto University.
The Arts and Culture section of this
article was contributed by Paul Varley.
V | ECONOMY |
Japan is the world’s second largest economy
after the United States. In 2006 Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $4.37
trillion, compared to $13.16 trillion for the United States. Japan also has one
of the world’s highest living standards. Economists compare living standards in
different countries using a measure called purchasing power parity. This measure
takes into account the countries’ differing costs of living. By this measure,
Japan’s per capita GDP rose from 21 percent of the U.S. level in 1955 to 56
percent in 1970. By 1992 per capita GDP had reached $19,920, 86 percent of the
U.S. level. Despite the overall strength of the Japanese economy, in the late
1990s Japan was mired in its longest recession since World War II. GDP, which
had grown slowly in the early 1990s, fell 0.4 percent in 1997 and another 2.8
percent in 1998. This was the first time in the postwar era that Japan’s GDP
declined two years in a row. The recession continued into the early 2000s, but
economic growth gained strength late in 2005.
As is typical in a mature economy, services
make up the largest part of Japan’s economy. In 2004 services (such as trade,
government, and real estate) accounted for 68 percent of Japan’s GDP, while
industry (mining, manufacturing, and construction) made up 30 percent, and
agriculture (including forestry and fishing) contributed 2 percent.
A | Historical Development |
Japan’s economy experienced two periods of
rapid development in modern times. The first began in the late 19th century
after a long interval of national seclusion, and the second followed the end of
World War II in 1945. After recovering from the war, Japan experienced three and
a half decades of prosperity and generally steady growth, although problems
began to surface in the 1970s. Recession plagued Japan in the 1990s and early
2000s, spurring leaders to reevaluate the structure of the economy.
A1 | From the Meiji Restoration to World War II |
In 1868 a group of disaffected feudal
lords, court aristocrats, and samurai responded to the threat of foreign
domination by overthrowing Japan’s military government and replacing it with a
new imperial government under the Meiji emperor. The Meiji Restoration, as it
came to be known, ended 250 years of self-isolation for Japan and introduced an
era of rapid economic change. The country’s new rulers adopted the slogan “Rich
Country, Strong Army.” They wanted Japan to become economically and militarily
powerful so it could retain its independence. Yet Japan had no modern machinery,
steel mills, steam engines, telegraphs, railroads, postal system, or newspapers.
It had few natural resources aside from coal and silk. Nor did it have modern
business institutions, such as banking and public corporations. Its main
resource was a population that was highly literate for a preindustrial country.
At that time, 43 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls had some
schooling.
The country’s takeoff was explosive.
From 1890 through 1938, Japan’s GDP grew 3.3 percent each year, far faster than
the United States and the countries of Western Europe at a similar stage of
development. Manufacturing grew especially rapidly, soaring from 8 percent of
GDP in 1888 to 32 percent by 1938.
Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan had
conducted almost no trade. After the restoration, Japan welcomed foreign
advisers and sent missions to the United States, Germany, France, and Britain to
learn the best techniques in economy and government. Between 1885 and 1900
foreign trade grew to 18 percent of GDP. Still, to avoid dependence, Japan
restricted foreign investments and loans.
Initially, the government had to fill
the vacuum in promoting industrialization because business was so weak. The
government owned few industries, but from 1868 to 1900, government agencies
supplied more than one-third of all financial capital and encouraged modern
industries. By the turn of the century, business replaced government as the
leading economic force. Topping the corporate pyramid were a dozen large
corporate groups known as zaibatsu, which were headed by rich families
such as Mitsui, Iwasaki (operating under the company name Mitsubishi), and
Sumitomo.
The worldwide economic slump of the
1930s, combined with other factors, led Japan to increasingly centralize and
militarize its economy. The government passed laws giving itself control over
imports, power to direct private bank loans to priority industries and firms,
and authority to promote heavy industries needed by the military, such as
petroleum, machine tools, aircraft, iron and steel, and automobiles. Industries
were organized into cartels (groups of business firms acting in concert to
reduce economic competition in a particular market). Heavy industry rose from 35
percent of manufacturing in 1930 to 65 percent by 1940. The legacy of this
period was a pattern of corporate organization and government-business relations
that remains influential today.
A2 | Postwar Devastation and Reconstruction |
When World War II ended in 1945,
one-quarter of Japan’s buildings lay in ashes. The GDP was only one-third of its
prewar level. Riots broke out among people who were barely surviving on 1,000
calories worth of food per day. To get recovery started, the government
instituted a “priority production” system, subsidizing the manufacture of basic
products such as coal, fertilizer, steel, and electricity. Japan’s economy did
not return to its prewar GDP levels until 1955.
The United States, one of Japan’s
opponents in the war, occupied Japan militarily and controlled economic policy
from 1945 to 1952. At first, the occupation authorities embraced economic
democratization as their first priority. They introduced land reform and
permitted workers to unionize. They also broke up the zaibatsu, which owned 40
percent of all equity (stock) in Japanese companies. By the late 1950s, however,
the zaibatsu were reforming. The groups of affiliated companies were now called
keiretsu, and banks, rather than rich families, stood at their core.
The rise of the Cold War in the late
1940s pitted a bloc of countries led by the United States against another bloc
led by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). With the new
international situation, occupation authorities adopted a new priority: to make
Japan into a strong ally for the United States. The change in policy became
known as the reverse course. To promote economic growth, the United
States provided financial assistance and opened its markets to Japanese goods.
In 1950 the Korean War broke out, and the U.S. military began buying supplies
from Japan, creating enormous demand for Japanese goods. Economic recovery
exploded to 12 percent growth per year from 1950 to 1952. In 1952 Japan regained
its sovereignty and the U.S. occupation of Japan ended.
A3 | The Era of High Growth |
Japan’s GDP grew an average of 9 percent
annually from the end of postwar reconstruction in 1955 until the oil crisis of
1973 (called the oil shock in Japan), when international oil prices rose
dramatically. While countries often grow quite rapidly during their industrial
takeoff, Japan’s takeoff was unparalleled. In its years of highest growth, from
1965 to 1970, Japan’s GDP grew an average of 12 percent a year.
By 1973 Japan’s economy, five times as
large as in 1955, was the third largest in the world. People began speaking of
the “Japanese economic miracle” Instead of exporting easily broken toys and
cheap blouses, Japan was now renowned for its high quality steel, ships, cars,
and televisions.
The fruits of growth were widely spread
among the Japanese people. During this period, real (inflation-adjusted) wages
per person increased between 7 and 8 percent per year. By 1970 living standards
had tripled. Whereas in the 1950s few households enjoyed piped-in water, a
refrigerator, a car, a washing machine, or a color television, virtually every
household did by the late 20th century. Throughout the era of high growth, Japan
maintained one of the world’s most equal distributions of income as well as
consistently low unemployment and no permanent underclass.
Economists attribute Japan’s growth
during this period to a number of factors. One important element was high rates
of saving and investment. Traditionally, Japan’s household saving rates, about 7
to 9 percent of income, were not high by international standards. However, huge
tax incentives, increasing prosperity, and other factors gradually raised saving
rates to 20 percent of income by 1973. As a share of GDP, business savings from
growing corporate profits were even more important. Household and business
savings provided capital for high levels of investment in things such as new
factories and machinery that fed economic growth.
New technology and education also
stimulated growth. Japan invested heavily in technology imports in the 1950s,
and in several industries Japanese firms were among the first to adapt or
commercialize technology invented elsewhere. Acting before their U.S.
counterparts, Japanese steel makers built new plants with electric arc furnaces
that helped them to produce quality alloy steels more efficiently, and Japanese
television makers adopted solid-state technology that allowed them to produce
televisions that were more compact, powerful, and reliable.
The process of industrialization itself
accelerated growth, as many workers moved from low-productivity farming and
textile production into modern industries enjoying higher efficiency and
economies of scale (factors decreasing costs of production while increasing
output). In 1950 farmers outnumbered factory workers; by 1970 farmers and
fishers accounted for only 17 percent of all workers while the manufacturing
workforce had risen to 40 percent. Equally important, production of
higher-demand, higher-value goods, such as machinery, gradually replaced
lower-demand items, such as textiles. By 1970 much of Japan’s industrial output
consisted of products that had not even existed in the Japanese market 20 years
earlier, such as color televisions, petrochemicals, and air conditioners.
An export boom was also a critical
factor. From 1955 to 1971 Japanese exports increased 15 percent per year.
Without exports, Japan could not have paid for all the imports of raw material
and food it needed. Until the mid-1960s, Japan imported more goods than it
exported (a trade deficit) nearly every year. However, as a result of the
industrial shift to higher-demand goods, the country began to export more than
it imported (a trade surplus). The increase in exports accelerated
industrialization. Although industries such as steel, cars, and television got
their start serving the domestic market, all soon began relying on the export
market for growth.
Economists disagree about how important
government economic policy was in fostering Japan’s growth, but much of the
evidence indicates that it played a crucial role. Governmental measures helped
accelerate savings and investment, the absorption of new technologies, and the
shift to modern industries and high-value exports. Virtually every key export
industry enjoyed protection and promotion during its early stages. For example,
in 1953 Japan’s young automobile industry was almost wiped out by cheap European
car imports. In response, the government allowed only negligible imports of
foreign cars until 1965, when Japan’s auto industry was able to compete on its
own. In addition to protecting emerging industries, the government provided
special tax credits to favored industries and directed banks to provide
low-interest loans to targeted sectors. While some industries that received aid
were notable failures, such as petroleum refining and aviation, the overall
success rate was high. Without government industrial policy Japan would still
have industrialized, but perhaps not at “miracle” rates.
A4 | The Era of Slower Growth |
In the fall of 1973 the first oil shock
set off a global recession. Japan’s GDP declined for the first time since
postwar recovery. Then, from 1975 to 1990, Japan’s economy grew at 4 percent,
just half of its pre-1973 rate.
While the oil shock triggered the end of
high growth, fundamental trends were slowing Japan’s growth anyway. Most
importantly, once a country’s industrial takeoff is completed, growth always
slows dramatically. In addition, the fixed exchange rate system, which had held
the value of the yen (Japan’s basic unit of currency) steady since
the end of the 1940s, ended in 1971. The value of the yen rose, raising the
price of Japanese exports, which caused sales of Japanese goods overseas to
slow. From 1972 to 1990, exports grew at half the rate they had during the
high-growth era.
In response to the oil shocks of 1973
and 1979, Japan conserved on energy. It also shifted much of its manufacturing
from resource-intensive products such as steel to more capital-intensive and
knowledge-intensive products such as cars, consumer electronics, and computer
chips.
Despite the economic setbacks of the
1970s and 1980s, Japan seemed to be doing very well. Its growth rate was the
highest of the major industrialized countries. It consistently ran huge trade
surpluses despite a rising yen. Some analysts predicted that Japan would
overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.
However, Japan suffered from a dual
economy that made the growth of the 1980s unsustainable. Its export sectors,
spurred by competition with other countries, were superbly efficient. But the
sectors that produced goods for domestic consumption—farming, retailing,
construction, and materials industries such as glass and cement making—were
shielded from both domestic and foreign competition and thus were much less
efficient. Moreover, far more Japanese people worked in domestic than in export
sectors.
By the 1980s Japan no longer openly
protected its domestic industries from competition with foreign imports. The
government had begun to reduce overt trade restrictions such as quotas (limits
on the quantity of imports) and tariffs (taxes on imports) in the 1960s, and
most restrictions were eliminated by the end of the 1970s. Nevertheless, Japan
imported few industrial products that would compete with ones manufactured in
Japan. This was due in part to government-organized recession cartels. Japanese
industries that had excess capacity (that is, they could make more goods than
they could sell) formed associations to control production, allocate market
share, raise prices, and, some observers believed, block imports in hidden ways.
After 1987 official recession cartels were stopped, but some industry
associations continued these practices on their own.
Some foreign exporters who had
difficulty selling their products in Japan believed that Japan also maintained
invisible barriers to trade, such as collusion among members of keiretsu groups,
and government regulations that slowed the import process and made it more
expensive. Japan argued that its market was fully open and that foreign
exporters were not trying hard enough. Tensions over trade in the 1980s gave
rise to a series of negotiations between Japan and its trading partners,
particularly the United States. By the end of the 1980s Japan began to import
more manufactured goods, and by the late 1990s frictions over trade became less
prominent.
Government influence over private
business decisions also continued in an indirect manner. In the high-growth era,
the government guided the economy through clear laws and powers, such as the
open import restrictions of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry
(MITI) or the official list of favored industries for bank loans of the Ministry
of Finance (MOF). In recent decades, ministries have tended to use informal
“administrative guidance” (gyōsei shidō) instead. This guidance takes the
form of suggestions or directives that do not have the force of law. Businesses
generally comply voluntarily with administrative guidance; if they do not,
ministries may punish them indirectly by enforcing unrelated regulations. MITI
used administrative guidance in the 1980s to encourage Japanese auto
manufacturers to cooperate with voluntary export restrictions requested by the
United States. The effectiveness of administrative guidance varies widely from
industry to industry. In general, its power has diminished over time.
In the 1980s Japan compensated for its
domestic inefficiencies—and thereby temporarily hid them—by greatly increasing
investment. But its investment was also inefficient. Japan needed to invest 35
percent of GDP (private plus government investment) just to get the same growth
that a more efficient economy could have gotten from 25 percent. This was like
running on a treadmill that keeps going faster. Unless Japan devoted ever-larger
portions of national income to investment, growth would inevitably slow.
A5 | Bubble and Bust |
The structural flaws in Japan’s economy
came to a head in the late 1980s, first generating a five-year period of
financial euphoria known as the bubble, and then bringing on a collapse. After
the value of the yen rose sharply in 1985, Japanese exports fell and economic
growth slowed. In 1986 a report by the government-appointed Maekawa Commission
recommended fundamental structural reforms to avoid long-term stagnation.
Instead, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut interest rates to stimulate investment and
growth. This raised the price of stocks and real estate, which began to escalate
in a self-feeding spiral. By 1989 the average stock was valued at 100 times the
annual corporate earnings, an overvaluation of 400 to 500 percent. Rising stock
and real estate prices stimulated an investment boom that led to rapid economic
growth.
Fearing a crash, the BOJ steadily raised
interest rates in 1989 and 1990, hoping that the economy would slow gradually.
Instead, the bubble burst abruptly, as Japanese stocks lost nearly 70 percent of
their value between 1989 and 1992. The financial bust ended the economic boom.
From 1992 to 1994 growth averaged a meager 0.5 percent a year.
Presuming that Japan was just suffering
from a normal recession, the government responded with standard recipes to
stimulate the economy. The BOJ once again lowered interest rates, and the MOF
increased government spending. The economy appeared to respond, with growth
rebounding significantly in 1995 and 1996. Anxious to balance Japan’s budget and
calculating that it was safe to ease stimulus measures, the MOF reduced
government spending in 1996 and raised Japan’s consumption tax (a tax added to
the price of goods and services) in 1997. A few months later, the value of
several Southeast Asian currencies fell sharply, triggering a regional economic
crisis and jeopardizing Japanese trade and investments in the region.
Had Japan’s economy been healthy, it
could have absorbed these setbacks. Instead, a new recession began in April
1997. Within a year and a half of its 1997 peak, Japan’s GDP fell 5 percent. In
the late 1990s Japan’s stock market was still 65 percent below its 1989 peak,
and commercial real estate prices remained 80 percent below their highest
levels.
The combination of financial collapse
and recession meant that many companies could no longer repay their debts to
banks. Over time, the size of the unpayable debt kept increasing. By 1998 the
MOF said that bad debts amounted to about 80 trillion yen ($600 billion), or
about 15 percent of GDP. Many private estimates were twice as high.
In 1998 the government reversed itself
again and created three large spending packages. It also addressed the banking
problem with a series of bills that authorized the nationalization of failed
banks and the sale of bad assets, and provided funds to protect depositors and
inject government funds into the banks. The government hoped to spark recovery
by 1999, but Japan’s economy remained stagnant in the early 2000s. Signs of a
turnaround appeared in 2005 as exports rose.
B | Government Role in the Economy |
Government ownership of business
enterprises is very low in Japan. Since the early 1980s, the government has
steadily sold off the few big enterprises that it did own, such as Nippon
Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) and Japan National Railway (JNR). It still owns
the major television network, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK).
In banking, the government plays a big
role. In 1996 one-quarter of all banking assets were in Japan’s
government-controlled postal savings system, in which post offices accept
deposits into various types of savings accounts. Postal savings are turned over
to the MOF’s Trust Fund Bureau, which lends the money to businesses.
In addition, through extensive formal
regulations as well as administrative guidance, government ministries influence
private business activities. Japanese policymakers began calling for
deregulation of sectors including telecommunications and transportation, and the
Japanese government launched a series of moves to deregulate banks. Most of the
banking reforms, known as the Big Bang, were completed by 2001, and other
reforms were subsequently implemented to further deregulate financial
markets.
