A Cultural History of Postwar Japan Read online

  National consumption=production+imports−exports−variations in stockpiles.

  ‘Grain’ means rice, barley, wheat, rye, miscellaneous grains (corn, buckwheat and so on), and does not include lentils (beans) and potatoes.

  It should be noted that since 1980, owing to enforced regulation of production and to irregularities of weather, self-sufficiency in rice has dropped to below 100%.

  The generation of Japanese who grew up in the period of rapid economic growth and the generation who grew up before, during and immediately after the war had such different food, were so different in height, that physically they might almost be called a different race of people. Taking the age of 20 as the cut-off point, the Ministry of Social Welfare published the following table of average heights (measured in centimetres), starting ten years after the beginning of rapid economic growth:

  See Table

  If we select those between 30 and 39 years, the figures are as follows:

  See Table

  In 1965, at the age of 43, I was 162 cm in height, which probably made me slightly shorter than the average 43-year-old Japanese at the time. (I was extremely short among city dwellers.) Now at this height, when I put myself against 20-year-olds whose average height is over 170 cm, I feel they are outlandishly big. Add to this the differences in body language which come from the cultural changes, one realizes that a totally different culture has been born in Japan since the 1960s.

  Nevertheless, putting aside such bodily changes and the world of physical gesture, we cannot say that the Japanese people are losing their Japanese culture on the level of thought. In fact there has been a tendency since the 1960s among the younger generation towards conservatism of thought, and according to Hayashi Chikio, basing arguments on the surveys of national spirit by the Research Institute of Statistics, they demonstrate an ethos which respects tradition. He argues that in younger groups the modern and tradition are not in conflict. Hayashi Chikio, Nihonjin Kenky Sanjnen (Thirty Years of Research into the Japanese), Shiseid, 1981.

  99 Society for the Study of Contemporary Customs (ed.), Gendai Fzoku (Contemporary Customs), No. 3, 1979. This research society strives to define ‘contemporary customs’ in their differences from pre-contemporary customs, based on the sense of the contemporary as defined by Kuwahara Takeo, ‘Gendai Nihon Bunmei ni tsuite’ (On contemporary Japanese civilization) in Bunmei Kanssh (Collection of Reflections on Civilization), Chikuma Shob 1975:

  Next, I would like to point out that by ‘contemporary’ I mean by and large the 1960s and onwards…. I would include the frustration of the Ampo demonstrations, but mainly I believe that rapid economic growth and the concomitant radical social changes became evident in the 1960s and after.

  100 According to the Prime Minister’s Office’s Kokumin Seikatsu ni Kansuru Yoron Chsa (Public Opinion Polls relating to National Life), the proportion of people regarding themselves as middle class has not changed greatly from the 1960s to the early 1980s. In the same period, those replying that their circumstances are upper class ranged from 0.6% to 0.7%, and lower class as shown in the table. Since it is based on subjective assessment the survey cannot be said to represent actual conditions, but even with making such allowances, it cannot be denied that in this period a middle-class consciousness was widespread.

  The meaning which can be placed on these poll results was debated by Murakami Yasusuke, Kishimoto Shigenobu, Tominaga Ken’ichi, Takabatake Michitoshi, and Mita Munesuke in the Asahi Shinbun, 20 May to 24 August 1977.

  According to the investigation of Tominaga et al. ten years after the defeat in 1955, 42% of Japanese assessed themselves as between ‘upper middle’ and ‘lower middle’, and by 1975 this had become 76%. All participants of the debate agreed on this. However, Kishimoto said that even in the sixties and seventies people who represented the ‘power of the organisation’ in the corporate world were still exceptional in that they were merely large individual shareholders, or the highest management executives, and that homogenization of income did not signify the establishment of a homogeneous new middle-class stratum. Tominaga saw the increase of ‘status inconsistency’, compared with before the 1960s, as an important change. People with high income are not necessarily those with the highest prestige; people with high prestige and status are not necessarily those in the highest positions of power. Thus, there are large discrepancies between multiple constituent factors of class status.

  See Table

  It should be noted that while there is a high degree of correlation between education and occupational status (0.42), the correlation between education and income is only 0.38.

  The significance of the concept of the middle class for postwar Japanese culture was early pointed out by Kat Hidetoshi, Chkan Bunka (Middleclass Culture), Heibonsha, 1957, which in retrospect was a highly prophetic book. For a book which explains what kind of pitfalls were faced in this period by the Japanese masses (or rather, to put it my way, the Japanese as a mass,) as ‘people who abandoned scepticism towards industrialism and democracy’, see Nishibe Susumu, Taish e no Hangyaku (Treason against the Masses), Bungei Shunjsha, 1983.

