A Cultural History of Postwar Japan

by Shunsuke Tsurumi

  War orphans (once)

  Preparation to ward off typhoon (once)

  Criticism of teachers (once)

  Cattle (once)

  There are 78 independent strips, each consisting of four pictures, and of these, social themes appear in 33, or 41 per cent. The others treat ordinary family events.

  In 1970, social themes appear in 27 of the 96 stories (29 per cent). The social themes are:

  The Expo (7 times)

  Inflation (4 times)

  Hardworking clerks (3 times)

  Pollution (twice)

  Old age pension (once)

  Over-protection of children (once)

  A bank robbery of Yen 3 billion (once)

  Disposal of rubbish (once)

  Position of Japan as economic super power (once)

  Scarcity of middle-school graduates going directly into employment (once)

  Part-time jobs for housewives (once)

  High taxes(once)

  Cheating in professional baseball (once)

  The contradiction of capitalism (once)

  Currency crisis (once)

  In the years immediately following Japan’s surrender, women were forced to leave home in order to procure a livelihood for the Family. They had to be alert to all kinds of information. In the 1960s and 1970s the household was secure. The young housewife no longer needed to leave home and re-examine her social outlook. Most necessary information was brought to the household through television. The only social theme that initially engaged her interest seems to have been inflation, in which Japan led the world, which naturally affected her style of living.

  Judging from the circulation of the Asahi, in which ‘Sazaesan’ was serialized, its readership has been 15 million for the past 30 years. Taking into account television viewing, more than 20 million people have access to these cartoons. Thus ‘Sazaesan’ reflects the social outlook of 15 to 20 million ordinary Japanese.

  37–38 From Sazaesan, Vol. 46, by Hasegawa Machiko

  Frame 1 (She)— We’ve been asked out. I might wear my kimono.

  (He)— That’s a great idea. There’s no femininity in Western clothes these days.

  Frame 2—Now I’m ready!

  Their outlook, and ‘Sazaesan’s’ outlook, seems to be:

  1. denigration of militarism as something that should not be repeated;

  2. satisfaction with the everyday life of the family, from which point of view an excessive craving for better positions, exemplified by hard-working company clerks or children pushed to study, seems funny;

  3. a fundamental belief that all men should be equal before the law: the standards required of children must be kept by the father, and boys and girls are to be judged by the same moral criteria. That gives ‘Sazaesan’ an instant supply of material from the social life of Japan even after Japan had achieved prosperity.

  ‘Sazaesan’s’ love of comfort may be open to criticism in that it overlooks the economic imperialism of Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, but there are two saving features. There is no trace of prewar ideology which justified dispatching military forces to protect Japan’s economic interests; and there is a fundamental faith in the way of life of the ordinary woman, together with a rejection of excessive effort to succeed, including to amass national wealth. All this explains ‘Sazaesan’s’ sympathy with the banishment of Kishi, the Premier responsible for war, in 1960, and with the anti-pollution movement, including the Minamata movement, in the 1970s. Nevertheless, this is not a sympathy with a revolutionary movement.

  Members of co-ordination committees of citizens’ movements, following Taketani Mitsuo and Kuno Osamu92 and Nakai Masakazu, whose views I have quoted, aimed for the independent development of citizens’ movements, working in collaboration with the Communist and Socialist parties, while reserving their right to criticize these political parties. They never entertained the illusion that the citizens’ movement was revolutionary. They emphasized that the revolutionary movement, and also revolutionary government, could learn much from an independent resistance movement. Their point of view was not shared by leftist parties and leaders. Some tried to draw the whole of the citizens’ movement into the revolutionary movement. Others seemed to think that their efforts in the citizens’ movement were revolutionary, confusing resistance with revolution.93

  8

  Comments on Patterns of Life

  Yanagita Kunio wrote the History of Modern Japan—Changing Signs of the Times in 1930, using no proper names and basing his history on the evidence of newspapers.94

  Yanagita was a unique scholar. He was a moderate, who dismissed most of his so-called moderate contemporaries as reactionaries. He thus managed to avoid many of the misjudgements of the prewar radical progressives and reactionaries and also the redirection which radicals, progressives and reactionaries underwent during the Fifteen Years’ War. Yanagita was one of the very few who did not lose sight of the cultural continuity between pre-Meiji and post-Meiji Japan. On the whole, Yanagita criticized the post-Meiji government from the point of view of the continuous cultural tradition, or folkways, of the Japanese people. A major challenge facing modern scholars is how to write a sequel to Yanagita’s History covering the period after 1955.