C | Labor |
In 2006 Japan’s labor force totaled 66.2
million workers. The biggest employers were services (23.5 percent);
manufacturing (22.3 percent); wholesale and retail trade (16.7 percent);
construction (10.6 percent); agriculture, forestry, and fishing (7.1 percent);
government (6.0 percent); transportation and communications (5.7 percent);
finance, insurance, and real estate (4.6 percent); and utilities (0.7
percent).
Traditionally, Japan has had a low
unemployment rate. It was 3.3 percent in 1996 and rose to a postwar high of 5.5
percent in late 2001. In 2006 men comprised 59 percent of the labor force and
women, 41 percent. Japan’s famed lifetime employment system, in which firms
employ workers for their entire career, covers about 20 percent of the
workforce, mainly full-time male workers in big companies. Small and medium-size
firms, for which the majority of Japanese work, do not offer this guarantee.
In 1945 only 3.2 percent of Japanese
workers were unionized. That year a law was passed establishing workers’ right
to organize, and by 1946 unionization had exploded to 41.5 percent. Initially,
most unions were controlled by Japan’s Socialist and Communist parties. A
pattern of frequent strikes, often violent, continued for years. Companies set
up their own company unions, which resulted in violent clashes with the leftist
unions. Union membership peaked at 50 percent of the workforce in the early
1950s.
Japan is now well-known for harmony
between labor and management, but it did not achieve this harmony until rapidly
rising living standards made union militancy unnecessary. Unionization fell to
33 percent of the workforce by 1964 and to about 20 percent by the early 21st
century. Over time, many unions cut their ties to leftist political parties and
became less militant. In 1989 the nation’s leading federations of private trade
unions merged into a single group, the Japan Trade Union Confederation, known as
Rengō.
D | Agriculture |
As of the early 2000s, agriculture
employed 5 percent of Japan’s labor force, down from 21 percent in 1970. In 2004
agriculture (along with forestry and fishing) constituted 2 percent of GDP.
Due to Japan’s many mountains, only 12.9
percent of the country’s total land area is cultivated or used for orchards.
Although farms are found in all parts of Japan, commercial farming is
concentrated in Hokkaidō, northern and western Honshū, and Kyūshū. Rice is the
most important crop, and more than 40 percent of farmland is devoted to rice
production. The government encourages farmers to convert rice fields to other
crops because Japan produces more rice than it needs. In addition to rice, wheat
and barley are important grain crops. Other leading crops include sugar beets,
potatoes, cabbages, and citrus fruits. Relatively little acreage is used for
livestock.
Although agricultural productivity
increased dramatically in Japan after World War II, Japan still imports much of
its food. In 1946 and 1947, U.S. occupation authorities confiscated land from
absentee landlords and resold it to former tenant farmers at low prices. Japan
also embarked on a program to modernize farming with new crop strains,
fertilizers, and machinery. These measures raised rural living standards and
elevated farm productivity. However, as farm plots remained small, averaging 1.4
hectares (3.5 acres), productivity leveled off. To help maintain farmers’
incomes, the government eventually restricted food imports and granted subsidies
to farmers amounting to as much as 75 percent of their incomes. Nevertheless,
most farmers work part-time in industry in addition to running their farms.
Despite the subsidies and quotas, Japan imports about a third of its food.
E | Forestry and Fishing |
Japan is still heavily forested, but the
trees are needed to prevent soil erosion, and the timber harvest remains
relatively small. Japan’s annual timber harvest in 2006 was 16.7 million cu m
(590 million cu ft). Japan imports most of its lumber needs, mostly in the form
of logs and raw lumber rather than as finished products. Many houses in Japan
are made of wood, and thus timber is in great demand.
Japan’s fishing industry is one of the
largest in the world, with a total fish catch of 5.4 million metric tons in
2005. Coastal fishing by small boats, set nets, or breeding techniques
contributes about one-third of the industry’s total production, while offshore
fishing from medium-sized boats accounts for more than half of the total.
Deep-sea fishing by large vessels operating far from Japan makes up the
remainder. Among the species caught are sardines, bonito, crab, shrimp, salmon,
pollock, mackerel, squid, clams, saury, sea bream, tuna, and yellowtail. Japan
is also among the world’s few remaining whaling countries. Although it
officially outlawed commercial whaling in 1986 in conformance with an
international ban on whaling, Japan continues to hunt minke whales in waters
near Antarctica, saying this is for scientific purposes.
Fish is second only to rice as a staple in
the Japanese diet. Japan’s fishing fleet provides most of the fish consumed
domestically, although due to rising demand and decreasing catches, fish imports
exceed exports.
F | Mining and Manufacturing |
Japan’s mineral resources are tiny, and
the country is almost entirely dependent on imports. Among the minerals mined in
Japan are limestone, coal, copper, lead, and zinc.
As in all maturing modern economies,
Japan’s manufacturing sector has decreased in importance. Manufacturing also
suffered from the stagnation of the 1990s. Between the early 1990s and 1996,
850,000 manufacturing jobs were eliminated; it was estimated that at least 2
million more were lost by 2004. Manufacturing output accounted for about 30
percent of GDP in the early 2000s, up from 28 percent in 1990 but down from 36
percent in 1970.
Japan’s leading manufacturing industries
include general and electrical machinery, food and beverages, transportation
equipment, chemicals, fabricated metal products, iron and steel, and publishing
and printing. Japan is among world leaders in production and export of
automobiles, steel, ships, machine tools, and electronic equipment.
G | Services |
Services have gained in importance for
Japan’s economy. Their contribution to GDP has increased from 48 percent in 1966
to 55 percent in 1981, to 68 percent in 2004.
The most important service sectors are
real estate, wholesale and retail trade, personal services (such as hairdressing
and health care), business services (such as business accounting and legal
services), transportation and communications, and finance and insurance.
H | Tourism |
In 2006, 7.3 million foreigners visited
Japan, spending $8.5 billion. Popular destinations include Tokyo and the
historic capitals of Nara and Kyōto, with their many ancient temples. The bulk
of Japan’s foreign visitors come from South Korea, the United States, China, and
the United Kingdom.
I | Energy |
Japan depends almost entirely on imports
for oil, natural gas, and coal. Following the oil shocks of the 1970s, Japan
developed effective ways of conserving energy. Its energy use per person in the
1990s was less than half that of the United States. Japan also moved away from
using petroleum. As a source of energy, petroleum fell from 75 percent of total
energy consumption in 1973 to 57 percent in the early 1990s. Although its
natural energy sources are limited, Japan sustains a rapidly expanding
industrial sector and a large populace with one of the highest standards of
living in the world. To do this it has followed a policy of developing nuclear
energy. Nuclear power generated from more than 50 nuclear plants provided 30
percent of the country’s energy in the early 2000s.
In 2003 Japan consumed 946 billion
kilowatt-hours of electricity, amounting to 7,413 kilowatt-hours per person.
Japan generates most of its electricity in thermal plants using coal or
petroleum, nuclear power plants, and hydroelectric plants.
J | Transportation |
Japanese depend heavily on rail transport.
Railroad track in 2005 totaled 20,052 km (12,460 mi), of which about 71 percent
was electrified. In the late 1950s Japan began constructing the Shinkansen, a
high-speed rail network linking major cities. The Shinkansen runs sleek trains
known as bullet trains. The first branch, linking Tokyo and Ōsaka, began
operating in 1964. Later construction extended the Shinkansen from Fukuoka on
the island of Kyūshū in the south to Hachinohe in the north and to several
cities in the west.
Japan has 1,177,000 km (732,000 mi) of
roads, of which 5,054 km (3,140 mi) are expressways. In 2004 Japan had 441 cars
for every 1,000 people. Bridges or tunnels link all of Japan’s main islands. In
1998 Japan completed construction of the world’s longest suspension bridge, the
Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. Linking Kōbe and Awaji Island over the Akashi Strait, the
bridge has a center span of 1,990 m (6,529 ft).
Japan has one of the world’s largest
merchant fleets, with 6,519 vessels totaling 12.8 million gross registered tons
in 2007. Japan Air Lines, established in 1951, provides international air
service, while All Nippon Airways, primarily a domestic service, has expanded
its international operations in recent years. Tokyo is the nation’s major hub
for both domestic and international flights. Ōsaka is the second largest center
for air travel, and important airports are also located in Nagoya, Sapporo, and
Fukuoka.
K | Communications |
All media enjoy freedom of communication
in Japan. Daily newspapers published in the country number 108. Their combined
circulation exceeds 73 million, one of the highest in the world. The largest
dailies are Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, which are
circulated nationally. The Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai
(NHK), dominates the broadcasting industry, operating two public television
networks and three radio networks nationally, as well as satellite channels. NHK
programs are financed by viewer subscriptions. Several commercial broadcasters
also offer television and radio programs, and many viewers subscribe to cable
television or satellite services. In 2000 Japan had 728 television sets and 956
radios for every 1,000 people.
Japan has one of the world’s best
telecommunications systems and high per capita telephone ownership. Until the
mid-1980s the government-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) provided all
telephone service. In 1985 NTT became a private company, and other companies
were permitted to enter the field. However, despite the somewhat increased
competition, phone call rates in Japan remain high by international standards.
Cellular phone usage has grown rapidly since new carriers offering digital
mobile service entered the Japanese market in the mid-1990s. Personal computers
in use in 2004 totaled 542 per 1,000 people, and Japan had the second largest
number of computers linked to the Internet, after the United States.
L | Foreign Trade and Investment |
In 2003 Japan’s merchandise exports
totaled $472 billion. Its imports totaled $383 billion. The largest share of
this trade surplus comes from the United States. China and the United States are
Japan’s leading trade partners, with other countries in Asia coming next.
In general Japan exports manufactured
goods and imports raw materials, food, and manufactured goods; manufactures
accounted for 93 percent of exports compared with 57 percent of imports in 2003.
Japan’s leading exports include general and electrical machinery, automobiles,
chemicals, steel, and textiles. Chief imports include machinery and equipment,
food, fuels, chemicals, ores and metals, and agricultural raw materials.
As of the early 2000s, Japan had run a
trade surplus (meaning its exports exceeded its imports) every year since 1965,
with the exception of the oil shock years. The size of the surplus fluctuated up
and down depending on the yen exchange rate and the relative growth rates of
Japan and its trading partners.
Japanese firms used the trade surpluses to
invest heavily in overseas stocks, bonds, bank loans, real estate, and new
business ventures. Beginning in the 1980s, many Japanese companies established
production facilities overseas, due to both the increased value of the yen and
growing resistance to Japanese exports from Japan’s trading partners.
Manufacturing or assembling goods at facilities in foreign countries gave
Japanese companies several advantages. The companies were able to meet the
foreign countries’ domestic content requirements (which mandate that a certain
percentage of an item be produced within the foreign country), avoid quotas and
other restrictions, and in some cases, save money on land or labor costs.
Japanese firms now produce more cars and consumer electronics outside Japan than
in Japan.
Japan is an active member of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Asia
Pacific Economic Community (APEC).
M | Currency and Banking |
Japan’s basic unit of currency is the
yen (116 yen equal U.S.$1; 2006 average). The Bank of Japan,
established in 1882, is the country’s central bank and sole issuer of currency.
About 140 private commercial banks constitute the heart of the financial system.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is one of the world’s leading securities markets.
The Economy section of this article was
contributed by Richard Katz.
VI | GOVERNMENT |
Japan is a parliamentary democracy. An
emperor acts as functional head of state, although his official status under the
constitution is the “symbol” of the Japanese nation and its people. Japan is a
unitary state, in which the authority of the central government is superior to
that of the country’s prefectural governments. However, Japan’s 47 prefectures
and several thousand city, town, and village governments enjoy a significant
degree of autonomy over local affairs.
A | Constitution |
The Constitution of Japan became
effective in 1947 as an amendment to the 1889 Constitution of the Empire of
Japan (also called the Meiji constitution for the emperor Meiji, who promulgated
it). The 1947 constitution was created during the military occupation of Japan
by the Allied Powers following World War II and reflects reforms proposed by the
occupation authorities. Occupation officials produced a draft constitution,
which was revised by American and Japanese officials. The draft was then debated
in Japan’s parliament, where Japanese legislators added nearly four dozen
amendments. The resulting constitution made several fundamental changes to
Japan’s government, the most significant of which involved the structure of
government.
The Meiji constitution was adopted not
long after Japan opened its borders to the West. It attempted both to preserve
the authority of the centuries-old imperial line and to introduce a
parliamentary government, which necessarily limited the power of the emperor.
The result was a sometimes-ambiguous delegation of powers. The Meiji
constitution enshrined the emperor at the top of government, granting him the
authority to declare war, make peace, conclude treaties, command the military,
and promulgate all laws. However, in practice and by tradition, the emperor
remained passive, allowing others to act in his name.
The Meiji constitution also failed to
provide an effective mechanism for resolving conflicts between the executive and
legislative branches of government. Any new legislation, including the annual
budget, required the approval of both the emperor’s executive cabinet of
ministers and the legislature. Yet the politically powerful cabinet was not
responsible to the relatively weak legislature. This situation led to frequent
battles between the branches, as lawmakers used their power over the budget to
obtain leverage in other matters. The constitution did not contain express
limitations on the legislature’s powers, so the judiciary had no occasion to
review statutes for their constitutionality—and thereby to check legislative
overreaching. The constitution did, however, significantly restrict the scope
and substance of administrative enactments. Thus the courts, which were fully
independent of the political branches, played an important role in enforcing
these constraints. The military was able to exploit this standoff between the
branches to take effective control of the government during the years leading up
to World War II. Military leaders claimed that they were not subject to civilian
control because the emperor—the nation’s absolute sovereign—was the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
The postwar constitution corrected most
of these structural shortcomings. The emperor continues to function as head of
state, but only as a symbol of the nation. His duties now are primarily
ceremonial, such as receiving ambassadors and convening legislative sessions.
All law-making authority is vested in the Diet, a bicameral (two-house)
legislature. The executive cabinet is fully accountable to the legislature, with
the majority party (or coalition) in the Diet selecting a prime minister, who
then appoints a cabinet. The judiciary has the authority to rule on the
constitutionality of all legislation.
The postwar constitution also expanded
and more fully protected the political and social rights of Japanese citizens.
The Meiji constitution had granted a number of rights to subjects of the
emperor, including the right to trial by judges and freedom of religion, speech,
and assembly. None of these rights were absolute, however. All could be modified
by statute. By contrast, the postwar constitution guarantees more than 25
specific rights and freedoms of Japanese citizens. Among the rights protected by
the constitution are the rights to minimum standards of living and equal
education, the right to work, and the right of workers to organize and bargain
collectively. Constitutionally protected freedoms include freedom from
discrimination on the basis of “race, creed, social status or family origin,”
freedom of occupation, and academic freedom. Most of these rights and freedoms
can be limited by legislation if necessary for the public welfare.
The most controversial aspect of the
postwar constitution is Article 9, which demilitarized Japan. By its provisions,
Japan renounces war or the threat of war as a means of settling international
disputes and is prohibited from maintaining military forces. Although its
origins are disputed, Article 9 was included in the constitution at the
insistence of the occupation authorities.
Japan’s constitution has not been amended
since 1947, although from time to time proposals are introduced to revise some
of its provisions, particularly those on demilitarization and the status of the
emperor. Public support for constitutional revision is weak, as acceptance of
the constitution and its fundamental principles has broadened over time.
B | Executive |
Executive power in Japan is vested in a
cabinet, headed by a prime minister. The prime minister is elected by the Diet
and typically is the leader of the majority party in the Diet. The prime
minister has the power to appoint and dismiss other cabinet members. If the Diet
passes a vote of no confidence, the prime minister must either resign or
dissolve the lower house of the Diet and hold a new general election in hopes of
winning majority support in the legislature. In addition to the prime minister,
the cabinet consists of the heads of 12 ministries and the directors of 9
administrative agencies.
B1 | Ministries and Administrative Agencies |
Japan’s ministries and agencies are
staffed primarily by career civil servants. Most ministries have only two
politically appointed posts—the minister and one of two vice ministers. The
influence of career ministry and agency officials is enhanced by several
features of the organization of Japan’s government. First, the size of the
national civil service is relatively small compared to most other industrial
democracies. The civil service also is highly professional, with potential
employees subject to strict national examinations. Finally, nearly all civil
servants in Japan spend their entire careers within a single ministry or agency.
Although temporary transfers to other agencies have become common, there is
little opportunity for permanent career change among public agencies or, until
retirement, into private enterprises. Japanese officials thus develop a strong
sense of identification and loyalty to the single ministry or agency in which
they work. Each of these factors contributes to the cohesion and stability of
Japan’s ministries and agencies and thereby their political influence.
Some ministries wield more influence
within the government than others. The Ministry of Finance (MOF) initially
formulates the annual budget, which ensures its preeminence among all the
ministries. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), which has
jurisdiction over export and import policies as well as domestic industrial
policy, is also very influential. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is
another top organization. The prestige of these ministries makes them highly
sought-after places of employment and draws some of Japan’s best minds to public
service.
