The Enigma of Japanese Power : People and Politics in a Stateless Nation

Rating:
Summary: Just a Great Book - "Living in Submissive Harmony" My Title
Review: As noted by the author in the book, the Japanese do not use the word "no", they try and seek a consensus, they live in a submissive harmony, they do not like to critique their own system, and they do not take kindly to outsiders pointing out any of this. So do not expect a native from Japan to endorse the book. Having said that this is just an excellent book.

One part of the book jumps out at me and I want to share that immediately to demonstrate the Japanese education and mind set. In Japan radical protestors often dress 100 % the same, where the same helmet and clothing all the same colors, and carry the same stick cut and shaped in the same way. They yell or chant radical leftist slogans together and have identical head-bands. In the west we would not view the people as spontaneous protestors but rather a well planned group following a leader. They are like a precision police marching band and differ from the police only in uniforms. That is how we differ. We are somewhat more chaotic but value the individual and the individual's religion.

This book contains a lot of good observations and information about the social structure in Japan. I have been to Japan a number of times and was impressed with the industry of the people, their dedication to organization, the cleanliness, the bullet trains, and the scale of some of their industries such as the large steel plants in Kawasaki where I worked on a job. It is a fascinating place where in central Tokyo everyone seems to wear a suit and thing are oh so clean. That is the visitor's view.

This book runs at a much deeper level that one sees in a visit or even working in Japan. It explains many institutions in a historical perspective - such as the police and press as two examples. People that have traveled and worked in Japan know that things are more complicated than they appear to westerners. It is not a question of better or worse than say the USA. It is just different, and as we suspect with one party in power for so long, probably not a real democracy as we think of the institution. What I never understood was how the relationships between different organizations and groups in the society actually worked. For myself, it is hard at first to understand the continuous reference to cultural differences by the Japanese when doing business with foreigners. It seemed like the Japanese were old fashion protectionists or even just a nation of racists/nationalists. In any case, this book brings many of these ideas into focus and it fills a lot of holes. It is excellent reading for the amateur or professional Japan watcher.

One of the key observations by the author is that the Japanese accepted many changes in the legal system and other institutions by the Americans after 1945 ended and Japan was under occupation. For simplicity, let us just say democratic reforms to the legal system. But since 1945-50 they have quietly gone about reversing many of these changes.

The good thing is that if you commit a crime but then confess you get off with a warning. But the police manage to keep the crime rate low and the numbers of people locked up low. The criminals must love that. But if you go to trial watch out! It is not a democratic process nor fair. The prosecutors hold the real power, not the judges, and there is a conviction rate over 99.8% - hardly a fair trial.

I like the author's assertion that no one is in charge in Japan including the government. In any case, it reinforces what we already knew, that the government has no real opposition. Dissent is often suppressed - for example corporations use boot camps for new college graduates. Japan is not really a democracy - it is groups of powerful people working together in a sort of quasi-democracy fashion. There are elections but just one party. So much of the political fighting is infighting in concert with the media.

Quite remarkably the institutions and people of Japan - despite the flaws and highly independent institutions (such as the police) have somehow come up with a way to work together and be a world economic power, if perhaps not an ideal democracy. This is just an excellent book.

There is too much information for a quick read. It takes a few readings to absorb all the concepts and information. Highly recommended.

Jack in Toronto

Rating:
Summary: No better available explanation of Japan.
Review: Enigma deserves all the praise you may read in this forum. Karl van Wolferen brings his extensive experience and keen insight to blow way the perfumed-scented, silk-screen interpretations offered up by the Reischauers, the Jansens and the Vogels. I have lived in Japan for seven years, have studied her language, her people, her history and culture and truly no explanation of Japan even approaches this work.

It is interesting that while Japanese propagandists and apologists have always attacked revisionist works on Japan (and their authors), they have largely ignored Enigma. Witness the controversy surrounding Changfs Rape of Nanking and, earlier, the total ruination visited upon Berkowitz. I suppose they have no effective counters to the arguments put forth by van Wolferen and hope that the book will just go way.

