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$Unique_ID{bob00338}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 5B.   Local Government}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald M. Seekins}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{political
court
local
urban
government
japan
rural
japanese
community
district}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Donald M. Seekins
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 5B.   Local Government

     As of 1981 Japan was divided into forty-three rural prefectures (ken),
two urban prefectures (fu-Kyoto and Osaka), one district (Hokkaido), and one
metropolitan district (Tokyo). These jurisdictions were subdivided into
cities, towns, and villages; Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and other large cities were
subdivided into wards (ku), which were further split into precincts (machi or
cho).

     Each prefecture or district had a governor and a unicameral assembly;
both were elected by popular vote every four years. All prefectures and
districts were required by national law to maintain departments of general
affairs, finance, welfare, health, and labor. Departments of agriculture,
fisheries, forestry, commerce, and industry were optional, depending on local
needs. The governor was responsible for all activities supported by
prefectural funds that were collected through local taxation as well as for
funds made available to his jurisdiction by the national government.

     Relationships between the governor and the prefectural or district
assembly were mutually restraining. The power of the assembly to pass a vote
of no confidence against the chief prefectural executive was balanced by the
governor's power to dissolve the legislature.

     Cities, like prefectures and districts, were self-governing units and
were administered independently of the larger units within which they were
located. In order to become a city, a town or village had to have at least
30,000 inhabitants, 60 percent of whom were engaged in urban occupations. It
was also required to have appropriate commercial facilities, and 60 percent of
its buildings had to stand within the urban core. City government was headed
by a mayor who was elected for four years by popular vote. A city assembly,
having varying numbers of representatives according to population, was elected
at the same time. In large cities like Nagoya, Yokohama, Fukuoka, and Kobe, as
well as Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, each ward elected an assembly, which in turn
elected ward superintendents.

     The terms machi and cho designated self-governing towns outside the
cities as well as the subdivisions of urban wards. Like the cities, each had
its elected mayor and assembly. Such a town could be formed by the
incorporation of a large village or the merger of neighboring villages.
Villages were the smallest self-governing entities in the rural areas, often
consisting of a number of hamlets (buraku) containing several thousand people
connected with one another only through the formally imposed framework of the
village administration. The principal village official was the elected mayor,
who administered assorted local projects with the village council, both being
elected every four years by popular vote.

     Beneath the village in the rural areas and the ward in the cities were
systems of "neighborhood self-government" consisting of chokai or burakukai,
which were subdivided into several smaller units consisting of twenty or
thirty adjacent households, called han. In prewar Japan, these units were
useful for purposes of social control, and although they did not in 1981 have
a formal, legal status, they continued to serve as the focus for local
community activities in many areas. Han have served as conduits for government
notices, and their members have engaged in cleanup, fire prevention, crime
prevention, and garbage collection activities. Leaders of han and chokai often
have had great political influence on the local level, and have been usually
rather conservative (see fig. 11).

     Taken as a whole, local governments have not been as autonomous as the
law authorized them to be. Local initiative has been often stifled because of
inadequate resources and the dependence of local entities on the financial
support of the central government (see Fiscal Policy, ch. 4). Local officials
have found that they spend most of their time administering the policies and
projects of the national ministries. In the 1970s, however, the election of
reformist mayors and governors in many prefectures and cities heralded a
change in the relationship between local governments and the center, one in
which the former struggled to be more independent (see The Opposition Parties,
this ch.).

The Electoral System

     The electoral system in late 1981 was based on the Public Offices
Election Law of 1950, as amended, and the Local Autonomy Law of 1947, as
amended. There were three types of elections: general elections to the House
of Representatives held every four years unless the lower house was dissolved
sooner; elections to the House of Councillors held every three years to choose
one-half its deputies; and local elections for offices in prefectures, cities,
and villages held every four years.

     Elections were supervised by election committees at each administrative
level under the general direction of the Central Election Administration
Committee. This central committee was appointed by the prime minister on the
advice of the Diet; local committees were selected by local assemblies. The
minimum voting age was twenty years, and a voter had to satisfy a three-month
residency requirement before being allowed to cast a ballot. For those seeking
office there were two sets of age requirements: twenty-five years of age for
admittance to the House of Representatives, to the assemblies in the
prefectures, cities, towns, and villages, as well as to the mayorship in
cities, towns, and villages; and thirty years of age for admittance to the
House of Councillors and to the prefectural governorship. Candidates for
office were required to file with a local election committee. Campaign tactics
and finances were subjects of detailed and restrictive legislation, but
complaints about election irregularities were not infrequently heard.

