More basically, the great economic growth of the fifties and the general stabilizing of society had made the outburst of 1960 somewhat anachronistic, and nothing quite like it ever occurred again. It was generally agreed, however, that Kishi must go, and Ikeda Hayato, an ex-bureaucrat from the influential finance ministry, was chosen to be his successor on July 19. Ikeda was a faction leader less to the right than Kishi, and he announced he would take a “low posture” in domestic politics, giving the opposition free rein for debate on controversial issues. His was to be the more typically Japanese strategy of compromise and consensus. Desiring to direct public attention away from the political conflicts of the past to the economic successes of the present, he announced, with considerable fanfare, a noncontroversial “income doubling plan” for the decade. This was more a prediction than a plan, and it actually fell short of reality: Japanese incomes doubled within seven years.
The general elections Ikeda held on November 20, 1960, showed that the uproar of the preceding spring had done the LDP no harm. It emerged with 57.5 percent of the vote, almost exactly the same figure as in 1958, and a small increase in the number of Diet seats to 296. The steady conservative undercurrent of Japanese politics was shown to be still flowing strong.
Ikeda’s term in office was a period of hitherto unprecedented stability and goodwill, which continued after his resignation on November 9, 1964, shortly before his death from cancer. His own personality and policies were, of course, the major reason for this calm. He was a skilled leader and, unlike most of his successors, was a man of broad national and international vision. He was also aided by the inauguration of John Kennedy as president of the United States in January 1961. As elsewhere in the world, Kennedy enjoyed extraordinary popularity in Japan, especially among the young people and progressives who were most likely to be anti-American, thus softening opposition to the American relationship. The United States also made conscious efforts to redress the relationship with Japan as inherited from the occupation days by trying to establish a more equal partnership. For example, in November 1961 joint annual meetings of certain members of the two cabinets were begun, and much more careful attention was paid to Japanese sensitivities. In April 1964 the United States insisted, against European opposition, on the admission of Japan into the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, making it the first non-Atlantic member of this significant grouping of the most advanced nations. Sensationally successful trips to Japan by Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, in January 1962 and again in January 1964, shortly after the president’s assassination, also helped improve the American image in Japan.
The basic reason, however, for the quiet of the Ikeda years was the realization at last by the Japanese themselves that their country had fully restored itself and was doing far better than ever before. The economy continued to race ahead at breakneck speed, dazzling the Japanese as well as the rest of the world, and from this new affluence emerged a growing sense of self-esteem and contentment. GNP continued to grow at its phenomenal average rate of 10 percent per year in real terms, at times rising as high as 14 percent. Before the end of the decade, Japan’s economy had become the third largest in the world, displacing West Germany’s and trailing only those of the two admitted superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Per capita incomes had soared well above $1,000. Japan, long a trade-deficit country, was developing a trade surplus. Its productive power was approaching four times that of all Africa and twice that of Latin America, and it was coming close to equaling all the rest of Asia combined. Living standards as measured in monetary terms were still only about half those of northwestern Europe and a quarter those of the United States, but they had shot past the levels of much of southern and Eastern Europe and were fast closing the gap with the most advanced nations.
This prosperity was largely the result of the tremendous expansion of industry. In some years Japan produced over half the world’s shipping tonnage, and it reached third place in steel production, third place in motor vehicles, and second place in electronics. The growth was largely in heavy industry, chemicals, electronics, and sophisticated machinery. Textiles and the other light industries did not do as well, with newer competitors in Asia pushing into these fields just as Japan itself had more than fifty years before. In fact, Japanese businessmen began to transfer some of their more labor-intensive and technically less difficult manufacturing processes to affiliates they established in countries where wages were lower but industrial labor was reasonably efficient, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—all, incidentally, areas that shared with Japan the basic East Asian work ethic and emphasis on education. Even Japan’s paucity of raw materials was an advantage in some ways. For example, the steel industry, lacking significant domestic supplies of iron ore or coking coal, could draw on the cheapest sources of supply throughout the world and benefit from plummeting transport costs as oil tankers and bulk carriers became behemoths in size. The result was that Japan’s steel industry could bring together Australian or Indian iron ore with American coking coal and produce steel that could be sold in the United States in competition with the products of aging and less well-placed American steel mills.
Industrial labor shared in the economic advance and, in contrast to earlier stages of industrialization, a shortage of labor developed. The vast pool of surplus rural population, which at one time had held back the development of a true urban labor force, was drying up. Factories and service industries still continued to use labor more lavishly than in the United States, and relatively early retirement ages meant that there was considerable slack in the labor market. But the supply of young new workers began to run short. Japanese employers competed eagerly for college and high-school graduates, bidding competitively for their services and signing them up long in advance of graduation. Japan, unlike the countries of Western Europe, did not make up for labor shortages by importing foreign “guest” workers. An insular abhorrence of large numbers of foreigners in their midst ruled out this solution and thus saved them from the problems such tactics later produced.
