A Grand Coalition for a Rise in the Consumption Tax is the Only Way

Yuji Genda “A Grand Coalition for a Rise in the Consumption Tax is the Only Way”

An enormous amount of support and assistance for regions and people affected by the Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake is pouring in from all over the country and the world. In addition to the donations of goods, numerous calls for monetary contributions are underway. For sure more volunteers will head to affected areas once the road condition improves. All of these are dearly needed efforts for now, and I forthrightly express my respect to those actively engaged in relief work.

But there is something those of us who luckily escaped the disaster and are able to continue to live a fairly safe life ought to ask ourselves. Is such relief work enough? Does this mean that those of us who live in Japan have fulfilled our responsibilities?

The reconstruction of our country will require a tremendous amount of money, labor and patience over a long period of time. For sure we need to avoid imposing the burden on the victims of this disaster. In order to accomplish the reconstruction work, we need to secure stable financial resources. However, considering Japan's already critical financial state even before the earthquake, we no longer have room for this.

What do we need to do? The only way to reconstruct our society is to raise the consumption tax rate decisively. This will only be possible if the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party spearhead the finding of common ground and facilitate the formation of a grand political coalition as quickly as possible.

Our political leaders ought to use the strength of this coalition to explain to the Japanese people with passion and sincerity why the consumption tax needs to be raised and to push this much needed tax reform forward. I believe that the Japanese people will understand the need for collecting the funds required for the reconstruction work ahead on a continuous and sustainable basis in the form of the consumption tax. The consumption tax may be waived for those regions affected by the earthquake. I expect our society to be united in the name of renewal.

Some may ridicule my proposal: “You are simply taking advantage of the current confusion.” Perhaps behind the scene clever politicians are steadily working toward such a coalition. But now is the time for a younger generation of politicians with a sense of a mission to voice their views in a more transparent fashion and unite themselves across different political parties and persuasions. They should use the momentum they may be able to create to lead us forcefully so that we may overcome the current crisis.

The raising of the consumption tax is a difficult task politicians alone have not been able to accomplish due to their preoccupations with elections, approval rates, etc. As a result, Japan is near bankruptcy. If this tax reform is achieved through a grand political coalition triggered by the earthquake, it would be a monumental achievement in which we confronted this severe experience head-on and overcame the crisis on our own.

In my view, taking decisive action in order to overcome difficulties is the only way to repay the dead. Now is the time to chart a route toward financial reconstruction. If we miss this opportunity, reconstruction will be impossible.

This is the moment of decision. Politicians may say that now is not the time to think about these things. We are preoccupied with the disaster. But before long we will have to choose to create one coalition government or another. Timing is everything. We are running out of time. A coalition government is the only hope for Japan.

Naoki Sakai “On Nationalism”

Disaster rarely affects people's lives evenly, as even the slightest differences in individual circumstances and environments may ultimately determine whose lives are saved, whose are destroyed, and whose are lost. It is also common for disaster survivors and those who are able to live their lives in safe places to develop a sense of guilt over the fact that they have survived or have managed to escape from disaster. Perhaps this reflects a rather paradoxical fact of human life: that only happenstance separates survivors from victims. Some people happen to survive while others happen to die, and often no reason can ultimately be found as to why one person died while another is left alive.

We all know that war and disaster force us to confront the contingency of life and death, and that such traumas can spark what is known as “survivor's guilt.” In Japan, this paradox was confronted en-masse during and after the Asia-Pacific War. Thus, it is understandable that the Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake has awakened memories of the past total war in a number of Japanese people today. It is also perfectly natural that some wish to extend the boundaries of “we” to include the national community and to express “survivor's guilt” in terms of the nation-state as a whole. I have no intention of criticizing this idea as unnatural. In any case, this disaster has once again confirmed that we humans have a rich capacity to create community.

