Читать книгу Japan - James Rebischung - Страница 9

INDUSTRIALIZATION

The most important single fact about Japan today is its industrialization and economic impact on the rest of the world. Since the early 1950’s when Japan became an American outpost in Asia and a link in the fence of the United States containment of Communism, the energies and talents of the Japanese people have been directed by a solidly entrenched ruling-class partnership of big business and government toward creating a modern, industrial, consumer society based on an American model. Other factors instrumental to the remarkable Japanese economic success are a massive and expensive importation of foreign technology, and an educated and dedicated work force. Along with the latest and most productive facilities operated by workers who still believe in a work ethic, the Japanese economy has benefited from governmental planning of investment goals, strategies, and priorities. The Japanese government has acted much like a Board of Directors and a central planning agency directing business activity to areas which would bring the largest economic returns and would most benefit the economy.

A little more than a hundred years ago. Japan was almost totally an agricultural economy never quite able to feed its people adequately. During the feudal Tokugawa period, Japan had cut itself off from foreign penetration for two hundred and fifty years, and was ignorant of the commercial and industrial revolutions and new technologies of the rest of the world. The government of the country was in the hands of feudal chiefs, the great daimyo, and their retainers, the samurai or fighting men. This group had ruled and kept in bondage the peasant bulk of the Japanese population since the thirteenth century. During feudal times this ruling class was composed of some 400,000 families numbering about two million persons, 7 percent of the population. Typically, as in all historical feudal societies, the ruling class disdained commercial activities and concerns, leaving such matters to the lowest social class, the merchants. The warriors were not allowed to deal with money or to accumulate it. They were paid in rice, which they used as a means of exchange to purchase their necessities. They did no work except to fight in the service of their lords. This ruling class lived on a minimum of fifty percent of the entire agricultural production, which in such a society was practically all of what we would call the GNP. Its level of living was twelve times higher than that of the peasant class which did all of the work and often was too poor even to eat the rice that it had labored over. The samurai class had the exclusive right to bear family names, to carry swords, and to use them with impunity on anybody of the commoner class, the other 93 percent of the population.

But with the opening of japan to foreign trade by the American Commodore Perry in 1854, great changes eventually took place. Foreign trade caused the emergence of a money economy which threatened to redistribute the wealth and power of the feudal chiefs, which lay in land and rice, to the rising class of merchant bankers. Accordingly, the more perspicacious daimyo sought money by encouraging trade and industry within their domains, and then monopolizing them. Thus were laid the foundations of Japan’s modern industrial and commercial structures. These daimyo developed spinning and weaving industries as well as the manufacture of porcelain, paper, and other products. They developed coal mines, iron foundries, and shipbuilding. In the years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 the feudal clans which had become successful in their economic enterprises, and having learned by experience that strength lay in the accumulation and control of capital, established the pattern of monopolistic control which is still the basic Japanese idea behind industrial and governmental activities.

However, the new money economy saw the rise in prices and a drain of gold which, in addition to other factors, brought eventual collapse of the feudal system. More and more of the real power in the feudal society gradually shifted to the prospering merchant class. In the growing commercialization of the economy, feudal lords grew poorer and poorer, and sought additional revenues by taxing their already impoverished peasants at ruinously higher rates. This increased taxation resulted in further impoverishment of the peasant class, in greater confusion and discontent in the changing patterns of life, in lowered productivity, and in widespread rioting. Without realizing it, the daimyo were undermining the very base of their social system. The samurai also shared in the impoverishment of those in the feudal system, and by the end of the Tokugawa period the entire ruling class found itself in desperate financial straits. The overwhelming number of samurai owned nothing but their swords, and were reduced to the working-class level or near it. Although the commercial class in Japan at that time had been a despised one, many samurai families were forced to enter its ranks, either as shopkeepers or small handicrafts manufacturers. Thus, at the advent of the new age of money and commerce, many samurai families found themselves inadvertantly at the head of the line, so to speak, and subsequently prospered.

The Meiji Restoration in 1868, engendered by the collapse of the feudal economy and the threat of Western domination, saw the eclipse of the ancient power of the daimyo, the restoration of the Emperor to active status, and the beginning of state-industrial-monopoly capitalism. The leaders of the Restoration came for the most part from the lower stratum of the samurai class, and the military class which had ruled Japan for centuries still continued to rule, but with a different leadership and with a unified, national, and industrial purpose. To protect itself from nineteenth century Western imperialism, the government embarked on a program of industrialization and took over or promoted strategic industries such as the manufacture of munitions, railways, telephone and telegraph, mining and shipbuilding. In the course of time, the government returned or sold most of these enterprises to private ownership, but it never entirely relinquished its power of direction and intervention. During these times, Japan was not a consumer economy or one with a business ethic. Rather, in keeping with its feudal background, the nation was organized on a militarist-socialist pattern. With the example of the depredations of the Western powers before them, the new Japanese leaders had much to fear from these war-like nations, and acted accordingly. It should be no wonder that japan developed along military-industrial lines until 1945.