  101 The Tokyo Metropolitan Council survey of workers’ household budgets shows that after peaking in July–August 1948, the Engel coefficient decreases; in 1949, it is 10% less than in 1946 and 1947. In January 1948, monthly wages averaged Yen 5,205, actual expenditure was Yen 7,084, of which food was Yen 4,220, giving an Engel’s coefficient of 59.5%. In January 1949, monthly wages averaged Yen 11,194, actual expenditure Yen 14,046, of which food was Yen 7,987, giving an Engel’s coefficient of 56.8% (Asahi Nenkan, 1950). On changes since that time, ‘Household Income and Expenditure of City Dwellers in all Japan’ in Hitotsubashi University Economic Research Institute (ed.), Kaisetsu: Nihon Keizai Tkei (Japanese Econometrics Interpreted), Iwanami Shoten, 1961, gives the following Engel’s coefficients:

  See Table

  It is relevant to mention here increased life expectancy and the ageing of Japanese society. Average life expectancy in Japan in 1980, according to Kseish Tkei Ykan (Statistical Survey of the Ministry of Health), was, for men, 73.32 years, for women 78.83 years. This surpassed the United States, and was about equal with northern European countries (Ksaka Masataka (ed.), Sji de miru Sekai no Ayumi—1982 (The Development of the World seen in Statistics—1982), PHP Research Institute, 1982). In 1983 the Guinness Book of Records listed Izumi Shigechiyo, a Japanese man (aged 118) as the oldest living person. The proportion of the population over the age of 65 has risen from 4.8% in 1930 to 9% in 1980, and is likely to go on increasing.

  102 Aratani Makoto, Kieta Mizuumi Hachirgata—Kantakumae no Mizuumi de no Shnen no Hi no Rd (The Lake that Disappeared—a Boy’s Working Day before the Reclaiming of Lake Hachirgata), Mumei no Nihonjin Ssho Bessbon 2, Yamanami Shuppan no Kai, 1977.

  103 Iinuma Jir, ‘Hachirgata to Sanrizuka’ (Hachirgata and Sanrizuka) in Kyoto Daigaku Gakusei Shinbun, 1 June 1979.

  104 Nomura Masakazu, in Shigusa no Sekai—Shintai Hygen no Minzokugaku (The World of Gesture—the Ethnology of Body Language), NHK Bukkusu, Nohon Hs Shuppan Kykai, 1983, says that in Japan toleration of a degree of nakedness in everyday life, a legacy of the southern islands, continued in places right through till the 1960s.

  105 Nakano Osamu, ‘Kapuseru ningen to katarogu bunka’ (Capsule man and catalogue culture), in Narushisu no Genzai (Narcissus Today), Jiji Tsshinsha, January 1983. The typology of ‘capsule man’ comes from Nakano, Kopii Taiken no Bunka (The culture which has experienced copying), Jiji Tsshinsha, 1975.

  106 Gendai Fzoku Kenkykai (ed.), Gendai Fzoku (Contemporary Customs), No. 2, 1978.

  107 According to Ienaga Sabur, in Zh Kaitei: Nihonjin no Yfukukan no Hensen (Changes in Japanese Attitudes to Western Dress: expanded and enlarged ed.), Domesu Shuppan, 1982 (1st ed., 1976), for primary school students in central Tokyo, Western dress came to predominate over Japanese dress between 1922 and 1926.

  Yamamoto Akira (ed.) Shwa no Kyk (Shwa Panic), third volume of
Zusetsu: Shwa no Rekishi (Illustrated History of the Shwa Period), Sheisha, 1979, treats the change towards Western clothes in both men and women in various places. It was towards the end of the Taish Period (that is, the early 1920s) that Western clothes took precedence among urban men in the workplace. A survey by Kon Wajir in the streets of Ginza and Nihonbashi on a public holiday in 1937 showed that only 25% of women were in Western dress. Women’s dress did not become predominantly Western throughout the country until after the war.

  108 The results of this film were later collated as a survey report. See Shhin Kagaku Kenkyjo and CDI (eds.), Seikatsuzai Seitaigaku— Gendai Katei no Mono to Hito (Ecology of Livelihood Assets—Things and People in the Contemporary Family), 2 vols., Riburoripto, 1980–3.

