(eBook PDF) Critical Issues in

Contemporary Japan 2nd Edition

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/download/ebook-pdf-critical-issues-in-contemporary-japan-2
nd-edition/
 Contents vii
18 Violence in schools: tensions between ‘the individual’ and ‘the group’ in the
Japanese education system 232
ROBERT W. ASPINALL

19 Hidden behind Tokyo: observations on the rest of Japan 243

JOHN MOCK

PART V
Reforming Japan? 261

20 Seeking to change Japanese society through legal reform 263

MATTHEW J. WILSON

21 Parochialism: Japan’s failure to internationalize 274

ROBERT DUJARRIC AND AYUMI TAKENAKA

22 What’s behind what ails Japan 285

DAVID LEHENY

23 Whither Abe’s Japan? 297

JEFF KINGSTON

Index 308
Illustrations

Figures
3.1 Celebrating a courthouse victory that opened the door to citizenship for
thousands 32
3.2 Anti-nuclear demonstrators are hemmed in by police at a central Tokyo rally
following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. 40
6.1 Dengen Sanpo from its inception (in hundreds of millions of yen) 82
7.1 Average electricity prices and component expenditure trends (1951–2011) 92
12.1 Japanese stamps featuring the Northern Territories 165
12.2 Northern Territories Day newspaper advertisement 166
13.1 Picture of sit-in from Okinawa Times 177
13.2 Henoko action 178
19.1 Consolidation in Akita Prefecture 244
19.2 Population of Japan: historic and projected 247
19.3 Population of Akita: historic and projected 247
19.4 Japan and Akita: percentage of 65+ population 248
19.5a High school and DID distribution in Akita 252
19.5b High school and DID distribution in Akita 253
19.6 Snow can be a complicating factor outside of metropolitan Japan 254

Tables
7.1 Diet committee voting on amendments to the Electric Power Industry Law by
political party 94
7.2 Total cash contributions to LDP (executives, subsidiaries, corporate) 95
9.1 Growth of Renewable Energy in Japan 117
9.2 Japan’s Energy Self Sufficiency in Comparative Perspective, 2000–2016 118
9.3 Japan’s Import Reliance in Comparative Perspective, 2016 119
9.4 Tokyo Metro Resident Survey of Priorities, 2012–2017 126
12.1 Rejected offers of territorial concessions, 1945–2013 165
19.1 Statistical Overview, Tokyo, Akita and national average 245

Maps
1 Map of Japan xix
2 Nuclear power plant operational status map, July 2011 73
Contributors