Labor shortages even benefited workers in the service areas and in less efficient factories, since workers could be retained in these fields only by higher wages. The dual structure of the economy thus started to disappear. Farmers in particular did better because of the drastic drop in rural population, the widespread use of farm machinery that made this possible, and generous price supports ensured by the LDP Dietmen they elected. Farm boys and girls, on completing their educations, deserted the countryside en masse, attracted by the glitter and excitement of the cities and the less arduous work in factories. In places 90 percent of graduating classes flowed to the cities, and some eldest sons who remained at home to take over the family farm had difficulty finding wives. Many farmers were drawn to higher-paying factory jobs in nearby towns or, if they lived in more remote areas, worked in the cities on a seasonal basis. Farming increasingly became an activity, as the Japanese put it, of “mummy, grandpa, and grandma.” Agriculture, which had absorbed close to half the labor force as late as the end of World War II, now used little more than a tenth. The remaining Japanese farmers became quite affluent, at least by Asian standards. Many came to own cars and some could afford vacation trips, organized by their local cooperatives, to Hong Kong, Hawaii, or even Europe.
Rural affluence, however, also produced problems. The dearth of males in the off season in some rural areas raised social difficulties, and long city sojourns for farmer husbands resulted in disruptive liaisons with city girls. The long-range problems were even more serious. An agricultural system that was made basically inefficient by its minuscule size could not be supported forever by constantly raising rice prices at the expense of city consumers. Farms of 2.5 acres, tiny patches of agriculture in remote valleys, and terraced fields on steep mountainsides hardly fitted the type of economy Japan was developing. In the long run, the only real solution to the agricultu
ral problem was to consolidate farms into much bigger units and abandon less productive fields, but the process had as yet hardly begun.
Continued rapid industrial growth thus did not solve all Japan’s economic problems. Higher wages for workers who did not increase their productivity inevitably led to a steady rise in prices, and the speed of economic growth generated other inflationary pressures. Tokyo real estate prices came to be matched only by those of midtown Manhattan. Social services continued to lag markedly behind those of the West. A beginning was made for a social welfare system similar to that of most modern Western lands, but it was still relatively small. The huge expansion of higher education that had taken place was seriously underfinanced. The congestion in transportation at times threatened to suffocate Japan with its own prosperity. Pollution of air and water grew steadily worse. Urban housing remained extremely cramped, city parks few, and roads unbelievably narrow and crowded. Fine new prefectural offices, city halls, and “people’s auditoriums” were built in most cities, and in the larger ones the construction of great office buildings went on apace. The withdrawal of the old earthquake-inspired limit on the height of buildings permitted skyscrapers of forty or more stories to appear in Tokyo. But a large proportion of the public buildings, such as hospitals and schools, were antiquated and often dilapidated, and urban housing remained in distressingly short supply.
On the whole, however, prosperity together with the passage of time gradually freed the Japanese from many of the anxieties of the early postwar period. Affluence undercut leftist predictions of economic catastrophe, diverted popular attention from the promised panacea of revolution to the enjoyment of immediate pleasures, and soothed strife between labor and management. Japan’s worst postwar labor dispute, which occurred at the Miike coal mines in Kyushu, was settled on November 1, 1960, when the striking miners were forced to bow to the inevitable rationalization and cutback of coal mining because of the availability of cheap fuel oil from the Middle East. Unions discovered that there was much more to be gained from peaceful bargaining over wage increases, made possible by a burgeoning economy, than from demonstrating in the streets for remote and theoretical political objectives. As labor-management relations in the sixties became decidedly less turbulent, the annual “spring struggle” over wages became basically a series of lackluster parades and wage negotiations. May Day, labor’s day for demonstrating solidarity, became a festive occasion to which workers brought the kiddies.
Japanese became decidedly more satisfied with their lives and more confident in their country. The national flag came more into evidence and the national anthem was heard more often. The word “patriotism” was still used only by extreme rightists, but “nationalism” as a concept became respectable. Since the old Japanese word for it had been discredited by past usage, the Japanese as usual borrowed from English and spoke of nashonarizumu. Opinion polls showed that between 80 and 90 percent of the people considered themselves middle class—hardly a basis for leftist revolutionary fervor. People might be distressed by the educational pressures put on their children to pass the examinations required for entrance into the more prestigious educational institutions, which led to positions in the higher bureaucracy and managerial jobs in the bigger firms, but they considered the system to be basically fair and open to talent. Culture in all forms prospered and proliferated, and in 1968 all Japanese were thrilled when Kawabata Yasunari was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the second man writing in a non-Western language to be so recognized. Japanese architects became world famous. Japanese scientists and scholars were winning recognition throughout the world. Countless international conventions were held in Japan.
