The Enigma of Japanese Power by Wolferen, Karel van -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments The Enigma of Japanese Power 1 The Japan Problem

Confusing fictions The neglected role of power

2 The Elusive State

Power out of focus The System

3 An Inescapable Embrace

The absence of political competition The System at work in rural Japan Controlling the workers Encapsulated outsiders

4 Servants of the System

The subservient education system The house-broken press Accommodated mobsters

5 The Administrators

Preserving the System Structural corruption LDP battles, bureaucrats and political tribesmen

6 The Submissive Middle Class

The ‘salaryman’ model Familist ideology Submission and order Producers of salaryman culture

7 Nurses of the People

Forces of benevolence The unprotected

8 Keeping the Law under Control

Laws above and beneath power-holders Coping with the legal threat to the System The prosecutor as judge

9 The Management of Reality

Political uses of contradiction Much maligned logic

10 Power in the Guise of Culture

The ideology of Japaneseness Orthodoxies as condition for Japanese order The Japanese sense of uniqueness and superiority

11 The System as Religion

Expedient religions Buddhists, Christians, Marxists and fanatics The danger of secularisation

12 The Right to Rule

The legitimacy problem

13 Ritual and Intimidation

A less than perfect harmony Order through ritual Order through intimidation

14 A Century of Consolidating Control

The fundamental continuity Consolidation

15 The Japanese Phoenix

The economics of national security Legacy of a mobilised nation Making Japan invincible

16 In the World But Not of It

The absence of political choice An uncomfortable dependence Victimised and alone

Notes Glossary of Japanese Words A Note About the Author