For anyone who is interested in learning about how Japan really works this book is an excellent place to start. For those who dont know the people of Japan, it could lend itself to a misinterpretation: most Japanese that I know are acutely aware of the failings in their society and are none too happy with them. However, they see little opportunity for change. As Patrick Smith has observed, theirs is a life of desire with out hope. It is the system that is the problem.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing. I want a sequel for the recession era!
Review: I first read this book in Kyoto, Japan. It left me staring into space, amazed by the depth of insight Wolferen had, and shared, into Japanese society.

Being a student at the time, I had plenty of opportunity to debate Wolferen's views with a wide range of political science professors, and although most of them disagreed with his almost Machiavellian portrayal of Japanese culture, calling it oversimplified and extreme, not one of them offered support for their views half as convincing as the support Wolferen offers for his. Bottom line: even if you disagree with Wolferen, you can't dismiss him with a wave of your hand.

I want a sequel, looking at what's changed now that recession-era rust is eating away at the previously fearsome Japanese economic machine.

Rating:
Summary: I have lived in Japan for 6 years. This book is accurate.
Review: I have given this book five stars because I can not give it six. Karel Van Wolferen's "The Enigma of Japanese Power" is a brilliant, if often infuriating and depressing, analysis of the way power is wielded in Japanese society. Having lived in Japan for six years now and having heard every conceivable interpretation of this culture by both westerners and Japanese, I have found nothing that even remotely approximates the accuracy of Van Wolferen's insights. I have seen the "the System" he describes at work, as it crushes the spirits of the good men and women of this country, demoralizing them until they meekly accept their "proper place." Van Wolferen's cool, clinical dissection of the central myths of Japanese society was so uncomfortably close to the mark that "the System" could not afford to let it go unchallenged. In fact, shortly after its publication a Japanese diplomat approached Clyde Prestowitz, an American expert on Japan, and through the use of an oblique threat, tried to enlist him in an effort to discredit Van Wolferen. For anyone who is interested in learning about how Japan really works this book is an excellent place to start.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: I have to admit that it's difficult to dislike a man who is so despised by the academic community. Van Wolferen, a native of a small country (Netherlands) who never even attended college, wrote a book that changed the way people think about Japan. In this way, it's similar to "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" by Ruth Benedict; long, rambling, flawed, far from perfect, but a book that had a huge impact on Western perceptions of Japan. That is why you should read this book. It's a piece of history, a work that inaugurated, for better or for worse, a new era in books on Japan. People in the ivory tower can't stand the Dutchman, but they will never reach as large an audience as he has.

Rating:
Summary: enigma within a puzzle within a dark mist
Review: Japan has endured enigmatic rule since at least the beginning
of the Edo era when the first military bushido shogun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, imposed a system of social control on the
Japanese people that can only be characterized as a feudalistic
totalitarian state. The shogun system created a society that
was strictly ordered with the iron will of the elite enforcing
rigid obedience and conformity from nearly all classes of
society. There was little or no social mobility. If you were
born into a farming family, that was your karma, literally.
No escape. At that time, to be a farmer might mean a life of
relentless toil, poverty, privation, and meek subservience to
all the higher orders. Was all of this swept away in the
Meiji Restoration? No. Cultures are not so easily transformed.
Japan enjoys modern industrial comforts, but the social order
continues to be rigid. And the hapless salaryman, the new
corporate peasant, must kowtow to the system and adhere to
the hierarchy. Some have called it a sort of corporation slavery.
The Japanese salaryman would protest and say that he is merely
'loyal' to his company. I suppose in the era of plantation
slavery in America's South, there were Black slaves who felt a
certain loyalty to their masters, the antebellum white
planter aristocrat. In Japan the serfs (about 85% of the Edo
era population) had to adhere to this social hierarchy. Some
brave souls would at times protest when the lord of their
province treated them unfairly. But such a protest meant a
death sentence for the petitioner. His grievance might be
recognized and some redress allowed, but the poor sod had to
commit suicide at that point.
Karel Van Wolferen has provided insights into Japan's
enigmatic world that its secretive leaders would prefer the
outside gaijin readers never discover! They prefer that the
myths persist: that Japan is a peace loving, crime free, well
educated society of mostly content hardworking people. No.
Small wonder Van Wolferen was threatened. Freedom of the press
is free to the extent that rightwing groups don't harass or kill
you. There is much fear and intimidation in Japanese society. It
seems to be the most common form of social control. In schools,
hospitals, corporations, and in the family, violence lurks
just beneath the surface for anyone who might protest. Learn
to accept the status quo and stifle one's individuality. The
nail that sticks up is still pounded down. From a gaikokujin
who has lived in Japan for twenty years and taught in both
universities and corporations, and who has lived in every region of the country. I also recommend 'Dogs and Demons' by Alex Kerr
and 'The Reckoning' by David Halberstam.
By all means visit Japan but do so with your eyes open!!
Don't play the gaijin buffoon, a stock character in Japan's
closed society since the Meiji era. In the Edo era such buffoons
lost their heads over Japan, literally.

