Labor as a Commodity and How It Transformed Japan, Application Essay Example

Historically Japan has had a very closed-door economic policy, with a trend of radically changing at will, at large cultural shock to its people. In the middle of the 19th century, however, this policy was changed into a full-blown attempt to adapt to advancing Western technologies. The Japanese are socially and culturally very traditional, a trait that was, and is frequently at odds with Western ideas and traditions. Japan’s trouble assimilating into a fully capitalist society is a direct result of the radical and profitable Meji policies employed in the mid to late 1800’s, an inconsistency in both economic and foreign policy resulting in economic growth, resulting in a profitable but volatile market that crashed as a direct result of the government’s inability to properly regulate, but was still able to sustain its economy adequately due to its previous investment in employees, dating back years.

Japan as a country only opened its doors to Western traders in the late 1600’s, and so by the reign of the Meji’s came, Western culture was still relatively new. Though the policy of the Japanese government has always been (since the late 1600’s) to study on par with the West, learn about Western culture and history, the Meji’s took this policy to new heights never before seen. Thousands of Western teachers were hired by the Japanese government to come into Japan, and educate them with Western tradition. In addition, another large contrast to previous policies, the Japanese government actually sent its citizens abroad to be educated in Western institutions (Halliday, 1975). (same pages as below.)

Though Japan had now completely educated itself about Western culture, traditions, and history, they certainly had not embraced the ideas of capitalism or democracy. The surge in Japan’s economy toward the turn of the century was a direct result of policies most would consider socialist. The government, to further stimulate economic growth, actually bought large plots of land, employed the Western factory system to develop said land, and then sold it to Japanese business owners at a very inexpensive price. This gave the Japanese economy a huge jumpstart, and is clearly a product of the government-sponsored private companies. In addition, during the Meijis’ time, the Japanese government put into effect many public works projects focused on improving roads and railroads–while creating jobs, this also helped to stimulate the budding economy due to the ease of transportation (Halliday, 1975). I switched the sources here to make it clearer. This is discussed on pages 47-51.

Japan’s economic policies can be traced to a direct source: the influence of Marxism on the East. The early 1900’s saw an uprising in Russia, resulting in the fully Communist-Fascist reign of Lenin. Russia widely circulated communist literature, and many of these socialist policies took hold; in Japan’s neighboring China a long-standing Civil War raged for control between the military state and Mao’s Communist regime. Japan was constantly at war with China during this era, part of the reason the Chinese Army could not defeat Mao; in fact, Japan, seeing a Chinese Civil War in their best interest, actually assisted the Communist Army that would eventually win China over. These encounters surely involved an exchange of ideas that Japanese soldiers brought back with them. No source used. General conclusion drawn from widely known historical knowledge. Should be in lecture notes, or discussions. It is discussed on pages 17-21 briefly from the Halliday reading though.

It is interesting to note that Japan, in the years before World War II, adopted a policy of imperialism like never before. Their war with China was not the end; Japan claimed many of the islands in the South Pacific for its own, and utilized the resources from each to further strengthen its economy and military might, with special reference to Korea. These islands proved absolutely vital for Japanese foreign policy, and subsequently economic policy, in the years to come (Kawishima, pgs.3-5).

Japan entered World War II on the side of Hitler’s fascist regime, as well as making an enemy out of the United States with its arguably surprising attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. Now fueled with Western knowledge and technology amassed in the decades before, Japan was ready to take on the Allied forces, already bent and broken by Hitler’s blitz. This attack also ensured that America would be fighting a two-front war, unable to concentrate its full might on Japan. This is very important when considering the adopted policy of imperialism just decades before. The small Pacific islands they claimed not only made Pearl Harbor possible, but also prevented an American ground invasion by serving as a buffer. After the fire-bombings of Tokyo, and the infamous incidents at Hiroshima and Nagasaki especially, the country was left completely war-torn by the time it raised its white flag. Same as the other paragraph–general history knowledge used to open the next paragraph.