People have become particularly creative in their efforts to offer assistance not only to people from their hometowns, but also to total strangers. Many are trying to help others across social classes, geographical regions and national boundaries. This is why we never lost hope in the social conscience of the masses despite all the problems that volunteerism entails and the extremely tragic nature of this disaster. Unlike those in poverty-stricken areas of Africa and Asia, one does not get an impression that victims of the recent earthquake have been ignored or left unattended. One of the possible reasons for this is that Japan is a member of the so-called First World: it is a quintessential information society entwined in myriad transnational networks. Therefore, one can easily expect some Japanese intellectuals to use this disaster as a chance to turn adversity into opportunity, to seek a national political transformation that would be unimaginable under the political regime that existed prior to the disaster.

Nevertheless, I have this lingering sense of being left unpersuaded by Yuji Genda's proposal. It is as if it keeps getting stuck in my throat and I am not able to swallow it. As I begin to discuss this feeling, two stories come to mind―one invoked by a momentary scene from a film, and the other about a Japanese cabinet member's recent resignation. The first episode can be found in the opening scene of Clint Eastwood's “Letters from Iwo Jima.” As the scene begins, the screen shows what looks like a dark night sky. As the camera pans out, however, it becomes clear that the blackness is in fact the “sands of Iwo Jima.” After panning to waves breaking on the shore, the camera moves to a panorama of the Pacific Ocean.

The scene I wish to describe comes right after this and lasts merely a second, a scene that depicts a cenotaph, facing its back to the Pacific Ocean, that commemorates the soldiers who fought in the battle (硫黄島戦没者顕彰碑). We can say that the entire theme of “Letters from Iwo Jima” is captured in this momentary image of the cenotaph. As the monument rests on the US-controlled island, the engraved script - in kanji, not Romanized script - seems to float in the dark. Then, right below the nine kanji, there are four more characters: “Kishi shin suke sho” (岸信介書) [written by a former member of the National Diet, Shinsuke Kishi]. This cenotaph was made not only to commemorate the fallen, but also to preserve the writings of a survivor.

When I saw those four letters, I felt a reflex. I must say that it felt like a vomit reflex. Shinsuke Kishi was an extremely famous bureaucrat-politician. He was the father-in-law of Shintaro Abe, the Secretary General of the national LDP and the national minister of foreign affairs, and was the grandfather of Shinzo Abe, Japan's Prime Minister between 2006 and 2007. He was a reformational bureaucrat who worked toward the establishment of Manchukuo before WWII, was the Minister of Commerce under the Tojo administration, and was one of the national leaders who planned and directed the Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Of course, he was convicted as a Class-A War criminal following Japan's defeat, and spent three years in Sugamo Prison. Once US foreign policy changed 180 degrees in response to the rise of communist powers, he was freed from prison.

Next, he reinvented himself as a player in anti-communist propaganda campaigns and a supporter of the anti-communism policies of the US government. These efforts culminated in his role as a founder of the 1955 regime, and he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and later the 56th and 57th Prime Minister of Japan. It is not hard to imagine that Kishi, who was well-versed in the vision of the Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, served as a crucial resource for American governance in East Asia. It was also a well-known fact– even though it was not reported much in the Japanese press – that Kishi and his brother Eisaku Sato were CIA operatives. Once the leader of the anti-US and anti-UK [campaign], Kishi became famous as a facilitator of American imperialism. As a consequence, several historians point out that protests of the ratification of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1969 were partially due to the Japanese public's hatred of Kishi.

However, Kishi was one of the few sly old fox politicians who forged strong connections with American politicians during the post-WWII period. He was an exception-to-the-rule who could provide arrangements for soldiers’ families, and did not hesitate to use this privilege [for his own benefit]. Thus, he was able to leave his name on the cenotaph as a survivor. Yet it is not an exaggeration to say that the Japanese soldiers in Iwo Jima practically died as [sacrifices] for the Tojo administration's Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere: they were the victims of Kishi and others’ mismanagement. Despite the fact that he ordered the soldiers to “die” in Iwo Jima, Kishi is now commemorating the fallen as if he was the one to inherit their wishes. In other words, the ill-intentioned person behind the soldiers' death is now commemorating the fallen. By doing so, Kishi stole the position to inherit the wishes of the fallen, and I must say that, in doing so, Kishi successfully stole the names of the fallen soldiers.

