This special issue of Social Justice begins a dialogue with our Japanese counterparts and other scholars interested in this dynamic part of the world. Interest in and understanding of Japan among Western progressives has failed to keep pace with its importance not only in today's world, but also in the coming century, when Japan, China, and Asia generally will become increasingly central to world affairs. I conceived of this issue prior to attending an international workshop on "Market Economy and Social Justice," held at Chuo University, Tokyo, in May of 1993. While in Tokyo, I had the good fortune of meeting and collaborating with Tetsuya Fujimoto, Won-Kyu Park, and Shoji Ishitsuka, whom I thank for their editorial suggestions and other help. This collection of articles broaches issues of great importance, but they are far from comprehensive. We are committed to continuing this dialogue in the future.

Japan in the World Order

In the lead article, Satoshi Ikeda examines the historical processes in the 20th-century world-system, particularly with respect to the Japanese accumulation structure -- defined as the totality of Japan's social, cultural, economic, and political aspects, together with the regional and world-systemic contexts that enabled Japanese enterprises to grow into one of the key accumulators in the world-system today. Japanese businesses have been expanding their activity networks over the entire world economy, and in so doing have contributed to the transformation of the very order that nurtured the "rise" of Japan. The key institutions of the Japanese accumulation structure are: (1) a corporate group system, which achieves high rates of accumulation by taking advantage of policies that provide both low-cost financing to select large-scale corporations and protection and promotion; (2) a multi-layered subcontracting system, which utilizes the segmented labor-market structure as the mechanism for siphoning off the surplus from the working population and small- and medium-sized companies; (3) income redistributive institutions, such as the family/household system and the policy of national pork barrels; and (4) "equal" educational opportunities and "fairness" in entrance examinations, which minimize resentment against Japan's enormously wealthy corporations since the opportunity of becoming an employee of a major corporation or a bureaucrat is open to everyone.

Despite discrimination against women and lower educational achievers in the labor market, the Japanese accumulation structure achieves a high rate of accumulation without creating either enormous inequality among the people or a disenfranchised group within Japan. This structure makes it impossible for most women to achieve economic self-sufficiency and yet the family/household system provides for relatively comfortable lives. Although the long-term underconsumption of Japanese families (who receive low interest rates on their forced savings for expensive housing and retirement needs), along with a rejection of systemic corruption, precipitated the downfall of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the "1955 setup" in the political system, there is not a crisis in the accumulation structure itself. The central bureaucracy continues to function as the redistributor of economic gains in the Japanese accumulation structure. Political instability may even increase the role of bureaucracy. According to Ikeda, Japanese politics has been and still is about how and how much politicians will extort from the private sector and embezzle from the taxpayers. Japanese politicians lack the capacity to write a bill and cannot even stage a political debate without the assistance of bureaucrats. In short, they matter only as intermediaries between the U.S. and the Japanese state bureaucracy and big businesses. Before recent reforms, the LDP-dominated parliamentary structure kept the opposition weak because of unequal distribution of effective voting power among constituencies. This article gives insight into the economic mechanisms behind the long-term planning characteristic of Japanese corporations, the loyalty to the firm on the part of employees, and the other advantages Japanese institutions will hold over competitors in the world-economy in the coming century.

In "The Fall of the 1955 System in Japanese Politics and the Current Crisis of Hegemony," Momo Iida observes that the revolutionary and world historical events of 1989 -- the massacre at Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall -- brought about an end to the East-West Cold War, the collapse of socialist systems, and the Persian Gulf War. The current turning point, at the fin de siècle, may imply the need for a comprehensive historical reevaluation since modern civilization is destroying both nature and the human species due to excessive development. We have reached a historical turning point for the nation-state and a point of "deadlock and crisis" of the dominant ideologies -- Marxism-Leninism, social democracy since the Second International, Keynesianism in the form of stimulative and safe-employment measures, nationalism as an ideology of nation building after colonial liberation, and liberal democracy.

Since the Cold War realities under which postwar Japan was able to profit and achieve super-high growth rates no longer exist, Japan, as a great power, has begun a reorganization of power and a transformation of values. In this context, the Japanese state has sought to transcend its structural limits by asserting itself as a global state, against the rights of global citizens who are fighting against efforts to amend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution -- which renounces both war as a sovereign right and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes -- and to bring about genuine parliamentary reform. This change was ushered in by both the onset of a recessionary period beginning in 1992 and the 1993 "collapse of the 1955 system," which had guaranteed the 38-year incumbency of the LDP. That collapse is the culmination of several trends: the dissolution of the conservative-reformist structure in parliamentary politics, the politically charged bribery scandals carried out within the circles of the "Iron Triangle" structure (conservative politicians, senior bureaucrats, and big business leaders), and changes in the socioeconomic system. The corporate model of mass production and waste-based consumer civilization, including the "Three Sacred Treasures" of labor-management relations -- lifetime employment, the seniority system, and house unions -- also entered a period of upheaval.

