Abstract
In the wake of the Second World War , Japanese society developed a favorable attitude toward the United States as well as the camp of the “Free World ”. This paper attempts to investigate the origins of the mass public’s relevant attitudes on the basis of survey data collected in Japan around 1960. Those with higher class positions and government workers tended to accept the US more than did labor . It is argued that for the mainstream middle class, capitalism became a viable option shortly after the war. In addition to the examination of class interest, we test three models: a political model , by which we stress that attitudes are influenced by the value positions of the political parties and organizations they affiliate with; a Cold War mentality model, which argues that a stronger perception of continuous confrontation between capitalism and the Soviet Bloc likely leads to preferring closer association with the US, capitalism, and the Free World ; and an emperor effect model, which measures correlations between support for the emperor and pro-American attitudes . The three models and hypotheses derived from them are generally supported through careful analyses of the survey results. This study offers a unique contribution to recapture the origins of a pro-American attitude of the Japanese public during the peak of the Cold War .
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Notes
- 1.
In a current official statement of the Party, the JCP (2015) states “it is working to realize changes in Japanese politics in the immediate future, through democratic change within the framework of capitalism”, by way of “Breaking away from the Japan-U.S. military alliance (Japan-U.S. Security Treaty), to fully restore our national sovereignty, and aiming to establish a non-aligned and neutral path”; “It opposed the U.S. war of aggression against Vietnam, as well as the former Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan”; and “To end its exclusive support for U.S. policy and develop a comprehensive strategy for exploring peaceful relations with other Asian countries.”
- 2.
The operationalization of party support requires additional explanation. The original question is “During the past few years, have you generally supported the same party in general elections, or different parties? Which party? Generally how many times for which parties?” We group “always conservative” and “usually conservative” into “conservative”; and “always left wing” and “usually left wing” into “left wing”. “Other positions” include those answering “half and half”, “forget”, “other”, and those who never voted.
- 3.
The original question is “Are you or is any member of your family a member of a veterans group? Do you favor or oppose political activity by veterans’ organizations?” This question is somewhat awkward, as it solicited two different pieces of information simultaneously. We combined “member, favor” and “nonmember, favor” into a favorable position; and combined “member, oppose” and “nonmember, oppose” into an unfavorable position. There are two additional responses, which are “member, other” and “nonmember, other”, which we placed together as “others”. In statistical modeling, we treated the first group as a dummy variable, in comparison to the last two groups.
- 4.
For example, see an official statement on the history of opposition by the JCP to restoration of the veterans’ pension system. “Senpan ni Onkyū: Nihon Kyōsantō no Taido wa?” [Pensions for War Criminals: What Were the Attitudes of the JCP?], Shimbun Akahata (September 14, 2006), available at: http://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik4/2006-09-14/20060914faq12_01_0.html (accessed: September 4, 2015).
- 5.
A small number of respondents failed to provide information for estimation. As the observations on the table fall short only about 0.3 %, this should not affect reliability of estimation.
- 6.
We regrouped the occupational positions into six major categories: (1) the primary sector, (2) commerce, (3) service, (4) managerial and white collar, (5) manual worker, and (6) those not in the labor market (employed, students, and others). The fourth and fifth categories include only those hired by other individual or firms. The first three mix the self-employers and those working in family business.
- 7.
The public officer group includes heads of villages, towns, or cities, treasurers of these government organizations, members of assemblies at various levels, committees for supervision of elections, mediator committees for courts, etc. These titles and other similar ones were listed in the questionnaire for respondents to identify their jobs. This category aimed to capture those with higher public office, as there is another category for “other public offices” which included directors of cooperatives, heads of towns or neighborhood associations, hamlet associations, PTA, fire brigades, etc., which represent lower level public offices.
- 8.
The original question was: “Do you think the opposition between the two sides [the free world centering on the United States and the communist world centering on the Soviet Union] will be stronger than ever before?” Three responses were offered to choose from: “will become more bitter (stronger)”, “will be less bitter”, and “present situation will continue”. I rearranged this variable into a binary one, comparing the first response to a combination of the second and third responses.
- 9.
The original question is: “putting aside legal problems, what sort of feeling do you have about the emperor and the imperial family?” Five responses were designated: (1) having feeling of respect and reverence, (2) have a feeling of friendliness, (3) do not feel particularly any friendliness, but not particularly unfriendly (hostile) either, (4) have feelings of hostility, and (5) feel hatred. I assigned the first response a score of 5, the second 4, and so on, which means a higher score representing more respect for the emperor. Those who did not answer this question (3.8 %) were assigned a medium score (3).
- 10.
“Well then, there is a view which says that the emperor should not, as now, have real power over the government, but that it should be made clear that he represents Japan vis-à-vis foreign countries. Do you agree with this view or do you disagree?” There were three original response categories: (1) agree, (2) disagree, oppose, and (3) cannot say simply or undecided. I arranged them into three dummies, and in the regression Table 8.1 showed only the coefficient of the first dummy, using the disagree group as a reference.
- 11.
The original question was: “do you think that the constitution should be changed so that the emperor could have to some extent some real power. Or do you think that it should not be changed.” The response “should be changed” is converted into a dummy coded variable, in reference to “shouldn’t be changed” 26.3 % of respondents did not answer this question. They are treated as another dummy group, but their coefficient is not shown in the table, as it is less relevant.
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Appendices
Appendix: Data Sources and the Sampling Methods
1.1 Data Sources
This study uses two original data sets that can be accessed from their distributor, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research based in the University of Michigan:
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1.
Mendel, Douglas (1957). Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy in Osaka and Izumo, Japan, 1957. ICPSR07071-v2. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07071.v2.
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2.
Office of the Prime Minister (1963). Public Opinion Concerning the Japanese Constitution , 1963. ICPSR07075-v3. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07075.v3.
Sampling Methods
Mendel (1961: 253–254) drew respondents from two cities: Osaka (n = 255) and Izumo (n = 257). Stratified random sampling techniques were applied for the Osaka subsample. Mendel first chose a number of wards on the basis of the percentage of conservative party vote and industrial-commercial concentration. Then within each ward, blocks were chosen at random. Respondents were selected at random from voter registration books for those chosen blocks. In Izumo, Mendel used the technique of simple (that is, unstratified) random sampling, which gave all registered voters an equal chance of being selected.
For the data of the Public Opinion Concerning the Japanese Constitution, which were collected in 1963, the size of the sample was 16,383 adults aged 20 years old or over. Stratified random sampling was applied. First, all the national administrative units were grouped into strata consisting of the six largest cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Kyoto, and Kobe) and 11 regions (Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Hokuriku, Tosan, Tokai, Kinki, Sanyin, Sanyo, Shikoku, and Kyushu). The number of administrative units from each stratum was determined according to the size of the population aged 20 or over in each stratum. After the administrative units were randomly sampled in each stratum, survey respondents were randomly sampled using the official residence registration records.
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Tsai, MC., Nakajima, S. (2016). Imagining America: The Origins of Japanese Public Opinion Toward the United States in the Cold War. In: Sugita, Y. (eds) Social Commentary on State and Society in Modern Japan. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2395-8_8
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