井の中の蛙

Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia has an op-ed in the New York Times (UPDATE: reprinted in Japan Focus) arguing that Japan’s post-bubble recession and fifteen year stagnation may well be what the US economy is facing now. I think he’s right about some of the dangers, but I think he’s leaving out some critical components. Macroeconomics never gives you more than an overview, and I think the situation in the US is much worse.

Roach writes:
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One of the very interesting things I discovered doing my dissertation was the relatively meager state of scholarship on Meiji era financial institutions, particularly on the ways in which Japanese used (and avoided) new systems of savings, transfers/remittances, loans, etc. I ended up being quite impressed by the financial sophistication of supposedly unsophisticated peasant migrant laborers, and considerably more sympathetic to the assumptions of economic history as a result.

My advisor even tried to steer me in that direction: I had to do some background reading on the Yokohama Specie Bank, which played a role in early Hawai’i-Japan remittances (by establishing one of Japan’s first overseas bank branches!), and he was disappointed that the bank itself did not sufficiently fire my historical curiousity that I might take it up as a topic in itself. It is true, though, that there remain questions which I can’t answer to my own satisfaction because I don’t know enough about Meiji banking.

Well, Sharon Howard forwarded me a link to Michael Schlitz’s Histor¥ which is described both as a “weblog about Meiji financial reforms” and (quite tantalizingly) an “opensource project on Japanese financial history 1850-1917.” I’m thrilled to see this topic getting the attention it deserves and available on-line, to boot! Now, I just need time to read through his archives and make notes….

Lots of folks are pretty sure that the success of Koizumi’s rejuvenated LDP in yesterday’s elections [here's a good summary] means something. What? It seems to me impossible to know what it means in a policy sense, but it clearly marks a step in the evolution of party politics and campaigning… a step away from past verities, but not necessarily towards anything easily recognizable or categorizable.

For myself, the privatization of the Postal Savings and Insurance system would mark the end of something historically interesting. The Postal Savings system was a fundamental institution in the Meiji modernization, enabling reliable low-cost long-distance transactions (including remittances from overseas, which is where my research comes in) and accumulating small deposits into a pool of capital that was agressively used for investment in railroads and other heavy industrial development. The great success of what is now the largest financial institution in the world is part of what forced me to recognize that the “rational actor” theory of economics which I had disdained for so long did in fact have its moments: the speed with which Japanese peasants adopted newer and more reliable banking institutions (and avoided less reliable ones) was a remarkable demonstration of fiscal sophistication and self-interest at work.

Recently I received an email from a novelist out on the West Coast who is working on a historical novel set in 1946 Japan. She wanted to know how much things cost at that time. Being an anthropologist and not a historian, I really had no idea where to look, other than to say that in 1946 prices must have been really unstable because of inflation, SCAP’s attempt to engineer the market while at the same time implement labor-friendly policies, and the proliferation of the black market. A great description of the social landscape at that time is in John Dower’s superb Embracing Defeat, especially the first section where he takes you right to the streets of postwar Tokyo so that you can smell the cheap kasutori liquor and see the pan-pan girls hanging onto U.S. servicemen. (Another book I have read that deals with this same time period is Chalmers Johnson’s gripping Conspiracy at Matsukawa).

But I asked around to see if there are easier ways of finding out other than combing through long passages, and sure enough our ever resourceful Jonathan Dresner recommended two reference books: Estimates of Long Term Economic Statistics of Japan since 1868 (bilingual) and the Historical Statistics of Japan.

He also had a brilliant suggestion of looking at microfilms of newspapers at that time and picking off prices of products through ads. I would never have thought of that!

(For those wishing to have questions answered, a more helpful place to ask might be over at H-Japan, a resourceful user group that focuses on Japanese history. They cast a much wider net of scholars there, so you might get more in-depth responses.)

I have to say, its nice to see fiction writers taking the time to do some historical research for their writing. When films like The Last Samurai mutilate history, it really is a travesty because a little veracity would have made the film truly powerful (my opinion). Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is also that much more convincing to the reader. So perhaps it’s worth paying the price of meticulous research to push for historical accuracy.

