The Land od the Rising Yen

eclipse, and the mysterious Komeito, with its lack of programme, doubled
its size. So did the Communists. The moral: Japan seems to support the American
alliance. But it should also be remembered that the elections were followed
with apathy, and only about two thirds of the electorate voted. Japan seems to be as bored with her politics as is the rest of the world.)
     
    Japan ’s foreign policy is conspicuous by its
nonexistence. Japan always used to back up her foreign policy by force. Today
she has no force; consequently she has no foreign policy. It all amounts to a
neutrality which is, in fact, unilateral disarmament. Japan is content with this; she is quite ready to go on manufacturing motor-cars and
transistor radios, building ships and office blocks and leaving political glory
to Mao, Tito and Wilson.
     
    It is often whispered in the
visitor’s ear that Japan is not a real democracy because its political life is
corrupt.
    This is a non sequitur.
    The country is a real
democracy. The democratic game is played honestly and strictly according to the
rules. Elections decide which party is to govern. Everyone can say what he
likes, the press is free, no one is persecuted for his opinions and the
opposition may attack the government as wildly as it pleases.
    But there are certain phenomena which
strike the Western observer as curious. Voters are often paid. To their credit,
this makes little difference. People accept the money and vote according to
their conscience — another great advantage of the secret ballot. To be a
politician is a fruitful career, indeed, good business. They are among the best
paid politicians in the world; they can keep two secretaries at public expense;
they are given luxurious houses — often with swimming pools — near the Diet;
and they raise their salaries with monotonous regularity. Business firms make
large contributions not only to party funds but also to individuals and as
these contributions are tax-free they do not have to be declared by the
recipients. There are quite a few, exceedingly influential, Pressuregroups.
Another unusual feature of Japanese political life is that high-ranking civil
servants often take up jobs on retirement with companies with whom they had
official dealings in the past. A man may have been deciding for many years who
gets building contracts and then become a director of one of those building
firms who did not do too badly. Such arrangements need not be corrupt;
but they certainly look corrupt. Nevertheless: they are made quite
openly, and every appointment becomes public knowledge.
    One day I had a dinner appointment
with a high-ranking civil servant and I arrived a few minutes late.
Apologizing, I mentioned the name of the gentleman who had detained me. My host
had never heard the name and asked me who he was.
    ‘He used to be Ambassador to X and
now is the vice-president of Y Oil Company.’
    He thought this over seriously,
perhaps with a view to his own future, then nodded earnestly: ‘Not a bad
promotion.’

TOLERANCE
     
    Quite a few Japanese remarked to me with
pride: ‘We are completely free of racial prejudice.’ This, more often than not,
was after sessions in which they ran down their country and I defended it. They
disapproved of almost everything around them, then concluded: ‘But I must tell
you one thing. There is absolutely no racial prejudice in Japan.’
    To a great extent this is true. There
is no anti-Armenian feeling because there are no Armenians. There is no
anti-Semitism because there are no Japanese Jews. There are none of the
anti-Greek sentiments you find in Istanbul and Alexandria, because there are no
Greeks. There are no anti-Negro feelings because there are no Negroes. And
there is not a trace of that anti-Bosnian prejudice which, I am told, was so
regrettably prevalent in Herzegovina before 1908.
    This is all to their credit. It is a
fallacy to believe as I have just suggested — that you actually need minorities in order to be prejudiced against them, although, as is shown in
Britain, it is of course easier to feel antagonistic to a minority if
you have it. Britain used to be very proud of having no colour prejudice, and
rather patronizing vis-à-vis the United States because they didn’t share
this virtue. This was while Britain lacked coloured people, and today we hear
little of this proud boast. On the other hand, Hitler managed to work up a
considerable number of his compatriots to a frenzy of homicidal