At the beginning of the industrialization of japan, it was the lower samurai which controlled the government, and it was from this segment of this social class that most of the young men were chosen for education overseas or for modern, scientific education in the newly established national universities at home. Although all feudal privileges in matters of education were swept away by the Restoration, the peasant class was totally illiterate, and only the samurai, who in addition to the martial arts were also required to be well versed in literature and learning, were capable of immediately absorbing Western knowledge. Public education was also established for the masses, but it would take years before they could profit from it. In addition to educational advantages, government grants-in-aid established many samurai families in industrial enterprises. In the Pension Capitalization of 1876, some $210 million of public bonds and cash were issued by the government to the former samurai in return for their anachronistic rice stipends. Since these samurai owned no land and little money, this gift of the government helped to absorb them into the framework of the new, capitalistic economy by making them capitalists. Not all families made good use of this government boon, but those who did became very rich indeed.

The peasants remained on the land where their forebears had been for centuries and were taxed heavily by the samurai rulers to finance the capitalization of the nation and the samurai class. The peasants furnished at different times from 70 to 87 percent of the government’s revenue, and never, it could be said, was so much extorted from so many by so few and for so long. Eventually, the collection of taxes in rice proved too unwieldy and the government changed it to a money tax. The result was that landowners and peasants were placed at the mercies of rice brokers and bankers who took advantage of the farmers’ need for cash money to pay this tax. The farmers had to accept whatever was offered to them by the rice dealers for their crops. Many landowners and peasants were ruined by the money tax and were forced to sell their land or to abandon it. The rich were starting to become richer. The losers in this new money economy, together with other unemployed rural people, fled to the cities and found low paid work in the new factories which had been established by the samurai government with that same tax money and given over to the management and ownership by samurai families.

With the coming of modernization to Japan, the samurai class was at the forefront of service to the nation and also of opportunity. While the peasant class remained exploited, the samurai were either established at the tax-payers’ expense in subsequently lucrative industrial enterprises or trained at the taxpayers’ expense for modern, well-paying occupations such as medicine, law, engineering, science, and the like. Members of the samurai class also found scope and employment with the government and in the class’ traditional military role.

Although Japan outwardly assumed Western political institutions during the Meiji Era, the traditional military orientation of the ruling class remained and directed much of Japan’s activities. The Japanese military clan system, which the new constitution sought to circumscribe, flourished under the new parliamentary institutions better than before. The great Satsuma clan controlled the navy, finance, and industries, while the Choshu clan controlled the army, civil service, and education. Together, these two clans were able to control the whole apparatus of government; in 1875, Japan boldly annexed the Ryukyu Islands. Later, Japan got into a war with China over the status of Korea, and won the war along with a free hand in Korea, the island of Formosa, and Southern Manchuria. Japan also got a huge indemnity of gold worth over 38 million English pounds. This plundered gold enabled Japan to shift to the gold standard as a monetary system in 1897, greatly aiding its industrialization. Japan wrung further concessions from China after acting in concert with Western troops during the Boxer uprising in Peking in 1900. Additionally, in 1904 Japan won a short war against Russia, and with it a world-power status.

During this period of varied and intense military activity, Japan’s industrial progress was steady but slow. The country was short of capital and did not wish to depend on foreign sources. Industrial investment was accordingly limited. Also, Japan had little to sell in the way of exports to pay for new industrial equipment. Since the country had so few natural resources, it had to use exports to pay for the needed raw materials such as cotton, coal, iron and steel, oil, rubber, and tin. But during World War I, while the Western nations were busy producing vast amounts of munitions instead of commercial products, Japan was able to increase its foreign trade and shipping so that it became a creditor nation. With its great fund of foreign credits, Japan was able to invest heavily in industrial capacity and to enter the ranks of the leading industrial countries.

During the war japan joined with the Allies and furnished some help in defeating the Central Powers. In doing so, Japan also extended its empire by capturing the German possessions in the Pacific Area. During the 1920’s, Japan’s foreign policy was largely in the hands of Baron Kijuro Shidehara, who believed that Japan would gain more by developing trade than by resorting to forceful aggression, and Japanese military activities were minimal. However, by 1930 problems had arisen between Japan and China over Manchuria which led to the Japanese Army taking affairs into its own hands and starting a war with the Chinese. After the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, growing preparations for war greatly stimulated Japanese industry. The index of industrial production doubled from 1929 to 1939. At first this great increase, which was planned and directed by the state, was opposed by leading financiers and industrialists concerned with international trade, but the militarists were too strongly in power to be dislodged by argument and parliamentary procedures. Opposition soon became “subversion,” and what police suppression could not accomplish, assassination did.