     The 130 electoral districts of the House of Representatives elected three
to five representatives, depending on their population; the one exception was
the district comprising the Amami Islands, south of Kyushu, which elected only
one man to the Diet. Successful candidates were those who won at least the
fifth largest aggregation of votes in a five-man district, the fourth largest
in a four-man district, or the third largest in a three-man district. Voters
cast their ballots for only one candidate. In House of Councillors elections,
the prefectural constituencies-forty-seven in 1981 including Tokyo and
Hokkaido-elected from two to eight councillors, depending on their population,
and each voter also cast one ballot for a candidate in the national
constituency. Representation in the House of Representatives and among the
councillors who were elected from the prefectural constituencies was based on
population alone; the purpose of having a national constituency was to have a
nongeographical basis of representation, consisting either of persons of
outstanding talent and reputation or of the representatives of important
national interest and opinion groups that might not be represented through
district elections alone.

     The apportionment of election districts in late 1981 reflected the
structure of the population in the years just after World War II, when only
one-third of the people lived in the urban areas and two-thirds in the rural
areas; in the three decades since then, in the wake of rapid economic
development and urbanization the proportion has shifted to over 78 percent
urban and 22 percent rural. This has led to a serious underrepresentation of
urban voters, because no reform of the districts has been undertaken. The
number of urban districts was increased by five in 1964, bringing nineteen new
representatives to the lower house; and in 1975 increased by six, with twenty
new representatives being given to them and to other urban districts. Yet
great inequities remained. In the 1976 House of Representatives election,
281,082 votes were needed to elect a candidate in the urban Fourth District of
Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, while only 80,404 votes were needed to elect
one from the rural Fifth District of Hyogo Prefecture. Despite the
differential weighting of House of Councillors prefectural constituencies by
population, it still took over a million votes to elect a councillor from
Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, which contains the large city of
Yokohama, while only 208,000 were needed to elect one in rural Tottori
Prefecture on the Sea of Japan. The Supreme Court handed down a decision on
April 4, 1976, declaring unconstitutional the allocation of lower house seats
because it violated the principal of equal representation; but little progress
has been made in the direction of reform, largely because rural
overrepresentation has favored the LDP, which might be forced out of power if
metropolitan areas were more fairly represented (see Bases of Support, this
ch.).

The Judicial System

     The Constitution guarantees the independence of the judicial branch of
government and prohibits the exercise of judicial powers outside the system of
constitutionally established courts. The highest court is the Supreme Court.
It consists of fifteen justices, appointed for life by the cabinet; the chief
justice is appointed by the emperor but approved by the cabinet. These
appointments, according to Article 79 of the Constitution, must be "reviewed"
by the voters in a referendum held at the time of the first general election
following the justice's appointment and every ten years thereafter. The
Supreme Court renders decisions either from a full bench of the fifteen
justices, or from petty benches of five justices each. Full benches are
required for decisions on cases involving constitutionality, on cases where
there has been no precedent in the Supreme Court, on those in which the
decision of the petty bench ended in a tie, or on those which, though not
involving constitutional questions, are considered to be of special
importance. The Court includes twenty "research clerks," usually themselves
experienced judges, who are roughly equivalent to the clerks of the United
States Supreme Court.

     The functions of the Supreme Court reflect the constitutional emphasis on
the independence of the judiciary. It is the court of last resort for civil
and criminal cases. It is also responsible for the administration of the
entire court system and can promulgate civil, criminal, and other procedural
rules, assign judges to specific courts, appoint and remove court officials
other than judges, prepare court budgets, and make rules both for the courts
and for public prosecutors. The cabinet must appoint judges to lower courts
from a list of those nominated by the Supreme Court. Article 81 of the
Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power of judicial review; it can
declare laws, official acts, and administrative rules unconstitutional. This
power, however, is rarely exercised. There was no precedent for judicial
review in the Meiji judicial system, and the Supreme Court has been reluctant
to render decisions on the unconstitutionality of laws and administrative
rules because of an unwillingness to become involved in political issues. In
1960 the Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the 1952
dissolution of the House of Representatives because "an official act which is
of a highly political nature directly affecting the basis of the government is
beyond the reach of judicial review, even if its validity is drawn into
question in an otherwise justiciable controversy." The decision of April 4,
1976, on electoral districts, however, may represent a departure from this
pattern.