Japanese took increasing pride in their country; they felt it good to be a Japanese. Conditions in the rest of Asia seemed pitiable by contrast, and even the West appeared a little stodgy and slow-moving. The floods of Japanese businessmen and tourists who roamed the world came home content to be back. It was intellectually stimulating for the graduate student to spend a year at an American university, but unless he was in New York City or some other major center, he felt as if he had gone to “the sticks.” No place seemed to hum with life and cultural activity quite like Tokyo. Not only had it become the biggest metropolis in the world; it had perhaps the highest concentration of university students, close to half of Japan’s total of a million and a half.
Taurus Photos
Elevated highways in Tokyo.
Despite the continuing rash of street demonstrations, Japan showed far greater calm and stability and a much more vigorous cultural life than it had for more than a century. The nation was creating its own very satisfactory version of a lively, affluent twentieth-century life. The 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games gave the Japanese a chance to show the world their achievements, which they did with great pride and gusto, in what were generally recognized to be the finest Olympic Games held to date. To accommodate the games, the Japanese threw themselves into a frenzy of building fine new sport facilities, a greatly expanded subway network in Tokyo, fine new hotels, high-speed elevated roadways, the start of a nationwide system of high-speed highways, and a “New Mainline” railway, the Shinkansen, which averaged speeds of well over 100 miles an hour in a crowded but incredibly punctual schedule between Tokyo and Osaka. In 1970 a great International Exposition in Osaka provided the impetus for a corresponding upgrading of transportation facilities and public buildings in the Kansai, the great population and industrial node around Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto, and Tokyo’s one great rival region for national leadership.
Japan in the early and mid-sixties was characterized by relative political tranquillity, massive economic growth, vigorous intellectual and cultural activity, and general goodwill. The sturdy nation had survived the greatest trials of its long history to rise from the ashes of the war and within two decades had burst forth into a blossoming far more glorious than anything anyone could have imagined. But the story of a nation is no mere fairy tale, ending with “and so they lived happily ever after.” Japan was to go on to even greater flowerings, but on the way an endless series of new problems kept springing up to plague its course.
16
THE PROBLEMS OF GROWTH
Japan’s economic growth remained phenomenal throughout the sixties and into the early seventies; it was becoming a truly affluent country. There was a certain fragility to this affluence, however. Japan depended on imported energy, raw materials, and even food. It was correspondingly dependent on foreign markets to pay for these necessary imports. Its population, now past the 100 million mark, provided a huge national market—the foundation for its booming economy—but large-scale foreign trade was essential if this economy was to operate. The pattern of trade was not regional and therefore potentially controllable by Japan, but global and hence entirely beyond its abilities to regulate or defend.
Some weaknesses in the Japanese economy were alarming. The country was more than four-fifths dependent on foreign energy resources—basically oil, which came largely from the Persian Gulf, but also on coal from the United States and Australia, and liquified natural gas. All or virtually all of its iron ore, most other crucial ores and metals, cotton, wool, and about half of its lumber and wood pulp had to be imported, largely from North America, Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, and even Africa. Almost all of its wheat and feed grains and some of its meat came from the United States, Canada, and Australia, and most of its soybeans, needed for protein and for oil for human consumption, from the United States. Its major animal source of protein was fish, caught in the seven seas. The Japanese imported 20 percent of the food they ate and, counting feed grains, about half of the calories that were turned into food.
Though nearby Taiwan and South Korea were becoming important markets, Japan’s largest market was the United States, which took about a third of Japanese exports in the early sixties and more than a third two decades later. Southeast Asia also loomed large, as did more distant areas, s
uch as Europe and Latin America. Relatively little of Japan’s trading area lay within 2,000 miles of Japan. Most of it was from 10,000 to 15,000 miles away. Japan’s economy had become truly global. To have tried to subsist merely on trade with nearby areas, which its military leaders once thought could be shaped into an economic base for Japan as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, would have spelled economic disaster for Japan as it existed in the sixties.
Despite these notable weaknesses in Japan’s foreign trade position, world trading patterns seemed relatively stable, and the Japanese had only vague apprehensions about the future. Politically the nation also seemed more settled than it had during the first two postwar decades, though unperceived political as well as economic problems lay just ahead. The old political hostilities remained, but some of the fire had gone out of them. Japan was an obvious success, and life was essentially well ordered and placid.
Younger persons, perhaps because of the more liberal new education and certainly because they were less psychologically scarred by the past, approached problems in a more open-minded way than their elders had. Beginning with economics, Japanese scholarship started to free itself from its Marxist straitjacket. Young scholars led the way in developing less doctrinaire, more pragmatic lines of reasoning about internal politics and world affairs. They discussed problems of defense and international tension without embarrassment. The tone of the newspapers followed suit. The Self-Defense Forces, developed in the fifties despite the violent opposition of leftists, began to win general acceptance. Most Japanese remained proud that Japan had “renounced” war and were strongly opposed to “rearmament,” but they came to feel that Japan had a right to self-defense and that the modest Self-Defense Forces were of appropriate size for this purpose.
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