  109 Hoshino Yoshir, Kkishin to kyhakukan no akekure (Absorption in curiosity and a sense of urgency), in Tsurumi and Hoshino, Nihonjin no Ikikata (How the Japanese Live), Kdansha, 1966:

  The boldness with which the Japanese jump at new foreign goods and technologies is in strong contrast with European industry. What is more, Japanese industry often does not accurately calculate the practical value of the importation. The introduction of foreign technology has greater economic influence than just on an individual, with the result that a whole industry often causes a stir by falling into ruin.

  However, on the other hand, characteristic Japanese attitudes and capabilities are eloquent. Japanese technologists tinker indefatigably with foreign technologies which were never meant for Japanese conditions; by making carefully thought-out improvements, they produce an exquisite balance, and make them into something Japanese which finally realize great profits for the industry.

  Hoshino here draws attention to the social psychology whereby the excitement of the discovery of new foreign technologies spreads like wildfire because of a common curiosity among engineers of the same generation.

  110 The rate of increase in the postwar Japanese population fell in 1957 to single figures per thousand and has not increased significantly since then up to the present:

  See Table

  111 In this period there was no government regulations aimed at limiting births as in the case for example of China over the same period; it was a voluntary population restraint on the part of the Japanese citizens.

  112 Morishima Michio, ‘Shin “Shin gunbi keikakuroron”’ (New ‘New armaments planning’) and Seki Yoshihiko, ‘Hibus de heiwa wa mamorenai’ (Peace cannot be kept without arms), in Bungei Shunj, July 1979; Morishima Michio, ‘Shin “Shin gunbi keikakuron” horon’ (Supplement to New ‘New armaments planning’) and Seki Yoshihiko, ‘Hibus de heiwa wa mamorenai horon’ (Supplement to Peace cannot be kept without arms), in Bungei Shunj, October 1979.

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  A Comment on Guidebooks on Japan

  113 Fay Adams, Walker Brown, Gordon W.Leckie, R.W.W.Robertson, Lester B.Rogers, Carl S.Simonson, The Story of Modern Nations, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1958. For an extensive collection of images of Japan presented in foreign textbooks, see Kokusai Kyiku Jh Sent, Kaigai no Kykasho ni miru Ikoku Nippon Gurafiti (Exotic Nippon Graffiti seen in Foreign Textbooks), Jatekku Shuppan, 1983.

  114 Richard Tames, The Japan Handbook, Paul Norbury Publications, Kent, England, 1978. For a treatment of the not necessarily rosy conditions of Japanese workers, see Satoshi Kamata, Japan in the Passing Lane, Pantheon, 1983, with a foreword by Ronald P.Dore. The Japanese version, Jidsha Zetsub Kj (Automobile Despair Factory), was first published by Gendaishi Shuppankai in 1973. Ronald Dore’s foreword to the English edition was published in Japanese in Keizai Hyron, Nihon Hyoronsha, October and November issues, 1983.

  115 Usami, Mitsuaki and Cheung Hon Chung, Tokyo, Chartwell Books, New Jersey, 1978.

  116 Ayukawa Nobuo and Yoshimoto Takaaki, Bungaku no Sengo (The Postwar Period in Literature), Kdansha, 1979.

  117 Kat Shichi et al., Tenkeiki, Hachijnendai e (The Age of Transformation—Towards the Eighties), Ushio Shuppansha, 1979.

  118 Kyokutei (Takizawa) Bakin (ed.), revised by Rantei Seiran, Zho Haikai Saijiki (The Book of Seasons for Haikai Poets: enlarged edit.) (2 vols.), Seikatsu no Koten Ssho, Nos. 9 and 10, Yasaka Shob, 1973. First appeared in November 1851.

  119 In the realm of popular culture, there are the essays of Uekusa Jin’ichi, and the parodies and novels of Inoue Hisashi. In the portraits of Yamafuji Shoji, there is a self-conscious effort to recapture the culture of the Edo Period. The 1983 NHK Great River Drama presented an idealized picture of the Edo Period, strategically planned by Tokugawa Ieyasu, in contrast to the civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in contrast also to the overseas aggression of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

  120 The literature written in Japanese by Korean residents of Japan is not strictly Japanese literature, but it is an important section of literature written in the Japanese language, and to ignore it one cannot satisfactorily relate the story of Japanese literature, especially in the postwar period.