Indeed, no one in Japan during the 1930’s was safe from assassination. Members of the Peerage, government Ministers, Premiers, newspaper editors, labor leaders, intellectuals, opposition political leaders, anyone who stood in the way of the right-wing militarist group, even military men, were killed or intimidated. The central government in Tokyo could hardly control the Japanese Army in Manchuria and was always under the threat of military usurpation. Everything in the country from education to farming to industry was made to serve the interests of the militarists, who twisted Japanese pride and patriotism to their own misguided ends.

Seen from the perspective of history, Japanese military aggression during the early period of industrialization seems more inevitable and unfortunate than either right or wrong. The world of the times was a jungle world full of stalking tigers. Aggression was everywhere, and in imitation of other powers, Japan turned into a predatory nation. If free trade had been allowed and territorial integrity guaranteed by all nations, perhaps the Japanese military tradition would have passed with the feudal past. However, it was an age of imperialism. Nineteenth century and even older mercantilist concerns formed the thinking of those times, and the bayonet was never far behind the bank draft. Nevertheless, probably 97 percent of the Japanese people had no control of their destinies during those times. Even so, it is difficult to imagine the ruling class of any other nation choosing otherwise during those economically difficult times.

In the Pacific War, Japan’s military leaders not only caused the deaths of countless innocent victims and billions in property damage, but also led the nation to its ruin. Forty percent of Japanese factories and machinery was destroyed, and 80 percent of the ships sunk. Nine million people in the nation were made homeless, and 1.8 million others were killed. Millions of men had for years done no useful or constructive work. But with the political realignments due to the war and with what could be termed the “Pax Americana,” Japan was rid of its militarists and released from its need for protection and for aggression. It returned to business enterprise.

Since its defeat in the Pacific War, Japan has channeled all resources into economic growth of a peaceful nature. What was once a rural, agricultural society based on strong family ties, the small-scale production of everyday items, and a heavy industry in the service of the military, has been transformed during the past twenty years into an urbanized, consumer society of factory workers and commercial employees devoted to industrial production. Because of Japan’s single-minded effort in the direction of this new industrialization, its economic growth has been fantastic.

Beginning with a subsistence level of economy in 1950 and a Gross National Product of only $10 billion, the Japanese have reached a GNP figure of over $200 billion in only two decades. The Japanese Gross National Product reached third highest in the world in 1968, and in 1971 totaled $225 billion. In 1972, the GNP topped $250 billion and totaled more than $320 billion in 1973.

In the decade of 1960-70, the Japanese economy had an annual growth rate which averaged an exceedingly high 12.5 percent. Production increased 450 percent over 1960. At the end of 1970, the Japan Economic Research Center optimistically predicted that the GNP would total $400 billion in fiscal 1975. However, the recession which began in 1970 and continued through 1972 caused the Prime Minister’s National Overall Development Council to place that level of production in 1985. The Japanese economy, however, is extremely sensitive to political and market conditions throughout the world, and it is difficult for anyone to predict its future with much certitude. For example, the “Nixon shock” of 1971 wherein the United States Government imposed a ten percent surcharge on imports, and the “dollar shock” of the devalued, non-convertible dollar cost Japanese business over $1 billion in losses. Although Japanese business was adversely affected, it reached new highs. Nevertheless, the very size of the Japanese economy and its needs for prodigious amounts of raw materials is becoming a limiting factor in its own development. Also, the Japanese home market cannot absorb the increased productivity of industry fast enough and the Japanese are flooding their export markets. Foreign governments are showing increased consternation over their unfavorable trade balances. The entire situation has reached a critical state. Despite present problems, indications point to continuing though not fantastic economic success for Japan, and the conservative Ministry of Finance predicts that by 1988 Japan will have the highest per capita national income in the world, a figure of $11,400.