Daniel P. Aldrich is Director, Security and Resilience Studies Program and Professor in Political
Science and Public Policy at Northeastern University. He has published four books including
Site Fights (2008), Building Resilience (2012), Resilience and Recovery in Asian Disasters
(2014) and Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities after Disaster (2015). His newest
book Black Wave: How Connections and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters is forth-
coming. His research has been funded by the Abe Foundation, IIE Fulbright Foundation, the
National Science Foundation, the Reischauer Institute at Harvard University and the East Asia
Institute Fellowship.
Robert W. Aspinall is a Professor in the Center for Global Education at Doshisha University,
Kyoto, where he is in charge of social science subjects taught in the medium of English.
He has masters’ degrees from the University of Manchester and the University of Essex,
and a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He was a Professor in the Department of
Social Systems, Shiga University from 2001 to 2016, and a visiting lecturer in the
Faculty of Language and Culture at Nagoya University from 1998 to 2001. Prior to his
university career he had experience teaching in secondary schools in England (where he
taught history and politics) and Japan (where he taught English language on the JET
program). He is the author of Teachers Unions and the Politics of Education in Japan
(2001) and International Education Policy in Japan in an Age of Globalisation and Risk
(2013).
Tina Burrett is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia
University, Japan. Her recent publications include “Russian State Television Coverage of
the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Demo-
cratization, 2018, “Abe Road: Comparing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Leader-
ship of his First and Second Governments,” Parliamentary Affairs, 2017 and “Mixed
Signals: Democratisation and the Myanmar Media,” Government and Opposition, 2017.
Kyle Cleveland is a sociologist at Temple University, Japan Campus in Tokyo. As the
founding Director of TUJ’s Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, he organizes
lecture series and symposia related to contemporary political issues. He is the faculty
director of study abroad and honors programming, through which he has supervised
special programs in Japanese popular culture and visual media studies. His research
focuses on ideology and social change in Japan, popular culture, transglobal ethnic
identity and the politics of nuclear energy. He is co-editing a volume on the Tohoku
disasters of 2011 and working on a book on the international response to the Fukushima
nuclear crisis.
x Contributors
Andrew DeWit is Professor of Comparative Public Policy and Local Public Finance at Rikkyo
University’s School of Economic Policy Studies. His teaching and research examine the
fiscal, administrative and other evidence of Japan’s climate and energy initiatives, especially as
they relate to building resilience against climate change. He has consulted with the OECD on
green cities and Japan’s local revitalization, including its projects to harness domestic energy
endowments. His most recent work includes ‘Japan: Response of policy entrepreneurs to an
energy crisis’, in Meeting the Paris Mandate: A Cross-National Comparison of Energy Policy-
Making, ed. Patrice Geoffron, Lorna Greening and Raphael Heffron (Berlin: Springer-Verlag,
forthcoming January 2019).
Alexis Dudden is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. She is author of
Troubled Apologies among Japan, Korea, and the United States (2008). Her current
research focuses on the modern history of oceans and islands in Northeast Asia.
Robert Dujarric is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple Uni-
versity, Japan Campus, in Tokyo. He is a former Council on Foreign Relations (Hitachi)
International Affairs Fellow. He has worked in North America, Europe, and Asia in finance
and policy research. He was raised in Paris and New York. He is a graduate of Harvard
College and holds an MBA from Yale University. He has published several books and
articles, including America’s Inadvertent Empire (with William E. Odom, 2004). For more
information, visit www.tuj.ac.jp/icas/the-institute/staff/.
Aurelia George Mulgan is a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of New South Wales, Canberra. Amongst her many publications, she has written
seven single-authored books on Japanese politics and political economy including The Abe
Administration and the Rise of the Prime Ministerial Executive (Routledge, 2017), Ozawa
Ichiro and Japanese Politics: Old versus New (Routledge, 2014), Power and Pork: A
Japanese Political Life (2006), Japan’s Failed Revolution: Koizumi and the Politics of
Economic Reform (2002) and Japan’s Interventionist State: MAFF and the Agricultural
Policy Regime (Routledge/Curzon, 2005). She is also joint-editor with Masayoshi Honma of
The Political Economy of Japanese Trade Policy (2015). In 1990 she was awarded the J. G.
Crawford Award at the ANU for outstanding work on Japanese political economy, in 2001
