Stone, Paper and Scissors

Abstract

‘Japan Incorporated’ as a label conveys correctly the united front the Japanese clan achieves in dealing with foreigners, but gives a facile impression of a binding organisation with absolute control centralised in the hands of a single chairman and board of directors, each with his responsibilities clearly defined. There is no such rigid, formalised ‘Japan Incorporated’, with centralised, autocratic authority. In practice there are three competing centres of power: bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen. The absence of unified dictatorship has prompted use of ‘competitive-communism’ as an alternative label while ‘clan’ depicts the binding frame of Japan’s self-centred racial exclusivity more aptly than ‘Japan Incorporated’.