The demise of "the 1955 system" marks the beginning of the end for Japan's profit-driven, illegal price-fixing agreements, for factional "money politics," and for the "blueprint for a New Japan" based on a high-growth economy. The author believes, however, that in the absence of opposition parties critical of the corporate nature of the state and society, parliamentary democracy is being suffocated and both the electorate's distrust of politics and their level of apathy have risen. On the path to the 21st century, as Japan is admitted into a military system through the U.N. Security Council (the nuclear club), the Japanese, as global citizens, must urgently begin working toward a transformation of global civilization and particularly toward the structural transformation of Japan, a corporate state with global reach, into a post-growth, post-development socioeconomic system.

Saskia Sassen analyzes the new illegal immigration into Japan, a first in its long history, and its relation to the internationalization of the Japanese economy. Japan has never had immigration, despite its history of forced labor recruitment, colonization, and emigration. The concept of immigration did not exist in its law on the entry and exit of aliens. Yet, since the mid-1980s, there has been a growing illegal immigration from Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and, most recently, Malaysia and Iran. Japan -- as the center of a regional Asian economic system -- is now a major foreign aid donor, investor, and exporter of a wide range of consumer goods in the countries where most of its new immigrants originate, except for Iran. This new immigration is part of the globalization of Japan's economy, a fact clearly recognizable in the case of foreign high-level manpower for the financial industry in Tokyo, but less so in the new, mostly illegal immigration of manual workers employed in construction, manufacturing, and low-wage jobs in services. Although much later than most advanced economies, Japan now has a growing demand for low-wage, unskilled jobs in a context where Japanese youth are rejecting such jobs. Advanced service economies tend to have high average levels of education and a growth in high-income jobs; they also engender a large supply of low-wage, unskilled jobs and a devaluing of most production jobs in manufacturing. Japan shows that even in a society that is fairly homogeneous and thinks of itself as one-nation, one-people, these processes of differentiation will produce relative labor shortages and this effect will be strengthened by Japan's low population growth.

The next selection takes up the application of the "Japanese model" of development in the Asian context. "The Political Process in Singapore's New Industrialization," by H.A. Yun, argues that while economists today are taken up by the spectacular success of East Asian economies, other social scientists have only just begun to look at another dimension of this great transformation in politics and society. The developmentalist states in the region often oppress the labor movement, but successful economic expansion in the region legitimates existing arrangements, especially because the rest of the peripheral regions have experienced slower growth or stagnation in the 1980s and 1990s. Using the case of Singapore, this study examines the link between the development of industrial capitalism and moves toward democratization, via the class transformation process. In Singapore, while economic success has given rise to new class forces benefiting largely from two decades of almost continuous double-digit growth, it has also spun off new questions regarding old formulae driving growth, that is, state intervention based on the ideology of meritocracy and elite formation. The deepening of capitalism tends not only to breed greater social differentiation, but also to subvert vertical mobility, the linchpin legitimizing strict measures for labor regulation. The author suggests that the tapering growth in important international markets and sources of capital investment in Singapore will contribute to disenchantment with meritocracy and cause a shift in concern to welfarism and demands for broadened popular participation. At the same time, cumulative development of productive assets favors the more palatable solution of redistribution over coercion.

Japanese Realities

Contrary to the popular wisdom, in "Is Japan Exceptional? Reconsidering Japanese Crime Rates," Tetsuya Fujimoto and Won-Kyu Park take on the evidence regarding Japan's low crime rate and suggest that Japanese crime may only temporarily differ from that of other advanced industrial countries. Data collected for the 1950-1988 period for homicide, sex offenses (including rape), and minor thefts in Japan and 15 selected countries indicate (1) that Japan's crime patterns resemble those of many other advanced industrial countries (a low proportion of violent crime and a predominance of property crime); (2) that Japan's crime rates have not always been lower than those in other advanced industrial countries; and (3) that Japan falls near the median among advanced industrial nations in terms of public safety. In short, comparative analyses that explain Japan's current low rate of crime with regard to its cultural uniqueness ignore structural causation, which emphasizes social, political, economic, and legal factors.

"Legal Equality and Reality for Japanese Women," by Kyoko Kodera, discusses recent socioeconomic changes in Japan and the extent to which the legislative environment for female workers is improving. Many women workers are excluded from the path of professional careers by structural discrimination inherent in the Japanese style of management. Career tracks, job assignment, and promotion schemes have largely separated women from men in the job market. Although the labor force participation rate of women reached 50.7% in 1991, female managers constituted only one percent of all paid female employees (compared to 7.2% for males). Moreover, the wage gap has largely persisted. In 1991, full-time female workers earned on the average only 60.7% of male gross monthly cash earnings. Japanese female workers share the problems common to all women in industrialized countries, but they are also faced with problems peculiar to Japanese management, where permanent employment and seniority-based wages for a core of male workers are the norm. The article discusses how new legislative reforms, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Law (1986) and the Childcare Leave Act (1992), are aimed at improving women's working conditions by helping them to balance the demands of work and family. The Equal Employment Opportunity Law, in particular, could be an important turning point in the history of women's labor relations in Japan. In addition, structural factors, such as the seeming inevitability of labor shortages in an aging society and the lack of sufficient managerial posts for the postwar baby-boom generation, should force Japanese employers to better utilize or revitalize the female work force and to adopt an employment system based on ability irrespective of sex and age.

