This picture of Japanese distinctiveness should not come as any great surprise. Even a relatively casual acquaintance with Japanese society conveys this impression. [160] As the accompanying tables and charts illustrate, Japanese attitudes and values remain strikingly different from those of Western societies, notwithstanding the fact that they share roughly the same level of development. [161] The first reason for this hardly needs restating: cultural differences have an extraordinary endurance, with Japan’s rooted in a very different kind of civilization. [162] The second is historical: because the Meiji Restoration was a relatively recent event, Japan is still strongly marked by the proximity of its feudal past. [163] Furthermore, the post-1868 ruling elite consciously and deliberately set out to retain as much of the past as possible. The fact that the
Even the nature of governance still strongly bears the imprint of the past. Throughout most of Japan ’s recorded history, power has been divided between two or more centres, and that remains true today. The emperor is now of ceremonial and symbolic significance. The diet – the Japanese parliament – enjoys little real authority. The prime minister is far weaker than any other prime minister of a major developed nation, normally enjoying only a relatively brief tenure in office before being replaced by another member of the ruling Liberal Democrats. Cabinet meetings are largely ceremonial, lasting less than a quarter of an hour. Although formally Japan has a multi-party system, the Liberal Democrats have been in office almost continuously since the mid fifties and the factions within this party are in practice of much greater importance than the other parties. Power is therefore dispersed across a range of different institutions, with the bureaucracy, in traditional Confucian style, being the single most important. [165] Since the end of the American occupation, Japan has been regarded by the West as a democracy, but in reality it works very differently from any Western democracy: indeed, its modus operandi is so different that it is doubtful whether the term is very meaningful. [166] Japan may have changed hugely since 1868, but the influence of the past is remarkably persistent.
Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan ’s mission was to close the gap with the West, to behave like the West, to achieve the respect of the West and ultimately to become, at least in terms of the level of development, like the West. Benchmarking and catch-up were the new lodestars. [167] Before 1939 this primarily meant Europe, but after 1945 Europe was replaced in the Japanese mind by an overwhelming preoccupation with the United States. In this context, the key objective was economic growth, but Japan ’s colonial expansion, which started within six years of the Meiji Restoration, also owed much to a desire to emulate Europe: to be a modern power, Japan needed to have its own complement of colonies. These territorial ambitions eventually brought Japan to its knees in the Second World War, culminating in its defeat and surrender. It was a humiliating moment: the very purpose of the Meiji Restoration – to prevent the domination of the country by the West – had been undermined. The post-1868 trajectory had resulted in the country’s occupation, its desire to emulate the West in disaster.