B2 | Role of Ministries and Agencies in the Legislative Process |
As is the case in other parliamentary
democracies, Japan’s ministries and administrative agencies play a relatively
active role in creating legislation. A law is often drafted initially by
bureaucrats in the ministry or agency with jurisdiction and technical expertise
over its subject matter. Nevertheless, the majority party in the Diet ultimately
controls all legislative enactments, primarily through cabinet oversight. Before
the law is sent to the Diet for a vote, the cabinet’s Legislation Bureau may
review or revise it. Therefore, all legislation in Japan reflects policies that
are either determined or approved by the cabinet.
In addition to cabinet oversight, the
ministries are also constrained by the need for broad consensus among those
affected by proposed legislation. Ministries incorporate the views of academic
specialists and private interests through special advisory commissions. The
drafting ministry also takes into account the views of career officials in other
ministries or agencies affected by the legislation. The final product of Japan’s
legislative process generally reflects the views of the leaders of the majority
party in the Diet, individual members of the Diet whose support is politically
significant, and influential private interests.
C | Legislature |
Japan’s legislature, the National Diet,
comprises two houses—a lower House of Representatives and an upper House of
Councillors. The House of Representatives has 480 members, 300 of whom are
elected by simple majority vote in single-member districts (geographical areas
that each have one representative). The remaining 180 members are elected by
proportional representation from a list of candidates selected by the political
parties. The maximum term of office for representatives is four years. Their
term may be shorter, however, if the prime minister or members of the House of
Representatives decide to dissolve the house before the term is up in order to
hold a general election. The House of Councillors has 242 members, of whom 96
are elected by proportional representation from a national constituency and 146
are elected from Japan’s 47 prefectures. Councillors’ term of office is six
years, with one-half of the members elected every three years. The upper house
is not subject to dissolution.
A bill becomes law if a majority in each
house approves it. However, if a bill does not receive upper-house approval, it
can still be passed into law if two-thirds of the lower house approves it on a
second vote. If the upper and lower houses disagree over approval of the budget,
the selection of the prime minister, or adoption of treaties with foreign
countries, the decision of the lower house becomes law after 30 days without a
second vote. For this reason the House of Representatives is the more powerful
of the two bodies.
D | Judiciary |
Japan’s court system is organized in four
tiers. At the top is the Supreme Court. Its 15 justices have jurisdiction to
hear appeals on issues of law (those involving legal interpretation, as opposed
to the determination of facts). Below the Supreme Court are eight high courts
with jurisdiction to hear appeals on issues of both law and fact. District
courts serve as the principal courts of first instance, where ordinary civil and
criminal cases are first brought to trial. In the bottom tier are summary
courts; their jurisdiction is restricted to civil cases involving claims of
900,000 yen or less and minor criminal cases. For every district court there is
also a separate family court with jurisdiction over domestic relations cases,
including contested divorces, succession, and other family matters, as well as
juvenile offenses. Domestic relations cases in the family court must be
submitted to a panel of court-appointed lay conciliators who try to reconcile
the parties.
The postwar constitution provides
explicitly for the power of judicial review. As in the United States, courts at
all levels may rule on the constitutionality of any statute or other formal
government measure. As in Germany, Japan’s appellate courts also have the power
of revision, or the power to enter new judgments on appeal. Japan does
not have a jury system. Most first instance district court cases are tried by a
three-judge panel. Japan has relatively few judges, and judicial caseloads tend
to be extraordinarily heavy.
The Japanese judiciary is notable for its
autonomy and public trust. Judicial candidates receive extensive training at a
government institute, then serve a ten-year term as assistant judge before being
promoted to full judgeship. As a matter of law, the cabinet appoints all judges
except the chief justice, who is appointed by the emperor at the direction of
the cabinet. In practice, however, the cabinet accepts the recommendations of
the Supreme Court in the appointment and promotion of lower court judges, and
the advice of nominating agencies and senior judges in appointing justices to
the Supreme Court. Lower court judges serve ten-year terms, which are almost
always renewed. All judges may be removed by impeachment, and Supreme Court
justices may also be removed by popular vote when their names appear on the
ballot in the first election after their appointment and every ten years
thereafter.
The Supreme Court, in addition to
nominating lower court judges and hearing appeals, also sets judicial procedures
and manages the judicial system. By convention, 5 of the 15 Supreme Court
justices are career judges, 5 are former practicing lawyers or prosecutors, and
5 are former government officials or scholars. Japan’s most senior career judges
tend to share markedly conservative attitudes toward the role of the courts and
the foundations of public trust. Their influence in the administration of the
judiciary has thus ensured a cautious judiciary that generally follows rather
than leads judicial and public consensus.
E | Local Government |
Japan is divided into a total of 47
prefectures. In addition to 43 regular prefectures, including Okinawa, there are
four special prefectures: Tokyo, which constitutes a metropolitan prefecture;
Kyōto and Ōsaka, both urban prefectures; and Hokkaidō, a special prefectural
district. Below the prefectural level are cities, towns, and villages.
Under the postwar constitution, local
units of government have significantly greater autonomy than they did under the
prewar system. Each prefecture is governed by a popularly elected governor and a
unicameral (single-house) prefectural assembly. Cities, towns, and villages also
have popularly elected mayors and legislative assemblies. Local governments have
authority to levy taxes, but they still depend on the national government for
grants and subsidies. The national government exercises control over local
governments through their fiscal dependency and through national legislation,
which local authorities must implement.
F | Political Parties |
Political parties have existed in Japan
since the 1870s, but they began to develop more fully when the first national
legislature was created in 1890, following the adoption of the Meiji
constitution.
F1 | The Liberal Democratic Party |
In post-World War II Japan, the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) became the dominant political party. The LDP was created
in 1955 from the union of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, two
conservative parties that emerged in the aftermath of the war. The party’s
philosophy is not well defined, but traditionally it emphasized economic
development and close ties with the United States. In recent years it has also
focused on administrative reform and economic liberalization. For many decades,
the party was dominated by relatively stable factions grouped around politically
powerful leaders. However, the factions recently have become more volatile. The
LDP and its predecessors governed Japan from 1946 until 1993, with the exception
of a brief period in 1947-1948, when Socialist Party prime minister Tetsu
Katayama formed a coalition government that lasted for ten months. Ashida
Hitoshi, leader of the Democratic Party, succeeded Katayama as prime minister
and kept the left-center coalition together for another five months.
In 1993 the LDP again lost control of
the government. A series of corruption scandals in the late 1980s and early
1990s caused the LDP to lose its majority in the upper house, and the party
began to fracture. For several years the LDP was able to maintain control of the
Diet through its hold on the more powerful lower house. However, by mid-1993 a
number of leading politicians and their supporters had withdrawn from the party,
causing the LDP to lose its majority in the lower house on the eve of national
elections. The elections produced a one-seat gain for the LDP, but the party did
not regain a majority.
An eight-party coalition of opposition
parties governed Japan from 1993 to 1996, but the LDP remained the largest
single party in the Diet. It returned to power in 1996 when it formed a
coalition government with two opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party of
Japan (SDPJ) and New Party Sakigake. In 1997 the LDP regained a small majority
in the lower house, and the three-party coalition fell apart the following year.
To improve its ability to pass legislation in the Diet, the LDP subsequently
formed coalitions with minor parties, including the Liberal Party and New
Komeito.
F2 | Opposition Parties |
Until recently, Japan’s leading
opposition party was the SDPJ (known as the Japan Socialist Party until 1991).
For many years the party embraced a leftist platform, advocating socialist
revolution and military neutrality. With other opposition parties, it also
championed various social welfare issues, such as national health insurance. In
the late 1980s the SDPJ began to move to the right, dropping the goal of
socialist revolution from its party platform. Two of the party’s leaders have
served as prime minister: Tetsu Katayama in 1947-1948, and Murayama Tomiichi
from 1994 to 1996. In the late 1990s the SDPJ lost its former prominence as a
variety of new parties emerged as the LDP’s principal opposition.
Japan has several other major
long-standing opposition parties. The Japan Communist Party (JCP) advocates
unarmed neutrality and a peaceful transition to socialism. New Komeito is a
centrist party that was initially affiliated with a religious organization known
as Sōka Gakkai but officially severed its ties to the group in 1970. The
Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) was formed by a right-wing group that split
from the SDPJ in 1960.
With the fracturing of the LDP in the
early 1990s, several new opposition parties were formed by LDP defectors. The
most important of these was the Japan New Party, which advocated government
reform. Its leader, Hosokawa Morihiro, became prime minister at the head of the
eight-party coalition government in 1993. After the coalition fell apart in
1994, the Japan New Party merged with several other reform groups to form the
New Frontier Party (NFP; in Japanese, Shinshinto). The NFP split apart in 1997,
giving rise to a number of new parties, including the Liberal Party, which
entered into a coalition with the LDP in 1999. However, the Liberal Party was
absorbed by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2003. The DPJ is a centrist
party that was founded in the 1990s to advocate reforms such as the
decentralization of government power. In 2005 a group of LDP defectors who
opposed the reforms of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (Western style) formed
another new party, the New People’s Party.
F3 | Electoral Reform |
Japanese politics have long been
characterized by strong political factions. During the years of LDP dominance,
many observers felt that political competition among the LDP factions was more
significant than that among the different parties. Factions have been accused of
creating negative effects such as raising the cost of elections, fostering
influence-peddling, and promoting individual politicians rather than beneficial
public policies.
Many political analysts believed that
Japan’s pre-1994 electoral system contributed to the strength of factions. From
1925 to 1994 voters elected Diet members from medium-sized, multimember
districts (geographical areas that have more than one representative). Most
parties put forward candidates for more than one of the available seats, but
each voter could vote for only one candidate. Under this system it was possible
for a single popular candidate to win such a large percentage of the vote that
the party’s remaining candidates might lose to minority party candidates. In
this case, the number of seats the party controlled in the Diet would not
reflect its popular support within the district. Parties were thus forced to
organize intensively at the local level during elections in order to encourage
voters to distribute their votes evenly among the party’s candidates.
Furthermore, in order to win votes, candidates had to distinguish themselves
from their party’s other candidates, often by developing a personal following,
or faction. Although the system was thought to ensure greater representation for
minority parties, the cost of local organization and factionalism was
great.
In 1994 the Diet adopted a number of
electoral reforms. These included restrictions on the fundraising activities of
individual politicians and the introduction of a mixed system of single-member
electoral districts and proportional representation. The reforms give the party
power, at the expense of factions, over political candidates. The effect of the
reforms on factions nevertheless remains uncertain. The turmoil of party
politics since the early 1990s largely reflects the instability of factions,
rather than that of parties or politicians. Many of the newly created
conservative parties were factions within the LDP before 1993. Since then they
have been reconstituted as separate political parties. These parties
continuously change and realign themselves, but they are dominated by a
relatively constant group of leaders.
G | Defense |
Article 9 of the postwar constitution
renounces war and the maintenance of military forces. It also establishes both
legal and political restraints for all government decisions related to defense.
Within these parameters Japan maintains the technologically most advanced
military establishment in East Asia. Although Japan spends more on defense than
any of its neighbors, it still spends less than half of the amount spent by the
United States (measured as a percentage of gross domestic product).
Known today as the Japanese Self-Defense
Forces (SDF), Japan’s military was first established as the National Police
Reserve in 1950. The creation of the SDF has been legally justified on the basis
that all nations possess an inherent right of self-defense. As its name implies,
the SDF’s stated purpose is to defend the country from attack rather than to
fight aggressive wars. It also carries out domestic disaster relief operations.
Service in the SDF is voluntary. In 2004 the SDF consisted of about 239,900
members. These comprised an army (148,200), a navy (44,400), an air force
(45,600), and a central staff. The country also has a coast guard. All police
forces in Japan are controlled by the central government.
Legal and political constraints prevent
Japan from participating fully in collective international military actions.
Japan’s government has long interpreted Article 9 as prohibiting the deployment
of the SDF outside of Japan. Thus, under the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation
and Security between Japan and the United States, still in effect, both nations
pledge to resist any attack on Japanese territory, but Japan has no obligation
to defend the United States from attack. In 1997 a controversial revision to the
guidelines for U.S.-Japan military cooperation extended the scenarios for
cooperation to include emergencies “near Japan.”
Japan’s constitution also limits its
participation in United Nations (UN) military and peacekeeping operations. Under
substantial international pressure, Japan provided funds but not personnel in
the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991). After the war, Japan sent mine sweepers to
help remove mines from the gulf. In 1992 the Diet passed legislation permitting
Japanese forces to participate in UN peacekeeping operations in noncombatant
roles, and since then the SDF has taken part in several operations, including
one to monitor a peace treaty signed in Cambodia in 1991. Japan also sent SDF
troops to Iraq (see U.S.-Iraq War) in the early 2000s. Japan’s ability to
participate actively in regional and international security arrangements remains
a significant domestic and international issue.
H | International Affairs and Organizations |
After World War II Japan pursued a set of
international affairs policies associated with Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru.
The so-called Yoshida Doctrine emphasized economic growth, dependence on the
United States for security and leadership in international affairs, and
avoidance of independent international political commitments. In recent years
Japan has displayed greater independence, but Japanese foreign policy is still
relatively passive and emphasizes caution and consensus.
While Japan rarely asserts itself
independently, it does participate actively in international organizations and
humanitarian efforts. Japan has been a member of the UN since 1956, and it plays
a prominent role in a number of UN agencies, including the Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD), the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). In the early 2000s Japan was
seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, the most
powerful UN body. Since the 1970s Japan has become a major source of foreign aid
to developing countries, particularly in Asia.
The Government section of this article
was contributed by John O. Haley.
VII | HISTORY |
Human beings may have inhabited the
Japanese island chain as early as 200,000 years ago. Very little is known about
where these people came from or how they arrived on the islands. However, during
the ice ages of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million to 10,000 years before the
present) sea levels were lower than they are today, and a land bridge
temporarily linked the Japanese islands to the Korea Peninsula and eastern
Siberia on the Asian continent. Historians theorize that successive waves of
Paleolithic hunters from the Asian mainland may have followed herds of wild
animals across these land routes. The Paleolithic culture of Japan’s earliest
inhabitants produced rough stone tools and articles of bone, bamboo, and
wood.
The Paleolithic culture of prehistoric
Japan gave way to a Neolithic culture around 10,000 bc. Archaeological evidence suggests
that a large number of Neolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers migrated to Japan
before sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. Known as the Jōmon people
(after the cord markings that decorated their pottery), these immigrants used
more sophisticated bone and stone tools and low-fired clay pots, but they did
not know how to work metals.
The arrival of paddy rice cultivation,
bronze weapons, and iron-working techniques in Kyūshū around 300 bc revolutionized the lives of the
islands’ inhabitants. Agriculture enabled peasant cultivators to store food
surpluses from year to year and encouraged them to abandon the nomadic
hunter-gatherer lifestyle and live in fixed settlements. The use of iron farming
tools as well as other implements made of wood increased peasants’ productivity,
and as productivity grew, so did the population. By ad 300 the new agricultural way of life
(called Yayoi culture after the archaeological site where its artifacts were
first discovered) had spread to the majority of the population. The
hunter-gatherer way of life persisted only in the northern part of Honshū.
Although some historians hypothesize that
Yayoi culture was the result of another major migration from the Asian continent
by sea, this theory is not universally accepted. DNA evidence suggests that
modern Japanese people descend from both the Jōmon and the Yayoi peoples, but it
is also likely that migration from the continent continued in later centuries,
as the majority of the modern Japanese gene pool reflects an inflow from the
continent after agriculture arrived. The Ainu inhabitants of the northern island
of Hokkaidō and the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands to the south are the only
people on the Japanese archipelago who appear to have more direct genetic links
to the Jōmon people.
A | Development of the Early State |
The earliest settlers of the islands did
not have a very complex political organization. They lived in small, relatively
self-sufficient village communities. Eventually, clusters of villages united in
small territorial or tribal units under local chieftains. Archaeological
evidence suggests that by the 2nd and 3rd centuries ad fighting broke out among these local
chieftains as they sought to expand their territories. Fortified hilltop and
highland village sites surrounded by moats or earthen embankments became
increasingly common.
Chinese historical chronicles provide
additional evidence of the state of Japanese political organization during this
period. The first recorded contact between Japan and China occurred in ad 57, when emissaries of a “king”
(likely a tribal chief) of a territory in “Wo” (the Chinese name for Japan)
arrived at China’s imperial court and received a gold seal from the emperor.
According to Chinese reports from that time, by the 3rd century the Wo people
were divided into a number of small “countries,” probably consisting of tribal
confederations.
By the 4th century local rulers in
Japan’s Yamato region, a rich and fertile plain south of the modern city of
Kyōto, had begun to build large burial mounds (kofun). The moated earthen
mounds cover stone burial chambers. The mounds often combined a round top with a
square bottom in a shape that resembles a keyhole. The size and complexity of
the mounds indicate that the Yamato rulers controlled considerable labor forces
and other resources. The largest keyhole-shaped mound, covering 60 hectares (150
acres), dwarfed in area, if not in height, the great pyramids of Egypt. Scholars
estimate that constructing this mound required the labor of 1,000 or more people
working full time for four years. Historical records suggest that by the 6th
century the Yamato ruling family, mobilizing superior manpower, technical
skills, and material resources, had brought many of the small “countries” on the
Japanese archipelago under loose control.
