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Posted by: Vince Lamb '59
Date posted: Tue May 29 0:08:04 2001
Subject: Which Turning is Japan in?
Message:
I would expect that Japan would be on the same cycle as the US and be in an Unravelling. However, the one thing that bothers me about Japan being in an Unravelling is that Third Turnings are *usually* times of economic expansion. Japan has been in a long-term recession for more than a decade. Long-term recessions are more the typical of an Awakening.

Pity that, last I talked to him, Mike Alexander hasn't been able to get long-term financial/economic data for Japan. That might settle the matter.

Posted by: Bob Cooperman
Date posted: Tue May 29 11:47:03 2001
Subject: Japan's turnings
Message:
One way to view Japan's history, was that the 1930's was not a crisis for them, but the 1950's still was a crisis.
2001 could still be in the Awakening era.

Posted by: Vince Lamb '59
Date posted: Wed May 30 0:59:06 2001
Subject: NY Times opinion on Japan
Message:
I tried to post a message agreeing with Bob, but it never made it. Oh, well, I'll talk about anime some other time.

Here is an article from the NY Times, for educational purposes only:

May 29, 2001

Japan's New Nationalism
By HERBERT P. BIX
MILLBORO, Va. ? Newly installed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has restarted debate over altering Japan's constitution. The relationship between Japan's political elites and their 1946 constitution has long been vexed. The question now is why constitutional debate has resurfaced and what it may portend for Japan and the world outside.

For years, Japanese conservatives have claimed that the "MacArthur" constitution of 1946 not only demeans Japan's armed forces, but also hampers the nation's ability to fulfill its United Nations obligations. Article 9 of the constitution forever renounces war as a right of the state "and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes."

Japanese critics observe that in 2001 the circle of great powers is no more open to the militarily hobbled than it was in 1904, when Japan defeated Russia. Because of its constitution, Japan (they say) is out of step internationally and hopelessly out of "real" power. But to bring about change, a new constitution must be drafted, one that can gain the support of two-thirds of the members of both legislative houses. Then a national election must be held and popular consent registered.

Not very logically, the constitution is blamed for other, quite different woes. For more than a decade Japan has achieved virtually no economic growth. Unemployment is officially at 4.7 percent, an all-time Japanese postwar high, and slowly rising. Inequalities in the distribution of wealth have steadily widened. Vast amounts of tax income have gone into public works projects, while other tax billions have been used to prop up debt-ridden, essentially bankrupt financial institutions. The long recession drags on; so, too, do the corruption, deceit and public non-accountability that have long been key ingredients in the workings of Japan's political-industrial-financial system.

This spring, facing July elections for the House of Councilors ? the upper chamber of Japan's Parliament ? the heads of the country's conservative parties closed ranks behind Mr. Koizumi, a media-savvy, popular politician who seems privately nontraditional. Trained in economics in London, the 59-year-old prime minister is the third generation of a family of national-level politicians. He is a former cabinet minister, with an understanding of the basic health and welfare needs of Japan's rapidly aging society, and he projects a youthful persona.

Mr. Koizumi proclaims that he will restore the competitive power of Japanese industry and finance. He calls for several very non-traditional measures: the postal service must be privatized, the prime minister must be popularly elected, the public debt should be reduced and the economy freed of excessive bureaucratic restrictions.

But if Mr. Koizumi's economic views are those of a neo-liberal, or what Americans would call a free- market conservative, he appears quite traditionally nationalist in other areas. He is unambiguous in his passion for revision of the constitution and wants to abolish the war- renouncing Article 9 even though its pacifist ideals are now broadly rooted in Japanese society. Like other right-wing nationalists, he would have Japan assume military responsibility in world affairs proportional to its economic strength. And, by making the emperor the head of state (genshu) rather than, as in the 1946 Constitution, a "symbol" (shocho), he would enhance the throne as an integrating force in Japanese life.

