Local Spaces and Identities— some people are just more equal
- “Theorists who allege that Japan has a 'new middle mass' that is politically fully in tune with what the System offers, thereby implying that the Japanese public has had the political means to express its preferences, have forgotten that no one ever told the Japanese people that they could set their own priorities. Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato summed up Japan's political relations most succinctly when he said: 'The government is the captain and the zaikai [business] is the compass of the ship.' At no time have the chosen representatives of the people tried to bring bureaucrats or business federation leaders into line.”
(van Wolferen 1990, 410)
It is tempting to see this privatization as a predictable consequence of state-nation modernity, because of the lack of an en external public sphere capable of exerting democratic oversight. And indeed the most egregious example of this, the creation of a dynastic succession in a Communist country (North Korea), lends support to this general notion. However, the potential for self-generated reform within governments under state-nation modernity cannot simply be dismissed. But what makes reform more likely, under state-nation modernity conditions is a bottom-up internal demand for this, and here is where the lack of democratic organizational logics is most acute.
Those who are left outside the “market” for cultural capital formation, and who thus have little means to influence the social/political situation, look to the promise of reform as the only means to secure fundamental civil rights in Japan. However, when unions, schools and civil organizations (religious or social) also operate in this non-democratic fashion, then the ability of civil organizations to provide internal, democratic leadership is questionable. While bottom-up reform may be the most likely avenue for political change in Japan in the near term, without skilling in inclusive, democratic practices even at this level, the possibility of such reform is difficult to imagine. Meanwhile, the interest in maintaining the social status quo, and the market for social connections finds little resistance. But while “democracy” as such suffers under such circumstances, it would be wrong to suggest that this fact is not known to people in Japan.
To literally “drum-up” interest in the municipal elections, the “Municipal Committee for Youth Guidance” stages its start-of-the-election-campaign period parade.
Elections, particularly local elections often have the participation of less than half of the eligible voting population. In opinion polls, large numbers of citizens express doubts about the quality of democracy in the government. Political parties contribute to public cynicism by not always hiding their contempt for their constituents. For example, in 1994, the head of public affairs of the long-ruling LDP party in Tokyo published a book, Hitora Senkyo Senryaku (Hitler’s Election Strategy) in which he encouraged the LDP to follow Hitler’s lead on manipulating public support (see: Election book praises Hitler's methods). And those official state venues where the public was supposed to provide input have become “invitation only” meetings arranged by government officials (see: Who gets to speak at govt hearings?).
While democratic reforms along the lines of those promoted by civil organizations in many nation-states—freedom of information, active acceptance of a plurality of life-styles, increasing responsiveness to the public sphere, etc.—are not possible with the arenas of discourse open within state-nations, governments within state-nations can still be held accountable to their own democratic self definitions. And in Japan, democracy is fundamentally a discourse of equality.