Clay figurines (haniwa) placed
around the periphery of the mounds and burial goods found within them indicate
that those buried were horse-mounted warriors equipped with body armor and
archery weapons. Some historians have used this archaeological evidence to
hypothesize that an invasion of horse riders from the Asian continent in the 5th
century brought with it the elements of Kofun culture. Most do not accept this
theory. Given the state of shipbuilding technology at that time, it does not
seem likely that a large invading force and their mounts could have crossed over
from the Korea Peninsula.
Discoveries at the burial mounds,
however, indicate that a continuous flow of new technologies, new materials, and
immigrants was arriving in Japan from the Korea Peninsula. The Japanese learned
how to cast bronze spearheads and bells, and historical records indicate that,
by the late 5th century, Korean artisans had brought in more advanced methods of
working iron, making swords and armor, firing finer and more durable ceramics,
and manufacturing stirrups, bridles, and saddles. The Chinese writing system was
introduced to Japan at about the same time. Writing made it possible for a new
specialized class of scribes to compile and keep records, and it opened Japan to
the influence of continental literary, religious, and philosophical
culture.
Korea also transmitted Chinese social
and religious philosophies to Japan during this period. In the late 4th century
or early 5th century, the Korean kingdom of Paekche sent the Yamato court a
Chinese scholar who brought with him a set of the basic writings of
Confucianism. In the middle of the 6th century the ruler of Paekche sent a group
of Buddhist priests to Japan (see Buddhism). The priests brought with
them Buddhist religious images, scriptures, and calendars. As Japan was drawn
further into the Chinese sphere of cultural influence, the Yamato rulers became
increasingly aware of political developments on the Asian continent.
B | Chinese-Style Monarchy |
For all of their expanding influence,
the Yamato rulers were in no sense absolute monarchs, nor were their powers
clearly defined. They relied on chiefs of subordinate uji (clans) to
manage local peasant populations. However, the uji controlled their own
territories, and chieftains in remote parts of the country often challenged
Yamato authority.
In the 7th century the Yamato rulers
embarked on a massive importation of Chinese political institutions, laws, and
practices to strengthen their position. The Yamato court was impressed by
China’s Sui and Tang dynasties, which reunified the Chinese monarchical state
after nearly 400 years of division. These dynasties ruled China from the 6th
century to the 10th century. The turn toward the continent was promoted by the
chiefs of the Soga clan, who managed the Yamato ruler’s treasury and had become
powerful patrons of Buddhism. By intermarrying with the royal family, the Soga
gained increasing power at court, at times dominating the Yamato rulers.
The introduction of the Chinese
political model in Japan is often attributed to Shōtoku Taishi, a member of the
Yamato lineage and regent to the female ruler Suiko. Japanese tradition credits
Prince Shōtoku with introducing a hierarchy of ranks for court officials in 603
and composing 17 injunctions (sometimes called the Seventeen-Article
Constitution) in 604. Aimed primarily at officials, the injunctions outline the
qualities necessary for good government, drawing heavily on Confucian ethical
and political ideas (see Confucius). They emphasize, for example, that
state officials should be selected on the basis of talent and virtue rather than
heredity.
No significant institutional changes
occurred, however, until 645. In that year, the Yamato prince Naka no Oe (later
the ruler Tenji) engineered a coup that ended the power of the Soga at court.
Naka no Oe then set about consolidating the power of the central government,
drawing up a series of reforms in 645 and 646 with the help of scholars and
monks who had studied in China. The Taika reforms, as they came to be known,
were intended to undercut the influence of the powerful clan chieftains. To do
this, the reforms abolished the clan chieftains’ control over local land and
people, dispatched provincial officials to supplant them, and promulgated a new
system of ranks, taxation, and administration. These reforms marked the
beginning of the conversion of the Yamato ruler from a great lord
(taikun) to an emperor (tennō).
In 710 the reorganized imperial court
established a new Chinese-style capital at Heijō-kyō (the modern city of Nara).
Laid out in a rectangular grid, it housed the ministries and offices of a new
Chinese-style bureaucracy. The Taihō Code of 701 and the Yōrō Code of 718,
elaborate sets of laws modeled on those of China’s Tang dynasty, established a
penal code and outlined administrative organization and procedures. Japan’s new
imperial state was highly centralized. Appointed officials, organized into eight
hierarchical ranks, administered the government. The country was divided into
provinces managed by governors who were dispatched from the capital.
The economic base of the imperial court,
with its expanded bureaucracy and new capital, was a land and tax system modeled
on the Chinese system. The government surveyed all cultivated land in the
country and took a population census. It then granted an allotment of land to
every man and woman over the age of six. The codes specified that every six
years a new census was to be taken, and land was to be reallocated based on any
population changes. The purpose of the land redistribution was to provide the
adult population with enough land to feed itself. In return, landholders were
obliged to pay taxes in the form of rice, labor, or some local product. The
Japanese government seems to have conducted regular surveys throughout the
country during most of the 8th century.
The imperial government continued to
maintain contacts with the Asian continent through diplomatic embassies sent to
China’s Sui and Tang courts. Between 701 and 777 the Japanese court dispatched
seven missions to China, each comprising 500 to 600 people. Many students and
scholars accompanied these missions and often remained in China for years. The
flow of people reinforced the flow of culture. Students, scholars, and monks
returned to Japan with new forms of Buddhist practice, new ideas about writing
history, and new styles of literature. Indirect contact with India, Central
Asia, and western Asia also enriched the higher culture at Japan’s imperial
court. An imperial treasure house that still exists in Nara, the Shōsōin, is
filled with ceramics (see Pottery), lacquerware, silk cloths, and other
luxury goods brought in from all over Asia.
The capital at Heijō-kyō was also the
site of many large and powerful Buddhist temples and monasteries, a number of
them financed by the new imperial state. The most impressive was Tōdaiji, built
between 743 and 752 as the centerpiece of a nationwide system of temples. It
housed a huge statue of the Buddha, estimated to have required 338 tons of
copper and 16 tons of gold. The Buddhist priesthood acquired enormous political
influence, especially during the reigns of several female emperors in the
mid-8th century. The emperor Kammu, hoping to escape the influence of the
Buddhist temples, moved the capital in 784 to Nagaoka, and then in 794 to
Heian-kyō (the modern city of Kyōto), where the imperial palace remained almost
without interruption until 1868.
C | The Heian Aristocracy |
After the move to Heian-kyō, Yamato
emperors expanded their rule over all of the main islands of Japan except
Hokkaidō. During the course of the 7th and 8th centuries Japanese settlers had
pushed north as far as the modern city of Sendai on Honshū island. Beginning in
the late 8th century, the court dispatched a series of military expeditions to
northern Honshū to conquer the land still occupied by indigenous tribal groups,
known collectively as Ezo (now called Ainu). The campaigns began to
achieve success by the early 9th century, and their commanders were the first to
receive the title of sei-i-tai shogun (“barbarian-conquering
supreme general”), usually shortened to shogun. By the middle of the 9th
century, the Ezo of northern Honshū had been largely subdued.
C1 | Aristocratic Control |
Despite such signs of imperial power,
the political role of the emperor shrank in importance during the 9th century.
Often the emperor was a child or youth, without the personal character, skills,
and experience needed to play a strong political role. Emperors thus became
figureheads whose main function was to preside over official ceremonies and
religious rituals. Political power in the imperial court shifted into the hands
of influential aristocratic families, most of whom descended from the clan
chieftains who had been allied with the Yamato rulers in the 6th and 7th
centuries.
The aristocrats held the highest
official ranks and occupied the most important bureaucratic offices. They
usually inherited their positions, and they paid no taxes. In place of a salary,
aristocratic officials were given official land, residences, household servants,
and agricultural workers. Secure in their inherited wealth and position,
aristocratic families accumulated huge amounts of land and power over the
generations. They dominated both the politics and cultural activities of the
imperial court until the 12th century.
The most powerful of the aristocratic
families were the Fujiwara, descendants of a clan chieftain who had played a
central role in the Taika reforms. Beginning in 858 the heads of the Fujiwara
family married their daughters into the imperial family, then served as regents
(kampaku) or chancellors (sesshu), exercising powers delegated to
them by infant or minor emperors. The most successful of the Fujiwara leaders
was Fujiwara Michinaga, who married four daughters to successive emperors in the
late 10th and early 11th centuries. Two emperors were his nephews and three were
his grandsons. The influence of the Fujiwara family remained strong until the
middle of the 11th century, when Fujiwara regents were displaced by retired
emperors who dominated their minor successors. Thereafter, the Fujiwara
continued to hold high office, but their power diminished.
Culture flourished in the era of
aristocratic rule, a period often considered Japan’s classical age. After 838
the court no longer sent diplomatic missions to China, and with the end of
direct contacts, the Japanese developed their own forms of artistic and literary
expression. In literature, the development of kana, a new phonetic
writing system, encouraged new forms of poetry and a native prose literature. In
painting, a style depicting scenes of court life, landscapes, and literary works
became popular. (For more information, see the Culture section of this
article.)
Aristocratic domination of the
imperial court signaled the decline of the Chinese-model state. The official
bureaucratic structure ceased to have anything to do with the actual functioning
of government. Rank and office were sold to aristocrats hungry for more land or
prestige, and eventually most positions became purely hereditary. The elaborate
land and tax system instituted in the 8th century fell into decay as regular
population censuses, land surveys, and land redistribution were abandoned
because the imperial government lacked the number of educated people needed to
manage such a system. Provincial officials stopped forwarding tax revenues to
the capital and instead used their official powers to enrich themselves. At the
same time, more and more landholdings escaped the public tax registers, reducing
the inflow of official income.
The imperial family, the aristocratic
families, and the great Buddhist temples at the capital gradually came to depend
on a system of private estates (shōen) for revenue. These large
hereditary estates, located in every part of Japan, were tax-free. Many peasants
and small landholders commended their land to such estates to escape the heavy
burden of taxes levied on public land. The estates’ aristocratic proprietors
shared the income from the land with local estate managers, who supervised the
peasant farmers.
C2 | The Rise of the Warriors |
As the effective influence of the
imperial court gradually waned from the 9th century through the 12th century,
power in the provinces devolved to local warriors (bushi or
samurai). The warriors were typically landholders, usually small estate
proprietors or estate managers. They lived in small, fortified compounds,
surrounded by palisades or earthen fortifications, and they dominated the
surrounding peasant communities. Often warriors served as local district
officials, responsible for collecting taxes on remaining public lands. Much of
their time was devoted to the cultivation of martial skills—archery,
horsemanship, and swordsmanship. With their land holdings, military skills, and
access to local office, the warriors constituted a powerful local elite.
Local warrior families often banded
together for protection into larger groups based on kinship ties. These warrior
bands were effective in settling disputes over land and protecting their local
communities from brigands and bandits. The imperial court, which maintained no
standing army of its own, often relied on regional alliances of warrior bands to
put down local rebellions or to deal with piracy. The court appointed members of
distinguished provincial families, many of them descended from the imperial
family or aristocratic families, to command these regional alliances.
Particularly important were two warrior families descended from early
9th-century emperors: the Seiwa Minamoto, based in eastern Japan, and the Ise
Taira, based in the southwest.
By the mid-12th century the Minamoto
and the Taira had been drawn into political disputes at the capital. In 1156 an
attempt by a Fujiwara official to regain power sparked an imperial succession
dispute at the court, with each faction recruiting military leaders to its
cause. The Taira and one branch of the Minamoto together defeated the Fujiwara
faction, but Taira Kiyomori emerged as the dominant figure at court. His
authority was briefly and unsuccessfully challenged in 1160 by an alliance
between the Minamoto and the Fujiwara. Thereafter, Kiyomori continued to build
his influence at court, placing relatives in key offices at the capital and in
the provinces, and marrying one of his daughters into the imperial family. His
infant grandson became emperor in 1180.
That same year Minamoto Yoritomo, a
Minamoto leader, led an uprising against the Taira. The ensuing civil war, known
as the Gempei War, ended five years later in 1185 when the Taira forces were
finally defeated at the Battle of Dannoura near the modern city of Shimonoseki
on the Inland Sea.
D | The Kamakura Shoguns |
During the course of the civil war,
Minamoto Yoritomo created a new set of governmental institutions at Kamakura in
eastern Japan as an alternative to the decrepit central imperial government. By
the end of the war, Yoritomo’s government had extended its control beyond Kyōto
to Kyūshū. The imperial court empowered Yoritomo to appoint two new kinds of
officials: provincial constables (shugo), charged with maintaining law
and order in the provinces, and land stewards (jitō), who were assigned
to private estates to protect the rights of their proprietors.
In 1192, after Yoritomo’s forces subdued
a powerful branch of the Fujiwara family based in northern Honshū, the imperial
court granted Yoritomo the title of shogun. This made him the country’s supreme
military commander with powers to preserve domestic peace. In effect, Yoritomo
had become a feudal warrior monarch, sharing power with the civil imperial
monarch at Kyōto. The new style of military government was called a
bakufu, often referred to in English as a shogunate. Yoritomo ruled
through a network of personal vassals (gokenin) who pledged complete and
unconditional loyalty to him. These personal vassals held offices at Kamakura or
were appointed as constables or land stewards. Their influence in the provinces
was usually greater than that of the provincial governors and district chiefs
appointed by the imperial court.
After Yoritomo’s death in 1199, real
power in the Kamakura shogunate passed to his widow’s family, the Hōjō. No Hōjō
ever became shogun; instead the family prevailed upon the imperial court to
appoint figurehead shoguns, often children, while a Hōjō leader served as
regent. In 1221 the Hōjō succeeded in crushing a rebellion led by the retired
emperor Go-Toba, who attempted to take back the reins of government.
In 1232 the Kamakura shogunate
promulgated a new 51-article legal code, now known as the Jōei Code. It laid out
the rights of the warrior class and clarified the duties of constables and other
Kamakura officials. The code also attempted to restrain and discipline unruly
warriors by enjoining them to respect the rights of other groups, including
those of the religious establishments attached to temples and shrines. A set of
practical laws based on local customs and practices, this new legal code
replaced the elaborate Chinese-modeled codes adopted by the imperial government
in the 8th century.
The era of Hōjō rule also witnessed the
spread of new forms of popular Buddhism. The large Buddhist monasteries and
temples in the capital catered to the needs of the aristocratic families who
patronized them, but the new schools of Pure Land Buddhism stressed personal
salvation for ordinary believers. Two great religious leaders, Honen and
Shinran, preached reliance on the power of the Amida Buddha. According to these
teachers, all believers could enter paradise by simply repeating the chant
namu amida butsu, an invocation to the Buddha. Nichiren, another
influential but contentious Buddhist leader, insisted that believers should
instead invoke the name of the Lotus Sutra, a central Buddhist text. The Zen
sect, stressing meditation and intense self-discipline, also took hold among the
warrior class, and the warrior leaders at Kamakura patronized its monasteries
and temples.
While the Hōjō enjoyed a reputation for
fairness and efficiency, their authority was seriously shaken by two attempted
Mongol invasions. In the 13th century the Mongol Empire stretched across the
entire Eurasian landmass, from Central Asia to China and Korea, just off Japan’s
shores. After the Kamakura government brusquely refused the Mongols’ demand that
Japan acknowledge the suzerainty of the Mongol leader, Khublai Khan, a Mongol
invading force of about 40,000 landed in northern Kyūshū in 1274. The Japanese
had prepared extensive defensive fortifications, but before they were fully
tested against the battle-wise Mongols, a sudden storm (later known as “the
divine wind,” or kamikaze) destroyed much of the invading fleet. A second
invasion force of 140,000 met a similar fate seven years later, in 1281.
The defeat of the Mongols had a high
political cost. Warrior families who had mobilized men, weapons, and other
resources to defend Kyūshū demanded rewards for their efforts, but the Kamakura
government had no confiscated land or booty to satisfy their claims. As a
result, confidence in the Hōjō declined, and warrior discontent grew in the
provinces.
E | The Ashikaga Shoguns and Civil War |
E1 | Rise of the Ashikaga |
In 1333 the retired emperor Go-Daigo,
who had been exiled for having defied the shogunate, organized a rebellion
against the Hōjō. Known as the Kemmu Restoration, the uprising was spearheaded
by Ashikaga Takauji, a powerful warrior leader in eastern Japan. Kamakura fell
to the rebel forces and the Hōjō were ousted from power, bringing the Kamakura
shogunate to an end. For the next two years, Go-Daigo attempted to restore the
authority of the imperial throne.
In 1336 Ashikaga Takauji turned
against Go-Daigo and drove him from the capital at Kyōto. Takauji set up his own
candidate for emperor, who in turn appointed Takauji as shogun. Go-Daigo and his
supporters fled south to Yoshino, near Nara, to establish a rival court. For the
next 56 years, civil war between the Northern Court (at Kyōto) and the Southern
Court (at Yoshino) divided the country. The dispute was eventually resolved in
1392, when the third Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, persuaded the emperor
at Yoshino to abdicate and worked out a compromise over the imperial
succession.