     Lower courts have often proved more willing to rule on constitutionality
than the Supreme Court. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Tokyo
District Court's 1959 decision in the Sunakawa Case that the 1952 Security
Treaty between the United States and Japan was unconstitutional on the basis
of Article 9 (renunciation of war). A similar case is the Naganuma decision of
September 7, 1973, growing out of a dispute over the construction of an SDF
antiaircraft missile base on a forest preserve in Hokkaido in which the
Sapporo District Court ruled that the SDF was unconstitutional. Another
example is the 1971 decision of the Nagoya Higher Court (reversing a lower
court decision), ruling that the employment of a Shinto priest in
groundbreaking ceremonies for a municipal building in the city of Tsu in Mie
Prefecture was a violation of Article 20 of the Constitution on the separation
of religious and state affairs and that the mayor of Tsu must pay the city
treasury compensation for the expense of the ceremony. The Supreme Court,
judging the legality of the security treaty to be a political issue, refused
to exercise judicial review in the Sunakawa case, and it reversed the Nagoya
Higher Court decision, ruling that Shinto ceremonies of the sort held at the
groundbreaking were "custom" rather than "religion." The Court as of late 1981
had not yet ruled on the Naganuma decision.

     In 1981 there were eight high courts throughout the country, which
functioned as courts of appeal in both criminal and civil cases and also had
original jurisdiction over election disputes. Below these were the district
courts, situated in fifty different cities, which had original jurisdiction in
all criminal and civil cases except petty offenses involving light fines and
certain cases specifically placed under the jurisdiction of other courts.
Fifty family courts, on a level with the district courts, had original
jurisdiction in matters concerning inheritance, divorce, juvenile delinquency,
and the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. Summary courts were located in
570 cities and towns. These courts generally performed the functions of small
courts and justices of the peace in the United States. They had jurisdiction
over minor offenses and small civil claims.

Political Values and Attitudes

     The Japanese are often described as being a community-oriented people.
The individual is characterized as "submerged" in the collective, having only
the weakest notion of selfhood or private, as apart from community, interests.
It has been pointed out that communities in both traditional and modern Japan,
from buraku or rural hamlet of feudal times, to the large, modern corporation
or bureaucracy with its cohorts of lifetime employees, strive to be
all-inclusive. The relationship of the individual to the community is
"functionally diffuse"; it provides a person not only with income and
sustenance but also with emotional support and individual identity. The focus
of social life is within that community, and persons rarely form significant
relationships outside them. Japanese call the inclusiveness of this sort of
community the takotsubo seikatsu, or "octopus-pot way of life." Large pots
with narrow openings at the top are used by Japanese fishermen to catch these
sea creatures, and the term refers to persons being so wrapped up in their
particular social group that they cannot see the world outside its constricted
confines.

     Parallel with the inclusiveness of community is an emphasis on hierarchy.
In what the anthropologist Nakane Chie calls Japan's "vertical society," human
relationships are defined in terms of inequality, and people relate to each
other as superiors or inferiors along a minutely differentiated gradient of
social status. This is true not only within bureaucratic organizations where
such a hierarchical structure might be expected, but in many, if not most,
aspects of daily life outside the work place. Hierarchy is described as
expressing itself along two dimensions. There is, first of all, an internal
differentiation within the community in which all its members are ranked
according to seniority, education, or occupational status. Secondly there is
the differentiation between "insiders" and "outsiders," between members and
nonmembers of the community, and the tendency to rank whole groups
(communities) along a vertical continuum. Thus Japanese universities are given
precise rankings; Tokyo University is at the top, followed by Kyoto University
and other national institutions (the former "imperial universities"), and
prestigious private institutions such as Keio and Waseda follow them.
Likewise, since the nineteenth century Japanese have been extremely concerned
with enhancing their country's international position, and have conceived of
it as ranking, at least until recently, below the "advanced" Western nations
yet above the developing countries of Asia and Africa. An awareness of rank
and hierarchy is by no means unique to Japan. Japanese are, however,
uncommonly sensitive to its nuances in all aspects of daily life. The language
possesses an unusual feature that reflects this preoccupation with hierarchy:
keigo, or "honorific language," establishes the superior position of one
speaker and the inferior position of the other through the correct use of
subtle vocabulary differences and grammatic structures. These usages define
the "place" of each speaker in terms of social status, and Japanese cannot be
spoken correctly without their use.