Mr. Koizumi considers more than the constitution to be outdated. One of his first acts as prime minister was to sanction new history textbooks celebrating Japan's pre-1945 imperial past; another was to declare his intention to pay an official visit in August to Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of several World War II Class-A war criminals are enshrined ? something no prime minister has done since 1985. Once an important site for rituals centered on the emperor, Yasukuni symbolizes the nation's former fusion of politics and religion.

In many respects, particularly in economic matters, Mr. Koizumi continues the policies of his immediate Liberal Democratic Party predecessors, who broke from the party's well-established tradition (since the early 1960's) of state support for agriculture, strict regulation of small business, and relatively low consumer taxes. Further, he differs from earlier advocates of constitutional revision, professing a desire to widen rather than contract the framework of democratic freedoms.

Yet Mr. Koizumi also draws heavily on Japan's nationalist past. Younger Japanese are by no means interested in a more military national identity. Older people, who remember Hirohito with a mix of respect and hatred, are dying off. Their dislike of Hirohito is more for his military failures and post-surrender refusal to abdicate than for Japanese militarism as such. Therefore Mr. Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine seems to offer little clear political advantage, but is sure to reignite old debates, passions and memories.

Looking forward and backward at the same time, and not yet openly committed to any course, the somewhat mercurial prime minister is a political enigma. While strengthening his ties with the far-right nationalistic factions opposed to radical economic reform, he espouses just such reform. Using a rhetoric of peace, he fosters and promises deeper cooperation with the great powers. But the political footprints Mr. Koizumi has already laid down do not inspire confidence. As he bides time waiting for the July elections, he and his L.D.P.-dominated coalition government are inevitably moving Japan toward a period of heightened ideological conflict that can only make economic reform more difficult.

Herbert P. Bix is professor of history at Binghamton University and author of ``Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan,'' which won a Pulitzer Prize this year.

Posted by: Vince Lamb '59
Date posted: Fri Jun 1 23:44:30 2001
Subject: Dogs and Demons
Message:
This is the title of a book by Alex Kerr subtitled "The Dark Side of Japan". Here is a URL for a site that has the first chapter:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kerr-dogs.html

Here's the URL for a review:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/1...15samuelt.html

And finally, here's a link to the NPR show "The Connection" which includes discussion about an interview with Kerr about the book:

http://www.theconnection.org/archive...04/0424a.shtml

Posted by: A Pikachu
Date posted: Tue Jun 19 6:45:58 2001
Subject: Pok?mon and the Japanese saeculum
Message:
In the Pok?mon TV show, which was written in Japan, Ash (10 years old at the beginning of the show) is a Hero, ever so ambitious without skepticism. The grey-haired Prof. Oak, who is old enough to have a grandson Ash's age, seems to act as the wise old Silent in most of these episodes where he appears. If a man his age is an Artist and a boy Ash's age is a Hero, Japan is probably on the same saeculum as us, off by only a few years if at all.

Posted by: Vince Lamb '59
Date posted: Wed Jun 20 1:55:57 2001
Subject: Possibly
Message:
But go read the messages about Disney movies in the "Generations and Movies" topic. Heroes and Nomads are overwhelmingly represented as the youth protagonists of these films and many of them appear quite out of phase with the turning in which they are being produced. For example, Cinderella, whose protagonist is a Nomad, was produced during a High, when the youth were Artists and Prophets, and Sword in the Stone, whose protagonist is the archetypal Hero, King Arthur, appeared at the beginning of an Awakening, when all the youth that could see the movie were Prophets.

Also, the fact that "Pokemon" caught on in the US may say more about what turning *we're* in than about what turning Japan is in!

Finally, if you're going to use anime for your evidence, you should look at more shows than just "Pokemon". What about "Dragonball Z", "Card Captor Sakura", "Sailor Moon", "Tenchi Muyo", "Gundam Wing", "Ronin Warriors", "Blue Submarine No. 6", and "Outlaw Star", just to name the series have been shown (edited and dubbed) on Toonami? Then go and look at the series that are only available on videotape/DVD. "Cowboy Bebop" and "Escaflowne" come to mind (although the latter is being shown on Canada's YTV). If you stick to only "Pokemon", then I have about as much respect for you as for Team Rocket!

