We should all be paying more attention to this country - especially from a _class perspective_, as Stratfor does. Japan (and China, but _right now_ Japan has a special geopolitical significance) may be the site of the next wave of great class battles in our time. The results of these battles may determine if we, at long last, pull out of the reaction, or if we are to be condemned to further decades of blight.
Annotated excerpts below, to filter out the inevitable Anglo-American imperial BS:
>Mori’s Political Woes Pale Next to
> Japan’s Systematic Trouble
> 09 March 2001
> By George Friedman
>.....
>The very policies that allowed Japan to triumph in the 1980s created the
>deep malaise of the 1990s. During this period, the primary concern of
>successive Japanese governments was to maintain social stability. Compare
>this with the United States’ liquidity crisis of the late 1970s. The
>response was high interest rates, high unemployment and a ruthless
>restructuring of American industry during the early to mid-1980s. This
>laid the groundwork for the boom of the 1990s. Where the United States had
>the social resiliency to endure the restructuring of the 1980s,
>Japan’s political elite are much more wary about their ability to impose
>pain on the Japanese public.
"social resiliency", my ass. Call it imperial prerogative - the ability to export your problems to the rest of the world, to countries like - Japan. That process was launched by the Plaza Accords (1986), and was accelerated by the counterrevolution of 1989-91, carried out by the privileged middle strata of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This counterrevolution put immense pressure on the reforms won by workers all over the world.
This situation, coupled to the historical weakness of the Japanese bourgeoisie, produced the stalemate - the unwillingness to frontally assault the Japanese working class in the Thatcher/Reagan style.
> .....
> Two forces are at work. The first is rooted in the Japanese cultural
> ethic of social solidarity. Japan is the only industrialized country that
> has never experienced a
>social revolution. Feudal loyalties run both ways; in return for loyalty
>to the leadership, the elite must protect the interests of the lower
>classes. The Japanese
> government has simply decided it cannot follow the standard Western
> response to a liquidity crisis by slashing consumption – particularly
> among working and middle
> class families – through high interest rates and unemployment.
"Japan is the only industrialized country that has never experienced a social revolution". Stratfor means _from below_. "Ee ja nai ka" was cultural (and therefore social) but not political, AMPO was political but not social. Also, add in the criteria of success: Germany has experienced more than one social revolution from below, none successful. But stating it this way allows you to indulge in cultural bigotries such as talk about "Feudal loyalties". Which are presumed not to exist in places such as Britain, or the USA. But this is not the reason for the unwillingness to attack.
>The second force impacting the situation deals with the nature of the
>Japanese political elite. While Japan is a democracy, working behind that
>democratic system
> is another system of entrenched bureaucratic elites in the various
> ministries with close ties to Japan’s corporate structure. This stratum
> has enormous practical power and a vested interest in stability and in
> maintaining its relative position. Senior officials view the economic
> problems through a lens of personal and institutional
>interests. Bold initiatives radically reshaping Japanese society will not
>emerge from this sector.
No country is a "democracy", of course. Statfor's right about the relatively greater weight of the bureaucracy - it's another measure of the historical-structural weakness of the Japanese bourgeoisie. It's a feature that allows the ideological maniacs who control the Anglo-American media to babble on about "socialism", etc. But their ideology may blind them to the possibility that this layer, rather than the "traditional" bourgeoisie, could take the lead against the Japanese working class. "Bold initiatives" could well "emerge from this sector." This would conform to the most salient feature of our reactionary times - its bureaucratically-driven character. 1989-1991 was probably its defining moment, its apogee. This is a clue for its reversal - get hip to it!
> So, Japanese prime ministers have come and gone throughout the 1990s.
> Each on the whole ineffectual, but able to hold together the basic social
> contract with the
>collaboration of the ministries and corporations. Japan bought into the
>stability of stagnation, a shared experience of distributed misery.
"Misery", my ass. Actually, this has been one of the most goldplated
stagnation-crises in modern history - in sharp contrast to Britain of the
1960s-70s. Again, the Anglo-American lunatics can't imagine a world
without profits as anything other as misery.