Rating:
Summary: Japanese Power - Political Observations
Review: Karel van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power presents to us a picture of the Japanese government as a corrupt and manipulative "System" in which individuals have few rights and are often ignored. What distinguishes this book from others in the area is the explanation given for how this came to be. Whereas Ruth Benedict and Chie Nakane use cultural and structural approaches to Japanese society, respectively, Van Wolferen views it from a political perspective. This allows The Enigma and Japanese Power to remain relevant even after the "bubble burst" of the Japanese economy.
One of Van Wolferen's central topics in this book is that not everything is as it appears in Japan - certainly not a new idea to the field. However, the political viewpoint he takes is refreshing. For example, he claims that there are two "Confusing Factors" (5) about Japan that cause problems when dealing with other countries. The first fiction is that Japan has a responsible central government. Note the word "responsible," since Japan clearly has a central government. Instead of a transparent government in which people are responsible for their decisions, Van Wolferen tells us that there is no one individual or group that has complete control over the country. Rather, power is divided among many ministries, politicians, and bureaucrats. At the start of the second chapter he tells us that, of course Japan has laws and regulations, several political parties, and unions workers can join. However, he then also explains that just because these institutions exist with our Western names attached to them does not mean they function in the same manner.
For example, Van Wolferen describes politics in Japan as a "rigged one party system" (28), even though there are quite a few opposition parties. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is neither liberal nor democratic, is primarily "a vote-getting machine" (30) and a policy-oriented organization dead last. Through gerrymandering the voting districts to favor rural areas - where the LDP has always had strong support -, buying votes, and pork-barrel politics (making promises to help a city by funneling money to it if a certain politician is elected for the area) the LDP has managed to virtually monopolize seats in the Diet. Due to this tremendous amount of power, policy debates and outcries against LDP corruption "are performances that are democratically reassuring but with not the slightest influence on developments in the countries affairs" (30). Due to this overwhelming power, the people are virtually at the LDP's mercy.
The other fiction about Japan that Van Wolferen thinks causes problems is that Japan has a free-market economy. He quotes Chalmers Johnson in describing Japan and other Asian countries as "capitalist developmental states" (6). In this system the economy of a country depends on a good relationship between industry and bureaucrats. In other words, the industry "advises" the bureaucracy about what they should do and the bureaucrats make policies that reflect those "suggestions." For example, Van Wolferen points out the banning of oral contraceptives in order to "[prevent] any decline in the lucrative abortion industry" (53) as an example of this. The incentives for bureaucrats are top positions in big business after retirement (known in Japan as amakudari - descent from heaven).
Van Wolferen argues that the ability to say or present one thing and take a completely different course of action - and that no one seems to care - is due to a lack of any universal truths or beliefs held by the Japanese. He says that because the political elites were able to pick and choose what aspects of Buddhism and Confucianism were adopted by society, they were able to weed out anything that detracted from their power. In this way, religion came to be a tool the government used to project an image that those in power were beyond the law, yet were still benevolent rulers. However, in Western thought, the government is seen as a protector of the people, answerable to the same laws as the commoners. In other words, Van Wolferen states that the lack of "truths, rules principals or morals that always apply, no matter what the circumstances" (9) enables the Japanese to accept seemingly hypocritical viewpoints and stances without flinching.
I enjoyed reading The Enigma of Japanese Power. It is popular Nihonjinron at its peak - easily accessible, entertaining, and does not stray too far from the generally held views of Japan. Some would argue that this third fact detracts from the book, but I do not agree. By looking at Japan through a political viewpoint, rather than a cultural one like countless others, Van Wolferen is able to garner more validity. Reducing everything done differently in Japan to culture or tradition gets us nowhere. Instead, by looking at the situation differently we can see that there are specific reasons why the Japanese are they way they are. It is important to realize, however, that this political view has its limitations as well, which I believe Van Wolferen makes clear that he knows.