I do not know what effect this news has on the question which has plauged the discussion group on and off for some time. However there are worrying signs a deflationary spiral is beginging in Japan, In the USA and Australia I can see signs of a deflationary sprial starting if the economy gets worse.

Japan is in a deflationary spiral, policy board member says
TOKYO, Dec 11 (AFP)|Published: Wednesday December 12, 7:57 AM

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) should adopt more radical monetary measures, including inflation targeting and buying
more domestic and foreign bonds to prevent a worsening deflationary spiral, a policy board member said
Tuesday.

"I believe Japan has already entered the early stages of a deflationary spiral," the central bank's Noboyuki
Nakahara told a gathering of analysts.

"The bank should introduce an inflation target or a price-targeting system and indicate when it expects deflation
to end," he said, advocating measures at odds with the views of BoJ governor Masaru Hayami.


The central bank should raise its current purchase of
long-term government bonds to 800 billion yen from 600
billion to boost the growth of the monetary base, Nakahara
said.

He added the central bank should buy 200 billion yen in
foreign bonds each month.

"The US appears unopposed to the possibility of foreign
bond buying. The periodical purchase of foreign bonds,
mainly to raise the amount of available Japanese currency,
is different from market intervention (in the foreign exchange
market).

"It would not be aimed at stabilising the foreign exchange
market but rather to increase the supply of yen," he said.

In recent weeks the Bank of Japan has come under
increasing pressure to further loosen its already ultra-lax monetary policy as the world's second largest economy wallows in its third
recession in a decade.

State Minister for Economic and Fiscal Policy Heizo Takenaka has already warned Japan is on the brink of a deflationary spiral after
consumer prices fell for the 26th consecutive month in October, while the unemployment rate climbed to a new high of 5.4 percent.

Earlier Tuesday, he challenged the central bank to put the brakes on deflation.

"I want the BoJ to take on the challenge of a new monetary policy," Takenaka told a news conference.

The economy could spin into a vicious cycle as unemployment rises, further dampening consumer spending and pressuring prices.
This would depress already weak corporate profits and force firms to cut more jobs, said analysts.

"There are advantages and disadvantages in inflation targeting," Takenaka said. "It is necessary to take another step in considering
the matter. We need to start open discussions right now."

The Bank of Japan has already responded to Japan's deteriorating economic conditions by cutting interest rates effectively to zero and
increased liquidity in the money market by targeting its current account reserves at over six trillion yen (50 billion dollars).

BoJ governor Masaru Hayami remains reluctant to take further measures until the government implements a structural restructuring
program but Nakahara argued the central bank should raise the current account target to 10-15 trillion yen as the economy
deteriorates.

"I'm concerned that consumer spending will be sure to fall further as wages drop. I expect service prices will fall further because of the
weakening of salaries," he said.

"The only opportunity for economic recovery is exports."

Here is a Yellow Alert Warning about Japan, while this is written with a free market captialist bent. It tells of something serious that could happen to the world economy.

Meltdown in the Land of the Rising Sun

Mike Nahan, Herald Sun, 16 February 2002

The world economy is facing as a full blown crisis with its epicentre in Japan.

The world's second largest economy---and Australia's largest trading partner---has failed to address is severe structural problems and is now running out of policy options. What is worse the Koizumi Government is proving bereft of leadership.

The Japanese miracle burst in late 1989. While the Japanese economy contained many world class manufacturers, its service sector, which makes up over 60 per of the economy, remained highly inefficient and uncompetitive. The economy was badly bloated and distorted by unsustainable levels of corporate debt. On top of this, the banking system was opaque, corrupt and incompetent and the political system was incapable of leading changing.