But then, I also think that if you’re writing a novel like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Pale View of Hills, then accuracy doesn’t really matter because it is all about how memories from one moment of your life become all confused with things that happened in other moments. (This is not to say that Ishiguro’s novel contained historical inaccuracies.)

Prehistory: You could almost write Japan’s entire modern history as the drive for respect from the rest of the world. Starting with the unequal treaties of the mid 19th century, and the Meiji era drive to modernize and industrialize — fukoku kyōhei [Rich Country, Strong Military] was the equation — culminating in Japan’s evolution into a regional power and full-bore Imperialist state. Japan was a member of the Allies in WWI and participated in the Versailles conferences, which allowed them to shut out Korean and Chinese representatives, and then became an active participant in the Wilsonian diplomacy — known as “Shidehara Diplomacy” in Japan, after the man who served as Foreign minister and Ambassador to the US for most of that period — of the 1920s, signing several arms control treaties and the Kellog-Briand Pact and participating in the League of Nations.

Though Japan was a respected regional power, some in Japan felt that the arms control treaties were intended at least partially to contain Japan’s power at the second-tier. This was compounded to some degree by growing American anti-Asian sentiment and legislation, which reinforced the sense that Japan needed to be stronger and more respected in order to be treated fairly in the world. This, along with a myriad of other factors, led Japan into Manchurian occupation, an attempt at brute force nationbuilding which caused more problems than it solved. Among other things, the condemnation of the Manchukuo puppet regime by the League of Nations led Japan to leave the League and join up with other expansionist pariah states — Italy and Germany — which were on the outs with Wilsonianism. Japanese rhetoric in response to the League’s condemnation was harsh — and correct — when it pointed out that Western nations had long histories of conquest and atrocities, but that was OK because they were White.

Present: Japan’s attempt to unify Asia against Western Imperialism, in support of Japanese wealth and power, under the rubric of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere still resonates in Asia today. Whether it’s protests over Japan’s textbooks (Note: China’s current riots need to be seen in the light of two trends: official support and consent for anti-Japanese historicism; rising rates of domestic disorder in China, mostly ethnic and economic) or official visits to the enshrined war dead (and pro-war museum) at Yasukuni, court decisions against former sexual conscription victims, or just reluctance to sign on to “Yen Bloc” plans, Japan’s leadership in Asia has been undercut since the war. Nowhere else in the world is historiography so central to political and international affairs: nobody denies Japan’s economic power, but nearly all of Asia believes that Japan’s ongoing official refusal to acknowledge past atrocities means that Japan lacks the capacity for moral leadership.

Japan’s role in the world continues to be limited by WWII in other ways. In the aftermath of the war, Japan was disarmed not just literally, but figuratively: the US-written constitution includes the famous Article IX, repudiating war and weaponry as tools of international problem-solving. Japanese leaders, particularly PM YOSHIDA Shigeru, premised post-war Japan’s national policy on non-militarization, non-entanglement, economic growth policies. Among other things, it makes it very difficult for Japanese troops to participate in UN peacekeeping missions; though they do regularly join relief aid (Africa, Iraq) and monitoring groups (Golan Heights), they go very lightly armed and rely on other UN forces and their own post-war reputation for non-violent generosity for protection.

That hasn’t stopped Japan from being an actor on the world stage. Japan is the second-largest economy in the world, and has been sharing the wealth with underdeveloped nations for several decades now, making Japan the world’s largest development donor in absolute terms. The US nearly got caught flatfooted, for example, when Japan’s government announced a post-Tsunami Indonesian aid package a full order of magnitude larger than our own. And Japan gave the US so much money in support of the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in Kuwait — because they couldn’t send military forces — that we nearly turned a profit. Of course, Japan’s economic strength means that economic decisions made in Japan echo around the developed world as well. And in a less official capacity, being members of the only nation to experience atomic bombs as a weapon of war has given Japanese peace activists a status in the world second to none. One of Japan’s few Nobel Prizes was the Peace award to Prime Minister SATO Eisaku, for his anti-Nuclear “Three Principles”: that Japan will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, or allow them in Japanese controlled territory.