Rating:
Summary: enigma
Review: Like Ruth Benedict, van Wolferen wrote a seminal book on Japan and Japanese culture. Benedict did so without ever having lived in Japan or knowing the Japanese language, as part of US wartime planning for the eventual occupation of Japan. Wolferen had the benefit of living in Japan for 20 years as a journalist, although he is said, enigmatically, to have never learned to read or write Japanese. The fact that in spite of this wilfull ignorance he has written a book that seems to have hit upon some very cogent insights into Japanese culture and politics is a tribute to his native intelligence and perceptiveness. His book, like Benedict's, is must reading for anyone interested in understanding the Japanese, but one must wonder how much credibility Americans would give a book about American culture and politics written by a journalist who had lived in the US for 20 years without learning to speak or read English!

5 stars for insight, minus 2 stars for wilfull ignorance.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: This is a wonderful book and powerful argument that, at its center, no one in Japan is really in control and no one can be. Taking a long view of history, van Wolferen does a better job at demolishing Japanese myths and pretenses than most other writers. I read this book when I had just arrived in Japan in 1990 - when Japan was in the ascendant with an asset bubble that was far greater than the US one that just burst - and was enthralled and repelled from page one to the very end. Once I understood what he was saying, I saw how much it explained that hitherto I had found completely unfathomable.

Unfortunately, read at one go, it sounds excessively negative and pessimistic: the Japanese appear feckless and weak, unable to rise above a history of division and obfuscation, etc. Even worse, as subsequent events have borne out, it appears truer than ever. Van Wolferen weathered extremely bitter attacks and smears because of this book. All I can say is, for many who have never lived in Japan, the bitterness of foreign residents towards that myserious country is a puzzle to them: they wonder if it can really be "that bad," if the attacks and vitriol are "racist" and the like. To his credit, though he finds little to admire, van Wolferen never lets the tone of this book descend to the level of polemic.

While dated now - van Wolferen fretted that the Japanese juggernaut would take over the entire world economy - it is still a great read. Get it, if you are interested in Japan. You must know the argument, even if you stridently disagree.

Rating:
Summary: Helped start the Japan bashing wave as mainstream but
Review: This is actually a terrible book. It ought to get negative stars. Van Wolferen is simply a hack Dutch journalist whose command of English probably isn't much better than his non-existing Japanese (even though the book's strength is supposed to be its insider information). Who pays this guy to write such propaganda? Probably interests like Dutch Phillips, which in the late 80s and 90s worried about being put out of business by Japanese electronics makers. The political economy of Japan is SO MUCH more than anything VanWolferen describes. Now, there are parts that are perfectly true of Japan. The problem is that the author and many of his positive critics seems oblivious to the fact that what he is critiquing can also be applied to neoliberal imperialist political economies like the US and EU. Duh.