In 1989 when the bubble economy started to haemorrhage, instead of trying to address its root causes---as the US did for it savings and loan crisis in the mid-1980s---the Japanese tried to stem the leak with government largess. The government put in place one massive spending spree after another, to no avail. The economy limped from one recession to another. Now there are no more rivers to straighten or bridges to be built and Japan has become the most indebted nation in the developed world. Goldman Sachs estimates that total household, corporate and government debt in Japan at about $58 trillion or six times Japan GDP. (US debt levels are about twice GDP.)

The government also tried to stimulate the economy via monetary policy, but again to no avail. The official interest is now virtually zero with no room for further cuts.

The trend on the asset side of the ledger has been if anything been worse. The Japanese stock market (Nikki 225) has lost 75 per cent of its value over the last dozen years and last week hit a18 year low. Indeed the Nikki which at its peak in 1989 was 15 times higher than the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now below the Dow Jones for the first time in 45 years.

The reasons for the decline in asset prices are clear. First they were grossly overvalued in the first place. Second, investors knew that that many firms and their banks were loaded with dud debt and discounted them accordingly. Third the Japanese economy became trapped in a deflationary spiral with the wholesale price index declining at an annual rate of 4 per cent. Deflation not only makes the debt burden greater but puts down ward pressure on profits and asset prices.

The concerns for the world is threefold. First, it means that the world's second largest economy will remain a drag on the world economy. Second, Japan could drag the rest of the world into its deflation spiral---remember deflation was a major cause of the great depression. This is real risk if Japan tries to solve it problem by devaluing the yen. Finally despite rapid build-up of debt, Japan remains the world largest creditor and largely responsible for funding the current account deficits of the US and Australia. If its banks are panicked into calling-in overseas loans---to for example shore up losses at home---a economic disaster could well sweep the world.

Even the Australia's teflon economy would not be able to shrug-off a tsunami from Japan.

Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com JAPANESE

POINT OF VIEW/ Susumu Saito : Abnormal economy requires special measures

Special to The Asahi Shimbun



Japan appears to be sitting idly waiting for another economic and financial crisis to unfold.

It seems those in power would use such a crisis as a pretext to inject more public funds into the Japanese banking system for its recapitalization. Those opposed to the economic policy of the ruling Liberal Democratic party appear ready to use such an occasion to attack and try to topple the government.

The rapid deterioration in Japanese business conditions is most vividly demonstrated by nose-diving industrial production over the past year. In November, the index of industrial production had already fallen about 16 percent from its August 2000 peak. The electronics industry experienced a 30-percent fall in production. Many companies have seen their sales fall by half in less than a year.

The level of industrial production in November was about the same as in the autumn of 1987, and below the bottoms recorded in the first and second Heisei recessions in the 1990s. If the recent rate of decline continues for six months or so, industrial production will fall back to the level of 1986, when it remained almost flat for almost a year as a consequence of the rapid rise in the yen's exchange rate against the dollar.

Since 1986, Japan's manufacturing capacity has expanded by about 50 percent. So the return of industrial production to 1986 levels means about 30 percent of Japan's manufacturing capacity will have become redundant. As manufacturing activity is closely related to non-manufacturing activity, it is no exaggeration to say that about 30 percent of Japan's companies and their workforces are in peril of going under if overall business conditions remain depressed for a prolonged period.

The rapid weakening of Japanese business activity has resulted in a large number of problem bank loans coming to light. According to data released by the Bank of Japan, the five categories of Japanese banks (i.e., city banks, trust banks, long-term credit banks, regional banks and second-tier regional banks) had 443.196 trillion yen in outstanding loans on their balance sheets at the end of November 2001. This sum represents a decline of 10.1 percent, or 49.523 trillion yen, from the peak of 493.023 trillion yen reached at the end of December 1997. Despite this seemingly drastic cut in loans outstanding for the past four years, about 112 trillion yen, or about 25 percent of the total loans outstanding, is still estimated to have been extended at interest below the prime lending rate of 1.375 percent as of the end of November 2001. In other words, this amount of outstanding loans is potentially bad and will eventually have to be written off if the current strategy of directly cutting problematic loans is to be continued.