During the civil war, the Ashikaga
shoguns had established their political base in Kyōto, where they could keep an
eye on the Northern Court. By the time the war ended, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu had
built a splendid Palace of Flowers in the Muromachi section of Kyōto, near the
imperial palace. Holding lavish gatherings for emperors, aristocrats, and
high-ranking warrior leaders, Yoshimitsu tried to establish the shogunal court
at the center of culture as well as of politics. Under his patronage, new art
forms such as nō drama and Chinese-style ink painting flourished. Yoshimitsu is
also remembered as the builder of the Golden Pavilion at his elegant retreat in
the Kitayama section of Kyōto.
Despite the splendor of the shogunal
court, the Ashikaga shoguns were never able to assert as much control over the
country as the Kamakura shogunate had. The long civil war between the Northern
and Southern courts had contributed to a growing independence of the local
warrior class. The dispute over dynastic succession was of little importance to
the warriors who joined the armies of the two imperial courts. For them, civil
war had provided an opportunity to expand their land holdings at the expense of
their neighbors and the aristocratic owners of private estates. The cumulative
effect of the civil war was therefore to accelerate the drift toward feudal
anarchy.
E2 | Descent into Civil War |
The shogunate delegated increasing
power to the constables responsible for maintaining order in the provinces, but
instead of protecting landholders’ rights, the constables gradually acquired
large, nearly autonomous domains for themselves. By the early 15th century,
central political authority was in rapid decline. Local warrior families, many
headed by constables, were fiercely attached to their land and concerned only
with their local power. They paid little heed to orders from above that did not
serve their interests. As a result of their steady inroads on the estate system,
local warriors undermined the remaining economic base of the Kyōto
aristocracy.
A major turning point came with the
outbreak of a new civil disorder, the Ōnin War of 1467-1477. The war began with
a dispute between two candidates for the shogunal succession, each backed by a
coalition of warrior leaders. Most of the fighting took place in Kyōto, which
was left in ruins after being fought over, looted, and burned time after time.
Many court aristocrats, already impoverished by the collapse of the estate
system, took refuge in the provinces, and the authority of the Ashikaga shoguns
completely collapsed.
The century following the Ōnin War is
usually known as the era of warring states, when the country was plunged into
more or less constant internal warfare. During this period, a new breed of
feudal lords, known as daimyo, rose to power. Some were former
constables, while many more were their vassals or independent warrior leaders
who fought both the constables and each other to build regional domains under
their complete and absolute control. As these upstart warlords expanded their
territories, they overran weaker neighbors or bullied them into alliances.
The daimyo abandoned any semblance of
loyalty to central authority. Instead they built territorial regimes that were
centered on castles and relied on the support of local warrior followers.
Administration was likewise local: the daimyo raised their own feudal armies;
levied taxes directly on the peasantry; issued their own legal codes; and
promoted local economic development through land reclamation, new irrigation
systems, and other public works.
E3 | Reunification |
The most ambitious daimyo aspired to
dominate the whole country. Although the powers of the shogun and emperor had
been eclipsed, the existence of the imperial capital at Kyōto was a potent
reminder that the country had once been unified. Oda Nobunaga, son of a minor
daimyo in central Japan, began the process of reunifying the country by building
up a strong domain in central Japan across the main trade route linking the
eastern and western parts of the country. In 1568 he secured military control
over Kyōto, and by 1573 he was confident enough of his own power to depose the
last Ashikaga shogun. Before Nobunaga could consolidate his rule, however, he
met a premature death at the hand of one of his principal vassals.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a man of humble
origins who had become one of Nobunaga’s leading generals, continued the process
of unification. After a series of successful campaigns in the 1580s and early
1590s, Hideyoshi succeeded in establishing political sway over the entire
country. He also launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea. When he died in
1598, leaving an infant heir, his leading generals fell to fighting among
themselves for control of the consolidated realm. In 1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu, who
had been an ally of both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, emerged victorious over his
rivals at the Battle of Sekigahara, near the modern city of Gifu. Ieyasu
established a new capital at Edo (modern Tokyo) in eastern Japan, and in 1603
assumed the title of shogun.
E4 | Contact with the West |
Meanwhile, during the era of warring
states the Japanese had their first contacts with Westerners. In 1543 Portuguese
traders arrived at Tanegashima, a small island off the southern coast of Kyūshū,
and in 1549 Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, brought Roman Catholicism to
Japan. With the arrival of the Portuguese, the Japanese learned the use of
firearms, which they soon began to manufacture themselves. Firearms decisively
changed the face of Japanese warfare, rendering obsolete the horse-riding
warrior who had dominated the battlefield for centuries. The Portuguese traders
were also an important source of goods from China, Southeast Asia, and other
parts of Asia, and they introduced the Japanese to the practices of smoking
tobacco and deep-frying foods. The Jesuit missionaries, offering the lure of
trade as bait, were extremely successful in making converts. By the time of the
Battle of Sekigahara, several hundred thousand Japanese, including a number of
daimyo in Kyūshū and western Japan, had become Roman Catholics.
F | The Tokugawa Shoguns |
F1 | The Bakuhan System |
The Tokugawa shogunate consolidated
its power during the reigns of Ieyasu (1603-1605), his son Hidetada (1605-1623),
and his grandson Iemitsu (1623-1651). The Tokugawa shogunate was the most
effective government that Japan had experienced so far in its history, but it
was not a centralized monarchy like the old imperial government at Kyōto. The
shogun shared power and authority with the local daimyo in a system known as
bakuhan (a combination of the bakufu, which functioned as the
central government, and the han, feudal domains under the control of the
daimyo). The Tokugawa family had direct control over only about one quarter of
the productive land in the country. The rest was dominated by the daimyo, who
had their own governments, castle towns, warrior armies, tax and land systems,
and courts. Altogether there were about 250 to 300 daimyo. The emperor continued
to rule as the civil monarch in Kyōto, but he had little actual power.
Many daimyo had survived military
unification with their existing domains intact, while other domains were newly
created by Ieyasu and his heirs. In redistributing land, Ieyasu made a
distinction between the daimyo who had fought with the Tokugawa at the Battle of
Sekigahara (known as fudai, “hereditary vassals”), and those who had
fought against them (known as tozama, “outside lords”). The tozama were
assigned domains on the periphery of the islands and were generally excluded
from positions in the central government. All daimyo, however, were required to
pledge their personal feudal loyalty to the shogun in return for the right to
rule their domains.
As a feudal ruler, the shogun imposed
many duties on the daimyo to keep them in line. First, the daimyo were required
to spend half their time in Edo and to keep their wives and children there all
the time. This practice, known as the sankin kōtai (“alternate
attendance”) system, enabled the shogunate to keep the daimyo under constant
surveillance. Second, the daimyo were required to provide materials, labor, and
funds for the construction of large public works, such as the shogun’s castles
and the mausoleum for Ieyasu at Nikkō. Finally, the daimyo had to secure the
shogun’s permission to build new castles, repair military fortifications, or
contract marriages with other daimyo families. If a daimyo committed some
infraction of bakufu laws or died without an heir, the shogun had the right to
confiscate his land or reassign him to a new domain. Under the first three
shoguns, such transfers and confiscations were quite common.
While consolidating their domestic
position, the first three shoguns also restricted Japan’s contacts with the
outside world. The Tokugawa welcomed foreign traders but were concerned about
the spread of Christianity. They feared that the missionaries were simply a
prelude to European conquest. Further, they regarded Christianity, which
demanded that the highest loyalty be given to God, as a subversive religion that
would undermine authority within society and the family. In 1614 Ieyasu,
announcing that Christianity was a “pernicious doctrine,” ordered the expulsion
of Christian missionaries, and in the 1620s Japanese converts to Christianity
endured persecutions and massacres.
In the 1630s the shogunate issued a
series of decrees forbidding imports of Christian books, prohibiting travel or
trade outside the country, and forbidding the construction of ocean-going
vessels. The only Westerners permitted to trade in Japan were the Dutch, who
were confined to Deshima, an artificial island in the harbor of Nagasaki on
Kyūshū. But the Japanese continued to trade with their Asian neighbors. Chinese
merchants were permitted to live in their own quarter in Nagasaki, and the
Japanese carried on trade with the Ryukyu Islands and with Korea through the
island of Tsushima in the Korean Strait.
The Tokugawa political system,
bolstered by its policy of limited isolation from the outside world,
successfully maintained domestic peace until the mid-19th century. Several major
local rebellions occurred in the 17th century, but none threatened the existence
of the regime.
F2 | Forces of Social Change |
The Tokugawa shoguns also attempted to
impose a rigid status system on the country that made a sharp distinction
between the samurai warrior elite, who constituted between 5 and 6 percent of
the population, and the commoners—peasant farmers, town merchants, and
artisans—who made up the rest. The samurai, who wore two swords as a mark of
status, enjoyed the highest prestige in Tokugawa society and were subject to
different laws and punishments than were the commoners.
Society did not remain rigidly frozen,
however. On the contrary, domestic peace set in motion forces of social change.
With the endemic warfare of previous centuries at an end, the samurai class
underwent a transformation. The daimyo, seeking to prevent their vassals from
plotting against them, had already begun to move the samurai off the land into
castle towns in the 16th century, and they completed the process in the 17th.
The samurai were no longer a landed class but an urbanized one. Their income
came not from rents collected from peasant cultivators but from stipends paid by
the daimyo. No longer needed as warriors, the samurai instead served as
officials in the shogunal or daimyo governments, where reading, writing, and
arithmetic were more important skills than horsemanship, swordsmanship, and
archery.
Even though the samurai were now civil
bureaucrats rather than battle-scarred warriors, they set themselves apart from
the commoners by maintaining a different set of values, later known as Bushido.
Young samurai were trained to prize not only the martial values of physical
courage and loyalty to their lord but also the social values of obedience to
superiors, piety toward parents, personal self-control, frugality, and hard
work. Many of these values rested on the older warrior tradition, but they were
also influenced heavily by Confucianism, the major source of elite political and
social ideas during the Tokugawa period.
Peace also brought in its wake a spurt
of economic development. The daimyo and the shogun were able to devote their
human and material resources toward reconstruction, and a burst in population
growth in the 17th century stimulated production and trade. Under the impact of
the sankin kōtai system, the shogun’s capital and local castle towns grew
rapidly. By the end of the 17th century Japan was probably one of the most
urbanized societies in the world. To meet growing urban demand, agricultural
production grew steadily, as did the production of many consumer goods. Even in
rural villages, many peasant farmers began to buy goods and utensils that they
had once made for themselves.
The growth of the economy brought with
it changing patterns in the distribution of wealth. While the daimyo and samurai
class remained dependent on agricultural taxes collected from the peasants, many
commoners became more affluent through the expanding commercial market. By the
18th century a class of wealthy merchants had emerged in Japan’s major cities
and castle towns. The shogunate and the daimyo, who borrowed heavily from
merchants to finance their elegant lifestyles, found themselves increasingly
burdened with debt, and in some domains merchants served as financial advisers
to the daimyo. As a result, the boundaries of the official status hierarchy
began to blur.
Affluent merchants and commoners in
the cities patronized a new urban culture centering on theaters and pleasure
quarters (entertainment districts). In the late 17th and early 18th centuries,
the kabuki and puppet (bunraku) theaters flourished, and short stories
about denizens of the pleasure quarters proliferated. Poets perfected a new form
of poetry, the 17-syllable haiku, and by the early 19th century readers devoured
popular novels and stories. In the realm of visual arts, woodblock prints
portraying courtesans, actors, and other scenes from urban life became extremely
popular (see Ukiyo-e). Urban commoners, particularly the wealthy merchant
class, consumed all these new art forms, which also found an audience among the
samurai elite.
Economic growth brought increasing
unrest in the countryside. A gap developed between the mass of the peasantry,
who were either small landholders or tenant farmers, and a well-to-do landlord
class. The landlords, who used their wealth to invest in activities such as
money-lending and rural industry, took advantage of their less fortunate
neighbors. More and more land became concentrated in landlords’ hands.
Beginning in the 18th century, peasant
riots became more and more frequent, especially in times of bad harvest, such as
the 1780s and the 1830s. The samurai elite, who saw the rural wealthy class
beginning to copy their own lifestyle, were deeply disturbed by this social
turmoil. By the early 19th century many conservative samurai scholars and
intellectuals called for a return to the good old days, when everyone knew his
or her proper place in society.
F3 | Decline of the Shogunate |
Internal social changes might
eventually have brought about the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate, but they
were overtaken by new pressures from the outside. In the late 18th century
Westerners began to challenge the Tokugawa policy of limiting trade and other
contacts. The first to do so were Russians, who made probes into the northern
island of Hokkaidō (then called Ezo) in the 1790s hoping to open up trade.
Further breaches of the seclusion policy soon followed, as British, French, and
other foreign ships began to appear in Japanese harbors with increasing
frequency. Although the shogunate issued orders to rebuff any attempt by the
ships to land, Japanese defenders, with their outdated weapons and organization,
could offer little resistance to modern warships.
The threat to the shogunate from
foreign intrusion was twofold: On one hand, the central government’s power and
authority had been maintained for more than two centuries through the policy of
seclusion, and to abandon it now would place the shogun’s dominant position at
risk. On the other hand, predatory Western powers presented a real danger to
Japan’s sovereignty. Britain’s victory over China in the first Opium War in the
early 1840s and the subsequent forced opening of Chinese trading ports provided
an alarming example of what might happen to Japan. Many daimyo were not
sympathetic to the shogunate’s predicament, however. They wanted to maintain the
policy of seclusion at all costs.
The arrival of a United States gunboat
expedition led by Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1853 threw Japan’s
leadership into turmoil. The United States had become interested in opening
Japan to normal trading and diplomatic relationships in the 1840s, largely in
order to secure good treatment for U.S. whalers plying the northwest Pacific and
U.S. merchants involved in the China trade. Now Perry used the implied threat of
his warships to pressure the shogunate to sign a treaty of friendship with the
United States. Failing to achieve consensus after unprecedented consultations
with the daimyo, the shogunate reluctantly agreed to sign the treaty in 1854.
Foreign demands for further
concessions followed rapidly. In 1858 the United States, represented by Townsend
Harris, successfully negotiated a second, commercial treaty that opened more
Japanese ports to trade, fixed tariffs (government taxes on trade), and
guaranteed Americans extraterritorial rights (which extended U.S. laws and
jurisdiction to U.S. citizens in Japan). Other Western powers soon followed suit
by demanding similar treaties, which came to be called “unequal treaties”
because they placed Japan in a subordinate diplomatic position.
The opening of the country under
foreign pressure undermined the authority and legitimacy of the Tokugawa
shogunate. The Tokugawa leaders had shown themselves to be too weak to fend off
the “Western barbarians,” and they had defied the wishes of the emperor at
Kyōto, who opposed the 1858 trade treaty. In the late 1850s and early 1860s,
antiforeign sentiments swept through the samurai class. Antiforeign activists
sought to rally the country around the emperor under the slogan “Revere the
emperor, expel the barbarians” (sonnō jōi). Foreign residents in the
newly opened ports were attacked, and in 1863 the domain of Chōshū fired on
foreign vessels sailing through the Straits of Shimonseki. Although it was
obvious that the Westerners could not be expelled by military force, this did
not prevent the antiforeign movement from further eroding the position of the
shogunate.
The antiforeign movement was
particularly strong in the large domains of the tozama daimyo of western Japan,
who as “outside lords” had always resented Tokugawa rule. During the 1860s many
of these domains, including Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Saga, began to build up
their own military strength by importing Western weapons and ships, hiring
Western military instructors, and training Western-style military units. The
shogunate, which had sent an unsuccessful military expedition against Chōshū to
punish its antiforeign activities, began its own military modernization program
as well.
Leaders of the western domains,
however, feared that the shogunate’s main goal was not to protect the country
but to preserve its own dynastic interests. Chōshū and Satsuma, coming together
through the mediation of Tosa, agreed to put an end to the shogunate and
establish a new imperial government in its place. In late 1867 leaders from Tosa
convinced the shogun to resign in order to assume a leading role in a
restructured government. Before this government could be established, however,
in January 1868 a palace coup in Kyōto, backed by the military forces of Satsuma
and Chōshū, brought to power the young emperor Meiji. The emperor abolished the
office of shogun, ordered the Tokugawa family to surrender their ancestral
lands, and announced the creation of a new imperial government. The following
month, in a brief battle outside of Kyōto, the new imperial army rolled back the
only serious military challenge made by Tokugawa forces. Sporadic fighting
followed in isolated pockets of Japan. Known as the Boshin Civil War, the
conflict ended with the surrender of pro-Tokugawa forces in Hokkaidō in
1869.
G | The Meiji Restoration |
G1 | Abolition of Feudalism |
The overthrow of the Tokugawa
shogunate was described as a restoration of imperial authority, but the new
imperial government soon launched a sweeping program to transform Japan into a
modern nation state. The core government leaders were younger samurai from
Chōshū, Satsuma, Tosa, and Hizen who had plotted to bring down the Tokugawa.
