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Greening Marx in Japan

The Japanese context of decades-long economic stagnation has helped to generate an unexpected reading of Marx as a proto-degrowth proponent. Kōhei Saitō discusses his novel synthesis of Kuruma School historical materialism, German philology and American eco-socialism.

Legacies of Abe Shinzo

How will the assassinated Abe Shinzo be remembered? Portrait of a ruling-class politician who re-enforced the crumbling citadel of Japan’s post-war order—and the murky connections with the far-right 'new religion' that led to his death.

Privilege Preserved

The first major economy to pass through the sequence of financial implosion and electoral upset, Japan is also ahead of the West in stabilizing its political order. But is the stasis of the elite mirrored in the society it sits atop? Renewed deflation and the dwindling of the seishain as backdrop to Abe’s third term.

On Shinzo Abe’s Japan

Headline-grabbing economic and monetary reforms read as smokescreens for a hardening of Japanese foreign policy, with Washington’s partial support. Incompatible mythologies of legitimation in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, presaging insoluble tensions for the region.

Re-selling Japan

Kristin Surak on David Pilling, Bending Adversity. Hopes for a Thatcherized Japan in Fukushima’s wake from the FT’s man in Tokyo.

Obama vs Okinawa

Practical lessons in world hegemony, as Japan’s attempt to strike an independent course is cut down by the Obama Administration. For the islanders of Okinawa, another chapter in a centuries-old tale of military occupation.

Misconceiving Asia

Achin Vanaik on Bill Emmott, Rivals. Contending Asian powers as arbiters of the 21st century, through Western establishment eyes.

East Asia’s Dollars

Discussions of the sustainability of the US current-account deficit—trending upward from $800bn—rarely plumb the long-term motives of its creditors. Taggart Murphy analyses the historical roots of Tokyo’s post-1868 geofinancial support for the ruling superpower, London or Washington, and the implications of China’s rise for Japanese strategy.

Koizumi’s Coup

How and why Japanese voters rallied to a plebiscite on privatization, downing the first strong cocktail of neoliberalism and chauvinism—laced with submission to the United States—in East Asia. The make-over of the LDP, the eclipse of opposition, and the implications of handing Japan Post to global finance.

Remilitarizing Japan

Relations between Washington and Europe have been under the spotlight since 2001; less so those between the US and Japan. Koizumi’s constitution-breaking dispatch of SDF units to Iraq, and American strategies for containing China and re-arming the East Asian rim.

Tokyo’s High-Art Emporia

Why Japanese department-store owners turned their upper floors over to Vuillard, Degas and Kandinsky at the height of the bubble economy. Consumption of high art as packaging for the mass commodity.

Breaking the Iron Triangle

How close is what was once the strongest—now the weakest—link in the chain of world capital to snapping? Gavan McCormack looks at the mortmain of Japan’s construction state, and the extent of its devastation of the country’s physical environment and public finances alike.

Refabricating Japan

Murray Sayle on Timon Screech, The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States 1760–1829. How painting, architecture, dress, topography were once mobilized to construct an official Japanese identity, and some analogies today.

Why Does the Emperor Need the Yakuza?

Japan’s flashy gangsters look to be the antithesis of its austere emperors. Bertell Ollman contends that there is a structural connexion between them. Rule by an unelected bureaucracy requires an inviolate imperial symbol for compensating legitimacy, which must in turn be shielded from queries or criticisms by criminal thugs. An American Marxist challenges the central taboo of Japanese public life.

Japan’s Houdini

Gavan McCormack on Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. A pathbreaking study of the life and times of the Showa Emperor, and of his American protectors.

A Left Within the Place of Nothingness

Japan’s Left is the least known of any major state, outside its own borders. Asada Akira situates it in a wide-angled panorama of his country: Japanese political, philosophical and cultural life from inter-war days to the dissatisfied, postmodern present.

For and Against NGOs

Non-governmental organizations have taken over from social movements as candidates for progressive activism. Tessa Morris-Suzuki looks at the theory behind them, and the practice of their roles in Asia and Australia, with a view to a critical politics of the ‘lived world’.

Japan’s Economic Crisis

The 20th century’s most dynamic economy has fallen into prolonged paralysis. What are the causes of Japanese stagnation, and why have the country’s rulers reacted so phlegmatically to it? Taggart Murphy highlights the potentially explosive interdependency between Japanese recession and the American bull market.