When speaking about labor as a commodity, the Japanese certainly predicted trends correctly. Japan was left in a mess during the Cold War-era, after World War II. Common sense tells us that this should have slowed the economy, even brining it to a halt, resulting in a similar situation to post-WWI Germany. This, however, is not in any way what happened. What happened instead is referred to as the Japanese post-war economic miracle. Less of a miracle and more of a direct result of proper planning, the boom helped boost the post-War Japanese economy. All this paragraph does is supplement the paragraph before it. These “general knowledge” paragraphs only contain information widely known and accepted. They function to give the reflection paper a direct application. Again, no source used.

With the end of the Chinese Civil War in favor of the Soviet-backed Communist regime of Mao, Japan literally became a commodity to the United States. The Communist and Capitalist worlds, namely the US and Russia, were in the middle of a global chess match; where Russia had China, the US took interest in rebuilding Japan as their ally in the Pacific. The American government took a leadership role in rebuilding Japan’s infrastructure, and the Korean War only helped to make this more apparent. American money funded Japanese mercenaries, as well as Japanese pressure on North Korea. While most countries touched by either the USSR or the US during the Cold War were left in ruins, Japan used the opportunity to build a powerful economic infrastructure, with percentage gains never before seen over the following decades (Halliday, 1971). (pages 17-21)

The country of Japan was now placed in a situation where they were educated to the standards of the West, as well as the capitol and infrastructure for large economic gain. The Meji regime planted the seeds many years before by importing teachers, and exporting students for maximum effectiveness. Ideas not exactly capitalist were gained during WWII and the time directly after. This gave Japan an educated workforce, plenty of public works projects, and the means to pay for said projects. The US-backed government money kept people employed with government funding, while simultaneously undoing the damage of WWII. Japan was poised for the economic boom that was to follow, from the 1960’s right up to the 1980’s (Hoston, ix-xii)

It should be no surprise that Japan was reluctant to adopt fully Capitalist policies, when their past was filled with extreme government assistance. The Socialist ideals represented by Japanese economic policy in the late 19th and early 20th century greatly benefitted the country, so the change much of the Western world expected was much less drastic than expected. By the 1980’s Japan and its citizens have seen only positive results from employing socialist policies, so the perception was to not change what was working.

Japan’s economic crash in the 1980’s was a direct result of inexperience. Japan grew too quickly too fast; its newly created Ministry of International Trade and Industry did not have the knowledge, nor the capacity to handle the drastic growth Japan experienced, and failed to adequately regulate Japan’s interest rates. When Japan crashed and the economy was inflated with currency to compensate, the Japanese internal economy was strong enough to sustain the losses at the end of the 1990’s, and Japan stood tall. This is another analysis paragraph. I changed the first sentence to make the sentence less sweeping.

Overall, although Japan has not fully complied to what the United States would consider an acceptable form of capitalism, they have adopted a socialist-based free market economy that allows for economic stimulation in both the import and export businesses. The reluctance of Japan to change economic policy is based on tradition, as well as the constant examples of positive results when socialist policies are employed. Obviously this resistance is for the better, as Japan now has the third largest GDP in the world (Tosaka, n/a).

Reference

Halliday, Jon. “The Meiji State,” from A Political History of Japanese Capitalism, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

Hoston, Germaine, Chapter 3, “The Stimulus from Without: Comintern Theses on Japan, 1922-1932,” from Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Kawashima, Ken. “The Obscene Supplement of State Power: On Korean Welfare and Class Warfare,” positions: east asian culture critique

Nishida Kitaro, “Fundamental Principles of a new world order”, from Sourcebook of Modern Japanese Philosophy, edited by Dilwood et.al, Greewood Press

Tosaka, Jun, “Preface to intellectual problems in contemporary Japan: Japanism, Liberalism, Materialism”