I'm bringing up Shinsuke Kishi's wartime responsibility not solely to criticize the fact that survivors can often take advantage of the loss of others. What Kishi's expedient action shows us, I think, is something about the possible courses of action that survivors could take in response to the fallen, “to inherit their will” or “to commemorate their death.” At end of day, I do not know whether the soldiers are happy or angry with the fact that Kishi made the cenotaph. Of course, they are not able to speak for themselves (死人に口無し), so [we] cannot criticize the survivors on behalf of the fallen. What we have to reflect on instead is actions which might use the plight of the deceased as tools to support or oppose preexisting interests. Understandings of the relationship between the living and the dead are typically derived from the religious sphere. But even secular societies uphold an ongoing relationship with the dead that is inherited through nationalistic rhetoric. It is a commonly thought that the idea of a national community has been founded upon a mythical continuity of the dead. Also, it is often discussed how such secularized religiosity has historically led to so many tragedies.

What concerns me with regard to Professor Genda's suggestion is his lack of attention to the pseudo-religious nature of nationalism, and how he naturally accepts the mythical nature of a national community. I cannot say that the cenotaph in Iwo Jima commemorates only Japanese soldiers, as its purpose is to commemorate all of those who lost their lives in Iwo Jima, Japanese and American soldiers alike. However, when we query the details of the “fallen Japanese soldiers,” we immediately find this to be a difficult case. When Professor Genda asked us “Does this mean that those of us who live in Japan have fulfilled our responsibilities?” I do not think that he paid due consideration to the pseudo-religious nature of nationalism.

I must say that this statement does not do justice to the limits of nationalism that the cenotaph in Iwo Jima contains. Among the Japanese soldiers who lost their lives in Iwo Jima, there are hundreds from the Korean peninsula and other former Japanese colonies. Yet even though they were treated as second-class citizens, they were still recognized as Japanese citizens. The boundary of Japanese citizenship not static, but is always in a process of historical flux. After 1945, many of the families of the soldiers, including those of the fallen commemorated in Yasukuni, are no longer Japanese citizens. And historically, a national community doesn't last forever. Such a mentality that approaches the national community as an eternal or immortal fixture is the foundation of the pseudo-religious nature of nationalism.

Now I must tell you the other story, about the recent resignation of Seiji Maehara, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Maehara was forced to resign because it was revealed that he received political donations from a “gaikokujin” (foreigner) annually of less than 50,000 Japanese yen. According to the news reports, the donation was from one of his long-term friends who managed a Yakiniku restaurant (a Korean BBQ restaurant). It is formally difficult to defend him, because we must interpret laws exactly as they are written, and his friend, according to the letter of the law, was indeed classified as a "gaikokujin." However, I see little problem with him receiving donations from someone who has lived in his voting district for long time, and I also don't find much problem with him giving a favor to the friend from his hometown. I don't think those are shameful acts for politicians. Still, I found it strange that I did not hear any commentary whatsoever from the media about whether applying the law literally would constitute racial discrimination, or about whether or not such a discriminatory law should be revised.

This response reminds me of the lack of public criticism in response to the comments made by the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishirara, that “The Third Nationals” was racial discrimination. I guess it is our own philosophical decay to stay silent in the face of such daily discrimination. Professor Genda started his question, “Have we, those who live in Japan, fulfilled our responsibility?” However, wouldn't the manager of the Yakiniku restaurant be included among those “living in Japan?” What is the reason for connecting the concepts of “responding to the will of the victims” and the “citizen's” obligation? Professor Genda's suggestion is rooted in the standard nationalistic rhetoric of “patriotic shishi” (憂国の志士), so wouldn't such self-demarcation immediately make nationalism the justification of the tradition? Doesn't the logic behind forming a ground coalition to increase the consumption tax by using methods rooted in the pseudo-religious nature of nationalism worsen the existing racial discriminations in dangerous ways?

