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(★)(A book that examines Japanese society and politics through the study of conflict will strike some as an unusual, and even perverse, approach to adopt, given most previous English-language studies of Japan. Social science research on Japan for most of the postwar period has emphasized just the reverse, visualizing a hierarchical society with strong collective unity. To the outside world contemporary Japan was characterized as lacking both major schisms and as resolving its lesser conflicts with relative ease, thanks to a consensual decision-making process. In the prevailing paradigm Japanese institutions are effective and satisfying to their loyal and cooperative participants. This general image of Japan has been accompanied by microlevel studies of individuals and small groups that portray the Japanese as ´polite´ people seeking the social harmony idealized in traditional Japanese culture. Foreign social scientists have regularly portrayed modern Japan as alive with Confucian values. Rural villages as well as modern modern organizations have been described as valuing identity with the collective, hierarchically ordered interpersonal relations and decision-making by consensus.／ That the qualities stressed in this model exist to a significant degree in Japan is beyond dispute ; but the model is inadequate because it has virtually excluded serious consideration of conflict. Anyone who knows Japan will agree that it witnesses conflict like other societies, that it has known periods of extraordinary conflict, and that much of the dynamic of change stems from conflict.／ Along with the dominant chord of harmony and consensus in many earlier studies, there were also some scholars who studied conflict and recognized its importance in Japan. In recent years, this minor chord has become more insistent and prevalent. It has become apparent, for example, that rapid economic change has created conflicts and dissension over the costs and benefits of industrialization. Environmental and minority rights issue (´burakumin´, women) have intensified, and rivalries among government and opposition parties and within the policymaking process have been major concerns of observers of Japanese politics. Follow-up studies of villages are likely today to discuss ´harmony and its tensions´ and to probe deep antagonisms beneath the surface of the apparent solidarity villagers maintain before outsiders. Student movements and mass protests reflecting severe generational cleavages and political alienation have been a consistent and popular theme in studies by Western scholars.／ Yet, despite the frequent discovery of conflict in many studies, the older paradigm of Harmonious Japan remains. No alternative approach to the study of Japanese social and political life has yet emerged. Certainly almost no scholarship on Japan hitherto has adopted an explicit conflict approach or attempted to use Western social science conflict theory to understand Japanese society. Rather, the original model of Japanese society, albeit in a more sophisticated form, actually has been expanded and perpetuated. The field´s most widely used and influential concepts have revived notions of unity, consensus, and harmony through visions of Japan as a ´vertical society´, as ´Japan, Inc.´, and even as ´Number One´ in effectively solving the problems of advanced industrial societies through group cooperation. A gap between theory and empirical research is increasingly apparent in scholarly studies on postwar Japan.／ With this in mind, we initiated this set of studies in 1975. An interdisciplinary project was formed under the auspices of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Socail Science Research Council (ACLS-SSRC). The project held two major conferences and a number of smaller planning sessions and meetings between 1976 and 1979. Participants in the project were encouraged to undertake original research on conflict in a Japanese institution or, alternatively, to rethink their prior research from a conflict perspective. The essays in this volume are the result of these endeavors.／ [from ´INTRODUCTION´] ▼PART I : INTRODUCTION／ 1.Conflict : An Approach to the Study of Japan (Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, Patricia G. Steinhoff)／ 2.Conflict and Its Accommodation : Omote-Ura and Uchi-Soto Relations (Takeshi Ishida)／ ●PART II : CONFLICT IN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS : INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES, AND VILLAGES／ 3.Nonconfrontational Strategies for Management of Interpersonal Conflicts (Takie Sugiyama Lebra)／ 4.Analysis of Conflict in a Television Home Drama (Agnes M. Niyekawa)／ 5.Spirit Possession and Village Conflict (Teigo Yoshida)／ ●PART III : CONFLICT IN MOVEMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONS : LABOR, EDUCATION, AND WOMEN／ 6.Conflict and Its Resolution in Industrial Relations and Labor Law (Tadashi Hanami)／ 7.Conflict in Institutional Environments : Politics in Education (Thomas P. Rohlen)／ 8.Student Conflict (Patricia G. Steinhoff)／ 9.Status Conflict : The Rebellion of the Tea Pourers (Susan J. Pharr)／ ●PART IV : CONFLICT IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS : PARTIES, BUREAUCRACY, AND INTEREST GROUPS／ 10.Conflict in the Diet : Toward Conflict Management in Parliamentary Politics (Ellis S. Krauss)／ 11.Policy Conflict and Its Resolution within the Governmental System (John Creighton Campbell)／ 12.Conflict over Government Authority and Markets : Japan´s Rice Economy (Michael W. Donnelly)／ ●PART V : CONCLUSION／ 13.Conflict and Its Resolution in Postwar Japan (Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, Patricia G. Steinhoff)) |
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