Nor has it stopped Japan from being a significant force in Asian and Pacific affairs. On the plus side is cultural and economic influence in South Korea, economic aid to North Korea, investment and education in China, development assistance in the South Pacific; still, all of that, it could be argued, rebounds to Japan’s benefit at least as much as it costs. There are territorial disputes as well, mostly over worthless-looking rock islands of immense strategic and economic importance — Sakhalin and Kuriles (Russia, with whom Japan still does not have an official post-WWII treaty of peace); Tokdo/Takeshima (Korea); Senkaku/Daiyou (China, Korea, Vietnam, etc. I’ve long argued that this was the most likely — after North Korea — flash point for a regional conflict) — disputes which seem to be heating up significantly in recent weeks in no small part because of Japanese actions.

Roots of the Future: The present campaign to get Japan on the UN Security Council is the culmination of two decades of diplomatic efforts, going back to the groundbreaking work of PM NAKASONE Yasuhiro, who turned Yoshida’s non-entanglement policies on their head. Nakasone’s kokusaika [internationalization] campaign seemed unfocused to some, but it really consisted of three crucial components: national pride in economic and cultural achievements, present and past (Nakasone was the first post-war PM to visit Yasukuni); international action both economic and political (Nakasone was an aggressive negotiator and worked hard to present distinctively Japanese views at meetings like G-7 and in the UN, plus his relationship with Reagan, Thatcher, etc); expanding Japan’s capacity to understand and influence the world through expanded foreign language and overseas study (this aspect always seemed kind of squishy and multiculturalist, but it was really integral to an expansion of Japanese power in the world). The campaign has been largely independent, though at times there were coordinated efforts with Germany, and has consisted in no small part of leveraging Japan’s ODA in places like Africa into UN support.

The present campaign is a very clever one: by including India and Brazil as Security Council candidates, it looks less like a resurgence of the reformed Axis Powers and more like a “Southernization” (to abuse a term), a legitimation of the success of 20th century decolonization and economic globalization. Moreover, including India makes it harder for China to maintain its traditional rejection of Japanese power. Article IX is still a sticky point: maintaining it makes it easier for Japan’s former and present competitors to deal with Japan without fear (not entirely without fear: Japan has one of the best-equipped militaries in the world, though it lacks significant force projection capacity), while it hobbles Japan’s ability to play a security role (which, since they’re looking for a seat on the Security Council, is significant); moreover, the majority of the Japanese population supports retaining the article as is (a bare majority now, whereas before Gulf War I it was an overwhelming one) and Japanese political leadership have been able to slip in more and more militarized activity under UN rubrics over the last decade (it’s highly unlikely that the Japanese courts would step in, being very, very conservative with regard to challenging legislative action).

Japan has been a peaceful, responsible, democratic society for over a half-century, and it is an economic superpower. But it has significant historical and ongoing tensions with its neighbors, one of which already sits on the Security Council and has a pretty good claim to being the natural representative of East Asia. On the other hand, it has good relations with the rest of the Security Council membership, and the example of the 1920s-30s suggests to some that trying to “keep Japan in its place” could well produce a nationalistic backlash in Japan that would exacerbate tensions.

[Thanks, Sepoy for suggesting this! Crossposted to Cliopatria]

Addendum: Konrad Lawson has compiled a very impressive list — with texts and commentaries — of Japan’s leaders attempts to apologize to Korea without entirely losing the support of Japan’s nationalistic elements. It complicates somewhat the question of how comprehensive “apology” and “historical recognition” needs to be to satisfy Japan’s critics.

Reading Hanley’s Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture with my class (which is quite interestingly divided on the success of its argument, but we’re just getting started), I was struck by my own lack of knowledge about Tokugawa era numeracy. We’ve got a pretty good handle on literacy, by class and period, but not its mathematical equivalent.

