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Crisis and Transformation in Heisei Japan Myles Carroll

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Crisis and Transformation in Heisei Japan Myles Carroll CRISIS AND TRANSFORMATION IN HEISEI JAPAN MYLES CARROLL-PREYDE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO NOVEMBER 2019 © Myles Carroll-Preyde, 2019 Abstract This dissertation examines the political economy of post-war Japan using a theoretical framework that combines Antonio Gramsci's ideas about hegemony and crisis in capitalist society with feminist political economy analyses of social reproduction under capitalism. The study theorizes Japan since the 1990s as facing a multifaceted crisis – what Gramsci would term an organic crisis – and seeks to understand the crisis in the context of Japan's post-war period of prosperous, stable and hegemonic political economic order. Moreover, it demonstrates how central to contemporary Japan's overall crisis is a crisis of social reproduction, characterized by a rapidly aging and shrinking population and a chronically low birth rate, among other things. This crisis of social reproduction is dialectically related to other dimensions of Japan's more general organic crisis, including its prolonged period of economic stagnation since the 1990s and the widespread degree of mistrust towards political institutions held among the public, which fostered a wave of reformist politics in the 1990s and 2000s. The dissertation is thus an attempt to theorize post-war Japanese political economy by exploring the key economic, social, and political conditions that served as the basis for the robust hegemonic order of the early post-war era. It considers how those conditions were transformed by a variety of structural, institutional and political forces, beginning in the 1970s, and how as a result many of the same conditions that had initially anchored the hegemonic order came to undermine its basis and ultimately bring about a deep-seated and multifaceted crisis beginning in the 1990s, which has thus far defied resolution. After providing an original account of post-war Japanese political economy from the 1950s to the 2000s, the concluding chapters of the dissertation first examine the current period since the return to power of Abe Shinzo in 2012, exploring how Abe has sought to solve the organic crisis, before finally considering four potential scenarios for the future, as various competing social forces in Japan struggle for a resolution to the organic crisis based on different ethico-political visions, exploring the barriers and contradictions inherent in each of them. ii Acknowledgements Though I take full responsibility for any remaining errors or oversights in this dissertation, I could not have carried out this research or written this dissertation without the love, support and kindness of many people. Stephen Gill has been an intellectual inspiration to me since my undergraduate years. It was in many ways a dream come true to have him as my supervisor. Stephen provided immense support, not only in helping me develop this project and fine-tune it in the final months, but also through his apt advice and dutiful letter-writing, which enabled me to win strong funding for every year of my dissertation. Without this support, this project – which involved extensive fieldwork in Japan – would have been impossible. Moreover, Stephen provided me with invaluable connections in Japan that enabled me to live and work there and early opportunities to publish elements of this research. I owe very much to Stephen. Isa Bakker was also extremely helpful as a committee member, providing a central inspiration for the theoretical approach I developed (along with Stephen), and providing crucial insights and advice on my project. I thank Isa as well for spearheading the Capital & Class special issue, in which I was able to publish an article that came out of this project. David McNally was also extremely helpful as a committee member, posing challenging and compelling questions, which helped me clarify many key issues that I likely would have never even thought about without his critical insights. I also want to thank Shannon Bell, Stefan Kipfer and Derek Hall for serving on my oral examination committee. In particular, Derek Hall proved to be the best possible external examiner, bringing the perspective of a Japan expert to this project and adding numerous insights and thought-provoking questions that helped improve the final version of this dissertation immensely. I would also like to give a special thank you to Seiji Endo, Vice President at Seikei University, who served as my field supervisor in Japan for two years. In addition to being my conduit to being able to live in Japan and hold a position at a Japanese university, Seiji provided me with immense support in developing the blueprint of my project, refining it (in response to some of his concerns) and turning it into the finished copy. He also introduced me to various key Japanese language (as well as English) texts and leading scholars in Japan. His support with this project was of immeasurable significance. I