All of the residents who live under the administration of the Japanese nation-state, regardless of their citizenship, typically have to pay taxes, particularly the consumption tax. Even though Maehara's friend was not legally a part of this nation-state, he will still have to pay [the tax]. I agree that we have to unite to help the victims of the earthquake. However, it does not have to be through an appeal to a national community. Without the pseudo-religious nationalism, we can still form a community. Right now, isn't the intellectuals’ obligation to find prospective ways to unite those with differences?

Hirokazu Miyazaki “The Hopefulness of a Rested Mind”

I want to respond not to the substance of Professor Genda's proposal since I am not an economist but to his call for immediate action. It is widely reported that Japanese people responded to the disasters in a calm and orderly manner. Some celebrated this as a manifestation of the well-known Japanese cultural commitment to perseverance and the social sharing of pain and burden. As far as I know, however, despite their surface calmness, many of my colleagues and friends are deeply suffering and mourning in the ongoing uncertain and unsettling situation. I believe this is true for many of us who are not currently in Japan.

Where is hope now? There is a widely shared urge to take action in Japan and elsewhere. This is definitely a sign of hope, an indication of solidarity in which people are willing to share the pain. But my research on hope points to a different kind of hope that I feel that we all need at this moment. That is the hopefulness of a rested mind. It is hard not to watch the news and search incessantly for current numbers (the death toll, radiation levels of all kinds, etc.). Indeed, information and knowledge are important tools for navigating uncertainty, and they are slowly becoming available.

In my view, the Japanese government is doing a fairly good job of providing the Japanese public with relevant information and knowledge and of assuring the public of the government's commitment to their safety. For sure, there is lingering doubt on the part of the public about whether the government is fully forthcoming in terms of critical information about radiation and food safety, but the situation is extremely fluid. Moreover, radioactivity is a contentious and little known territory to begin with. In other words, no matter what, certain knowledge is not something we can expect to achieve at the moment.

Anthropological and sociological research on the nature of hope I have led at Cornell University has shown something profoundly controversial in the midst of our collective urge and will to take action. Research shows again and again that hope cannot be reduced to either action or non-action. It is a particular kind of modality that is neither active nor passive. It often entails a temporary total submission or abeyance of yourself, even your capacity to act in and know the world, to other forces. That is, in confronting uncertainty, hope demands that we at least temporarily give up our constant quest for information, knowledge and certainty. It then gives us a moment of rest that our mind desperately needs for further thought and action. We all need a moment of rest particularly in the midst of this catastrophe so that we may mourn our losses together, pray for others who are suffering and have a rested perspective on the crisis of humanity we now confront together.

Shigeki Uno

Much like others who share my specialization in political philosophy, I believe that I need more time before engaging in discussions on the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant crisis. What I can say right now, however, is that this crisis is a political one, and that we find ourselves called to restore not only people's lives, but also politics itself. I will discuss three points in the following comment. First of all, I would like to call attention to criticism of the Japanese government's response to the disaster. It has been said that the government was slow and insufficient in providing information to the public as the events unfolded. And following the nuclear power plant explosion, countries and international organizations around the world began to question the government's handling of information disclosure. Thus, one could say that the credibility of the Japanese government has been damaged in the course of this disaster.

