Chalmers Johnson once wrote,
"the fascinating problem of the study of modern Japanese government (and a source of its considerable intellectual attraction) is the fact that the formal and overt aspects of its institutions are misleading as guides to how the society actually works." Johnson, Japan's Public Policy Companies (Washington, D.C: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978, p.9)
Chalmers Johnson was a leading figure among the so-called "revisionists" of Japan. He considered Japan to be a different kind of political system from other advanced industrial democracies. Unfortunately, he was right. Japan has all the formal rules and institutions of democracy, but it is not a democracy. A renowned Yale political scientist Robert Dahl, who developed a more "scientific" definition of democracy (polyarchy, he called it), came up with a laundry list of institutions a country needs to possess before it can be considered democracy. According to this list, Japan is a democracy.
So, Japan was a democracy where there was no change of power. Think how ridiculous this is. Political scientists even came up with a convenient concept of “one-party dominant democracy.”
Why did political scientists fail to tell the difference? Or rather, why did they refuse to see the difference? Theoretically, that’s because we were all institutionalists of a very narrow-minded kind. We believed that formal democratic institutions shaped the incentive structure of political actors in such ways that they would take into consideration what voters wanted. Democratic institutions can only function when certain conditions are met. Yes, political scientists would list things such as “free press.” But we haven’t taken this sufficiently seriously.
In Japan, no journalist would be shot in the broad daylight like what used to happen in Sicily or still happens in a country like Russia. But a journalist can suffer serious economic consequences if he or she really try to do investigative journalism. Within the phenomenally well-paid journalists in the main newspapers and TV networks are expected NOT to engage in journalism. Their job is to control the flow of information so that the status quo would be maintained. This works because there are informal but extremely credible system of rewards and punishment. All major newspapers, TV networks and the bureaucracy all gain tremendously from Japan’s information cartel. All senior politicians who tried to challenge the status quo would be charged for minor issues blown out of proportion by the media working closely with the prosecutor’s office. Yes, the system of check and balance is written in the law, but no politician would even mention it, because he might then be the next one to take the fall.