     The hierarchical orientation was reinforced by the introduction into
Japan of Confucian ethical concepts from China. Confucianism emphasized
rigidly defined, unequal social relationships and the importance of obedience
to one's parents and to one's lord. The moral and educative role of a
well-defined elite class-the scholar-officials in China and the samurai or
bushi in Japan-was stressed. The doctrines of Confucius were introduced into
Japan as early as the fifth century A.D., but it was not until the Edo period
that the shoguns made ultraconservative Neo-Confucian principles, especially
those expounded by the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200), the official
ideology.

     In Confucianism the interests of the community as a whole are assumed to
be superior to, if not identified with, the interests of the individuals
composing it. The legitimacy of private interests is not recognized. Yet
tensions are necessarily generated by life within a hierarchical,
collective-oriented social structure. Political mechanisms are needed to
reduce these tensions in order to achieve harmony (wa), that much sought-after
ideal of social life.

     One very natural means of lessening tension within the community is
through the aging process. As men or women grow older, gaining seniority
within a community or organization, they obtain authority and higher status,
commanding greater respect from others. The seniority principle is reinforced
by the great reluctance to place younger persons in positions of authority
over older ones. Yet the prerogatives of age are not absolute. Early
retirement is a feature common to most Japanese organizations, including
government institutions. The top ranks retire at age fifty-five or sixty,
allowing younger men to succeed them. The institution of early retirement
serves the purpose of keeping the process of promotion to higher positions
smooth and predictable. The system enables talented individuals to succeed to
the most responsible positions and prevents a small group of older persons, or
what the Japanese call a "one-man leader," from monopolizing leadership
positions, frustrating those below and imposing on the organization ideas and
policies that might be increasingly outmoded and old-fashioned. Retirees,
however, often continue to wield great influence in an advisory capacity and
usually pursue second careers in organizations affiliated with the one from
which they retired (see The Corporate System, ch. 4).

     A second political mechanism is the salience of personal, rather than
legalistic or coercive, ties between superior and subordinate. These are most
typically characterized in terms of fictive familial relationships, analogous
to the bonds between parents and children (the oyabun-kobun relationship). The
ideal leader is the paternalistic one, who has a warm and personal concern for
the welfare of his followers. Surveys of social and political attitudes
carried out by social scientists during the postwar years reveal that Japanese
of all ages and occupations consistently and overwhelmingly prefer leaders who
have warm, "human feelings" (ninjo) and a sincere concern for their
subordinates over those who are impersonally fair, but emotionally distant.
For those lower down in the hierarchy, loyalty is both morally prescribed and
emotionally sustained by the ethic of paternalism. In the political world the
personalist and paternalistic nature of leadership expresses itself in terms
of patron-client relationships that permeate the entire political system.

     Community is pervasive, but it is also fragile, because social ties are
sustained not only through adherence to universal legal norms or out of a
sense of common self-interest, but upon the affective interplay of human
sensitivities as defined by the patron-client relationship. Conflict poses a
definite danger to the continued existence of the community, and thus the
making and implementation of policy require an elaborate process of
consultation and consensus-building involving all the parties concerned.
According to political scientist Lewis Austin, "Everyone must be consulted
informally, everyone must be heard, but not in such a way that the hearing of
different opinions develops into opposition. The leader and his assistants
'harmonize opinion'...in advance, using go-betweens to avert the confrontation
of opposing forces." After a preliminary agreement among all the parties has
been reached, a formal meeting will be held in which the agreed-upon policy
will be suggested and adopted. This process is called nemawashi, a term
translated as "root trimming" or "root binding," suggesting the image of a
gardener preparing a tree or shrub for transplanting, i.e., a change in
policy. Austin points out that a common Japanese verb meaning "to decide,"
matomeru, means, literally, to gather, collect, or bring together. Decisions
are the "sum of the contributions of all."

     Political leaders have had to deal not only with the problem of
maintaining solidarity and harmony within a single group, but also that of
gaining cooperation among different groups who find themselves in often bitter
and acrimonious competition. The "octopus-pot way of life" can lead to an
often destructive sectionalism that undermines common interests. Within
groups, loyalties to personal leaders rather than to a set of abstract ideals
can lead to bitter factionalism and infighting. Modern societies with
divergent and well-organized interests possess a high level of political
conflict, and political leaders have had to use all their consensus-building
skills to the utmost to maintain the cooperation of their constituents.

     The traditional values of community and hierarchy have contributed to the
stability of the political system, especially in the postwar period. The
emphasis on consensus-building and the harmonization of different points of
view have encouraged an ethic of cooperation and moderation among political
groups with divergent interests. Although history reveals many exceptions,
Japanese "political style" has tended to be slow-moving, pragmatic, and
dependent upon personalistic ties sealed by the exchange of favors and
support. The rhetoric of ideological confrontation is downplayed as productive
of divisive conflict.