  The defeat of 1945 and the subsequent occupation by the U.S.A. brought about some drastic institutional changes in Japan,95 although, with the hindsight of 35 years, these changes no longer seem as great as they seemed at the time to the Occupation authorities and many Japanese opinion leaders.96 In the 1960s and 1970s high economic growth changed the face of Japan. Between 1955 and 1975 a great change took place.97 Of the total workforce, those engaged in agriculture numbered 41.1 per cent in 1955 and 13.8 per cent in 1975. In January 1979, 12 per cent of Japanese families were agricultural. Agriculture became to a large extent the work of grandmothers and mothers, and commuting to city factories and companies increased.

  The crucial question is, how much cultural change occurred in the era of great economic growth?

  With regard to food, Japanese self-sufficiency has decreased markedly. In terms of grain, it has fallen from 82 per cent in 1960 to 34 per cent in 1978, an alarming drop from the 1977 figure of 40 per cent. In terms of beans, it has fallen from 44 per cent in 1960 to 11 per cent in 1974. For animal meat the figure has dropped from 96 per cent in 1960 to 60 per cent in 1974. Only in terms of rice has Japan’s level of self-sufficiency been unchanged, standing at 102 per cent in 1974.98

  During the Fifteen Years’ War, Japan suffered a food shortage, and towards the end of the war people were forced to replace rice with substitutes and were encouraged to eat bread. After the defeat and during the Occupation, imported corn and wheat were introduced into everyday life. Schoolchildren were given skimmed milk and bread. A campaign was initiated, claiming that rice was unhealthy and made one sleepy and sluggish. Some writers claim that this was a conspiracy by the government on behalf of the U.S.A. intended to encourage imports from America. Eating rice is no longer considered unhealthy by specialists in nutrition, and, in fact, cardiologists both in Japan and abroad recommend traditional Japanese cooking with its mixture of unrefined rice, kelp seaweed, vegetables, beans and fish, and consider that with less salt and soya sauce it would be an ideal menu for those over middle age. But since the start of the war and in the following 35 years the ingredients of traditional Japanese cooking have become difficult to procure. The cheap dishes of the Meiji and Taish Periods are now the most expensive, and a hamburger, frankfurter or croquette, delicacies in the Meiji Period, are now cheap and easily accessible fast foods. In the Edo Period, the three greatest delicacies were silver carp sushi, dried mullet roe and sea urchin (sea chestnut), none of which attract young people today, who prefer the food popular in America and Canada.

  The Society for the Study of Contemporary Customs, begun in 1976, asked its 500 members in 1978 about their breakfast habits. This we can ascertain only by asking, because our mode of living is undergoing such a swift change in the years of hi
gh economic growth. Only 6 per cent of the society’s members, mainly middleclass city dwellers whose ages range between 20 and 70, ate a traditional Japanese breakfast of boiled rice, bean-paste soup, fermented soy beans, pickles and Japanese tea.99 Moreover, the concept of what constitutes the middle class is itself highly vague, now that 90 per cent of Japanese place themselves within it.100

  39 –40 Two types of Japanese breakfast

  Engel’s coefficient, which indicates the proportion of the household budget spent on food, was over 44 per cent in 1960, and 34 per cent in 1970, comparable to European countries.101 Parallel with this change, the daily menus of the Japanese now commonly include hamburgers, croquettes, veal cutlets, curry or omelettes with rice. On the other hand, the simple foods which were so easy to procure before the war have become the object of nostalgia. Citizens affected by pollution declared that they would rather eat simple rice balls with pickled plums in clean air than beef steak under a smoke-filled sky. Such a desire has become more and more difficult to satisfy since the 1960s. The anti-pollution movement, which is continued today by a small minority in each locality, is in this sense linked to the wishes of ordinary citizens who do not participate in demonstrations and sit-ins. It is very seldom that direct action by anti-pollution groups is molested or ridiculed by the majority of citizens.