These leaders were united in their belief that the shogunate was not up to the
task of strengthening the country or renegotiating the unequal treaties imposed
by the foreign powers. However, they were divided in their views of what kind of
change was needed. Some, like Saigō Takamori of Satsuma, wished to preserve as
much of the old social and political order as possible; others, such as Ōkubo
Toshimichi of Satsuma and Kido Takayoshi of Chōshū, advocated more radical
reform. The radicals prevailed. In April 1868 the new regime proclaimed its
reform goals in the Charter Oath, promising to base its decisions on wide
consultation, to seek knowledge from the outside world, and to abandon outmoded
customs. The emperor’s main function was to legitimate the new regime and
symbolize a united nation.
The division of Japan into independent
domains made it difficult to deal with foreigners in a concerted way or to fully
mobilize national resources. Thus, the Meiji government’s first task was to
unify the country territorially. In late 1868 the imperial capital was moved to
Edo (which was renamed Tokyo), where the emperor took up residence in the
shogun’s former castle. In 1869 the daimyo of Chōshū, Satsuma, Tosa, and Hizen
surrendered their lands and census records to the imperial government and asked
that their domains’ laws, institutions, and regulations be placed under unified
control. Other domains soon followed suit. In 1871 all the daimyo domains were
abolished by imperial decree and were replaced by a system of centrally
administered prefectures governed by imperially appointed officials.
From 1871 to 1873 the new Meiji
leaders felt confident enough to send half of their number on a diplomatic
mission around the world. Under the leadership of Iwakura Tomomi, they were to
learn about the institutions, laws, and customs of economically and
technologically advanced countries of the West, such as the United States and
Britain. The Iwakura mission’s direct observation of the West left them feeling
challenged but hopeful. Much of the progress that Western countries had made in
military science, industry, technology, education, and society had occurred only
within the past two generations, and a number of the European nations, such as
Germany and Italy, were quite new themselves. It did not seem impossible that
Japan could catch up with the Western nations very quickly.
During the 1870s the imperial
government enacted reform after reform to dismantle the Tokugawa system. The
goal was to create a new population of imperial subjects who all shared the same
obligations to the state, regardless of their social origins. Laws enforcing the
status system were abolished between 1869 and 1871, elementary education was
made compulsory in 1872, a military conscription system requiring service of
young adult males was promulgated in 1873, and new national land and tax laws
replaced the old domain-based tax system in 1873. The final blow to the old
order came in 1876, when the government stopped paying stipends to the former
samurai class and abolished their privilege of carrying swords. The result was a
series of local samurai rebellions, culminating in the Satsuma (or Kagoshima)
Rebellion led by Saigō Takamori in 1877. The government’s new conscript army
successfully crushed all of the uprisings.
In the 1870s the Meiji government also
consolidated and expanded its control over outlying islands. It launched a
program to colonize Hokkaidō, asserted control of the Ryukyu; and Bonin islands
to the south, and made an agreement with Russia for control of the Kuril Islands
to the north.
G2 | Emergence of the Modern State |
During the 1880s a new
emperor-centered state structure took shape. After the Satsuma Rebellion,
disgruntled former samurai started a popular rights movement, demanding a
national legislature. Meiji leaders were not opposed to constitutional
government; indeed, their contacts with the West had convinced them that it
would unify and strengthen Japan as well as improve its international standing
by conforming to Western ideas of “civilized” government. Thus, in 1881 the
emperor declared his intention to grant the country a constitution. In
preparation, the government leadership created a strong executive branch run by
professional bureaucrats dedicated to the national good rather than to sectional
or partisan interests. During the 1880s the government made several steps in
this direction. It created a new nobility of five ranks from the former court
aristocracy and daimyo, established a cabinet system modeled on that of imperial
Germany, created a new privy council of imperial advisers, and instituted a
civil service examination system for recruiting high officials.
The constitution, drafted by a small
bureaucratic committee working under statesman Itō Hirobumi, was promulgated in
1889 as a “gift of the emperor” to the people. It came into effect the following
year. The constitution placed most of the powers of state in the hands of the
emperor, who was declared “sacred and inviolable.” It guaranteed the emperor’s
subjects certain basic political and religious freedoms “within the limits of
the law.” It also established a bicameral (two-chamber) national legislature,
the Imperial Diet. The upper chamber, called the House of Peers, was composed of
members of the newly created nobility and imperial appointees. The lower
chamber, the House of Representatives, was elected by a small percentage of the
population—only adult males paying more than 15 yen (Japan’s basic unit of
currency) in taxes could vote. While a relatively conservative document, very
similar to the constitution of imperial Germany, the Meiji constitution was a
remarkable departure from a long tradition of authoritarian politics in Japan.
It provided a foundation for the eventual development of representative
government.
Nevertheless, for many years a small
ruling group made up of the Satsuma and Chōshū leaders continued to monopolize
executive power. The emperor, although constitutionally the country’s highest
political authority, did not participate in administration. Until the late
1910s, prime ministers and most cabinet members were drawn from the ranks of the
Satsuma-Chōshū clique, their protégés, and members of the civil and military
bureaucracies. However, political parties gradually grew stronger during this
period, eventually winning positions in the cabinet.
In addition to restructuring the
government, the Meiji leaders worked diligently to build up a modern economic
sector by acquiring new manufacturing technology. In the 1870s the government
imported a mechanized silk-reeling mill, cotton-spinning mills, glass and brick
factories, cement works, and other modern factories. They also brought in
foreign workers and technicians to get the factories started and train Japanese
workers. The government hired hundreds of foreign teachers, engineers, and
technicians to build up modern infrastructure, such as railroads and telegraph
lines, and dispatched hundreds of bright ambitious young men to study science,
engineering, medicine, and other technical specialties in the United States and
Europe. In the 1880s the government set up a modern banking system.
By the 1890s the beginnings of
industrialization were well underway. A railroad network linking the major
cities of Honshū had expanded into Kyūshū and Hokkaidō; coal mines were
producing fuel needed for new steam-driven factories; the cotton-spinning
industry had reduced the country’s dependence on foreign imports; and a domestic
shipbuilding industry was developing. Except for the railroad system, however,
the government no longer played a direct role either in financing or managing
these enterprises. It had sold off its imported factories to private
entrepreneurs and had adopted a policy of encouraging private enterprise.
The dramatic changes during the three
decades after the Meiji government took power were driven by government
initiatives from above, but other classes of society were not simply passive
recipients of change. Many former samurai, although stripped of their
traditional privileges, made a successful transition to the new society. Highly
educated, trained for public service, and imbued with the values of ambition,
hard work, and perseverance, they played an important role in many areas,
including government, business, science, education, and culture. The same was
true of the well-to-do elements in the countryside, who introduced innovations
in agriculture, worked to develop local schools, and were active in the movement
to establish a national legislature. Even the sons of poor peasant farmers
conscripted into the army returned home with new skills, ideas, and habits that
they spread to fellow villagers. And by the 1890s, when most school-age children
were attending elementary school, Japan’s educational system became a formidable
vehicle to promote enthusiasm for change. See Meiji Restoration.
H | Imperial Expansion |
By the mid-1890s the Meiji leaders had
succeeded in convincing the Western powers to renegotiate the unequal treaties,
returning full diplomatic equality to Japan. Extraterritoriality ended in 1899,
and treaty tariffs, in 1910. The Meiji leaders sought to buttress their new
international position by building a colonial empire. Their motives were mixed:
First, in the competitive climate of global imperialism, they wanted to improve
Japan’s national security by building a defensive buffer of colonial
territories. In addition, only “civilized” countries, such as Britain and
France, possessed colonial empires, so the acquisition of colonies was a marker
of international prestige. Finally, having built up their own national wealth
and strength, many Japanese felt that they had a mission to spread modernization
among their Asian neighbors.
H1 | The First Sino-Japanese War |
Initially, the Meiji government was
most concerned about Korea. Korea had for centuries been a tributary of China.
However, in 1876 Japan had used gunboat tactics to force Korea to open trade
with Japan, a move that challenged China’s dominance in Korea. The Meiji leaders
feared that a weak and backward Korea, under the influence of a weak and
backward China, would be easy prey for a predatory Western power, probably
Russia, thus putting Japan itself at risk. In 1894 both China and Japan sent
troops to Korea to deal with a peasant rebellion in the south. Once it had been
suppressed, the Japanese decided to resolve the ongoing tension with China by
going to war. The newly modernized Japanese army and navy won a quick victory
over the larger but less prepared Chinese forces. The First Sino-Japanese War
was over in just nine months.
Japan’s victory surprised the Western
powers, which had expected China to defeat its much smaller neighbor. Under the
terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in April 1895, China ceded Taiwan and
the P’enghu Islands to Japan, gave Japan a huge monetary indemnity, and allowed
Japan to trade in China under the same unequal treaty privileges that the
Western powers enjoyed in China. The Chinese also ceded to Japan the Liaodong
Peninsula in southern Manchuria (as the northeastern region of China was then
called), but the Russians, backed by Germany and France, forced Japan to accept
additional indemnity money instead.
In the wake of the war, popular
resentment against Russia ran high. It grew more intense when the Russians tried
to expand their own influence in Korea and in Manchuria. In 1898, for example,
Russia secured a lease of the very territory it had prevented the Japanese from
acquiring—the Liaodong Peninsula with its important ice-free naval base of Port
Arthur (now part of the municipality of Dalian)—and began building a railroad
line in southern Manchuria. Japanese leaders saw this as a direct threat to
Japan’s own national security. Russia took advantage of the Boxer Uprising of
1900, a popular peasant revolt against foreigners in northeastern China, to send
an occupation force into Manchuria and begin a military build-up on the
Chinese-Korean border.
H2 | The Russo-Japanese War |
When diplomatic negotiations failed to
dislodge the Russians, the Japanese decided to go to war. In 1904 the Japanese
navy attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. The Russo-Japanese War that
followed was more daunting to the Japanese leaders than the First Sino-Japanese
War had been. While Japanese armies won a series of early battles, the land war
bogged down by early 1905. Only the complete annihilation of a vast Russian
fleet at the May 1905 Battle of Tsushima finally brought the Russians to the
negotiating table. The Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated with the help of U.S.
president Theodore Roosevelt, gave Japan control over the Liaodong Peninsula,
the railroad line in southern Manchuria, and the southern half of the island of
Sakhalin (later known as Karafuto). The Russians also recognized Japan’s
paramount interests in Korea.
Shortly after the end of the
Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese established a protectorate over Korea. The
Korean court and the traditional Korean elite resisted the Japanese political
intrusion. When the Japanese ousted the Korean king from the throne in 1907,
anti-Japanese guerrilla activities spread quickly throughout the Korea
Peninsula. In 1910, after three years of often brutal fighting, the Japanese
finally annexed Korea to Japan under the name Chosen. The Japanese colonial
government adopted a harshly repressive policy toward the Korean population, but
it also embarked on a program of introducing modern institutions and developing
the agricultural economy.
With the acquisition of Korea, the
Meiji leaders rounded out a defensive perimeter of colonial possessions
stretching from Taiwan in the south, through Korea in the west, to Karafuto in
the north. They had also established Japan as one of the world’s great powers,
side by side with the United States and the major European countries. The
Western powers were quick to accept the Japanese colonial sphere in East Asia,
and they regarded Japan’s military and naval prowess with admiration as well as
concern. By the time of his death in 1912, the Meiji emperor, whose reign had
begun when the humiliation of Japan’s unequal diplomatic status was still fresh,
stood among the ranks of the world’s leading monarchs.
I | Industrialization and Democracy |
I1 | World War I |
Japan joined World War I (1914-1918)
on the side of Britain and its allies. Japan’s military actions were limited to
taking over the German-leased territory of Jiaozhou, located on the Shandong
Peninsula in northeastern China, and its industrial port city of Qingdao, and
occupying the German-held Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana islands in the western
Pacific. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 ended the Russian Empire and
destabilized Russia, Japan also joined an Allied expeditionary force to aid
anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia in 1918. Contrary to Allied agreement, Japan
maintained troops in Siberia until 1922.
Despite the country’s limited
participation, the war in Europe brought economic boom times to Japan, as
Japanese industry sold munitions and other goods to the Western countries
fighting the war and advanced into Asian markets left open by the decline of
Western trading activity. Nearly every sector of the Japanese economy expanded,
but heavy industry grew especially fast, creating a new and increasingly large
male industrial labor force. The war also brought with it social unrest, as
rapid inflation sparked wage disputes between management and workers.
I2 | Two-Party System |
In 1918 an outbreak of nationwide
rioting over inflated rice prices, along with calls for political reform, forced
the sitting cabinet to resign, and for the first time a commoner and political
party leader, Hara Takashi, became prime minister. An astute former official,
Hara built political power by catering to local economic interests. For the next
decade and a half, except for the years from 1922 to 1924, political parties
based in the lower house of the Imperial Diet dominated the political scene.
Just as it did in Britain, power in Japan passed back and forth between two
major political parties, the Seiyūkai (Liberal Party) and the Rikken Minseitō
(Constitutional Democratic Party). Many observers concluded that an era of
“normal constitutional government” based on parliamentary control had arrived in
Japan.
Public demands for democratic reforms
became increasingly vocal at the end of World War I. The outbreak of democratic
revolutions in Germany and Russia signaled a change in world trends. At first
the public drive for democratization in Japan centered on expanding the right to
vote to include all adult males. In 1925, after several years of debate, a
universal manhood suffrage law finally passed the Imperial Diet, and the
electorate expanded from 3 million to nearly 14 million.
But radical political elements in
Japan, including an emerging Marxist left, demanded more sweeping social
reforms, including protection for labor unions, laws guaranteeing improved
working conditions, public health insurance, and other social welfare laws. By
the late 1920s representatives from a small group of left-wing parties had been
elected to the Diet. The demand for more social legislation had support from
liberal-minded government bureaucrats and from moderate party politicians, but
conservative forces blocked passage of such sweeping social reforms.
Japan’s foreign policy became less
expansionist after World War I, also in response to trends among the Western
powers. Japan joined the League of Nations (an international alliance for the
preservation of peace) at its founding in 1920 as one of the “big five” most
powerful nations. At the Washington Conference of 1922, Japan agreed with other
major naval powers in the Pacific to respect one another’s colonial territories
and to limit naval development at a fixed ratio of ships. Nine countries,
including Japan, also agreed to respect the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of China, ruled since 1911 by a republican government. Finally, in
1928 Japan, along with 14 other countries, signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which
denounced war as a means of solving international disputes.
I3 | Economic Depression and Right-Wing Terrorism |
In 1920 Japan’s wartime economic boom
collapsed, and the country suffered a series of recessions. Bad economic
conditions were aggravated by the great Kantō earthquake of 1923, which
devastated the Tokyo-Yokohama region. Agricultural prices plunged, and the rural
economy stagnated. A major bank panic in 1927 set off alarm bells, but
conditions grew much worse with the onset of the Great Depression—the global
economic slump that began at the end of 1929. Japan’s manufacturing production
fell, workers were laid off, a new wave of strikes began, and the rural economy
went into a tailspin.
These deteriorating economic
conditions undercut the fragile growth of Japan’s democracy. Public opinion laid
blame for the country’s economic troubles at the door of the political party
leaders, who reacted slowly and conservatively to the economic crisis. Public
distrust of the parties was heightened by revelations of political scandals
involving the bribery of Diet members, cabinet members, and other leading
politicians. Tight links between political parties and big business firms, known
as zaibatsu, also deepened public suspicions.
By the early 1930s radical right-wing
groups had formed, seeking to end party rule through terrorism. Extreme
nationalists, these radicals sought to preserve traditional Japanese values and
culture and eradicate what they saw as Western influences: party government, big
business, and recent cultural imports. Many junior military officers, often from
conservative rural backgrounds, shared these ultranationalist views. To achieve
their aims, the radicals, with their sympathizers in the military, plotted to
assassinate leading business and political figures. In May 1932 the era of party
cabinets ended when a terrorist group assassinated Prime Minister Inukai
Tsuyoshi. From 1932 until 1945, Japan was governed by military and bureaucratic
cabinets whose members claimed to stand above partisan politics.
J | Militarism and War |
J1 | Occupation of Manchuria |
Against a background of economic
distress, social discontent, and political instability, the Japanese military
launched a new phase of political expansion on the Asian continent in the early
1930s. Their primary motive was to protect Japan’s existing treaty rights and
interests in Manchuria and other parts of China against a militant new Chinese
nationalist movement. This movement, led by Chiang Kai-shek, called for an end
to foreign imperialist privileges. Because the Chinese nationalists cooperated
for a time with the Chinese Communist Party, many Japanese military leaders
feared an alliance between a radicalized China and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR, the Communist successor to the Russian Empire). Others saw
Japan’s expansion into Manchuria as a way of dealing with economic crisis and
rural distress at home. Vast tracts of undeveloped land in the region offered
opportunities for Japanese rural migrants, and its natural resources could
supply raw materials, such as iron ore and coal, for Japanese industry.