More critically, we can observe a tendency toward paternalism in the government's behavior. The most likely reason the government repeatedly insisted on the safety [of the nuclear power plant] is because it wanted to avoid fueling the anxiety and panic of the public. And it is no doubt that the reason behind its choice to extend the evacuation order was rooted in a deep concern about the fear and confusion that could rise during the evacuation process. In this case, the United States federal government would have likely taken a different approach to this issue. In American political culture, the individual has the right to decide how, when, and whether to evacuate a dangerous area. I believe that, [in a political context like that of America], the role of the government is to provide necessary information for all individuals [so they can make their own informed decisions].

When it issued the evacuation order, the Japanese government did not provide a clear explanation of their understanding of the incident, nor did it suggest what was considered to be the “worst case scenario” that could emerge from the disaster. I believe that the government likely thought that it would be sufficient to disclose only the results of their deliberations and decision-making endeavors because they felt assured that they were indeed making responsible decisions. We also can't deny that the public has a tendency to depend on the government's decisions, as they might operate under the assumption that they should follow the officials’ judgments. Yet, sooner or later, individuals will find a desire to make their own decisions, and will demand that their government provide the information necessary to make their own choices. We must pay close attention to whether or not this traditional paternalistic political culture will change.

Secondly, [I would like to point out] the unequal burdens imposed by the earthquake. As Japan is seen by many as a nation marked by social inequalities, it is critical to question how this disaster will effect existing disparities. Nevertheless, as soon as news of the earthquake circulated, rescue and aid initiatives were organized all over Japan, orchestrating ground logistics and volunteer activities. The deeper sense of national unity – the notion of “One Japan” that emerged – might be the only positive outcome of this unfortunate disaster. Still, we need to perceive this issue in a long-term trajectory. How will we raise the funds to recover the damaged regions? This poses the question of how we – as an entire nation – share the enormous burden of aiding the victims. If we make a mistake in [dealing with this issue], we will reinforce or exacerbate the existing unequal burden of inequality in Japanese society. Professor Genda's suggestion was a short response to this very problem.

This question is difficult because it contains two interconnected issues. It is no doubt that our most immediate imperative is to restore the victims’ normal daily routines as soon as possible, and that the need to form organizations and secure financial resources for restoration is urgent. But this disaster should also lead us to reevaluate the legal and tax system to achieve a greater degree of fairness and equality in Japanese society. These two issues need to be discussed together. Moreover, we must not forget that there is a broader issue that transcends these two issues: without understanding the interconnection of such multifaceted problems, it is likely to be impossible to substantively change Japanese society. The damage of this disaster is devastating, and the victims’ burden is enormous. In the short term, such unequal burdens will probably be exacerbated. We should initially start figuring out how to share their burden, and should later discuss how to regain the fundamental fairness and equality in the Japanese society. This will be a long process. However, without going through this process carefully, we won't have a real sense of equality in Japan.

And finally, recovery from this disaster is connected deeply to the future of Japanese society. Not only can we expect more discussion of energy issues, but we must also undertake a proper discussion of the future direction of our nuclear energy policy. I believe that this nuclear power plant crisis has made many Japanese citizens aware of how our society is built upon a very dangerous foundation. How will we come to deal with the expected long-term energy shortage? This is closely related to the challenge of reimagining our way of living: this disaster is inseparable from political questions about how we must steer the future of Japanese society. This nuclear power plant issue is a symbol of Japan's “political absence.” If we had ever properly discussed the risk of nuclear energy and then, after reasonable deliberations, formally determined it necessary in terms of a comprehensive energy policy, I could have accepted any outcome. However, in reality, it seems most people face this critical problem without realizing that they voluntarily chose nuclear energy.

The world has praised the victims’ calm and orderly reaction to this disaster. However, it is a serious problem if we interpret their response as a sign that they are merely giving up or accepting the disaster as their fate. If we consider both the earthquake and the government's subsequent response as accidents, what we see is far from a restoration of politics. It is a kind of clouded thinking, one that does not mesh with a politics in which people are supposed to change society through voluntary means. This disaster, as a result, reconfirmed the deeply rooted paternalistic tradition in Japanese political culture. There is nothing more unfortunate than surrendering critical thinking to such political paternalism. If we can lighten the burden of the victims by sharing it with the rest of society, and if we can reexamine and develop a fairer and more equal Japanese society, then we will see a comprehensive “recovery” from this disaster.