  121 Edwin O.Reischauer wrote in The Japanese. Harvard University Press, 1977, that Japan differed from the United States in that there were virtually no underprivileged ethnic and regional groupings, but followed with the statement that there were, however, the problems of the unliberated burakumin (descendants of a class of outcastes) and of Koreans resident in Japan. In the Japanese version of this book— Kunihiro Masao (trans.), Bungei Shunjsha, 1979—this line is omitted.

  This fact reveals a situation where, even more than the Americans, the Japanese are made not to see the discrimination against burakumin.

  A book by Marie-Josée Balbeau, edited by Morooka Sukeyuki, Shiritagaranai Nihonjin: Furansujin no mita Burakumondai (The Japanese Who Turn a Blind Eye: the Buraku Problem as seen by a Frenchwoman), Kashiwa Shob, 1983, analyses accurately the reaction of the Japanese who are who are coming into contact with Westerners.

  122 Nagata Hidejir, ‘Nettai kidai no kangaekata’ (How to consider seasonal themes [in haiku poetry] in the tropics), in Nagata Seif Kush (A Collection of the Haiku of Nagata Hidejir), 1958. Quoted in Kamishima Jir, ‘Nihongata hoshushugi—Nagata Hidejir o tegakari to shite’ (Nagata Hidejir as a clue to the Japanese mould of conservatism), in Rikky Hgaku, No. 6, 1964.

  123 Tsukuda Jitsuo, Senry no Sekaishi (A World History of Occupation) in Shis no Kagaku Kenkykai (ed.), Nihon Senrygun— sono Hikari to Kage (The light and shadow of the Japanese Occupation Army), Vol. 1, Tokuma Shoten, 1978.

  In 1918 the problem arose of the god to be enshrined in a Shinto shrine in Korea. The Korean Governor’s headquarters had began preparations on the basis of the decision to enshrine the two mainstays, Amaterasu mikami and the Emperor Meiji, but Imaizumi Sadasuke, Ashizu Kjir, Kamo Momoki, and Hida Kageki among others argued strongly that ‘the god to be enshrined in the Korean shrine should naturally be a god with a close connection with the land of Korea; that is, the god who was responsible for the creation of Korea should be venerated’. Ashizu in particular had been thinking along these lines ever since the annexation of Korea, and had explained his position to the first Superintendant-General of Korea, It Hirobumi, when he visited Shimonoseki on his way to take up his new post. Ashizu’s August 1925 article, ‘Chosen Jing ni Kansuru Ikensho’ (A statement of personal views on the Korean Shrine), which is included in Jinja Shinpsha Seiky Kenkyshitsu (ed.), Kindai Jinja Shintshi (A Modern History of Shinto and Shinto Shrines), Jinja Shinpsha, 1976, is also quoted by Tsukuda in his book, cited above.

  124 The International House of Japan Library, Modern Japanese Literature in Translation, Kdansha International, 1979. According to this Ibuse Masuji’s works have been translated into English, German, French, Russian, Korean, Portugese, Thai and Polish. Nakano Shigeharu has been translated into Russian, German, Korean, French, Chinese and English. See Three Works by Nakano Shigeharu, translated by Brett de Barry, Cornell University East Asia Papers, No. 21, 1979.

  Index

  Alphabetical order is word-by-word. Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations. Titles of works have been indexed from th
e text only, authors from both text and references. MCG

  Adams, Fay 163

  advertisements 74–6

  Age of Transformation, The (Kato) 129

  agricultural policy 119–20

  Akechi Mitsuhide 35

  Akita Minoru 55–6, 57, 74, 146

  Akiyama Saneyuki, Admiral 74

  Akiyama Yoshifuru, General 74

  Akutagawa Award 75

  All-Japan Proletarian Arts League 103

  Amakawa Akira 155

  Amano Ykichi 149

  Amaterasu mikami 132, 164

  ancestor worship 122

  ancestral spirit 120–1

  And Sheki 126

  animism 38, 122

  Anti-Bomb movement 109

  anti-pollution movements 107–8, 114, 123, 128, 130

  Anti-Vietnam War Movement 109–10

  Aratani Makoto 160

  Asahi Graph 28, 29

  Asahi newspapers 28, 29–30

  Asahi Weekly 49

  Ashizu Kjir 132, 164

  Asukai Masamichi 149

  Atrocity (Kuroiwa) 77

  ‘Auld lang syne’ 100, 101

  Ayukawa Nobuo 129, 163

  Azuma (East) Society 26–7

  Baerwald, Hans H. 136

  Balbeau, Marie-Josée 164

  banquet amusements 49–50, 145

  baseball heroes 69

  bathing 127

  ‘beshimi’ (grimacing face) 50