The Asian Crisis: The High Debt Model Versus the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF Complex

“How could the widely acknowledged real estate problems of Thailand’s banks in 1996 and 1997 have triggered such a far-reaching debt-and-development crisis? The devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997 was followed by currency crises or financial instability in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, . . .” read more

Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Perspective

“To what extent is the World Bank an actor, an ‘autonomous variable’ in the international system? Or to what extent are its objectives and approaches the mere manifestations of competition and compromise among its member states? Several writers have argued that the Bank has a relatively large amount . . .” read more

Japan in the Age of Uncertainty

“How did you come to write The Enigma of Japanese Power? The book was published in 1988, but you’d been living in Japan for a long time before that. What was your experience of the country?” read more

The Price of Affluence: The Political Economy of Japanese Leisure

“It is well known that Japan has in the past decade developed into an economic superpower—the world’s greatest asset country, with the biggest per-capita gnp, the biggest aid budgets, home to all ten of the world’s biggest banks and many of its biggest corporations, the base for . . .” read more

Feminist Politics in Japan

“The situation of women in Japan, perhaps the most advanced capitalist nation today, raises a number of issues that will seem at once familiar and highly distinctive to an international readership. What is the role of women’s labour, and how have capital and the state attempted to regulate . . .” read more

Japan and America: Antagonistic Alliance

“The ‘Nixon Shocks’ of 1971, which announced the opening of relations between the us and China and initiated a series of measures to protect the us economy, had an immense combined impact in Japan. As America’s main economic rival, Japan was the most threatened of all . . .” read more

Washington v.Tokyo: Wall Street v. Marunouchi

“In November last year the us House of Representatives passed a protectionist trade bill, by 215 to 165 votes, which was condemned inside and outside the usa as the worst of its kind since the Smoot-Hawley Bill of 1930. The bill was blocked in the Senate . . .” read more

The Student Left in Japan

“The Japanese student movement has won world-wide publicity in recent years for its militancy. Repeated images have been conveyed of helmeted, stave-wielding students doing massive and heroic battle with the police, of their holding out against helicopter-borne assaults on their university strongholds, or of their hi-jacking aircraft at . . .” read more

Mishima

“Mishima’s death provides an excellent and salutary occasion to look at two important phenomena: the nature of Zen culture in Japan, and the condition of the Japanese army.” read more

'The Japanese Communist Movement'

“Robert Scalapino: The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. University of California Press (CUP) 52s.” read more

On 'Japan--Asian Capitalism'

“Hide Ishiguro writes: There are two or three things in Jon Halliday’s interesting article on Japan which require comment.” read more

Reply to Ishiguro

“Hide Ishiguro’s apt comments are most welcome: my analysis was certainly somewhat abbreviated at many points. However I would like to defend myself against the implication that I was supporting the traditional right-wing view in Europe. The essence of the bourgeois viewpoint, in Britain at least, is to . . .” read more

Japan--Asian Capitalism

“Japan is now about to become the third industrial power in the world. It is already the second largest car producing country. In 1955 it’s gross national product was slightly less than half Britain’s. This year it will be almost 20 per cent greater. Japan is the only . . .” read more

'Prisoner of the British'

“Prisoner of the British: Yuji Aida. Translated from the Japanese by Hide Ishiguro and Louis Allen. The Cresset Press. 30s.” read more

Maruyama and Japanese Thought

“I have a number of thoughts and feelings about contemporary domestic and foreign events. However, I believe I should not precipitately engage in political discussions since my scholarship is still shallow and my practical experience is not yet extensive. I prefer rather to stroll in the free world . . .” read more

'The Modern History of Japan'

“The Modern History of Japan. W. G. Beasley. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 36s.” read more

Olympic Games

“All athletes who competed in the Games of the New Emerging Forces at Jakarta last year have been indefinitely suspended by the iaaf. This means that they will not be able to take part in the Tokyo Olympics.” read more

Tokyo Against the Alliance

“the storms of June are over: but the Japanese sky is still full of clouds. The recent high-tide of the anti-Kishi movement, whose crest was the massive resistance to the new US-Japan Security Treaty, washed away the visit of President Eisenhower. Nevertheless, the Premier and his Liberal-Democratic . . .” read more