Many opinion leaders have criticized Japanese banks for their slow progress in reducing the scale of problem loans in all loans outstanding, despite the injection of public funds in 1998 and 1999. Their misguided criticism comes from their ignorance of the full picture of Japan's banking problem.

In 1992, the size of potentially bad loans outstanding held by Japanese banks already exceeded 150 trillion yen, or about 30 percent of the total. If other private financial institutions such as shinkin banks, credit unions and insurance companies had been taken into account, the scale of potentially bad loans would have increased by about 50 percent, or more than 200 trillion yen in total.

In other words, Japan's financial system would have been insolvent in 1992 if their assets had been evaluated at market prices.

Without the recovery of asset prices and steady expansion of economic activity, forcing Japanese banks directly to write off bad loans has only transformed the once potential problem of insolvency into an apparent one.

The forced contraction of outstanding loans, coupled with the government's tighter fiscal policy, has contributed to depressing domestic activity and asset prices for the past four years to result in the exhaustion of all the net worth of Japanese banks. Under these circumstances, the collapse of several major Japanese companies with total debt of only several trillion yen will play the role of the last straw that breaks the back of the Japanese banking system.

Effective on April 1, 2002, the guaranteed payoff of insured time deposits from a failed financial institution will not exceed 10 million yen per depositor, according to the Japanese government. And also effective on April 1, 2003, the guaranteed payoff of all other insured deposits from a failed financial institution will not exceed 10 million yen per depositor, ending a temporary measure to protect all the deposits without any upper limit since 1996.

Depositors are said to have been shifting their money from many shaky financial institutions in time before the deadline of March 31. Accordingly, bank failures are expected to rise substantially. To deal with this situation, the Financial Services Agency intends to use 15 trillion yen on the contingency account of the Deposit Insurance Corporation. As is suggested by the size of potentially bad loans outstanding held by Japanese banks, such an amount will not suffice to protect deposits at the failed financial institutions.

Naturally, the general public, frightened at the prospect of losing deposits, will allow the Japanese government to inject into the Japanese banking system as much money as is deemed necessary. It was quite easy for any sensible economist to predict that the current deflationary economic policy would lead to such a financial situation. If so, there remains serious doubt that the Japanese government has deliberately engineered the economic and financial situation to bend the view of the general public with the threat of a ``major financial crisis.''

Some economists, especially Americans, argue that more than 130 trillion yen should be mobilized to write off bad loans all at once. It is technically possible for the Japanese government to mobilize such a huge amount of funds all at once. Then, the Japanese government will have to issue new bonds in the same amount, and the Bank of Japan will have to buy all those new bonds by printing yen.

The results, however, will be quite unpleasant not only for the Japanese economy as a whole but also for the Asian economies in particular.

First, Japan's public debt will balloon instantly, leaving virtually no room for reflating the depressed Japanese economy through fiscal policy.

Secondly, deposits withdrawn from the failed banks will be re-deposited at viable banks. Those viable banks flooded with new deposits, however, will find it difficult to find new investment opportunities in the depressed Japanese economy. The result will be a huge exodus of capital from Japan to result in a sharp weakening of the yen.

It will mean exporting deflation from Japan to the Asian economies that compete with Japan in the export market. And the greatest beneficiary will be the U.S. economy, where the bulk of Japan's capital will be headed. It is no wonder that the U.S. government and their proxy economists urge the Japanese government to use mass injections of public money to clean up the nation's bad bank loan mess.

Another beneficiary will be Japan's surviving export-oriented companies. They will enjoy the stronger price competitiveness that results from a weaker yen, while their Japanese competitors are extinguished in the process of writing them off from Japanese banks' balance sheets with the help of massive public funds.

The biggest loser will be the whole national economy. In the process of writing off bad loans hastily on a massive scale, the Japanese economy will be obliged to shrink sharply while capital is drained from it.