"On Women's Centers in Japan," by Miho Omi, briefly discusses the impact of the feminist movement in Japan, the implementation of the United Nations' International Women's Year in 1975, and the U.N. Decade for Women that followed. Among the legacies are facilities for women, often called "josei senta" (women's centers) that offer support to women and aim to facilitate the building of equality between women and men. The activities of these centers make up only a small part of the Japanese women's movement and the many women working to improve their situation and advance their status. The article describes the relationship between Japanese women, who are struggling to solve the problems they face and to advance their status in society, and the government, which establishes these women's centers. How women's issues came to be included in official public policy in Japan, and how women's centers can be of use to women are examined in a case study of Yokohama.

"The Making of Prostitutes in Japan," by Bill Mihalopoulos, is a historicalstudy of the karayuki-san -- Japanese women who went to work as prostitutes, mainly in Southeast Asia, but also in Siberia, China, the South Pacific, and even the United States after the Meiji Restoration (1868). Most were young teen-age girls from western Kyushu, who were sold by their parents to procurers, who in turn sold them to overseas brothels. Many sent money "home" to help support their former households. Some helped to found Japanese overseas interests and communities by starting their own businesses and operating as an important source of finance for other Japanese enterprises. The article examines various classifications in the literature on the karayuki-san and how they produce a social commentary that emphasizes particular ways of identifying who and what the women are. Analyzing these categories is important since they link the women's conduct to political objectives such as dominant (and shifting) constructions of Japanese national identity. In the 1970s, Japanese feminist writers used innovative techniques and disciplines to reidentify the karayuki-san in the context of unequal gender relations secured by the oppressive, patriarchal nature of the modern Japanese state. The author argues, however, that a better understanding of the women's activities and the social relations of power in which they were engaged can be achieved if the category karayuki-san as "overseas prostitute" is discarded. Rather than explain them in terms of generalized structures of oppression, an alternative account of the karayuki-san would elaborate a new category that takes account of the material framework of these women as overseas migrant laborers.

"Youth Culture in Japan," by Keniichi Kawasaki, is a comparative study that lays out a historical typology of youth and the youth movement in Japan. The article examines the labor market and the possibility for increased delinquency, deviance, and protest among the younger generation. The effect of factors such as generation, class, education, and consumer culture are evaluated. The author concludes that Japanese youth (sinjinrui -- the "new youth culture" -- and the baby-boomer junior generation) and yuppies share subcultures such as expressionism, urban style, and high educational achievement. However, those subcultures have different social implications from those in the U.S. and Britain, where social class and ethnicity are key factors, while in Japan, group consciousness and quasi-ageism are important. The most pressing problem for Japanese youth is how to balance weak individualism with public spirit and a strong group sense. Given Japan's international stature, linking local group awareness to global ethics within contemporary consumer culture is essential. Global ethics must not only be an ideal, but a real policy goal.

Lill Scherdin makes a comparative analysis of the mechanisms involved in creating groups of "strangers," the "other" who is cast as a suitable enemy, and the heightened willingness to punish them. The research draws on extensive interviews in Japan and on a research tradition that explores whether the Holocaust, for instance, is a historically singular event. Scherdin applies this framework to two groups in Japan: the burakumin (outcasts) and prisoners. The burakumin were originally formed in the 17th century from a conglomerate of groups on society's edge who engaged in "unclean occupations" or who were once guards, executioners, or criminals. Criminals were degraded to burakumin status either for a specific period (e.g., 10 years) or forever. Despite the absence of visible differences from other Japanese, the burakumin are discriminated against even today residentially, socially, and in the labor market. By the same token, though Japan's prison population is relatively small and the prisons themselves humane by international standards, prison life constitutes serious hardships, humiliation, and pain that are neither described nor intended in the national laws and certainly not in the Covenant of Human Rights.

The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations' "Summary Report on the Application and Practice in Japan of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," by Masaki Nibe, details the criminal process in Japan, the rights of foreigners, women, the handicapped, children, and legal aid. It is a "counter report" to the government's version of the status of human-rights compliance in Japan. Thus, it examines the practice of torture and maltreatment by police to obtain confessions, abuses of police custody, the treatment of juvenile offenders, and issues relating to foreign workers in Japan. The report concludes that on the basis of actual workplace practices, equality of men and women in employment has never been promoted. The full report, as well as an analysis of Japan's prison practices, is available to those interested.

We hope that this issue will provide readers with an appreciation of the important role Japan will continue to play in the international community. It is especially crucial for Japanese and U.S. citizens to become global citizens in the 21st century and to critically evaluate each other's strengths and weaknesses.