  During the early stage of high economic growth, in 1960, the representative financial groups proposed an agricultural policy with two objectives: to mechanize and aggrandize traditional agricultural methods; and to abandon self-sufficiency in agricultural products. The ruling party accepted this proposal and directed labour power from agriculture into industry. With this object in mind, the government drew up the basic agriculture law of 1961. Today the income of agricultural families comes mainly from industry, with about four-fifths being provided by husbands, sons and daughters who work in factories. The small-scale agriculture carried on by grandparents and mothers with the help of expensive machinery is not highly productive, nor is it able to compete with overseas production, particularly that of the U.S.A. With the exception of rice, the price of which is given legal protection, agricultural products have gone down both in quality and quantity. The Conservative Party has benefited agricultural families in two ways, by increasing their income and by raising the price of rice, and so has received their support ever since the land reform during the Occupation.

  The farmers’ reaction to the basic agricultural law is typified by two incidents. Farmers in Akita Prefecture in northern Japan agreed to the draining of Lake Hachirgata, the second largest lake in Japan, to provide new land for rice production. When the drainage had been completed, a surplus of rice necessitated a change of policy on the part of the government regarding the distribution of bonus money to farmers for not producing rice. The farmers obeyed the government’s order and accepted the loss of a fishing site and play area for their children.102

  The Hachirgata farmers, according to the agricultural economist Iinuma Jir, are the ‘teacher’s pet’ of the Japanese government, and indirectly of the U.S. government. The unruly pupils are the farmers of Sanrizuka, who refused to accept the government’s proposal to buy their land for the building of an international airport, in spite of the enormous sums offered them, and continued to cultivate their land. Although their income was small and shrinking further, they could survive on their own produce, and were suspicious that a large amount of cash would not provide them with a healthy way of life.103

  The government policy of high industrialization at the cost of agriculture has so far made Japan a prosperous country, to the envy of other nations. It has urbanized much of Japan and turned the majority of Japanese into city dwellers. This represents a decisive break with pre-Meiji tradition.104 Yanagita Kunio says in his History of Modern Japan—Changing Signs of the Times that the Japanese are a nation who consider the outdoors as a part of the house. Streets are where adults meet and converse and where children spend most of their waking time playing. This way of life was probably brought from southern islands. But now, shut up in mammoth buildings and living in small partitions, the Japanese have little time to associate with one another, and children little time and space to play. Even young people with time and money are said to tend towards what Nakano Osamu calls ‘Capsule Man’, who feels most secure and relaxed when he is shut up in his small room with his stereo, television and comic books.105 They have developed a love and respect for privacy, a distrust of public causes, and have very little regard for the state. A survey of employees of an electrical company showed that not a single one was prepared to give his life for the state in a time of emergency, in decisive contrast to the mentality of the prewar and wartime eras.

  Yanagita Kunio quotes from an Asahi newspaper of 1929 the story of an old tramp, 95 years old, who carried as his only luggage 45 wooden mortuary name tablets of his deceased ancestors. He would not throw them away for fear the ancestral ghosts would not only hound him but would haunt somebody else and make mischief. That was two years before Japan plunged into a long

  41 High-rise housing estates, Takashimadaira, Tokyo, 1973

  war. Then the belief still existed that each person should work for the continuation of his family. The ancestral spirit of the family would be with the living and give assistance. Such a belief in the family spirit has dwindled in the postwar period. In more and more city houses, there is no place for family mortuary tablets. The anxiety that haunted the 95-year-old wanderer of 1929 no longer torments the city dwellers of 1980. The transformation is not due to the Japanese people’s conversion to Christianity.