Cynthia Bowman

I'd like to comment on Professor Uno's recent contribution, with much of which I agree. I disagree, however, with his assumption that a comparable accident would have been treated differently in the United States. Professor Uno posits that a political culture of transparency, individualism, and access to information would have meant that citizens in the United States would demand and receive prompt and accurate information from the government, on the basis of which they could decide whether it was necessary to evacuate or not. The conduct of the U.S. government during the 2010 BP oil spill suggests otherwise. It was very difficult for anyone, even relatively educated persons who keep up with the news on a daily basis, to figure out exactly how bad the disaster in the gulf was, and the real story did not come out for months.

The explosion that caused the British Petroleum oil spill (to date the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history) occurred on April 20, 2010, and the well was not capped until July 15, 2010, after immense damage had been done to the economy and environment of the coastal regions. During the first few days after the explosion, both BP and the federal government estimated the amount of oil spilling at 1,000 barrels per day. By the end of April, however, independent scientists who had viewed satellite photos of the area told the press that the leak had to be at least 5,000 barrels per day, and the government switched to this estimate on April 28, over the public objections of BP. By mid-May, independent experts who had examined BP video at the request of the media suggested that the real figure was 10 times higher. By June 11, the government raised its own estimate to 20,000-40,000 barrels per day. The final official estimate, at the time the well was capped in July, was that the initial leakage had been 62,000 barrels per day, which had decreased to 53,000 barrels per day by the time it was stopped.

Internal BP documents showed their worst-case scenario to have been 150,000 barrels per day. But in December 2010, the company's lawyers were again contesting the government estimates of volume, arguing that it was as much as 50% less, because civil and criminal fines for restoration efforts would be levied on the corporation in direct proportion to the amount of the spill. In short, the U.S. public was faced with wildly differing estimates from day to day during the crisis; and if it were not for some persistent media sources (especially National Public Radio, which the Republican Party has been targeting for defunding), realistic estimates would not have been forthcoming. In the meantime, 320 miles of shoreline were affected; vast numbers of marine animals and birds were killed; and commercial fishing important to the lifeblood of people in the region was closed down.

After all the efforts to recapture the oil, it is estimated that 75% still remains in the gulf and may be toxic for decades, exacerbated by the effects of the chemicals used as dispersants. While I do not suggest that this was equivalent to the nuclear disaster experienced by Japan in 2011, the performance of the corporation responsible for the accident and of the government appear rather similar to that in Japan. So the political problem Professor Uno describes may be one that we share in important ways. My own diagnosis is that this problem results, in the United States at least, from corporate cooptation and control of the government and (for the most part) of the media, rather than from a tradition of paternalism or presumed deference to authority. I wonder if this is not so in Japan as well.

Shigeki Uno

I deeply appreciate Professor Bowman's comment. I think that it is very important to compare the 2010 BP oil spill and the present nuclear power plant incident in Japan. Further, it will be important to evaluate how corporations approached and pressured the media with regard to coverage of the nuclear disaster. There are a number of people who are presently dissatisfied with the ongoing media coverage. I have an impression that there is an amazingly small amount of objective media reporting on this incident, as they mostly broadcast the comments of some “experts” or some personal episodes instead of the official press releases of governments or TEPCO. I think social scientists should examine the significant differences in the coverage between the Japanese and the Western media on this nuclear power plant incident.

Nevertheless, many candidates who ran for positions in the recent nationwide local elections did not engage in the political discussion on the nuclear power plant issues, while they repeatedly stated that they would try raising the safety of nuclear power plants. While many people have questions about the safety of nuclear power plants, there is some continuing mysterious political silence following this question. I now wonder if this silence is the outcome of political control of public opinion, the response of a public resigning itself to live with nuclear power plants, or the result of some nation-wide coma.

