The Bureaucratization of the State and the Rise of Japan

Abstract

The rise of Japan is explained in terms of the development of an exceptionally bureaucratic state. This resulted from the sixteenthcentury emergence of a ruling salariat separated from the land, the eventual overthrow of the pre-modern state by a revolutionary section of this salariat, and its subsequent building of a modern state. The early military expansion of Japan was directed in a highly rational manner by these bureaucrats. In the 1 930s, however, military expansion became irrational, in the sense that it became heedless of costs and consequences, and self-destructive, but this was not because of the resurgence of non-rational forces but rather because of the disintegration latent in the bureaucratic state. Defeat cleared the way for a resumption of economic expansion in a changed international situation. Economic growth did not happen automatically, however, but was directed by the economic bureaucracy, which used the institutions created by bureaucrats in the pre-war period. Economic expansion too has, arguably, become irrational and self-undermining but the parallel with military expansion should not be taken too far, for economic expansion has been much harder for the West to combat than military expansion. This analysis of the origins, development and expansion of the Japanese state is set in the context of the debate between Marxist and Weberian theory. Explanations of the rise of Japan have made little reference to the development of theJapanese state. Apart from the work of Bendix and Barrington Moore, the sociological discussion of the development of the state has made little reference to Japan. The aim of this article is to bring these two fields of inquiry into a mutually profitable dialogue. The theme of the article is that the modernJapanese state has been exceptionally bureaucratic in character. The explanation of this is sought in the development of Japan's pre-modern bureaucracy, The British Journal of Sociology Volumc XXXIX Number 2 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.30 on Wed, 20 Jul 2016 05:39:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 229 The bureaucratization of the state and the rise ofJapan which, in contrast with that of China, has received little attention in sociology. The bureaucratic state is then linked to Japan's military and industrial expansion. All too often Japan's expansion has been explained in terms of non-rational impulses stemming from Japanese national character or culture. It is argued here that both military and industrial expansion were consequences of the development of a bureaucratic state. Both were initially highly rational, though both, especially military expansion, became irrational later, not because non-rational forces in some way came to the surface but because of the dysfunctions of the bureaucratic state. So far as theoretical issues are concerned, the article has a bearing on the debate between the Marxist and Weberian approaches to the development of the state. The approach taken here is Weberian, building on the insights of specialist writers on Japan, such as Huber and Silberman, who have explicitly used the ideas of Weber. It is argued that the expansion ofJapan can be better understood in terms of the development of a bureaucratic state and its relations with other states than in terms of the development of capitalism and the dynamics of class conflict, as argued in the broadly Marxist accounts provided by Moore and Halliday. 1. JAPAN AS A BUREAUCRATIC STATE It is first necessary to justify the assertion that Japan developed an exceptionally bureaucratic modern state. The first ground for making this statement is the character of Meiji, Japan's ruling group. During the Meiji period (18681912), when Japan established itself as a powerful modern state, it was controlled not by a ruling class, at least not a ruling class in the classic Marxian sense, but by bureaucrats. Japan was a bureaucracy in the true sense of the word, rule by state officials. The background to this was that the Meiji Restoration, Japan's nineteenth-century revolution, was carried out not by a bourgeoisie but by samurai, who took control of the state and modernized it. The samurai were administrators not landowners and should not be confused with aristocracies of the European kind. Moore's comparisons with Germany and references toJapan's 'landed aristocracy' are here misleading. This is not to say that a politically influential landowning class did not exist or that there were no samurai landowners but that, as Smith and Bendix have argued, Japan was not ruled by a landed aristocracy. Neither bourgeoisie nor landowners controlled the state. It was ruled by an oligarchy of ex-samurai, from the feudal domains of Satsuma and Choshu, the domains that brought about the Meiji Restoration (Moore 1969:253; Bendix 1969:221-8; Smith 1961:370-83). The second ground is the subsequent weakness of political parties This content downloaded from 157.55.39.30 on Wed, 20 Jul 2016 05:39:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms