You will notice that as far as countries go I appear preoccupied with the United States and Japan. That has a reason. I lived in Japan for all of my career as a foreign correspondent – as a base for journeys to parts of East and South Asia – as well as roughly a decade before and after that. There is no other country that has been more intellectually stimulating to me. Trying to make sense of its political and social life forced me to conceptualize things that otherwise would have remained routine, taken for granted. I concluded some time ago that Japan, when regarded with serious and sympathic curiosity, offers laboratory-like conditions for viewing the human condition. The political culture that developed during centuries of isolation moulded a society that in many respects appears farthest away from social experience based on European and American habits. It is, therefore an ideal place to contemplate human institutions and how they interact. Politically it has achieved the major feat of maintaining very orderly communal life while lacking a center where power is held to account. Without that center of political accountability it is yet fairly democratic in the popular sense of the...

On Japanese Scandals (PDF version) Karel van Wolferen / Chuo Koron Sept. 1991 The study of Japanese political and economic affairs should be enriched with a special subcategory for scandals. Not because Japanese people produce more, or juicier, scandals than others. Some other countries are pretty good at it as well. But there is a need for systematic analysis of Japanese scandals because of their important function of keeping the Japanese power system running smoothly. The current security brokerage scandal is, again, a wonderful example of this. The major, central, role of the Japanese scandal is to help curb excess. Excess in any kind of behaviour that is otherwise considered normal. For example, it is considered normal in Japan that the astronomical amounts of money politicians spend to get re-elected is provided by corporations. But there are limits to this normality. It is not considered a good thing that one politician gets ten times more than he needs to get re-elected. Conversely, it is not considered a good thing that one single company funds every well-known politician. In either case there is the risk of producing a threat to the way things are done. This threat may turn into an...

Paper prepared for What Is To Be Done? Conference, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 3-5th February 2000 Assumptions held by Western economists, policy makers, and commentators about the nature of the world’s second largest industrial power are so much at variance with observable reality there, that they ought to disturb our peace of mind. The realization that the discrepancy results from conceptual filters with which reality is normally apprehended, ought to have far-reaching consequences for those ready to rethink what is to be done about the world’s international economic order. CREDIT ORDERING A quick look at Japan’s commercial banks affords an immediate glimpse of routine misinterpretation. In the eyes of Western governments and businessmen these are profit seeking institutions, operating in a private realm under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance (MOF). This would lead one to expect that they are regulated under civil law. But civil law and the commercial code do not at all control the activities of Japanese banks. Administrative law does, and in Japan this is entirely a tool in the hands of ministry bureaucrats. The Banking Law has a mere 66 clauses, leaving the operational details for the banks to be settled by the ministry officials...

Asahi Shimbun Japan’s prime minister Junichiro Koizumi is a master illusionist. Playing the media better than any of his predecessors, he has managed to create the widespread impression that voters will have chosen reform if they return him and the LDP candidates supporting his favorite project to the Diet next Sunday. Years before he became prime minister an idea was implanted in his mind that true reform in Japan would begin with an overhaul of the postal savings system. Ever since he has believed that they ought to be privatized, and he has frequently repeated that he would stake his “political life” on an attempt to accomplish this. In the four years that he has headed Japan’s official government he was creeping toward this seemingly receding goal until the Lower House of Japan’s parliament passed related bills, which were subsequently voted down by the Upper House on the 8th of August. This prompted Koizumi to challenge his own party, and Japan’s political elite more generally, dissolving parliament and calling for a snap election. In the current campaign he insists that his plan of privatizing postal savings is the sole issue deserving of debate. He makes it appear as if the...

Asahi Shimbun Why was last Sunday a sad day for Japanese democracy? Because it was demonstrated that a TV celebrity who also happens to be the prime minister of Japan managed to hijack the cause of reform, placed meaningful policy discussion out of bounds, and was given the opportunity to continue blocking the real repairs that Japan does need. Koizumi’s achievement is amazing if you consider that genuine privatization of postal savings is unthinkable. We need to be very clear about this right away; what I write here is not controversial opinion, it is a reality anyone can see. The money collected by the post office has a peculiar function that is crucial in helping to keep the Japanese economy going through the zaisei yushishikin – which officials can treat as a “second budget”. If you expose the huge amount of money involved to real market forces – which is what privatization means – Japan’s financial system would collapse along with many of its agricultural institutions, and practically the entire construction sector would go bankrupt. Just one further detail: In combination, this fund, administered by Ministry of Finance officials, together with Japan Post itself, are the biggest holder of Japan...

This article is part of the “Turning Points 2003” year-end package from The New York Times Syndicate. c.2003 Karel Van Wolferen (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.) Amid the appearance of a resurgent, newly aggressive America, the really significant international development of 2003 was the destruction of the conditions that until now had made American hegemony possible. The almost universally accepted dominance of the United States had been the pivot of a relatively stable and peaceful world order, but that order now stands on the verge of disintegration. Hegemony implies consent on the part of weaker powers, which enables the dominant power to avoid overt coercion _ the mark of imperialism, from which it must clearly be differentiated. It reveals itself in the dominant country’s influence over other countries’ world views, particularly in regard to international political and economic relations. While the United States has often been accused of arrogance and has not always been accepted as a model of good governance, generally American hegemony enjoyed a global welcome. The United States was understood to constitute the world’s primary force for order, an order initiated in the cauldron of World War II, built in the shadow of superpower rivalry...