It comes up in her second chapter, on living space: the minka [commoner house] architecture which spread in the late 17th-early 18th century “required a considerable amount of calculation” (30), which presumably was available (otherwise the houses couldn’t have been built). I’ve always assumed that numeracy was pretty widespread among the urban population — merchants and artisans and anyone else involved in substantial business dealings — and that even farmers need pretty strong math skills to keep track of productivity, inputs and markets. I have also read things which suggest relatively low rates of numeracy among samurai — considering arithmetic something done by “lowly merchants” — but that is counterintuitive: household budgeting based on an annual stipend must have required some fiscal planning.

Perhaps part of my problem is that I don’t have a good idea of how a non-numerate person would function, in a modern or early modern environment. Once markets and money are involved, basic numeracy seems to be a sine qua non for daily life function. It is true that there are still plenty of non-market actors in the early, even mid-Tokugawa, so there should be some numeracy shifts to track.

But it’s going to be harder than literacy, because it can leave fewer traces. Is anyone working on this question? Rough ideas welcome.

I’m going to miss Natsume Soseki. I know, he’s been dead for a long time (are there any plans in the works for centennial editions or celebrations, because the hundredth anniversary of his greatest works, as well as his death, are coming up), and I’m not going to stop referencing or using his writings in my modern history classes. But one of the things I could always tell my students, if they doubted the importance of this particular novelist, is that he was featured on the ¥1000 note. No longer.

He’s being replaced by Noguchi Hideyo, discoverer of the syphilis bacterium. This is a good choice, I suppose: promotion of science and all that. Looking for images for currency, I stumbled across this article on photocatalytic substances and their use in evironmental rejuvenation and eco-friendly construction, and this article on natto-based water-absorbing resins. I spent two summers translating and cataloging Japanese technical writing, so I’m used to a certain overstatement in these kinds of articles, but there’s something very, very intriguing about the work being done here. It’s something of a truism among environmental activists that environmentally-friendly technology is its own economic reward, reducing costs and stimulating demand, but it can be hard to find really good examples when everyone points at the solar cells and says “why aren’t they cheaper yet”? I think Japan’s long-term economic importance in the world will be sustained by such technological creativity — melding scientific and economic and social innovation — and that’s worth noting. It’s also worth noting that he did the work that made him famous in the United States

Inazo, the educator and writer who worked so hard to introduce Japanese culture to the world in the early 20th century, is losing his place on the ¥5000, as well. I have more mixed feelings about that: though Nitobe is described in Hunter’s Concise Dictionary as “a strong opponent of militarism and nationalism.. an internationalist, Christian and liberal,” my strongest association with him is the cultural essentialism which he promoted through books like Bushidō: the Soul of Japan. That is a strain of Japanese culture commentary which provided great support to the militarists and nationalists over the course of the 20th century, and which still plagues us today in a variety of forms (including overwrought undergraduate essays on the samurai, which I’m plowing through now).

Nitobe is being replaced by Higuchi Ichiyo, about whom I know almost nothing. I’ll admit it: the woman being described as one of the first and most important feminist novelists in Meiji Japan I know nothing about. I know some of the work of Enchi Fumiko and Ariyoshi Sawako and Tawara Machi…. but not Higuchi. I guess I’ve got some reading to do. Still, she is the first modern woman to appear on Japan’s currency, and it’s nice to see a novelist still holding a place, though the ¥5000 is something of a ghetto in terms of daily use.

The reverse of the bills is changing as well: you can see them here. Mt. Fuji is moving from the ¥5000 to the ¥1000, and picking up some cherry blossoms. The cranes (I liked the cranes) are not moving the other way, though: the ¥5000 now features “Kakitsubata, or rabbit-ear irises, drawn by Korin Ogata.”

The ¥10000 bill will retain Fukuzawa Yukichi, which makes me very happy, though it will also be modified slightly to include the anti-forgery features of the other new bills.

And in a sign of how long I’ve been out of Japan, I hadn’t realized that they introduced a ¥2000 bill in 2000, featuring the Tale of Genji and its author “Murasaki Shikibu.” I do remember the phase-out of the ¥500 bill, and I still think that the transition to a coin for that denomination is a model of what the US government should do with its $1 and $5 paper denominations. Even I’ve mostly given up on the Sacajawea dollar, but that’s partly because I’m on an island where it’s harder to get them, but the cost savings in shifting to coinage would be considerable.