This whole dilemma stems from the pretense that the nation's economy is in a normal state where conventional monetary and fiscal policy tools can manage to lead business conditions on a steady growth path. To introduce capital and foreign exchange controls, for example, will open other options for the Japanese economy to reflate itself and reduce bad loans at the same time with public funds much smaller than 130 trillion yen. Note that the size of bad loans is not a ``fixed'' number, but is ``relative'' to the level of economic activity.




*

*

*

The author is director of the Trilateral Institute, Inc. (Sankyoku Keizai Kenkyusho), a private economic think tank based in Tokyo. His column runs on the third Wednesday of each month.

(01/16)

Japanese Government:Work Less, Have More Babies.

The Coming War With Japan is a fascinating study in geopolitics. This is a must read by anyone interested in the last Crisis period.

The authors listed Japan's geopolitical interests of that period:

1. To keep the home islands under the control of a central gov't. and a unified army.

2. To maintain control of the seas around Japan's islands with a costal navy in order to avoid invasion.

3. To dominate land masses threatening this localized sea control (Korea, Liaotung, Taiwan).

4. To be the dominant naval power in the northeast Pacific as far south as Taiwan, and as far southeast as Iwo Jima.

5. To secure and maintain control of access to Japan's mineral sources in either mainland China or Southeast Asia by dominating the entire western Pacific and excluding all foreign navies.


All of these were goals were lost in 1945. However, preoccupied with the Soviet Union, the U.S. gov't. rehabilitated Japan as a Cold War bulwark. The Japanese were permitted to regain control of their gov't. and rebuild their economy. The U.S., in effect, dominated South Korea and Taiwan for Japan, and kept the sea lanes open as part of a free trade regime (which was intended to bolster Cold War allies).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tim Walker on 2002-04-06 08:53 ]</font>

Article in today's Seattle Times, "Japan's taboo on nuclear weapons challenged." States that Japanese politicians such as Prime Minister Koizumi are considering shifting their space program to spy satellites and missles, and constructing nuclear warheads using plutonium from their nuclear power industry. Stated that a reappraisal began after North Korea test launched a ballistic missle over Japan in 1998. "In October 1999, Shingo Nishimura, then the new vice minister of defense in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, said Japan's failure to consider nuclear armament left it open to 'rape' by China." It is stated that the Japanese have doubts about the U.S. security guarantee. "'Simply put, we doubt that the United States would sacrifice Los Angeles for Tokyo,' said Taro Kono, a member of Parliment."

The plot thickens.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tim Walker on 2002-06-09 19:18 ]</font>

Face it, folks. Sooner or later, Japan is going to have to stand on it's own two feet again, probably sometime later in this 4T.

It is rather obvious that Japan reformed and renewed itself as Japan II. During the second half of the 19th century they went from feudalism to industrialized nation-state; they reorganized their institutions after Western models. Change in Japan was at least as great, if not more so, then the West entering its early Modern period. With massive change in less than a life time, it would be no wonder that the saeculum would ignite.

Interesting discusssion of the Taisho period in The Making of Modern Japan. The author, Marius B. Jansen, discussed life in the universities. "'Have you seen,'" he quotes Nitobe's Bushido: "'many a young man with unkempt hair, dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane things: He is the student to whom the earth is too small and the heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe and of life. he dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of wisdom. in his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to him to drive him onward; worldly goods are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the self-imposed guardian of national honour. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of Bushido.'"

Quoting Jansen: "Taisho writers explored the reaches of the inner self, and student readers eagerly followed their example. Twentieth-century radicalism also entered the campus gates, and provided, in German philosophy and Marxist theory, more sophisticated weapons than samurai asceticism for criticism of bourgeois materialism. What resulted was not a simple East-West or tradition-modern dichotomy, but something at once Japanese and international in origin."

Quoting Jansen concerning Taisho: "As Japan entered the 1920s liberal and radical students had no lack of complaints. The depression that followed the war years tightened job opportunities. Worker strikes mirrored social discontent. The massive environmental degradation caused by Ashio copper mine effluent, which poisoned rivers and threatened the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of farm families, produced governmental controls that were not enforced, and ultimately the entire flood basin was condemned. The problem and the protests had begun as early as 1877, but it festered almost a century until 1974, when a class action suit was successful. There was grinding poverty in industrial cities, some of it the target of Christian socialists like Kagawa Toyohiko. Worst of all, the Diet was temporizing regarding the issue of universal manhood suffrage. There was also anti-militarist movements. A national organization of students that was formed in 1923 took as one of its targets an army program to introduce military training in high schools in order to provide employment for officers rendered redundant by budget cuts. Large-scale student protests proved unsuccessful, but they succeeded in working up enthusiasm. Conservatives, of course, found it deplorable that students should heckle and disrupt, as they did, speeches by the army minister. They were even more alarmed by indications of student interest in the fledgling communist movement.

Quoting Jansen concerning "Taisho Youth: From 'Civilization' to 'Culture': New Man Society liberals and Seven Lives Society rightists may have been preoccupied with social reform and ideology, but many more students, particularly in the Special Higher Schools, were focused on problems of identity and personal development. In Meiji times young men occupied themselves with success, for themselves and for their new country; kuni no tame, 'for the sake of the country,' was, as we have noted, an amuletic phrase that accompanied every act. In the interwar years this wore thin. The nation-state had been built, Japan had taken its place among the powers, and people began to think about the structure and justice of society. Meiji youth had been brought up on Fukuzawa's theory of civilization, in which societies were arranged in hierarchic order by degree of 'civilization'; the the callenge was to climb another rung on theat ladder of development. Japan had done this. Now what began to matter was 'culture,' being rather than doing, and feeling rather than achieving. The sense of collective national crisis was replaced by a sense of individual and existential crisis. Introspection and doubt replaced the formulistic invocation of the previous generation. Veterans of the Meiji struggle, no longer young, looked on this change with distaste and disdain. Tokutomi Soho, whose Youth of the New Japan had electrified its readers in the 1880s, deplored the change. Taisho youth, he wrote, were self-indulgent, soft, and lacked character and purpose."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tim Walker on 2002-07-30 08:56 ]</font>

Jansen: "The cultural kaleidoscope of Weimar Germany presented additional attractions for Japanese studying abroad. Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901-1977), who went to Germany to Study Christian theology and philosophy, turned instead to avant-garde art as a result of what he encountered there. He returned to Japan and espoused a 'constructivist' art leading a group that styled itself MAVO. The MAVO members were contemptuous of academic art and the establighment that supported it. They found in the chaos of post-earthquake Tokyo conditions somewhat comparable, they thought, to those of postwar Europe, and worked to construct a new and revolutionary culture. Abstract decorations on the ugly barracks built for the homeless provided one target, and trendy cafes another. MAVO members cultivated eccentricity in dress and appearance as a form of freedom. Disillusioned with politics, they were deeply alienated from the state and the bourgeois culture around them. As a movement MAVO was short-lived, but it had considerable influence on graphic design. Murayama went on to work for reform of the theater and dance. The group and movement were provocatively 'modern' in life-style and affirmation of freedom of the body. It was a time when the erotic and the grotesque were also becoming faddish in literature, and all this combined to startle conservative contemporaries."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tim Walker on 2002-07-30 10:03 ]</font>

Jansen: "The air of liberation among members of the urban middle class in the years around World War I included a women's movement. It is not surprising that such a movement developed in Japan. Japanese women faced greater obstacles in their struggle for equality than did their counterparts in most developed countries, but it is noteworthy that a movement for woman suffrage was under way as early as 1918 at a time when only Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom had given women the vote. Future feminist leaders naturally expected to share some of the benefits men were gaining from increases in the suffrage, but not many crumbs fell from that table. Fundamental reform, in fact, was not to come until the years after World War II, when the Meiji Civil Code was abandoned. That code had been based on the samurai family ideal, and it emphasized patriarchal authority...."

