No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Tradition and Politics in Studies of Contemporary Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Extract
Each of the books listed above is concerned in some way with problems of tradition and modernity. The extent to which tradition is still an influential force in Japan; the compatibility and/or incompatibility of tradition and modernity; the present functions of tradition in Japanese society, polity, and economy; and the future prospects for tradition in modern Japan—all these are matters of concern to the authors, and together they may inform present intellectual discussions of traditionalism, modernization, and modernity.
- Type
- Review Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974
References
1 See, among others, Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York 1964)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., “Breakdowns of Modernization,” in Finkle, Jason and Gable, Richard, eds., Political Development and Social Change (New York 1966), 573Google Scholar; Holt, Robert and Turner, John, The Political Basis of Economic Development (Princeton 1966)Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston 1966)Google Scholar; Smith, Thomas, “Japan's Aristocratic Revolution,” Yale Review, I (Spring 1961), 370Google Scholar; Ward, Robert and Rustow, Dankwart, Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 “Macro” and “micro” refer, in this essay, to levels of generalization, not to levels of analysis.
3 Diamant, Alfred, “Is There a Non-Western Political Process?” Journal of Politics, XXI (February 1959), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pye, Lucian, “The Non-Western Political Process,” Journal of Politics, xx (August 1958), 468CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See, for instance, Bernard Silberman, “Ringisei: Bureaucratization or Cultural Norms?” unpub. (Duke University 1972).
5 Parsons, Talcott, Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Ill. 1949)Google Scholar; Levy, Marion J. Jr., Modernization and the Structure of Societies (Princeton 1966), 135–74Google Scholar.
6 Silberman (fn. 4), 6.
7 It has been suggested that, since I am using “traditional” in a purely chronological sense, I should discard the term and posit two behavioral dimensions, a chronological continuum (from “old” to “new”) and an analytical one (from “non-modern” to “modern”). I do use die latter; for the former, however, I personally prefer the poles “traditional” and “non-traditional.”
8 Bendix, Reinhard, “Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX (April 1967), 309Google Scholar.
9 Huntington, Samuel, “The Change to Change,” Comparative Politics, III (April 1971), 288Google Scholar.
10 Joseph Gusfield, “Tradition and Modernity,” in Finkle and Gable (fn. 1), 16.
11 Ibid., 16; Huntington (fn. 9), 295-96.
12 Bendix (fn. 8), 326.
13 Levy (fn. 5), 14, 128.
14 Huntington (fn. 9), 293-95.
15 Kishimoto, Hideo, “Modernization versus Westernization in the East,” Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, VII (1963), 871–72Google Scholar. For one such instance, see Bellah, Robert, Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, Ill. 1957)Google Scholar.
16 Bendix (fn. 8), 329.
17 Into this category would go all of the literature of “prerequisites of modernization” produced by those who see the roots of modern Japan in the Tokugawa period, such as the contributors to Hall, John and Jansen, Marius, Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan (Princeton 1968)Google Scholar.
18 Kahn, Herman, The Emerging Japanese Superstate (Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1971)Google Scholar; Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York 1972)Google Scholar.
19 Halloran, Richard, Japan: Images and Realities (New York 1969)Google Scholar.
20 Ibid., xviii; emphasis in original.
21 Docho and kyoso in Japanese.
22 Chusei kyoso in Japanese. Another equivalent is “more royalist than the king”; in its nationalistic manifestation the best rendering possible (if I may be permitted a neologism) is chauv'-qui-peul.
23 A “good” family is one which can provide the best possible education for its children and, for itself, a one-family house and all the “right” consumer goods.
24 See, for instance, Scott Flanagan, “The Japanese Party System in Transition,” Comparative Politics, in (January 1971), 231.
25 Hakushi inin-kei shido. For a treatment in English, see Ward, Robert, ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton 1968), 314 n. 11Google Scholar.
26 A poor translation of oyakflta hi-no-maru.
27 That is, by mobilizing society's dominant biases. See Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York 1960), chap. 2Google Scholar.
28 Halloran (fn. 19), chap. 4.
29 For a discussion of this phenomenon see Kamishima Jiro, Kindai Nihon no Seishin Kozo [The Spiritual Structure of Modem Japan] (Tokyo 1961).
30 Among others, by Reischauer, Edwin, The United States and Japan (New York 1962)Google Scholar, chap. 8; Langdon, Frank, Politics in Japan (Boston 1967), chap. 3Google Scholar; Ike, Nobutaka, Japanese Politics (New York 1972), chap. 2Google Scholar; Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Tokyo 1954)Google Scholar, passim, esp. chap. 3.
31 Here, too, Japanese uniqueness may be questioned, since in the world as a whole consensual decision making is probably prevalent in more societies than is majori-tarian.
32 For a discussion of this concept, see the extensive writings of Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz; eg. , “Decisions and Non-Decisions,” American Political Science Review, LVII (September 1963), 632.
33 Kahn (fn. 18), 9.
34 Brzezinski (fn. 18), 3; Langdon (fn. 30), 97.
35 Brzezinski (fn. 18), 5.
36 Asahi Shimbun [Asahi News] (March 18, 1972).
37 Verba, Sidney, “Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of the International System,” in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney, eds., The International System (Princeton 1961), 93Google Scholar.
38 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston 1965), chap. 1Google Scholar.
39 Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven 1961)Google Scholar.
40 Oral presentation, Washington, D.C. (October 1972).
41 Kiyoaki Tsuji, “Decision-Making in the Japanese Government,” in Ward (fn. 25), 457. The ringi-sei is basically a system wherein each member of an organization within whose jurisdiction or expertise a proposal falls has an opportunity to check and formally approve the proposal.
42 It must be admitted, however, that if the Japanese are eager seducers, we—with our visions of Oriental exoticism and inscrutability—are certainly unprotesting partners.
43 Moore (fn. 1), chaps. 5, 8.
44 Duus, Peter, Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taisho Japan (Cambridge, Mass. 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Silberman (fn. 4).
46 Huntington (fn. 9), 298.
47 Reich, Charles, The Greening of America (New York 1970)Google Scholar.
48 I use the term dehumanizing both impressionistically, to denote a characteristic of any society situated at the “modern” poles of all of the Parsonian patterned variables, and empirically, building on studies of comparative industrialization. See, for instance, Dore, R. P., City Life in Japan (Berkeley 1967), 258Google Scholar; Vogel, Ezra, Japan's New Middle Class (Berkeley 1966), 255Google Scholar.
49 Riesman (fn. 39).
50 MacPherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London 1962)Google Scholar.
51 Brzezinski (fn. 18), 4.
52 The term is Watanuki Joji's. Nihon no Seiji Shakai [Political Society in Japan] (Tokyo 1967), chap. 3.
53 As defined by those who present the arguments. Note that the degree to which these factors are traditional is debatable.
54 However, events since the original writing of this essay may rescue it from the realm of speculation. The instability of domestic economic conditions has been demonstrated by the Arab oil embargo—which could, if extended, almost totally destroy the Japanese economy—and by gnawing inflation (over 15% in 1973) which preceded the oil crisis and which Prime Minister Tanaka has stubbornly refused to acknowledge, much less come to grips with. In the international arena, the problems facing expanding Japanese trade and ambition have been violently demonstrated by the bloody anti-Japanese riots which followed the Prime Minister's padi during his January 1974 trip to Southeast Asia. The domestic political repercussions of these phenomena are yet to be seen, but may well provide a test of the hypotheses posed above.