During the past twenty years, the Japanese government wisely restricted foreign investment in order to ensure local control of industry and to achieve economic autonomy. Between 1950 and 1966, for example, France was able to invest only $1 million in Japan, West Germany $4 million, England $22 million, Switzerland $34 million, and the United States $207 million. In contrast, during 1961-66 alone, the American investment in France totalled $735 million, in West Germany $1.4 billion, and in England $1.8 billion, resulting in a veritable financial invasion of Europe. Though the Japanese economy was helped by about $2.1 billion worth of aid, chiefly American, during the Occupation years of 1945-51, the Japanese economic growth has been financed largely by the Japanese themselves. From 1954 to 1963, the average yearly investment in capital by the Japanese was a phenomenal 34 percent of the Gross National Product. For the decade of the 60’s the share of private consumption in Gross National Expenditures fell from 59 to 49 percent. Such a fantastic belt-tightening investment subsequently led to a burgeoning productive plant and a rapid rise in personal incomes. During that time the per capita GNP figure rose from $460 to $1,900. In recent years, Japanese investment in plant and machinery has remained substantial. In 1967 it totalled $21 billion, in 1968 $26.9 billion, in 1969 $33.6 billion, and in 1970 $40.7 billion. But due to the recession of the past few years, industrial investment fell to $38 billion in 1971, and to approximately $35 billion in 1972. In comparison, the United States, which has twice the size of the Japanese population and over four times the GNP, invested $82 billion in 1971 and about $90 billion in 1972.

Not all of Japanese industrialization has been due to state capitalism or large funds of private venture capital, however. Sony Corporation, Japan’s well-known and world-wide electronics manufacturer was started by two penniless engineers in a Tokyo shed in the early 1950’s. Morita Akio, now the company president, and Ibuka Masaru, who manages the technical end of the business, begged and borrowed $500 to start the business. By creatively using foreign technology, the two men managed to produce good products which sold well. They financed their expansion through the public sale of stock and now are among the richest men in Japan. Morita is the largest shareholder in the company and is worth over $130 million. Another self-made capitalist is sixty-five year old Honda Soichiro. He started his business career as a garage mechanic, got into the manufacture of bicycle engines after the Pacific War, and now commands the motor company which produces one-third of the world’s motorcycles. Seventy-seven year old Matsushita Konosuke is another man who started with little capital and is now among the top wealth holders in Japan. Fifty years ago he started manufacturing a small light switch. Over the years he has built his company into the second largest Japanese electrical manufacturer, the fourth largest Japanese manufacturer of any kind, and the most profitable of all Japanese companies.

Another man, Tanaka Kauei, now fifty-four years old, left Niigata and his farming background during his teens and went to Tokyo to seek his fortune. He entered the construction business, later went into politics, and eventually became a millionaire contractor. After serving as Minister of International Trade and Industry, Tanaka was voted the Liberal-Democratic Party president, and became Premier of Japan.

Because most Japanese industries are now economically strong enough to survive international competition, capital “liberalization” — the entry of foreign capital into Japan — has been allowed on increasingly freer terms by the Japanese government. Large American and European corporations have made and are making many financial connections with Japanese companies. A subsidiary of the First National City Bank, the second largest monetary institution in the world. now supplies funds to about ninety Japanese corporations. Chrysler Corporation has made an $80 million investment in a 35 percent interest in Mitsubishi Motors Corporation which has about 10 percent of the Japanese automobile market. General Motors has a 34 percent investment in Isuzu Motors Ltd. which has 5 percent of the market. Ford Motors had sought to buy into the Toyo Kogyo Company Ltd. which has patent rights on the new Wankel rotary engine and produces the “Mazda” automobile. Many other sales, services, and manufacturing companies, large and small, have entered the Japanese economy, generally in joint ventures. Procter & Gamble, Sears, Roebuck, Safeway, Singer, and even Oscar Mayer, the world’s largest ham and sausage maker, are now in Japan. More than a dozen large companies were able to enter the Japanese market during the American Occupation and have been operating profitably ever since. In fiscal 1970, IBM had earnings of $112 million in Japan, Coca-Cola had $54 million, and NCR had $23 million.

Capital liberalization has also allowed foreigners freer access to purchase Japanese securities, and the value of government and private bonds held by foreigners is about $500 million. Foreigners also own close to $1.5 billion of Japanese corporate stocks, and ratios of foreign owned stocks in Japanese companies are increasing. Foreigners now own about 10 percent of Fuji Film, Maruzen Oil, and Nippon Electric; 15 percent of Canon Camera, Shiseido Cosmetics, Takeda Chemical, and Toshiba Electric; 34 percent of Sony; and 50 percent of Nippon Light Metal.

This picture of Eitai-Dori Avenue in Tokyo contains all the elements of modern Japan: the dense traffic in the streets, the thick smog which obscures the background, the smartly dressed “salary men” on their way to work in air-conditioned offices, and the anachronistic delivery-man on the bicycle wearing geta instead of shoes.

The new affluence of modern Japan can be seen in these commuter cars parked along the tracks of the Yamoto Station in Kanagawa. From here commuters take the Sagami Line into Yokohama and points beyond.