an Ohira Memorial Prize for her book on Japanese agricultural politics and in 2010 the
Toshiba Prize for the best article published in the British Association of Japanese Studies
journal Japan Forum.
Sachiko Horiguchi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Temple University Japan
Campus. She earned her DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. Her
main research interests lie in the social and medical anthropology of Japanese society and
culture, with particular focus on youth mental health issues in contemporary Japan. Her
recent works include a chapter in Life Course, Happiness and Well-Being in Japan
(Routledge, 2017), entitled “‘Unhappy’ and Isolated Youth in the Midst of Social Change:
Representations and Subjective Experiences of hikikomori in Japan.”
Tin Tin Htun is from Burma/Myanmar. She has been teaching gender studies courses at
Temple University, Japan Campus for over 14 years. She is currently doing a research on
feminism and women’s activism in Burma. Her publications include “Social Identities of
Minority Others in Japan: Listening to the Narratives of Ainu, Buraku and Zainichi Koreans
in Japan,” Japan Forum 24.1 (2012); “Inequality in Japan,” in Encyclopedia of Race and
Racism, 2nd edn (2013), vol. 2; and “Mixed Marriage in Colonial Burma: National Identity
 Contributors xi
and Nationhood at Risk,” in Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: Global Perspectives on
Marriage, Crisis, and Nation (2016).
Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies and professor of history at Temple University,
Japan Campus. Most recently he co-edited Japan’s Foreign Relations with Asia (2018) and
edited Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2017), Asian Nationalisms
Reconsidered (Routledge, 2016), Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2014)
and Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis (Routledge 2012). Recent monographs include
Nationalism in Asia: A History since 1945 (2016) and Japan (2018)
David Leheny is Professor in the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University.
He is the author of Empire of Hope: The Sentimental Politics of Japanese Decline (2018);
Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan (2006); and
The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure (2003). He
previously held the Henry Wendt III ’55 Professorship of East Asian Studies at Princeton
University, and was an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison.
David McNeill has been a foreign correspondent in Japan since 2001 and currently writes for
The Irish Times and The Economist. He was previously a correspondent with The Chronicle
of Higher Education and The Independent. He was awarded a PhD in 1998 from Napier
University in Edinburgh and has taught at universities in Ireland, Britain and China. He
currently teaches media and politics at Sophia University in Tokyo. He is a former board
member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and co-author of Strong in the Rain:
Surviving Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster (2012).
John Mock is a social anthropologist who has lived and worked in the United States and
Japan. After being ‘retired’ from the University of Tsukuba, he now teaches at Temple
University, Japan. He is author of Culture, Community and Change in a Sapporo Neighbor-
hood 1925–88: Hanayama (1999).
Akihiro Ogawa is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute.
He completed a Ph.D. in anthropology in 2004 at Cornell University, followed by two years
of postdoctoral work at Harvard University’s Program on US–Japan Relations and Depart-
ment of Anthropology. He then taught at Stockholm University, Sweden, from 2007 to 2015.
His major research interest is in contemporary Japanese society, focusing on civil society. He
is the author of two books: the award-winning The Failure of Civil Society?: The Third Sector
and the State in Contemporary Japan (2009) and Lifelong Learning in Neoliberal Japan:
Risk, Knowledge, and Community (2015). He recently edited the Routledge Handbook of Civil
Society in Asia (Routledge, 2017). He writes extensively on politics, social movements and
peace.
Lawrence Repeta has served as a lawyer, business executive and law professor in Japan and
the United States. He retired from the Meiji University law faculty in 2017. The primary
focus of his advocacy and research is transparency in government. He has served on the
board of directors of Information Clearinghouse Japan, an NGO devoted to promoting open
government in Japan (www.clearing-house.org) and the Japan Civil Liberties Union (www.
jclu.org). He has written widely on Japanese law issues, especially in relation to constitu-
tional rights. Publications include “Chilling Effects on News Reporting in Japan’s ‘Anon-
ymous Society’,” in Kingston (ed.) Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (with Yasuomi
Sawa, Routledge 2017), “State Power versus Individual Freedom: Japan’s Constitutional
xii Contributors
Past, Present, and Possible Futures,” in Baldwin and Allison (eds.) Japan: The Precarious
Future (with Colin P. A. Jones, 2015), and “Reserved Seats on Japan’s Supreme Court,”