On September 18, 1931, officers of
Japan’s Kwangtung Army (the military force stationed on the Liaodong Peninsula)
blew up a section of track on the South Manchuria Railway outside of Mukden
(Shenyang). Claiming the explosion was the work of Chinese saboteurs, Japanese
forces occupied key cities in southern Manchuria. Within a few months they
controlled the entire region. Although the Kwantung Army acted without
authorization from the Japanese government, its decisive action was popular at
home, and political leaders accepted it as an accomplished fact. Rather than
create a new colony, the Japanese decided to set up the nominally independent
state of Manchukuo under Emperor Henry Pu Yi, who had been the last emperor of
China. Real control over Manchukuo remained in the hands of Japanese advisers
and officials.
The United States and Britain
condemned Japan for its violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact but did little to
stop the occupation. An inquiry commission dispatched by the League of Nations
placed blame for the so-called Manchuria Incident on Japan, and in 1933 the
League Assembly requested that Japan cease hostilities in China. The Japanese
government instead announced its withdrawal from the league. Japanese military
forces took over the Chinese province of Jehol as a buffer zone and threatened
to occupy the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, as well. Unable to resist the
superior Japanese forces, in May 1933 the Chinese signed a truce that
established a demilitarized zone between Manchuria and the rest of China.
Success in Manchuria emboldened the
Japanese military to intervene in domestic politics. In February 1936 young,
ultranationalist army officers staged a military insurrection in Tokyo to end
civilian control of the government and put a military regime in its place. Army
leaders put down the coup but in its aftermath acquired greater political
influence as the country embarked on a new military buildup. In 1936 Japan
signed an anti-Communist agreement with Germany, and one year later it signed a
similar pact with Italy. Aggression and expansion now seemed inevitable.
J2 | The Second Sino-Japanese War |
On July 7, 1937 a Chinese patrol and
Japanese troops on a training exercise clashed near the Marco Polo Bridge on the
outskirts of Beijing. When the Chinese nationalist government sent
reinforcements to the area, the Japanese responded with a mobilization of their
own, launching the Second Sino-Japanese War. By the end of 1937 the Japanese had
overrun northern China, capturing Shanghai, Beijing, and the Chinese capital at
Nanjing. The Chinese government under Chiang Kai-shek, however, refused to
negotiate an armistice. Instead it retreated to the interior province of Sichuan
(Szechwan), where high mountainous terrain protected it against Japanese land
attack. By the end of 1938 the Japanese had occupied northern China, the lower
valley of the Yangtze River beyond Hankou, and enclaves along the south China
coast, including Guangzhou (Canton). However, the fighting had reached a
stalemate. Instead of confronting regular Chinese forces, the Japanese army had
to fend off constant guerrilla attacks, even in territory they occupied.
J3 | World War II |
The outbreak of war in Europe in
September 1939 encouraged the Japanese leadership to consider expanding military
and political influence into Southeast Asia. Japan urgently needed the region’s
natural resources, including oil and rubber, for its war effort. In 1940, after
France and the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands) had fallen
to the Germans, the government of Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro announced
Japan’s intention to build a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a
self-sufficient economic and political bloc under Japanese leadership. In
September 1940 the Konoe cabinet concluded the so-called Axis Pact, an alliance
with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and received permission from the
Nazi-backed Vichy government in France to move troops into northern French
Indochina (the area that is now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). The Japanese also
tried to negotiate an economic and political foothold in the Dutch East Indies,
whose colonial government had declared itself independent of the fallen home
government of Netherlands.
Escalating Japanese aggression created
friction with the United States, the only major nation not yet involved in war.
In 1937 U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt called for a “quarantine” against the
“disease” of international aggression. The United States sympathized with the
Chinese nationalists and wished to keep the resources of Southeast Asia
available for the embattled British. Japan was heavily dependent on the United
States for vital strategic material, such as petroleum, steel, and heavy
machinery, so the Roosevelt administration gradually imposed embargoes on such
goods. Negotiations aimed at settling differences between the two countries
began in April 1941, but when the Japanese moved troops into southern Indochina
in July, the United States responded by placing a complete embargo on oil.
Britain, countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations (an association of
states that gave allegiance to the British Crown), and the Dutch East Indies
followed suit.
The U.S. oil embargo threatened to
bring the whole Japanese military apparatus to a halt when its limited oil
reserves were used up. Rather than face the humiliation of giving in to U.S.
economic pressure, in early September the Konoe cabinet decided to continue
negotiations while at the same time preparing for war. All attempts to reach a
diplomatic accommodation with the United States failed, including a proposal for
a summit meeting between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Konoe. In
October Konoe resigned, and General Tōjō Hideki, Japan’s minister of war, became
prime minister. Tōjō formed a cabinet in preparation for war.
On December 7, 1941 (December 8 in
Japan), a Japanese naval and air task force launched a devastating surprise
attack on the major U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Japanese also
launched simultaneous attacks in the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway
Island, Hong Kong, British Malaya, and Thailand. The following day the United
States declared war on Japan, as did all the other Allied powers except the
USSR. Nevertheless, Japan maintained the offensive in Southeast Asia and the
islands of the South Pacific for the next year. By the summer of 1942, Japanese
forces had occupied the targets of their first attack, as well as Burma (now
known as Myanmar), Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, and several islands in the
Aleutians off Alaska. Japan’s forces were also striking toward Australia and New
Zealand through New Guinea, New Britain, and the Solomon Islands.
J4 | The Tide Turns |
Japanese leaders were aware of
America’s immense economic and technological strength, but they gambled that the
American public and politicians would not have the stomach to fight to the
finish. Japanese war plans envisaged a limited war that would lead the United
States to a negotiated peace that recognized Japan’s dominant position and
territorial gains in East Asia. The plans assumed that Japan would be able to
hold a strategic defensive perimeter of island bases stretching through the
central and South Pacific against American counterattack, and that Nazi Germany
would complete its military conquest of Europe. These sobering realities would
then force the United States to the negotiating table.
In actuality, the United States
decided to wage an all-out “total war” that would end only with Japan’s
“unconditional surrender.” Although the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been heavily
damaged by the Pearl Harbor attack, American aircraft carriers had escaped
unscathed, and they inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese at the Battle of
Midway in June 1942. The Americans adopted an island hopping strategy of
striking behind bases on Japan’s outer perimeter and cutting them off from their
logistical support. The Americans also used submarine warfare to sink Japanese
merchant marine vessels and cut the sea lanes linking the Japanese home islands
to the resources of the Dutch East Indies and Southeast Asia. In July 1944 the
American capture of Saipan, a major Japanese base in the Mariana Islands, put
the Japanese home islands within range of American long-range B-29 Superfortress
bombers. Beginning in the early fall of 1944, Japanese cities and their civilian
populations were subjected to increasingly frequent bombing raids.
Although Tōjō was forced to resign as
prime minister after the fall of Saipan, military setbacks did not change the
basic policies of the Japanese government. A number of Japanese civilian
politicians, ranking bureaucrats, and a few former generals were aware that the
tide of the war had turned against Japan. They urged the opening of peace talks
with the United States through an intermediary such as the USSR. However,
despite steady military and naval losses, the destruction of Tokyo, Ōsaka, and
other major cities, and the surrender of their German allies, Japan’s military
and naval leaders were determined to fight to the end. Furthermore, despite
increasing shortages of food, clothing, and other necessities, the civilian
population showed few signs of declining morale. Many farm women and housewives
were even trained to meet an American invasion force on the beaches with bamboo
spears.
When in late July 1945 the Japanese
cabinet rejected the Potsdam Declaration, a renewed Allied demand that Japan
surrender unconditionally or face utter destruction, the United States decided
to use its new atomic weapons (see Potsdam Conference). On August 6 the
United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Two days later the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and on August 9 the
United States dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Faced with such an
utterly hopeless situation, the Japanese leadership finally agreed to surrender
on August 14 (August 15 in Japan). Japanese emperor Hirohito, speaking for the
first time on the radio, broadcast the news to the nation.
K | Postwar Reform and Recovery |
K1 | Demilitarization and Democratization Under the Occupation |
Beginning with Japan’s formal
surrender on September 2, 1945, the Allies placed the country under the control
of a U.S. army of occupation. An international Allied Council for Japan, sitting
in Tokyo, was created to assist the Americans, who presided over the dissolution
of the Japanese colonial empire and the disbanding of all Japanese military and
naval forces. In 1946 an 11-nation tribunal convened in Tokyo to try a number of
Japanese wartime leaders, including Tōjō, for war crimes. American occupation
policy aspired to more than a simple demilitarization of Japan. It aimed at
destroying the social, political, and economic conditions that had made Japan an
aggressor nation, and transforming Japan into a peaceful democratic nation that
would never again threaten its neighbors or world peace. Under the guidance of
U.S. general Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied powers, the
Japanese were subjected to the most sweeping program of reform they had
experienced since the Meiji Restoration.
Political democratization centered on
a revised constitution, promulgated in 1947. The new constitution stripped the
emperor of the enormous powers granted to him by the Meiji constitution, making
him instead the symbol of the Japanese nation and restricting his official
functions to largely ceremonial duties. It placed the National Diet, formerly
the Imperial Diet, at the center of the political process. The constitution
provided for a British-style parliamentary system, with a cabinet elected by and
responsible to the House of Representatives. The electorate was expanded to
include all adults, including women. The constitution also guaranteed basic
civil and political rights, including a number of rights not included in the
U.S. constitution, such as the right of labor to bargain collectively. But the
most radical article of the new constitution was Article 9, under which Japan
renounced war and the use of force to settle international disputes, and pledged
not to maintain land, sea, or air forces to that end. Although this “peace
constitution” was originally drafted in English by American occupation
officials, it was debated and ratified by the Japanese Diet.
To build a rural base for democracy,
occupation officials promoted a land reform program that allowed tenant farmers
to purchase the land they farmed. In cities, the occupation encouraged the
growth of an active labor union movement. By the end of 1946 about 40 percent of
Japan’s industrial labor force was unionized. To weaken the power of big
business, the occupation adopted a program of economic deconcentration, breaking
up the large conglomerates known as zaibatsu. Occupation authorities also purged
the business community of those leaders thought to have cooperated with wartime
militarists.
On the whole, the Japanese population
welcomed these changes. The Americans encouraged an atmosphere of free public
debate and discussion on nearly every kind of issue, from politics to marriage
to women’s rights. After years of wartime censorship and thought control, most
Japanese appreciated their new freedom. At first the Americans also encouraged
the emergence of a vital and active left wing, including a legal Japanese
Communist Party, in the hopes that it would play the role of a strong democratic
opposition.
Nevertheless, conservative parties,
with agendas aimed at rebuilding Japan’s economy and strengthening its
international position, dominated domestic politics in postwar Japan. After the
first postwar elections, held in 1946, conservative politician Yoshida Shigeru
became prime minister. Divisiveness within the conservative ranks gave an
election victory to the Japan Socialist Party in 1947, but in 1948 Yoshida
returned to power, continuing to serve as prime minister until 1954.
K2 | The Occupation’s “Reverse Course” |
With the rise in the late 1940s of
the Cold War (the struggle between the United States and its allies and the USSR
and its allies), the American desire to reform Japan was overtaken by a desire
to turn the country into a strong ally. The resulting change in occupation
policy is often called the “reverse course.” In 1947 and 1948 the U.S.
government in Washington decided to actively promote the recovery of Japan’s
devastated economy. The American occupation reversed its policy of breaking up
big business concerns, and it encouraged the Japanese government to adopt
anti-inflation policies and to stabilize business conditions through fiscal
austerity. Conservative political leaders like Yoshida, who hoped to restore
Japan’s position in the world as an economic power, welcomed the change in
direction. With assistance from the United States, the Japanese government also
began to crack down on the domestic Communist movement and curb the activities
of radical labor union groups.
In September 1951, after more than a
year of consultation and negotiation, Japan, the United States, and 47 other
countries signed a peace treaty in San Francisco returning Japan to full
sovereign independence. Japan renounced all claims to Korea, Taiwan, the Kuril
Islands, Sakhalin, and the country’s former mandates in the Pacific, as well as
all special rights and interests in China and Korea. The treaty also established
U.S. trusteeship of the Ryukyu Islands, including the island of Okinawa, which
the United States had occupied during the war. In return, Japan was not
subjected to punitive economic restrictions. In light of its fragile economic
position, it was permitted to make reparation payments to the countries it had
invaded and occupied in goods and services rather than in cash.
The San Francisco treaty, however,
failed to resolve Japan’s relations with the Communist adversaries of the United
States—the USSR and China. The USSR refused to sign the peace treaty,
maintaining that it would lead to a resurgence of Japanese militarism. And
neither the government in Beijing, ruled by the Communists, nor the Nationalist
government on Taiwan, ruled by the Kuomintang (which had retreated to the island
after the Communists gained control of the Chinese mainland in 1949), were
invited to the peace conference because of international dissent over which
government legitimately ruled China. Nevertheless, the United States made
Japan’s recognition of the government on Taiwan as China’s legitimate government
a condition of its own acceptance of the treaty; thus, in a separate agreement
Japan promised to deal only with the Nationalists.
Finally, to ensure Japan’s defense
and secure it as an ally of the United States, the two countries signed a
bilateral mutual security treaty that allowed the United States to maintain
military bases and forces in Japan. The peace treaty and the collateral
agreements had the effect of aligning Japan firmly with the Western bloc of
nations. On April 28, 1952 the peace treaty became effective, and full
sovereignty was restored to Japan.
K3 | Domestic Debate over Japan’s International Role |
During the course of the 1950s Japan
reestablished normal diplomatic relations with most of the countries that had
not signed the peace treaty, and negotiated reparations agreements with the
countries it had invaded. In 1956 the USSR and Japan agreed to end the technical
state of war that had existed between the two countries since 1945; however,
they did not formally conclude a peace treaty. A continuing source of conflict
was the question of ownership of the Kuril Islands. The San Francisco peace
treaty had not specified which islands were included in the Kurils, and Japan
continued to claim three islands and one island group occupied by the USSR. The
USSR agreed in principle to return the islands nearest Hokkaidō if a peace
treaty was signed between the two countries, but the issue of the other two
islands was left open. With the USSR no longer blocking the way, in 1956 the
United Nations (UN), an international organization founded in 1945 to promote
peace, security, and economic development, admitted Japan to its
membership.
Nevertheless, Japan’s postwar
international role remained a subject of domestic political debate in the 1950s.
The mutual security treaty, along with the Yoshida government’s commitment to
rearm Japan by creating a new National Self-Defense Force (SDF), caused bitter
disagreement between the right and the left. The conservative political parties,
which became unified as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955, favored
close ties with the United States. They supported limited rearmament but hoped
to revise the security treaty to provide for greater equality between the two
countries. The left wing, including the Socialist and Communist parties, opposed
the security treaty. They called for Japan to maintain a position of neutrality
in the Cold War, allied with neither the United States nor the USSR.
The Japanese public, fearful that
Japan might be pulled into a war between the U.S. and Soviet blocs, also
harbored doubts about the treaty. In the spring of 1960 the debate over
ratification of a revised security treaty occasioned massive popular
demonstrations and riots in Tokyo and other large cities. The sitting prime
minister, Kishi Nobusuke, was forced to resign. To many it seemed that Japan’s
postwar democracy was facing a major crisis. But the revised treaty was ratified
by the LDP-dominated Diet, and by the end of summer political calm had been
restored. For the next three decades the LDP continued to govern the country,
and its policies of cooperation with the United States abroad and economic
development at home set the course for postwar Japan.
L | Era of Growth |
L1 | Rapid Economic Growth |
By the early 1960s the focus of
public attention had shifted from international issues to domestic economic
ones. Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato, who took office in July 1960, announced a
plan to double household incomes over the next decade. This dramatic
announcement was welcome news to the public. After decades of economic
depression, wartime hardship, and postwar austerity, ordinary Japanese were more
interested in a secure and comfortable future than in grand political
issues.
The recovery of the economy had
already begun during the Korean War (1950-1953), when UN fighting forces had
used Japan as a logistical base. Procurement of military supplies and repair of
damaged military equipment stimulated Japan’s manufacturing sector. The Korean
War boom was followed by a series of new growth spurts in the late 1950s.
Indeed, from 1955 to 1973 Japan’s gross national product (a measure of a
country’s total economic output) grew at an annual average rate of 9 percent,
much faster than any other industrial economy was growing at that time. By 1968
Japan had become the third largest economy in the world. To be sure, the whole
world economy was expanding during this period, but Japan’s success seemed to be
an “economic miracle.”