     Studies of political attitudes and behavior in rural and urban areas
reveal a contrast between "old" and "new" political values. Researchers have
discovered an interesting paradox: political participation is higher in rural
than in urban areas, yet, largely because of better educational standards,
urban people have greater interest in, and more knowledge of, political
affairs than rural people. In rural villages there appears to be a great
measure of political mobilization based on personalistic or patron-client ties
of the oyabun-kobun type.

     Politicians on the local level make themselves available for the exchange
of favors for votes and support, many of these being influential people within
the structure of informal neighborhood self-government institutions (see Local
Government, this ch.). This also seems true in the older urban neighborhoods,
where people have been settled for several generations. Yet other city
people are less likely to have personal connections with politically
influential people. Danchi (high-rise apartment) dwellers, who form a
significant portion of Japan's urban population, are especially likely to be
politically unconnected. In rural areas and in old city neighborhoods, the
locality provides a medium through which political leaders can reach their
supporters directly. People in the newer urban areas, which have grown
tremendously in the 1960s and 1970s-suburban "bedroom" communities as well as
danchi-are apt to be the employees of large government or private
organizations, and it is these, rather than the locality, which dominate their
social focus. Although values of community solidarity and hierarchy are much
stressed in the company context, this is largely outside the sphere of local
or national politics. Urban people are apt to be spectators of, rather than
participants in, the political process, gaining most of their information from
newspapers, magazines, and television. Voting percentages are higher in rural
than urban areas, though city people see politics more in terms of issues and
ideologies than in terms of personalities.

     Public opinion surveys in the postwar years have revealed a general
tendency for voters to regard politicians with a mixture of resignation and
mistrust. Voter participation rates in Diet elections ranged from between 58
and 73 percent between 1946 and 1979, with no firm upward or downward trend,
although the number of independent voters with no firm party identification
has increased in recent years. The general mood of mistrust has been reflected
in the surveys on Japanese national character carried out by the Institute of
Statistical Mathematics every five years, since 1953. The number of
respondents who said that they found politicians trustworthy declined from 43
percent in 1953 to 23 percent in 1973, while the number who mistrusted them
increased in the same period from 38 to 51 percent. This same survey showed
that while only 19 percent of all respondents supported no party in 1953, in
1978 there were 34 percent who did. Nonetheless people have remained generally
content with things the way they are. In 1978 only 3 percent of all
respondents said that radical change was needed, while 89 percent supported
moderate reform.

Interest Groups

     Of the great variety of groups and associations in contemporary Japan,
many are never, or only occasionally, involved in politics while others were
established specifically for that purpose. The most prominent of the latter
are identified with economic issues and relate to the individual in terms of
his or her occupation. Others concern themselves with issues related to the
quality of life. Despite the self-perceived homogeneity of the population,
there are a number of active minority rights movements. Among religious groups
Christians have spoken out on issues involving the separation of religious and
state affairs; with the great exception of the Soka Gakkai, Japan's "new
religions" have tended to be apolitical (see The Komeito, this ch.). Since the
late 1960s Japanese women have become politically active, tending to identify
themselves with livelihood issues such as consumerism and the environment,
although women's rights issues have also become increasingly important in what
is perceived to be a male-dominated social and economic system.

Business Interests

     Business interests in Japan are powerful, well organized, and in close
touch with government leaders on the highest levels. Business leaders are
active participants in the making of policies that have shaped Japan's
development in the decades since the end of the war. The links between
business leaders and government have been maintained through four national
organizations: the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), the
Japan Federation of Employers' Associations (Nikkeiren), the Committee for
Economic Development (Keizai Doyukai), and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (Nissho).

     As of late 1981 Keidanren was the most important of the four. Its
membership included the largest corporations and some 110 manufacturers'
associations, and its Tokyo headquarters served as a kind of nerve center for
the country's most important economic enterprises. Thirty-nine standing
committees dealt with issues affecting different sectors of the economy and
international trade relations. The prime minister and members of his cabinet
regularly sought Keidanren's advice on policy issues; it also served as a
major conduit for political contributions to the LDP, although this role has
been reduced since a law regulating campaign contributions was passed in 1976
(see The Liberal Democratic Party; Bases of Support, this ch.).