Tom Ginsburg

I want to intervene in the Uno-Bowman exchange. Comparing the BP oil spill disaster in the United States with the nuclear disaster in Japan, I tend to agree with Uno that the two polities respond differently. While Bowman is correct that information was not very clear in the US case, the key point is that the government and business had a more adversarial relationship. President Obama spoke early and often about keeping the government “boot on the throat of BP,” surely a hostile image. The Japanese government appeared much more closely tied to TEPCO. The government seemed to think its role was one of simply managing public fears. It also seemed to lack any independent fact-gathering capacity in the early days of the nuclear disaster. Surely there are problems associated with our pattern of more adversarial business-government relations, and surely in many instances government is captured by industry in the US. But in Japan, the two are nearly identical.

Annelise Riles

An Emerging Debate

It is exciting and even moving to see this rich conversation developing on Meridian 180. Thank you so much to all the contributors so far for taking this dialogue so seriously. On the surface, this conversation seems focused on recent events in Japan. But I think the comments raise many questions that transcend this specific set of events. I see a number of issues emerging from the comments so far that might benefit from more intensive exchange and from comparative analysis. I particularly want to encourage members outside of Japan to comment on these questions from the point of view of other events or political and legal contexts that seem most important to you.

Major Themes (in roughly the order in which they appeared)

1. National Unity versus Nationalism

Professor Sakai queries whether the national unity and concern for victims voiced by Professor Genda does not build on the ugly underpinnings of nationalism. Certainly, as an American married to a foreign citizen who lived through 9/11, I remember being as frightened of the anti-foreigner rhetoric of my fellow-citizens and government representatives as I was of Al Qaeda at that dark moment in our own history. Yesterday as I walked in my neighborhood in Aoyama, Tokyo I noticed a new shop catering to trendy young people selling every kind of clothing and bag with the words “Kamikaze” emblazoned on them. I don't remember any such thing before. What a sad discursive frame for the sacrifices that each person in Japan is now making. I did not see a direct response to Sakai's critique from Professor Genda so I want to invite him to respond if he wishes. But more broadly, what do others think about the relationship between national unity and nationalism? Do the two always coexist? How do we know the difference? What more positive models of national unity might we support? What examples can you share?

2. Focusing on policy solutions versus taking a break

Miyazaki and Kuo argue in different ways that the urge for finding policy solutions can produce unintended consequences. More generally, their comments focus on the role of the intellectual in moments of crisis. Their counterintuitive suggestion is that rather than rush to find answers our job is to slow things down. What do others think of this?

3. Government paternalism, individualism, and public/private collusion

The fascinating debate between Professors Uno, Bowman and Ginsburg concerns how to diagnose the political crisis behind this and other environmental crises. Uno argues that the Japanese government has acted paternalistically in failing to release information so that citizens can make their own choices, while the Japanese people in turn are in a “nation-wide coma.” As a foreigner in Japan now, I do share Uno's inchoate sense of some sort of odd collective “coma”—on the one hand, ask any person and you get a quite robust critique of the government and TEPCO both, along with quite detailed knowledge of the dangers from radiation they are now facing every day. Yet the very same people for the most part do not even think of speaking out publicly, nor do they do as much as one might expect to avoid contact with radioactive rainwater or foods. They both know and choose not to know. What kind of political stance is this?

It reminds me a bit of something Professor Kasuga has tried to describe in his writings long before this crisis concerning so-called “freeters,” so I wonder if he wants to comment here. Bowman points out that in making this argument, Uno relies on a rosy picture of politics in the United States. Uno's vision of pure political transparency enabling individual action in the US may be rhetorically effective in Japan but bears little relationship to the reality of American political life. I love this exchange because it gets to the heart of what we can achieve on Meridian 180. I did not see a direct response to this point from Uno, so I wonder if he wishes to comment. I also wonder if others want to intervene, either on the substance of the debate over which is better—individualism or paternalism—or how they come together in other political contexts, or on the more general point this exchange raises about how examples from other countries, fictional though they may be, can be deployed in domestic politics, and what the intended or unintended consequences may be.