  According to Takatori Masao, a scholar of the Japanese folk religion, the Japanese word for a memento, katami, originates in seeing the missing form. Keeping a memento, then, presupposes an ability to see the missing form of a person now deceased. However, this ability, supposedly universal for much of the history of Japanese culture, has declined swiftly in the years of prosperity since 1960. The spread of photographs, radio, gramophones, tape recorders, television and videos has contributed to the deterioration of the ability to conjure up missing forms through a memento. Today, very few city dwellers keep mementoes of their ancestors, even grandparents or parents, in their homes.106 This is partly due to the smallness of their houses, but a more important reason is the change of dwelling place: most city dwellers lived previously in the country, where the natural surroundings them selves contained innumerable mementoes which enabled them to conjure up the images of the deceased, thus educating them to see the missing forms of familiar figures.

  Changes in dress have also contributed to the decline. With Japanese dress, cloth can be preserved and reused again and again. When one dress is discarded, the cloth is washed and dried, and used as a part of some other dress. In this way, a grandmother’s dress may live on as part of her granddaughter’s pyjamas. According to Japanese animist tradition, the spirit is transmitted together with the material. The transmission of the material naturally evokes in the mind of the granddaughter the imaginary scene of the grandmother as a child. Until the 1920s, most Japanese wore traditional dress. After 1931, the war encouraged efficiency and, in spite of the traditionalist ideology of the wartime government, accelerated a thorough Westernization in the dress of men and women at work and also at school, although both men and women continued to wear traditional Japanese clothing at home for a long time after the war. Since the 1960s, the majority of Japanese men and women have worn Western clothes even at home.107 According to a survey made from 24-hour TV recordings of city dwellers in big flats, men spend their waking hours at home in underwear, children in pyjamas, and wives in simple Western dress.108 When such a mode of life is adopted, there is no room left for the transmission of an ancestral family spirit in the form of clothing.

  There remains, however, a vague sense of ancestor worship which envelops the nation. This unity is symbolized by the person of the Emperor. In this sense, at least, the Emperor has not been outgrown. The Emperor is a symbol of the se
lf-containment of the Japanese people. Thus, unless there is another war and defeat that brings about its downfall through a foreign agency, the emperor system will not become obsolete until the condition of self-containment undergoes a radical change. This change is, I believe, taking place, but it is a gradual one.

  The solidarity of the Japanese as a nation is still very strong, as indicated by their constant use of the word ‘foreigner’, and will continue to be so for a very long time. This mentality contributed to Japan’s swift recovery from the devastation brought about by the war, and to the vigorous atmosphere of private enterprise in Japan. The historian of technology, Hoshino Yoshir, has characterized postwar technology in Japan in terms of the ability to be excited about minor technical innovations. In Europe and North America, inventive engineers are interested only in innovations of radical novelty. In Japan, however, engineers are excited over minor innovations often brought from abroad, and the excitement is instantly shared by the group.109 Japanese enterprise makes money from these minor innovations, and the success of Japanese technology has invited the jealousy of the U.S.A., which responds by forcing Japan to buy more agricultural produce and thus brings about a further decline in self-sufficiency.

  High industrialization has made pollution a problem that will haunt Japan for many years. In every region there has sprung up a local group that opposes pollution. There has arisen a romantic longing for a simple life with the recycling of waste products, a limited use of mechanical means and energy, a return to traditional food and housing and, in sum, a lower standard of living. At what point we check our reliance upon technology in our own individual life style and also in our national life style is the question now facing Japan, and which will determine our future.

  Some clues lie in the actions of the Japanese in the 35 years following the surrender. In 1947, right after the war, the birth rate per 10,000 was 34.3. It was 33.5 in 1948, 33.0 in 1958, sank to 17.2 in 1962 and 13.88 in 1966. According to the estimate disclosed by the Population Institute in 1979, the Japanese population has stabilized, and will reach zero population growth after 50 years, remaining at 139 million.110 Population is a major factor in the intellectual and cultural history of a nation. To check population growth was an intellectual achievement of the Japanese nation, which will encourage it to deviate from the course followed since the Meiji Period.111 Population growth was often used as a pretext for Japan’s military expansion in the prewar years. It takes a certain growth in national self-esteem to have brought about such a check upon the size of population. This growth in self-esteem, coupled with the abandonment of the prewar concept of the national structure, exercises a check on the re-emergence of the ideology of militarist expansion in the era of high economic growth.