(2011). He is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law and member of the
Washington State Bar Association.
Sven Saaler is Professor of Modern Japanese History at Sophia University and Representative
of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Tokyo. He was formerly Head of the Humanities
Section of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) and Associate Professor at the
University of Tokyo. He is author of Politics, Memory and Public Opinion (2005) and co-
author/co-editor of Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History (2007), The Power of Memory in
Modern Japan (2008), Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History (2011), Under Eagle Eyes:
Lithographs, Drawings and Photographs from the Prussian Expedition to Japan, 1860–61 (in
German, Japanese and English, 2011), Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German
Relations, 1860–2010 (2017) and the Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History (2018).
Paul J. Scalise is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, an
Adjunct Fellow at the Institute at Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University (Japan
Campus) and an independent contractor to several international consulting firms. Dr. Scalise
spent several years with such financial institutions as Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Japan
Ltd (DrKW) and UBS Global Asset Management as an equity research analyst focusing on
the Japanese energy and transportation sectors.
Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell and at
NYU’s Asia/Pacific/American Center, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History at
Binghamton University and Editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal apjjf/org. His interests
include the modern and contemporary geopolitics, political economy and history of China,
Japan and the Asia Pacific. His books include China in Revolution: The Yenan Way
Revisited (1995); Chinese Village, Socialist State (1993); Censoring History: Citizenship
and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States (2000); The Atomic Bomb: Voices
from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1990); Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance
(2010). He is completing a book on Apple, Foxconn and Contemporary Chinese Workers.
Arthur Stockwin was born in Great Britain and has a first degree in Philosophy, Politics and
Economics from the University of Oxford and a doctorate in International Relations from
the Australian National University, Canberra. Between 1964 and 1981 he taught in the
Department of Political Science of the Australian National University. Between 1982 and
his retirement in 2003, he was Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and Director of
the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford. In 1994–5 he was
President of the British Association of Japanese Studies. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His publications include The Japanese Socialist
Party and Neutralism (1968), Japan and Australia in the Seventies (editor, 1973), Dynamic
and Immobilist Politics in Japan (editor and part-author, 1988), Dictionary of the Modern
Politics of Japan (2003), Collected Writings of J. A. A. Stockwin: The Politics and Political
Environment of Japan (2004), Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Resurgent Economy
(4th rev. edn, 2008) and Japanese Foreign Policy and Understanding Japanese Politics:
The Writings of J. A. A. Stockwin (2012).
Ayumi Takenaka is a sociologist specializing in immigration and now food studies. Having
taught sociology in the US and the UK, she will join the Faculty of Global Studies at
Ritsumeikan University.
 Contributors xiii
Matthew J. Wilson draws upon 30 years of international experience in legal, business and
academic matters in the United States, Asia and the Pacific. Wilson specializes in interna-
tional business law, intellectual property law, commercial litigation, international dispute
resolution, comparative law and Japanese law. His publications include articles and book
chapters in both English and Japanese. He is completely fluent in Japanese. Wilson speaks
frequently in the United States and Asia about transnational and domestic US legal matters,
and has appeared on primetime network television and radio in Asia as a legal expert.
Having joined the University of Akron in 2014, Wilson served as Law School Dean for two
years and then University President for two years. Prior to that time, Wilson served as
Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming (2009–14); a
distinguished international scholar from Kyung Hee University Law School in Seoul
(2011–14); Senior Associate Dean and General Counsel at Temple University Japan in
Tokyo (2003–9). Before entering academia over a decade ago, Wilson practiced law in
Florida at a major law firm and as general counsel for a telecommunications/Internet firm.
Prior to this time, Wilson accumulated extensive business experience in Japan working at a
large electronics manufacturer, hydrological and meteorological instruments maker and a
multinational medical devices company.
Introduction
Jeff Kingston

