Cultures of Political Recycling and Conflict Resolution in Japan: Any Lessons for Africa?

Abstract

In the 1990s Japan changed its prime ministers nine times just in a span of nine years, an extraordinarily high turnover by any standard, and — above all — by Japan’s own. But all the transitions took a characteristically peaceful form. Although fewer changes took place in individual African countries in the same period, the process was invariably less than peaceful and often bloody. Simple observations such as these automatically call to mind a number of questions which, it should be admitted, are easier to ask than to answer. As an African who has studied and lived in Japan for a while, the specific questions I was confronted with included the following. Why does violence mar political change in Africa, but not in Japan? What are the lessons that Africa could draw from Japan’s experience? Formidable questions indeed. Social scientists generally explain change in terms of the nature and the state of political structures and institutions in a given society. In a sense intended neither to dismiss nor belittle the usefulness of this approach, I wish to address the above questions in the eye of a non-specialist primarily from a cultural perspective in order to (a) highlight the less obvious but significant forces which seem to be also at work in Japan, and (b) suggest the lessons Africa could extract from the experience.