     Nikkeiren, established in 1948, has been largely concerned with issues of
labor-management relations and with enabling business to present a united
front in the face of union demands. The Keizai Doyukai, composed of younger
and more liberal business leaders, has claimed to concern itself with the
social responsibilities of big business. Nissho, the oldest business
organization in the country (its antecedents go back to the Tokyo Chamber of
Commerce and Industry established in 1878), represented the interests of
Japan's small- and medium-scale businesses and thus has been generally
regarded as the least influential of the four groups.

Labor Unions

     Postwar labor unions were set up with the blessings of the occupation
authorities. The mechanism for collective bargaining was established, and
unions were organized on an enterprise basis. Membership was on the basis of
company affiliation rather than skill or industry classification, and it was
in general limited to permanent, nonsupervisory employees. Workers have been
organized into a number of loose labor federations, including, in order of
size: the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyo), the Japanese
Confederation of Labor (Domei), and the Federation of Independent Labor Unions
(Churitsu Roren-see Labor Relations, ch. 4).

     Labor federations have attempted to foster greater unity among their
constituent unions, though with little success; the two largest, Sohyo and
Domei, have been active politically, being the principal supporters of the
Japan Socialist Party (JSP) and the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP),
respectively (see The Opposition Parties, this ch.). Their political
influence, however, has been limited by the fact that these political parties
have not had the opportunity to form governments. In late 1981 Sohyo, the
organizer of Japan's annual spring "Labor Offensive" wage demands, was
strongly ideological. Many of its constituent unions were composed of
government employees, such as the Japan Teachers Union (Nikkyoso) and the
All-Japan Union of Prefectural and Municipal Workers, or of employees of
public corporations, such as the National Railway Workers Union and the Joint
Council of Telecommunications Workers. A major issue for Sohyo has been
gaining the right of government employees to strike, which has been prohibited
by law.

     A majority of the country's primary and secondary school teachers were
members of Nikkyoso (see Education in the 1980s, ch. 3). The significance of
Nikkyoso goes beyond its role as a labor organization, campaigning to improve
the working conditions of teachers. It has had an active role in the
formulation of educational policies, which remain an ideological issue for
progressives and conservatives alike. It has struggled to preserve the
occupation-inspired reforms of the school system, such as local autonomy for
school boards, which have been under intensifying conservative attack, and has
promoted curricula emphasizing democratic and internationalist themes and a
structure of classes and grades that stresses equality, especially on the
primary school level (see Education, ch. 3). Moral education courses, which
were at the core of the nationalistic prewar school curriculum, were first
resisted by union teachers, but since their adoption in 1959 the emphasis has
been on teaching themes of cooperation, mutual respect, and good citizenship
rather than nation- or emperor-centered ideology. Thus universal middle school
education has exposed most of the younger generation to democratic political
and social values. Yet Nikkyoso has been one of Japan's most radical unions,
and conservatives have accused it of not instilling in students a respect for
traditional "Japanese values." Extreme rightists and union members have often
been involved in confrontations, particularly at the union's annual
conventions.

Agricultural Interest Groups

     Observers have suggested that the great influence exercised by the
Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives (Nokyo) over policymaking is in
part the result of a widespread feeling of "gratitude" to the dwindling
agricultural sector, which in the past supported the country's industrial
modernization. Nokyo spokesmen have been vociferous in their claims that the
agricultural sector is somehow intimately connected with the "spirit" of the
nation. They have also argued that self-sufficiency, or near self-sufficiency
in food, resulting from government support of a healthy agricultural sector,
is central to Japan's security. Yet it is also true that Nokyo has been
politically powerful because the LDP has gained a significant measure of its
support from the overrepresented rural constituencies (see The Electoral
System, this ch.).

     Nokyo, organized in 1947 at the time of the land reform, had in late 1981
local branches in every rural village, and its members included practically
all of the country's 5 million farming households. Since its founding Nokyo
has been preoccupied with maintaining and increasing government price supports
on rice and other crops and with holding back the import of cheaper
agricultural products from abroad. Nokyo's techniques often have been
heavy-handed. Each year when the national budget is being drawn up, thousands
of farmers come to Tokyo in order to demonstrate and pressure members of the
Diet and government for more generous supports. The costliness of subsidies
and the high price of food have led to widespread criticism, but Nokyo's
privileged position, like that of Keidanren and other business organizations,
has been assured in the generous contributions it has made to LDP campaign
funds.

     Other interest groups associated with agriculture included the National
Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Purchasing Associations, the National
Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Associations, and the Japan
Forestry Association. There were also a small number of left-wing farmer's
unions.