JPNA170 Spring 2025
July 7
W13L2 – Postwar Growth
The era of high-growth
The Korean War boom and the close diplomatic relationship with the U.S. provided the stimulus for Japan’s
economic recovery during the early 1950s. In particular, the close relationship with the U.S. fostered
Japanese trade by opening U.S markets to Japanese products. In addition, a series of reparation treaties with
Southeast Asian nations were established allowing for these reparations to be in the form of goods and
services.
• Period of high growth from early 1950s to early 1970s: Japan’s economy grew by an average rate of
10%
• War time Boom: Korean War in the 1950s, Vietnam War in the early 1960s à Japanese industry
profited
• San Francisco system = low defense costs for Japan
• American firms made technical cooperation agreements with Japanese counterparts, enabling Japan
to catch up with technology.
• Production shifted from textiles to consumer goods requiring more advanced technology, such as
motor-cycles
• Proportion of income spent on cultural and entertainment expenses rose dramatically. (Example,
pachinko, hotspring resorts, coffee shops, films, etc.)
• Education is now important for the obtaining of material comforts (particularly, a college degree)
• Reduction of population via a eugenics law passed in 1948 and further revised in 1952 to allow
doctors to induce abortions at their discretion.
• “Motherly duties” became concentrated on fewer children.
• Anti-zaibatsu policies = Formation of keiretsu “conglomerates” (in contrasts to Zaibatsu) such as
Toyota, Honda, Sony
• Japanese began thinking of themselves as economic leaders of Asia – as the leader in a formation of
flying geese
Postwar Literary/Media Trends
It is no doubt that mass media played a key role in postwar Japanese society. As we mentioned in earlier
weeks, the publishing industry was crucial in the Meiji and Taishō period for the formation and education of
a national community in Japan. In the era of high growth, although media became more varied (with new
forms of media technology), the images of what constitutes “Japanese people” were remarkably
standardized.
• Flourishing of publishing industry
• Varley: Released from severe restrictions of war-time controls, writers rushed to complete
manuscripts and get them to print.
• Varley: Increased volume of translation of “western” literature, both classical and contemporary.
• In addition to English, French, German, Russian writings, now American as well.
• Partially due to the equation of American writings = democratic writings
• Standardization of images of normal middle-classness
• Creation of urban middle-class-ness in media productions
• Images in film and movie contributed to the idea of Japanese people as “middle-class”
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Ozu Yasujirō (1903-1963)’s movies’ attention between traditional and modern through the (average)
Japanese family.
Varley: The Japanese Family as important….
Varley: “It is simply a fact, as outsiders constantly observe, that the Japanese are overwhelmingly group-oriented: they
work in groups; they play in groups; they seem happiest in groups.”
Ideas such as the “three sacred regalia” of modern life and later “three new regalia” in the 1960s
Ordinary programs and coverage of big events like the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 à Japan’s postwar
modern life is part of a global modern culture common to advanced capitalist countries
High impact cultural events (like the Tokyo Olympics) make it a point that “the Japanese people”
shared a common socio-cultural world.
Literary works à Exploration of a new (masculine) identity that is no longer rooted in empire
Varley: Burai-ha (lit. school of irresponsibility and decadence)… “viewed the world as a place of
existential chaos, distorted values, and universal hypocrisy.”
Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters
o Varley: The Makioka Sisters is the story of the decline of a once affluent merchant house as
revealed in the lives of four sisters after the death of their father, the head of the family…
o Varley: The decline not only of a single family but of the entire way of life of prewar Japan
o Varley: The Makioka Sisters is a “Tale of Genji” set in the present age.” (Oh Varley….)
Mishima Yukio’s death by seppuku in 1970, a radical critique of Japan’s postwar culture
o Attempted to define and defend “traditional” Japanese aesthetic values
o Linked these values to a militaristic veneration of the emperor and nation
Kawabata Yasunari’s 1968 Nobel prize Lecture “Japan, the Beautiful and Myself” (1968)
o Varley: “Kawabata is probably more Japanese in what is generally understood as the
traditional sense than any other modern novelist”
o Varley: One is, for example, always keenly aware in a Kawabata novel, as in the poetry by
ancient courtier masters, of nature and the seasons, or more precisely, of the particular
nature and seasons of Japan that have shaped the temperament of its people
o The emphasis on the oriental landscape – “mountain-water”
o The “Emptiness of the Orient,” a kind of zen-like “innate reality”
The Rise of the Discourse on Japanese Uniqueness (Nihonjinron)
In spite of the immense impact of the Nixon Shocks and the double oil crises of 1973 and 1979, the
Japanese economy recovered almost immediately. They were achieving growth rates that, although not
phenomenal, were at levels above any other advanced industrialized country. Coupled with the rising
consciousness amongst Japanese that the bulk of Japanese society was middle-class (see above) and that
Japan was leading the group of Asian rising economies, this confidence in economy brought about a new
form of cultural nationalism from the late 1960s known as Nihonjinron.
• Erza Vogel: Japan as Number 1, a country that the US can learn from.
• Japan became the largest creditor in the world in the 1980s
• Realization of material affluence amongst Japanese helped keep Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in
power
• Japanese people became “visible” as hundreds of thousands travelled as high-spending tourists or
bought up prime real estate in other countries.
• Nihonjinron attempted to explain Japan’s economic strengths in terms of its cultural attributes
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Nihonjinron defined as “discourse of Japanese uniqueness” but often presupposes implicitly the
superiority of Japanese culture
“Japanese culture” is credited with not only economic success, but also with preventing social
problems found in “western countries”
Written/propounded both internally by Japanese themselves, and by foreign scholars
Millions of readers in Japan and abroad.
Nihonjinron portrayed Japanese culture as timeless, people and society as harmonious and
homogeneous, bound together by a long history of racial purity.
Historical Amnesia?
At the same time Nihonjinron publications were so popular, inequalities among Japanese were
becoming greater.
Marginalized groups became more visible.
Mainly a male-centered discourse: Women amongst those excluded from the discourse on Japanese
economical culture.
Equal Employment Opportunity Law (passed in 1985, implemented in 1986) a failure.
Women suffered lower wages; women’s average hourly earnings in the 1970s-80s remained a little
over 60% of men’s.
Large corporations used family registration records (koseki) to determine who were Korean or
Burakumin (a designation for people who descended from an Edo period “class” that worked on
corpses, animal remains, etc.)
Families also used list to block marriage of their children to Burakumin. (But such prejudice is in
decline.)
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