Although Ginsburg structures his intervention in this debate as siding with Uno against Bowman, I think he actually raises a separate and equally fascinating point. His point is that rather than focus on individualism versus paternalism—on state/citizen relations—to understand the root causes of this disaster, we should be focusing on government/industry collusion. He argues that government/industry relations are not so collusive in the US. I wonder what Bowman or others think of this. But more generally, what do others think of the choice between focusing on individual /state relationships versus industry or market/state relationships as a way of thinking about crises—financial, environmental, political, etc.?

4. Legal interpretation

The exchange between Kamiyama and Yamada (the financial expert and lawyer, respectively) about how to interpret a key clause in a Japanese law absolving nuclear power plant owners of liability in certain extreme situations raises much broader issues about the nature of legal interpretation, and I wonder if the many eminent legal theorists in our midst would like to weigh in on this issue. Essentially, Kamiyama looks to the letter of the law, while Yamada argues that the letter of the law tells you little: the meaning of the law will be determined by the political and economic effects of one interpretation versus another. Yamada makes what in the US we would call a classic legal realist argument here. My question for Yamada would be, what do you make of the fact that many of the influential parties in this story are not lawyers, and that many of them probably think about the law as does Kamiyama, in much more literal terms? At what point does their non-professional reading of law become legal reality by the force of the fact that they believe this interpretation to be correct and act accordingly—especially in Japan where even prominent company managers have less minute-to –minute contact with the kind of sophisticated legal expertise people such as Yamada offer? I am simply raising a query about the legal realist move from the point of view of a sociological understanding of legal thought in the market.

And one unanswered question: Doug Kysar raised the point that how any stimulus should be used is as important as how it should be funded. He offers the example of wasted stimulus funds in the United States. Since Kysar intended this as a cautionary comment on Genda's proposal, I wonder what Genda thinks of it. More generally, what experience do those in other countries have with this problem of controlling up front how large stimulus funds are distributed? I realize I have left out many important points but this post is already much too long. The main point is that I hope that our members around the world who perhaps feel less connected to the Japanese case will freely interject on these or any other points of debate. In emphasizing the points of potential disagreement, also, I am only acting on my hope that Meridian 180 can become the kind of friendly space in which we can disagree openly knowing we are among friends. We will close this conversation on May 31.

Shigeki Uno

Professor Riles has pointed out what I didn't clearly respond to in my previous comment. Since I can no longer “escape,” I'd like to explain my idea. As the participants of this forum know, the Japanese – both intellectuals and the general public – have used such rhetoric as “in America” or “in Europe” since the time of the Meiji restoration. The Japanese have idealized the West (presenting an image which sometimes departs significantly from reality) to criticize actualities in Japan. Recently, this rhetoric has been regarded as an exaggeration, and is not as effective as it used to be. However, it is not fully gone. I found that I had been in line with this “tradition” when I read Professor Bowman's comment.

However, my research focus is on Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville's purpose of writing “De la démocratie en Amerique” (Democracy in America) was to emphasize the healthy segments of American democracy (to the audience in France) while he pointed out the many problems in the system. I'm not trying to identify myself with Tocqueville, but I think that American democracy does suggest various points to reflect on with reference to Japanese society even as it contains many problems. “In a state of emergency, it's the individual who has the responsibility to make decisions, but not the government. The role of the government is to provide necessary information for all individuals so they can make their own decisions.” I think that many individuals in America share this idea, but not so in Japan. As it is, I find paternalism in Japanese political culture, and I believe that that's not a good thing for Japanese democracy.