> yes, and i should have mentioned as well the internal labour camp of
> 'ethnic koreans' in japan. (thinking here of Hick's _Japan's Hidden
> Apartheid_.)
Thanks. I haven't seen this but I'll definitely check it out.
>
> it seemed to me that any suggestion of japanese socialism -- or even of
> egalitarianism in japan -- has to be premised on an ignorance and/or
denial
> of the place of korea and korean migrant workers within the japanese
> economy. moreover, it is much easier to arrive at a sense of an
> egalitarian society, when those who are counted as citizens do not tend to
> occupy the lowest rungs of the labour market, whether they're in japan or
> offshore.
>
Sure. FT and the World Bank are talking about a developmental model that now stands in for socialism in the neo-liberal imaginary. Like postwar Keynesianism, which surely didn't end the marginalization of black workers (especially in the South), the Japanese "developmental state" or "governed market" at least has the virtue of *imagining* that it is in prinicple responsible everyone. I don't doubt that it makes its way on the backs of uncounted (and countless) ethnic Koreans, who round out Japanese networks of downstream labor markets. But I also can't stand FT's triumphalism.
> that's not to minimise the importance of the US occupation of japan and s
> korea; but it is to indicate the hidden reasons for what the article in
> question refers to as japan's 'egalitarianism' and 'socialism'.
>
> Angela