>..........................................
>Japan faces an economic crisis that could rapidly give way to a social
>crisis. The unemployment figures cut to the heart of Japan’s social
>contract. Unlike stagnation,
>unemployment is not a shared experience but something that hits the
>population disproportionately. Japan’s reserves of economic strength are
>cracking.
"unemployment is not a shared experience but something that hits the population disproportionately", very true, as is "Japan faces an economic crisis that could rapidly give way to a social crisis.". But it doesn't follow that "Japan’s reserves of economic strength are cracking." In fact, exercising its own, albeit much more limited imperial perogative, Japan has been "exporting the crisis" (i.e., investment and loan capital) to the rest of East Asia, in particular, China, an ungaugeable wild card in this situation. This is the objective basis which politically links the Japanese process with that of China.
>As Mori topples, there is a striking lack of personalities to replace him.
>The obvious choices are as much placeholders as he. There is a deep
>hollowness in the
>Japanese political system. The mystery of Mori’s survival is that while he
>has no support, no one else seems any better.
Japan is not unique in this regard. In fact, there is a general lack of strong-willed, class-oriented "offensive leadership" for the capitalist classes of the imperialist world. Britain: Instead of Thatcher, Tony Boy and some half-lunatic Tories. The USA: The Shrub instead of Reagan. Germany? - it's unclear who runs that country these days. And so forth.
>.........................................................
>
>There is precedent for this in Japan. During the 1920s, after a remarkably
>similar economic crisis, Japan executed a fairly sudden – and in many ways
>unexpected – shift from a sort of liberalism toward militarism and
>xenophobia. Indeed, what is remarkable in Japanese history is the
>suddenness of its social shifts. Japan was a
>pre-industrial society in 1860. Less than a half century later, it
>defeated Russia in war. Japan was a violently aggressive culture until
>1945 then genuinely shifted toward pacifist liberalism.
More cultural bigotry: "a violently aggressive culture" - what else from a warrior class that ruled for centuries? It became its opposite, though, both for 250 years of the Edo period (under the same warrior class), and post-WW2. But yes, agreed, countries in awkward geopolitical historical situations, such as Russia or Japan, are prone to sudden "social shifts".
>We strongly suspect the answer is not much longer. The internal situation
>in Japan has become intolerable and unsustainable. History will neither
>note nor care about
>Mori. What is important about him and the current situation is that it
>drives home the fact that Japan is running out of maneuver room with this
>political and economic system. The poll numbers indicate Japan is facing
>systemic failure.
>What comes next? As with Russia, we expect sudden, unexpected change that
>will take Japan in radical new directions.
Despite its own misconceptions, Stratfor is on to something, alright. It is mostly "intolerable" for the worlds' capitalists, as we've seen no large-scale actions (defensive or otherwise) from the Japanese working class (contrast with Korea). _They_ appear "content", that's a warning sign for _us_. Whether Japan is "running out of maneuver room" is still unknown, but it is clear that the Washington-London axis is applying the squeeze to it.
Critical missing info: organization of working class in Japan.
Japanese workers, "wise up"! ;-) You're about to get whacked!
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
>Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:51:07 -0800
>From: "Bob Morris" <bobmorris at mediaone.net>
>Subject: RE: Balancing the Japanese economy down
>
>< sell the yen>
>
> >stratfor.com has been sourced on this list before.
>This would
>create a worse market for U.S. exports, thereby
>creating a
>countervailing - perhaps not equal - force to the Fed's
>rate
>lowerings. If folks do sell their Yen, what would they
>buy?
>
>The StratFor article indicated that the "sell the yen"
>call was a desperation move, a short-term play, and
>probably doomed to failure. They see Japan's prospects
>as bleak, at best, with a dysfunctional economy having
>major effects on the inherent social contract. "Feudal
>loyalties run both ways; in return for loyalty to the
>leadership, the elite must protect the interests of the
>lower classes", and with unacceptable, by Japanese
>standards, levels of unemployment, things are starting
>to crack.