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The
Reconstruction of Bourgeois
Order in Northern Ireland
by John Newsinger
Science in a
Skeptical Age
by John Bellamy
Foster
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What's the matter with Japan? According to
today's conventional wisdom—i.e., what we are told by the media and the
syndicated pundits—almost everything. Its economy, the second largest in
the world, is in a long-term crisis that affects on everyone else, most
severely the United States, and it stubbornly refuses to do anything about it
despite the friendly advice and frustrated pleas of its partners in the
developed capitalist world.
What do they want Japan to do? Simple: they want Japan to "be like
us." Open its markets, deregulate its financial and trading systems, and
then step on the economic accelerator—reduce taxes, especially on the
higher incomes, and open wide the government-spending spigot. The consequence
would presumably be that Japan would quickly become a bigger and better market
for its stricken neighbors in Asia and its rich trading partners on the other
side of the Pacific Rim.
This is of course the orthodox neoliberal cure for Japan's crisis. Why does the
Japanese government hold back, drag its feet, refuse to accept its
"responsibilities" to the newly globalized capitalist economy? Until
quite recently the answer to this question was to blame the ossified
bureaucratic structure of the Tokyo government. The top bureaucrats,
particularly in the Ministry of Finance, were seen as living in the past and
being incapable of understanding the needs of the new situation. But this is
not a very convincing story. The bureaucrats have been around for quite a while
now, and during the great post-Second World War upsurge that catapulted Japan
to the top level of the world economy, they gave a pretty good account of
themselves. Why should we now believe that they have suddenly become a bunch of
doddering incompetents?
In this situation, we have New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristof
to thank for a very different and much more satisfactory explanation of Japan's
recent performance, one that no one, at least in this country, seems to have
had any intimation of. Kristof's contribution is contained in a long dispatch
under the headline "Shops Closing, Japan Still Asks `What Crisis?'"
that takes up part of three columns on page one and almost all of an inside
page (April 21, 1998).
Kristof's thesis, reduced to its essentials, is that the Japanese as a whole
are not feeling any crisis, that they are reasonably satisfied with things as
they are, and that they have no interest in pumping up their economy to meet
the demands of the Americans. In sum, "the lack of a crisis mentality
means that Japan cannot summon the political will to lay off surplus workers,
to extinguish insolvent banks, to snuff out the hopes of the kindly old ladies
who run rice shops and futon stores. It means that there is little public
pressure on prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to push for the sweeping
deregulation and huge stimulus that the United States is urging." As a
further indication of Japanese opinion, Kristof cites Hironori Tatayama, a
banker in a small town 200 miles southwest of Tokyo: "For people like Mr.
Tatayama, the problem of economic restructuring is the price in fairness,
equity, and civility. To foreigners, Japan often seems virtually socialist in
mind set, profoundly believing in social equity and relying on the most
progressive income tax system of any major country in the world—including
a marginal rate of 65 percent on personal income taxes—to achieve the
equality. After the Soviet Union collapsed, I [Mr. Tatayama] thought that
socialism had failed and that capitalism was better ... but when I visited
Singapore one time, I saw skyscrapers and what looked like a slum next to them.
I was surprised, and maybe that was because Japan is the only place where that
kind of thing doesn't happen, the only place where everyone thinks of
themselves as middle class."
As he approaches the end of his long dispatch from Japan, Kristof sounds a note
that must be reassuringly welcome to his bosses at the Times in New
York. Citing Yasuo Murata who runs a sawmill and has been hard hit by the
opening of Japan's economy: "Unless the Government changes its
policy," he said,
it'll be impossible for me to survive here. The problem is the
imports.... I want the Government to stop the imports of logs, but I know it
can't do that. Japan is selling high-tech products to other countries, and I
understand that if the Government stops the log imports, then the other
countries won't buy Japanese cars or high-tech goods. I understand that the
weak are eliminated. I'm really against deregulation, but ultimately I have to
accept it. There is no other way.
According to Kristof there are a lot of people who think like Mr. Murata,
and so far they have managed to resist caving in altogether. Perhaps this is
because Japan is a much more egalitarian country than it is usually given
credit for and the popular resistance to neoliberalism may be greater than
those who rule Japan would like. If so, that is a piece of good news, coming at
a time when good news is in sadly short supply.
—The Editors
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