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107 (van Wolferen 1990, 409)
(van Wolferen 1990, 409)
The Systematic deprivation of choice in practically all realms of life bearing on the political organisation of Japan is essential for keeping the System on an even keel. The Japanese have no choice with regard to political representation: they are stuck with the LDP. They have almost no choice in education: its major function is as a sorting mechanism for the salaryman employment market, and the only way to the top runs through the law department of the University of Tokyo. Once a middle-class Japanese male has been taken on by a company, he has as good as no alternative but to stay with that company. The Japanese have no choice with respect to Japanese sources of news and information: these come in the monotonous tones of a virtually fettered press, or processed by other reality managers such as Dentsu. The choices the market offers them as consumers do not include what the distribution keiretsu do not want to distribute.
The common view of the Japanese political process assumes the possibility of political choice. It sees rulers and ruled as engaged in continuous communication for the sake of an ever evolving 'consensus'. Contributing to this consensus forming process, it is suggested, are the multitude of interest groups, academic commentators, journalists, politicians and bureaucrats whose approval must be won for whatever is being decided. Japan's power-holders have enthusiastically seized on this perspective. because it can be passed off as 'democratic', and because it fits in nicely with the all important belief in the benevolence of the System.
Exhortations in the press and in statements by prominent administrators seem to afford constant evidence that the nation is preoccupied with certain issues. But continuous reference to the desirability of something does not constitute a debate. This becomes clear when one looks at it closely: everyone always seems heartily to agree with what is being said. When the evils of the amakudari system and 'examination hell' receive their annual airing in the press it is obvious that the routine exhortations have a cathartic function, substituting, as they do, for genuine remedial action. Discussions, such as can be found in European countries and the United States, with intellectuals and political representatives putting forward identifiable and conflicting opinions that result in a give and take, in education of the citizenry and above all in altered policies, are unknown in Japan, where nothing of substance is debated in the proper meaning of the term. [van Wolferen, Karel. 1990. The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and politics in a stateless nation. New York: Vintage Books.]
