1960-Present: Fracture and Response

Abstract

The preceding chapter considered the period of occupation of Japan by US forces and the conservative backlash that followed it, arguing that through what amounted to a ‘passive revolution’ a new historic bloc was forged from the broken structure of the old, based not upon militarism but on economism and ‘pacifism’.¹ This set the scene for the advent of what has become known as the ‘era of high speed economic growth’. Since the concern in this book is with the formation of this historic bloc and its fracturing (if not destruction) from the 1970s onwards, it is not necessary here to explore the period of high speed growth in any detail. It is the response to the appearance of these fractures by the existing Japanese hegemonic class and the attendant impacts upon Japanese and other East Asian societies (and, subsequently, on the world order), that forms the central focus of this study. As we shall see in the final part of the book, these impacts are clearly manifest, within and beyond Japan, in each of the four structures of power — production, finance, security and knowledge — previously identified as key areas of human activity. Before proceeding to that analysis, it is the task of this chapter to briefly outline the changing circumstances of the existing Japanese historic bloc as it began to feel the strain of domestic and international pressures for change, and to detail the efforts of the Japanese hegemonic class to hold the bloc together.