The social origins of Japanese nuclear power: a Gramscian analysis

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to contribute to the post-Fukushima literature on Japan, much of which accepts uncritically the orthodox narrative locating Japan’s nuclear origins in the politics of the Cold War and in the passivity of Japanese civil society vis-a-vis a ‘strong’ state. In contrast, I draw upon Gramsci’s work in order to locate these origins within wider processes of global structural transformation associated with the shift from feudalism to capitalism, and the attendant imperialism of the nineteenth century. I treat Japan’s Meiji Restoration as an instance of passive revolution within this context, one outcome of which was the adoption of a specific form of state (the ‘developmental state’) and a specific form of nationalism (techno-nationalism). I further argue that the US Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) can be viewed as another instance of passive revolution. In both cases, I examine the economic, political and social channels through which state goals were communicated to the Japanese populace and either embraced or resisted in turn. I suggest that Japan’s techno-nationalism survived into the post-war era, but was stripped of its overt military trappings and portrayed instead as a unique combination of ‘pacifism’ and ‘economic developmentalism’. In this way, despite being victims of nuclear weapons, ordinary Japanese people were persuaded to embrace nuclear power.