also want to thank a number of people from Japanese academia, including Naoaki Kobayashi, Tokuoh Konishi, Makoto Itoh and Nobuharu Yokokawa for their advice and insights as I developed this project. Finally, I would also like to thank my family for their unwavering support and love. As always, my parents provided tremendous emotional support, even in my moments of self- doubt, every step of the way. My brother Wes also provided significant moral support, and there was nothing like listening to his music when I needed a break. My aunt Michèle iii provided much moral support in the lead up to and at the defense. Most of all, however, I want to thank my wife Yasuka and son Tomohisa for truly being the sparkling diamonds in my life. When I started this project, Yasuka and I had just met and Tomo did not yet exist. It is hard to believe how far we have come as a family in these past two years, just as this project has come to fruition. I could never have done any of it without these two, and I dedicate this dissertation to Yasuka and Tomo. iv Table of contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of contents iii List of abbreviations iv Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Existing approaches to Japanese political economy 20 Chapter Three: Theoretical and analytical approach 61 Chapter Four: The post-war hegemonic order 102 Chapter Five: Contradictions and transitions of the Showa era 156 Chapter Six: The organic crisis of the Heisei era 201 Chapter Seven: Bonapartism and the return of the LDP under Abe 254 Chapter Eight: Whither post-Abe Japan? Four scenarios for the future 290 Chapter Nine: Conclusion 330 Bibliography 350 v List of abbreviations Anpo Treaty of Mutual Cooperation Between the United States and Japan BOJ Bank of Japan CDP Constitutional Democratic Party (2017-present) DPJ Democratic Party of Japan (1996-2017) DSP Democratic Socialist Party (1960-1994) FILP Fiscal Investment and Loan Program GATT General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs IMF International Monetary Fund JCP Japanese Communist Party (1922-present) JNP Japan New Party (1992-1994) JNR Japan National Railways (now JR) JRP Japan Renewal Party (1993-1994) JSP Japan Socialist Party (1955-1996)1 LDP Liberal Democratic Party (1955-present) MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries METI Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (successor to MITI) MEXT Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology MHLW Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare MITI Ministry of International Trade and Industry MOF Ministry of Finance NEET Not in Employment, Education or Training NFP New Frontier Party (1994-1997) PARC Policy Affairs Research Council SCAP Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces SDF Japanese Self-Defense Forces SME Small and Medium-sized Enterprises TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership WTO World Trade Organization 1 Renamed as the Social Democratic Party of Japan since 1996. vi Chapter One: Introduction Nearly thirty years after the 1989 crash of the NIKKEI Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Japanese post-war boom seems now to be little more than a distant memory. Today crisis defines Japanese politics and may do so for many years to come (Noble 2012). This crisis has economic, political, social and ecological dimensions. More than two decades of economic stagnation have led to an unraveling of Japan’s post-war class compromise including its famed lifetime employment system (Osawa et al 2012; Schoppa 2006). The cost of stagnation to the state has been high: public debt is now 2.5 times GDP; the highest level in the world (MOF 2017). Moreover, poverty, income inequality and precarious employment have increased since the late 1980s (Wakatabe 2015). Politically, after 38 years of stable Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule, the 1990s and 2000s witnessed unprecedented political turmoil, with various periods of rule by non-LDP coalition governments and "reformist" LDP leaders, culminating in the landslide victory for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009, followed only three years later by voters' staunch rejection – and the subsequent self-destruction – of the DPJ. Socially, Japan faces the challenge of a shrinking and aging population (a phenomenon known as shōshikōreika) (Noble 2012), as many Japanese youth see the traditional family as either unappealing or unviable (Nemoto 2008; Ratherford et al 2001; Schoppa 2006), dynamics that deepen the economic malaise. As the ratio of elderly people to working age people increases, the costs of health care and social security are increasing just as the size of the tax base from which to pay for those programs declines (Itoh 2000). 1 This situation is sharpened by gender dynamics. While women have traditionally been disadvantaged in the public sphere (Nemoto 2013; North 2009), public officials are now calling upon them to fill labour shortages whilst returning to their traditional roles as mothers in an effort to revive Japan’s birthrate (Kawai 2009).
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