I've been trying to date the Taisho era's beginning and end. Jansen: "the Emperor Meiji (his name was conflated with his person posthumously) symbolized the changes of his period so perfectly that at his death in July 1912 there was a clear sense that an era had come to an end. His successor, who was assigned the era name Taisho (Great Righteousness), was never well, and...his son Hirohito succeeded him as regent in 1922 and remained in that office until his father's death in 1926, when the era name was changed to Showa..." At this point I would guess-timate that the Taisho era was at an end when the Japanese army seized Manchuria in the early '30s.

Jansen: "The shortages that developed during the years of crisis that began with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 brought relative prosperity for farmers. As Japan became more isolated the government increased its control over the distribution of what was now a limited supply of food. Landlords' control over their lands and produce gave way to government directives to deliver rice to newly established cooperatives."

Jansen described aspects of Taisho popular culture: "Cafes blossomed everywhere and served as recreation, drinking, and meeting places...The cafes were...fashionable. They had a slightly decadent air about them, not unrelated to the ready attention of the waitresses, but they were a new way of telegraphing culture. Popular authors frequented them, described them, and used them as settings for their stories. Amid this kaleidoscopic change there was also growing nostalgia for what had been lost. In the Meiji ethos there was little space for Edo and its culture, but now there was sufficient distance to permit it to take on a rosy hue. Sometimes there was a linkage to more recent history. The vogue for tales of nihilistic swordsmen who struck down men they encountered were, one suthor suggests, a by-product of the the crushing in the High Treason Trial of Kotoku and the anarchists. Forerunners of the Meiji Freedom and People's Rights Movement were lionized. A play about the Tosa loyalists Takechi Zuisan and Sakamoto Ryoma was so well recieved that it traveled to all parts of Japan. 'No one,' Tsurumi Shunsuke suggests, 'did more for the cause of Taisho Democracy than this fictitious hero of the Edo period.' Films, which entered Japan in late Meiji years, became enormously popular. More often than not they focused on loyal samurai. The description of Restoration politics was no longer a simple morality tale; there were heroes on both sides, and in depictions of the violence Tokugawa adherents frequently held their own. The great leaders of the Meiji period were gone, and their immediate successors, the cautious old men who dominated the Privy Council and House of Peers, had little claim on popular affection. Ironically, although these films, many with a consistent antiestablishment message, could be shown during Japan's war years, they were banished by the Allied Occupation as dangerously militaristic.
"Mass culture included cartoonists and comic strips. The Asahi Graph first appeared in 1923 with versions of popular American comics, but others soon drew on the brilliant graphic traditions of Hokusai and other Japanese artists. Major cartoonists like Okamoto Ippei (1886-1948) recorded for the masses important cultural events like the visits of Albert Einstein and Margaret Sanger."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tim Walker on 2002-07-30 16:42 ]</font>

Jansen on the Taisho era: "Still others, no less aware of the importance of ordinary people and objects, reached back to save aspects of everyday life that were being lost in a mass-production industrial society. The folkcraft movement, led by Yanagi Muneyoshi (Soetsu, 1889-1961), was one more expression of the awareness that society and culture were changing irrevocably. Yanagi began as an art historian...In 1916 he traveled to Korea and fell under the spell of the beauty of ceramics produced by and for ordinary people...Yanagi sought to restore dignity and appreciation for the beauty inherent in simple implements used in daily life in traditional Japan...brought about a new awareness of the artisitic and as they saw it, spiritual importance of a tradition that was in danger of being lost to the products of modern mass production...The leaders of the folkcraft movement were men of courage as well as taste. Yanagi founded a museum in Seoul and espoused the cause of Korean independence...admiration of simple products of the past was related to distress for the forced centralization and homogenization of twentieth century Japan."