JAPANESE IMPERIALISM TODAY - JON HALLIDAY & GAVAN MCCORMACK

As Kuznets, a man who I’m not really a fan of, once said, “there are four types of economies in the world: Developed, Undeveloped, Argentina and Japan” which, while simplistic, is a pithy way to explain how weird the Japanese economy and political system can seem to an outsider. As someone who now lives in Japan, I’ve really been trying to understand the country and history more and when I found this book in a bookstore here, it seemed like a real blessing. McCormack and Halliday are Marxists and thorough, this book is full of tables and charts and real, materialistic analysis. It draws political conclusions and highlights implications while grounding itself in actual facts and figures. In this way, it really reminded me of Nkrumah’s Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Beyond their shared commitment to deep analysis, both books were also written in the period between the end of WWII and the neoliberal turn in the 70s and 80s, so while both are excellent, they are missing a more current piece. JIT came out in ‘72, so it’s out of date in many ways but still quite fascinating. It was very telling to read how quickly Japan fell under US control was was used as a tool for American imperialism post WWII. It was telling to see how important Japan was in backing up Indonesia and South Korea, both major American projects (and both sites of enormous American-lead genocides). It was fascinating to see how Japan collaborated on the Vietnam war as well as “aid” schemes that trapped East Asia in conditions favorable to Japan and the US. It was illuminating to see the ways Imperial Japanese bureaucrats were folded into the new political order, like the Nazis of West Germany. The book is very clear-eyed and informative about Japanese Imperialism from Korea to Okinawa and beyond. It’s good at showing how this type of imperialism has a long history in Japan and how it functions today. It’s always so devastatingly sad to read about the early decades of the Cold War, to see how brutal and monsterous the US and its allies were and to imagine what sort of world we could have had if some of our leaders weren’t so committed to a political and economic reality that demands so much of the world live terrible conditions. It’s interesting to think about where Japan went after this book was finished. This book focuses on the time after WWII and the ways Japan rebuilt itself politically and economically. Shortly after the book was published, by the 80’s Japan was so strong economically that people in the US were afraid they would become the world’s superpower. In the decades since then, for the last 30 years or so, they’ve basically been stagnant and experienced no growth. Likewise, these days it appears that US global hegemony is weakening and we’re moving to a multi-polar world, in terms of power. If that happens Japan will be an interesting case, given its ties to both the United States and China. I can’t pretend to know what will happen there, I would love an updated version of this book to help me think through how this might go down. Tho, until I find that book, I will remain thankful to Halliday and McCormack for providing clear material analysis of the place I live.