>On Tue, 4 Jul 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > I don't think Tim's making a claim that "we acted differently in
> > Germany, and they boomed just fine." The US policy in Europe
> > regarding Reds was the same as its policy in Japan; also, just as few
> > militarists were executed or purged permanently from public life in
> > Japan, few National Socialists suffered in West Germany after the war.
>
>And the resulting democracy was just as lively? So you agree then with
>Brad, that the repression of 1947 had no lasting ill effects for Japanese
>political culture? West German democracy was about as lively as Western
>democracy ever got.
>
>These aren't rhetorical questions, I'm asking honestly. I thought Tim was
>saying Japanese democracy was relatively stunted as a result. And I
>thought Japan was a de facto one party state for the first 40 post war
>years. But my knowledge of the details of the Japanese case is minimal.
I don't think of German democracy as very lively. The recent war on Yugoslavia and Germany's active participation in it suggest that democracy may be faring worse in Germany than in Japan, in so far as Germany's militarism has become fully rehabilitated with the lead of Social Democrats & the cooperation of the majority of Greens, whereas Japan's has yet to be. And, if anything, German Social Democrats & Greens will be a better vehicle for neoliberalism than Christian Democrats (& the LDP in Japan) have been.
The labor movement in West Germany is stronger than in Japan, but then again the German labor movement was incomparably stronger than the Japanese one before the World War II as well.
I agree with Tim, you, etc. that the US policy stunted democracy in Japan, but it had the same effect everywhere -- just not to the same degree in exactly the same fashion, since each nation had different conditions prior to the U.S. assumption of global hegemony.
For excellent allegorical treatment of the impact of the U.S. policy on West Germany, see, for instance, _The Marriage of Maria Braun_ (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), _The Nasty Girl_ (Michael Verhoeven), & _Zentropa_ (Lars von Trier).
Yoshie