The reasons why the Japanese economy
grew so fast are complex. First, a bureaucracy with jurisdiction over economic
matters, based in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the
Ministry of Finance (MOF), and the Bank of Japan (BOJ), had considerable
administrative power to promote industrial growth through tax breaks, import and
export licenses, and direct subsidies. The economic bureaucracy backed high tech
industries that could supply the domestic market and compete in international
markets as well. Second, corporate leaders were more interested in company
growth and market share than in short-term profits, and thus they constantly
reinvested their gains in updating and improving technology. Third, corporate
policy stressed the need to develop and hold on to loyal and highly skilled
workers. Large corporations guaranteed their workers lifetime employment, wage
and salary increases based on seniority, and corporate welfare benefits. Fourth,
the Japanese work force was well educated, driven by a strong work ethic, and
disinclined to strike or carry out work stoppages. Fifth, Japanese consumers,
responding to the new availability of high quality consumer goods such as
refrigerators and automobiles, eagerly bought up industrial output. This
expansion of the domestic market was the driving force behind rapid growth. And
finally, the Japanese economy was not burdened by heavy military expenditures
and the taxes needed to pay for them because Japan depended on the United States
for its basic national defense.
The era of rapid economic growth
ended in the early 1970s, when Japan’s economy underwent a sudden slowdown
brought on in part by two external events. In 1971 the United States abandoned
the system of fixed foreign exchange rates that had been in place since World
War II. This change caused the value of the yen to rise, and consequently,
Japanese exports fell. In 1973 an increase in crude oil prices caused recessions
in countries around the world; in Japan it inspired panic buying by consumers
who feared shortages and price increases, double-digit inflation, and a sudden
slowdown in the growth rate. Timely government and corporate policies, including
a drive to expand Japanese exports, soon overcame these difficulties, but growth
continued only at a much slower and steadier rate of 4 to 5 percent, about half
what it had been during the high growth years of the economic miracle.
L2 | Social and Environmental Impacts of Growth |
The social impact of rapid economic
growth was enormous. The most obvious effect was rapid urbanization, especially
along the industrial corridor stretching from Tokyo-Yokohama in the east along
the Pacific coast through the Inland Sea to northern Kyūshū. Between 1955 and
1970, people were pouring into Japan’s six major cities (Tokyo, Yokohama, Ōsaka,
Nagoya, Kyōto, and Kōbe) at an average rate of 1 million per year. Just before
hosting the 1964 Olympic Games, Tokyo became the first city in the world to
claim a population of 10 million. At the same time, Japan’s rural population
shrank rapidly. By the 1980s less than 10 percent of the workforce was engaged
in agriculture. That figure had dropped to 5 percent by the early 2000s.
Rising household incomes and savings
produced by the economic miracle transformed Japan into a middle-class society.
Compared to other industrial countries, Japan had a relatively equal
distribution of income, and few pockets of extreme poverty remained, even in the
countryside. To most Japanese the ideal social status was that of the “salary
man”—the white-collar middle-class employee of a large corporation. Since access
to white-collar status depended on education, high school completion rates rose
rapidly, as did attendance at colleges and universities.
But rapid economic growth had a
downside. The Japanese had built the world’s third-largest economy with a
population half that of the United States, in a country whose territory could
fit comfortably within the boundaries of Montana. The results were predictable:
overcrowded cities and suburbs, air pollution and water pollution, huge
accumulations of solid waste and garbage, overloaded highway and public
transportation systems, and a disintegrating natural environment. During the
1960s and 1970s local citizens’ movements fought against the worst cases of
industrial pollution. Under increasing public pressure, the LDP governments
passed legislation setting tough automobile and noise pollution standards and
providing compensation for pollution-related health problems. But difficulties
such as crowded urban housing, lengthy commutes, and traffic problems were less
easy to deal with.
Despite the domestic problems
accompanying rapid economic growth, the other advanced nations recognized that
Japan had emerged as an economic superpower. When the first economic summit was
convened at Versailles, France, in 1975, Japan was invited to join as one of the
“big five” nations. With international recognition came a recovery in national
self-confidence. During the 1970s and 1980s books explaining the secrets of
Japan’s economic success became bestsellers abroad, while at home a new cultural
nationalism found expression in a proliferation of books explaining the
distinctive strength and virtues of Japanese society.
L3 | Political Developments |
In the 1960s and 1970s Japan’s major
diplomatic initiatives were aimed at improving relations with its Asian
neighbors. In 1965 Japanese prime minister Sato Eisaku hosted South Korea’s
foreign minister at the first meeting of the two governments since World War II.
The meeting produced a far-ranging agreement on mutual relations. After the
United States suddenly reestablished relations with the People’s Republic of
China in 1971, surprising and exasperating the Japanese government, Japanese
prime minister Tanaka Kakuei visited China in 1972. The two countries agreed to
resume diplomatic relations immediately, and Japan severed official diplomatic
ties with Taiwan. Finally, in 1972 Japan regained sovereignty over the Ryukyu
Islands, although the United States continued to maintain military bases on
Okinawa.
In domestic politics, the LDP
continued to hold the reins of government throughout the 1970s, although the
party’s cabinets changed frequently, due largely to factional infighting. Six
LDP politicians succeeded one another as prime minister in the ten years that
passed between the cabinet of Tanaka Kakuei in 1972 and that of Nakasone
Yasuhiro in 1982.
Factionalism and the growing expense
of elections led politicians to become increasingly involved in dubious
financial dealings, and during this period the first of a series of
influence-peddling scandals involving the LDP came to light. In 1974 Tanaka had
been forced to resign amid accusations of improprieties, and in 1976 he was
arrested for taking bribes from the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, a U.S. firm.
The scandal widened as it became clear that Lockheed had paid at least $10
million in bribes and fees to Japanese politicians and industrialists since the
1950s.
Tanaka’s trial and judicial appeals
lasted for more than a decade. National voting rates declined steadily, and
public opinion polls showed a rising indifference to politics.
In the aftermath of the scandals, the
LDP lost its absolute majority in the lower house between 1976 and 1980. During
the mid-1980s, Nakasone, a conservative who supported rearmament and a more
active international role for Japan, revived the fortunes of the LDP. Under his
leadership the party won its largest electoral victory in 1986, but this success
owed much to the continuing influence of the Tanaka faction.
M | Japan in Recent Years |
M1 | The Economic Bubble and Its Aftermath |
In the latter half of the 1980s Japan
experienced a period of financial euphoria that came to be known as the bubble.
The bubble was triggered in 1985 by a sudden rise in the value of the yen. As
Japanese goods became more expensive overseas, Japan’s exports decreased and its
economy slowed. To stimulate economic growth, the LDP government increased
public spending and eased interest rates. Real estate and stock prices soared,
and even middle-class Japanese began to speculate. In addition, the high value
of the yen encouraged Japanese investment overseas. In Southeast Asia, where
labor costs were lower, Japanese companies built new production facilities. In
the United States they invested not only in electronics factories and automobile
assembly plants but also bought highly visible assets such as Rockefeller Center
in New York City. In early 1990, however, the economic bubble burst suddenly
when the government raised interest rates to dampen speculation.
The collapse of the bubble ushered in
a period of prolonged economic slowdown. Large corporations attempted to deal
with the slowdown through downsizing, but many large banks and financial
institutions remained saddled with huge amounts of bad loans left over from the
economic boom period. In 1997 an economic downturn in Southeast Asia harmed
Japanese trade and investment in the region and further undermined the strength
of Japan’s economy. Public confidence in the economy steadily deteriorated as
the economic bureaucracy appeared unable to deal with the country’s economic
problems. By the early 2000s Japan remained mired in its longest recession since
World War II.
Blame for the continuing economic
slowdown was laid at the door of the MOF, which did little despite strong
domestic and foreign demands for economic deregulation and greater market
freedom. In May 1997 the MOF announced plans for a “Big Bang” to deregulate
banking and finance, but daily newspaper and television news continued to
headline stories about bureaucratic inflexibility, incompetence, and corruption.
In 1998 the Diet passed a series of bills intended to initiate economic recovery
by increasing government spending and authorizing measures to address the
banking problem. By late 2002, however, a decade of massive stimulus packages
and emergency measures had failed to stimulate Japan’s stagnant economy. Signs
of an economic turnaround began to appear late in 2005.
M2 | Political Turmoil |
In January 1989 Emperor Hirohito died
after a 62-year reign. His son Akihito succeeded him as emperor, inaugurating
what was officially called the reign of Heisei, which means “achieving peace.”
However, the years that followed were marked by domestic political turmoil.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s a
new set of scandals shook the LDP. In 1988 it was revealed that the Recruit
Company, a Japanese data services and real estate firm, had bribed many top LDP
leaders. Scandal brought down the administrations of prime ministers Takeshita
Noboru and Uno Sosuke in rapid succession in 1989. In national elections held
that year, the LDP lost its majority in the upper house for the first time in
more than three decades. Kaifu Toshiki, elected by LDP Diet members as a “clean”
candidate to improve the party’s image, unsuccessfully tried to push through
political reform. Unable to cope with economic malaise and lacking the
confidence of prominent party members, Kaifu was replaced in late 1991 by a
veteran politician, Miyazawa Kiichi.
In 1993 younger LDP leaders, led by
Hata Tsutomu and Ozawa Ichiro, became frustrated by the party’s inertia and
broke away to form new parties of their own. The loss of these members deprived
the LDP of its majority in the lower house, and national elections held that
year did not restore it. A coalition of eight opposition parties formed a
cabinet under Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro, putting an end to the LDP’s long
political hegemony.
The political situation continued to
deteriorate, however, as the new parties maneuvered for position. Amid
allegations that he had accepted an illegal loan in 1982, Hosokawa stepped down
in 1994, and the coalition chose Hata as prime minister. Soon afterward, the
largest of the eight parties withdrew from the coalition, leaving Hata without a
majority in the lower house of parliament. He resigned after only two months in
office.
Meanwhile, the power of the political
left had dwindled substantially during the late 1980s. After decades in the
opposition, the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ; formerly the Japan
Socialist Party) moved to gain more support among voters by adopting a more
pragmatic platform. The party even abandoned long-standing positions such as
opposition to the mutual security treaty with the United States and the
maintenance of the SDF.
In 1994 a coalition cabinet came to
power made up of the LDP and its former rival, the SDPJ, electing Murayama
Tomiichi Japan’s first socialist prime minister since 1948. But the political
parties continued to combine, split, and recombine into new political factions
and parties. Murayama, whose coalition government was weak, resigned in January
1996, and the Diet elected LDP leader and former trade minister Hashimoto
Ryutaro to the post. Hashimoto formed a coalition government with the SDPJ and
Sakigake, a progressive conservative party.
In late 1997 the LDP regained a
majority in the lower house when a key opposition member returned to the party.
Political maneuvering and a stubborn opposition, however, made it difficult for
Hashimoto’s cabinet to confront the country’s many economic and political
problems. The following year, the coalition of the LDP, SDPJ, and Sakigake broke
up. Unhappy with the state of the economy, Japanese voters inflicted a defeat on
the LDP in elections for the upper house in July 1998. Accepting responsibility
for the defeat, Hashimoto resigned as prime minister. LDP politician Obuchi
Keizo replaced him as prime minister, and the LDP entered a new coalition in
1999, this time with the Liberal Party, a group of former LDP members led by
Ozawa. Obuchi suffered a stroke in April 2000 and lapsed into a coma. He was
replaced as prime minister and head of the LDP by longtime LDP politician Mori
Yoshiro.
In early parliamentary elections held
in June 2000 for Japan’s lower house, the House of Representatives, the LDP and
its coalition partners suffered losses but retained a majority. Public approval
ratings for Mori plunged to below 10 percent due to his reported political
blunders and the LDP’s lack of success in reviving the economy. In late April
2001 the LDP held an early internal election to choose a new party leader to
replace Mori as prime minister. Junichiro Koizumi (Western style), a
reform-minded former health and welfare minister, was chosen over former prime
minister Hashimoto Ryutaro. Koizumi’s victory over the candidate favored by
party seniors broke with tradition and was widely interpreted as a sign of
growing frustration with Japan’s economic problems.
Koizumi pursued structural reforms of
the Japanese economy. In 2005, however, some LDP members in the upper house of
the Diet blocked his goal to privatize the national postal service. In response,
Koizumi called an early parliamentary election for the lower house. LDP members
who had opposed him were officially banished from the party; some of them
founded the New People’s Party. In the September 2005 election the LDP and its
coalition partner, New Komeito, won a landslide victory, taking 327 out of 480
seats. The two-thirds majority gave Koizumi the power to override any opposition
to his reforms in the upper house.
Despite his popularity, Koizumi
announced his intention to step down at the end of his term in 2006.
Accordingly, in September 2006 the LDP chose party member Shinzō Abe (Western
style) to succeed Koizumi. Although Abe initially enjoyed high poll ratings, his
popularity plummeted following a series of corruption scandals involving several
of his cabinet ministers. Support for Abe was also divided on his proposed plans
for revising the constitution to allow Japan’s military forces a greater role in
international affairs. In the July 2007 elections to the upper house of the
Diet, the LDP-led coalition lost its ruling majority in that house, further
undermining Abe’s ability to garner support for his policies.
Abe abruptly resigned in September
2007. The LDP was able to choose his successor because its coalition continued
to hold a majority in the lower house of the Diet. Yasuo Fukuda (Western style),
who had served in the pivotal role of chief cabinet secretary under Koizumi,
became the new leader of the LDP and prime minister of Japan.
M3 | International Affairs |
The end of the Cold War in the late
1980s brought new uncertainties in Japan’s relations with the outside world.
Although the mutual security treaty remained in force, the United States
pressured Japan to assume responsibility in international politics commensurate
with its economic power. A country with a large stake in international
stability, the Americans argued, should take some responsibility for maintaining
it.
Japanese political leaders, aware
that public sentiment strongly supported the peace constitution, remained
reluctant to take a more active role in international military efforts. During
the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the Japanese government provided $13 billion to
help reimburse the expenses of the anti-Iraq coalition, but sent no troops. In
1992 the Diet passed a law allowing noncombatant SDF personnel to take part in
UN peacekeeping operations, but the law required Diet approval in every case.
And the Japanese public expressed concern in 1997 when a new U.S.-Japanese
security plan committed Japan to cooperate with U.S. forces in conflicts
occurring in areas around Japan.
In the 1990s the Japanese confronted
hostility among their Asian neighbors despite growing trade, investment, and
other economic ties. Memories of Japan’s wartime activities remained alive in
North and South Korea and China. In the early 1990s, for example, South Koreans
and other Asians demanded that Japan admit responsibility for forcefully
recruiting women to serve as “comfort women,” or prostitutes, for Japanese
soldiers during the war. On August 15, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of
the war, Prime Minister Murayama expressed “deep remorse” for war victims,
particularly in Asia. But leading LDP politicians continued to make statements
that appeared to defend or justify Japan’s actions as an imperialist and
military power. The issue resurfaced in 2001 when a new history textbook
appeared to gloss over Japan’s past military aggressions in China and Korea, and
it was further aggravated the same year when Prime Minister Koizumi visited the
Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, where Japanese war dead are honored, including
Japanese convicted of war crimes. Koizumi continued to make annual visits to the
shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, further
straining relations with neighboring countries that regarded the shrine as a
symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism.
In September 2002 Koizumi and North
Korean leader Kim Jong Il signed a joint declaration to begin normalizing
relations between their two countries. The summit meeting, held in North Korea,
marked the first diplomatic relations between the two countries since 1948. In
the joint declaration, Japan formally apologized for Korean suffering under
Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. Prior to the meeting, North Korean
officials admitted that North Korean agents had abducted a number of Japanese
citizens since the 1970s in order to conduct spying operations under stolen
identities. North Korea’s refusal to fully comply with Japan’s demand for the
return of its kidnapped citizens remained a point of contention between the two
countries.
In the 1990s and early 2000s Japan
and Russia took steps toward resolving their long-standing territorial dispute
over the Kuril Islands. The dispute had prevented Japan and the Soviet Union
from signing a peace treaty after World War II, leaving them technically in a
state of war. The lingering dispute also posed a significant obstacle to
diplomatic and economic relations between Japan and Russia after the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991. Meetings between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and
Japanese prime ministers in the late 1990s produced statements of commitment to
resolving the dispute. In 2003 Prime Minister Koizumi and Russian president
Vladimir Putin signed an agreement calling for an accelerated effort to resolve
the dispute and produce a peace treaty. In general terms, the agreement also
indicated that the two countries would cooperate in exploiting Russia’s vast
energy resources.
An initial group of an intended
600-strong noncombat contingent was sent to Iraq in February 2004 to assist in
the reconstruction of the country. It represented the first Japanese ground
forces to be deployed in a combat zone since World War II. The measure was
widely seen as controversial and potentially unconstitutional, especially as it
came after the deaths of two Japanese diplomats in a bombing in the city of
Tikrīt in northern Iraq in late 2003 (see U.S.-Iraq War).
Japan began withdrawing its noncombat
forces from Iraq in June 2006. Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe, who succeeded
Koizumi in September 2006, announced his intention to revise Japan’s pacifist
constitution so that the Self-Defense Forces could play a more active role in
international missions. Abe also supported the annual renewal of an
antiterrorism law allowing Japan to provide naval support to U.S.-led coalition
forces in Afghanistan. During his first month in office, Abe visited China and
South Korea in a move to ease strained relations. In another fence-mending
gesture, Abe avoided honoring Japan’s war dead at the Yasukuni shrine during his
term, which ended with his resignation in September 2007.
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