Why should we study Japan? The world’s third-largest economy plays a key role in the
rising Asia story as a crucial trading partner and investor, competing for resources,
markets and geopolitical influence. Japan remains, however, poorly understood, with
limited recognition of its fundamental strengths and enormous contributions to regional
stability and global development. Despite two decades of sluggish growth, the “declining
Japan” story has been overstated, a narrative that overlooks its still enormous economic
heft. It is the world’s top creditor nation; many of its companies are world leaders in their
sectors; it is at the cutting edge of technological innovation, especially in the renewable
energy and environmental industries; its soft power and fashion trends appeal to youth the
world over; and there is considerable capacity for reform despite institutional inertia and
conservative inclinations. It is, however, a nation going through a twenty-first-century
identity crisis. The halcyon days of the economic miracle in the 1950s–60s and triumph-
alist dreams of a Pax Nipponica prevalent in the late 1980s have faded into history as
clouds gather on the horizon.
Knowing more about Japan is important because what happens here matters a great
deal, especially to Asia, the world’s most dynamic and populous region. Japan is the
fulcrum of the burgeoning Asian economy and regional supply chain, a fact underscored
in the aftermath of the 3/11 disaster as assembly factories in China and South Korea shut
down because the flow of high-tech speciality widgets produced in Japan’s tsunami-
devastated northeast was suddenly interrupted—and with typical efficiency restored far
sooner than anyone expected.
In the early 2013 cycle of media coverage, the “Japan in demise” narrative gave way to
more euphoric coverage; The Economist cover, for example, depicted Shinzo Abe as
Superman (The Economist May 18, 2013). “Abenomics” vaulted into the global lexicon in
2013, symbolizing a new policy dynamism aimed at reviving the economy. The Bank of
Japan’s bold monetary easing took global markets and media by storm, transforming the
national reputation for cautious consensus. However, as we discuss in the chapters to
follow, the narrative is far more complex and interesting than the fascination with a
booming stock market suggests.
In fact, recent jubilation has only partially dispelled the malaise that haunts contempor-
ary Japan. There is no shortage of doom and gloom stories in a country where the young
are said to have no dreams, women remain marginalized, jobs and families are less stable
and traditions seem in retreat. The negative fiscal and economic consequences of a rapidly
 Introduction xv
aging society also weigh heavily on perceptions about Japan’s future. Eclipsed by China
in the early twenty-first century and worried that Japan-bashing (trade friction in the
1980s) has given way to Japan-passing (US prioritization of China), some Japanese also
feel anxious about the shifting geopolitics of Asia and underappreciated by Washington.
Can Japan regain its mojo?
Crises beget action, albeit not always apt. The lost decades of economic stagnation and
apparent policy drift in the 1990s and 2000s, the rise of China and the shocking disasters
of March 11, 2011—tsunami and nuclear—have become catalysts for renovation. In a
remarkable and rare political comeback, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (2006– 7, 2012–)
strode back onto the national stage for the second time at the end of 2012, riding a wave
of voter disillusionment over the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) mostly broken
promises and inept governance. The DPJ had gained control of both houses of the Diet
(national parliament) in 2009, interrupting the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) near
monopoly on political power since 1955. The DPJ promised to focus on improving
people’s lives and rectify a gamut of social problems, but disappointed supporters because
it never got traction on its reform agenda. In addition, tensions with China escalated
sharply in 2012 due to the government’s decision to nationalize disputed islands in the
East China Sea, making national security a major campaign issue that played to the LDP’s
advantage.
As a result, the business-friendly conservative LDP regained power and implemented
Abenomics, including huge increases in the money supply and debt-financed public works
spending. The LDP has long favoured such spending, which helps explain why Japan’s
public debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio reached an incredible 240%. The twin
monetary and fiscal stimuli are designed to provide an opening for “structural reforms”—
an expansive concept that ranges from promoting trade liberalization, ending utility
monopolies and sweeping deregulation to improving women’s status, education and
boosting immigration, among other proposals.
Making headway on this agenda has been difficult and contentious, but this is the litmus
test of whether Abenomics is a chimera of reform or can really deliver sustainable growth.
Is it a quick fix providing welfare for the wealthy or can it deliver on its inflation and
investment targets and promised restructuring while improving productivity and competi-
tiveness, boosting wages, narrowing income disparities and expanding good jobs? So far
Abenomics has overpromised and underdelivered. With over one-quarter of the population
aged 65 or over mostly living on fixed incomes and more than one-third of the workforce
mired in low-paid, non-regular jobs, inflation has proved elusive and consumption
stagnant because wages and household income have not increased. Thus far, Abenomics
appears to be an inadequate remedy. The stakes are very high and whether the gamble
pays off will have a considerable impact on Japan’s economic prospects. Yet there is much
more to be understood about the return of the LDP than the current business news,
because Japan’s future very much depends on its past and overcoming obstacles to
regional reconciliation.
Japan remains a nation where prominent political leaders, especially in the LDP, are still
struggling to come to terms with wartime history and as a result regional ties remain
fraught because the past keeps haunting the present. Overall, nationalist sentiments among
Japanese seem relatively muted compared to those of East Asian neighbors.
However, uncertainties about Japan’s future, North Korean nuclear weapons and the
prospects of Chinese hegemony have aroused patriotic passions, putting wind into the
sails of Abe’s agenda of revising the pacifist Constitution. Abe’s supporters call this a
xvi Introduction
sensible policy, stressing that Japan lives in a dangerous neighborhood and should
unshackle its armed forces. Critics oppose sacrificing this iconic symbol of post-World
War II Japan’s redemption and worry that constitutional revision will roil the region and
erode civil liberties.
Battles over the Constitution are also battles over the past. The contenders are a vocal
and now ascendant minority who deny or minimize Japan’s wartime atrocities, justify its
actions and feel it has been unfairly singled out for criticism versus the majority who
believe it is important for the nation to assume the burdens of history and express
contrition about the unjustifiable devastation caused by Japan’s imperialist rampage
across Asia (1931–45). Contemporary nationalists are eager to turn the page on this
history, but most Japanese still think there are important lessons to be learned from
Japan’s authoritarian era of militarism, aggression and political repression at home. Some
Japanese resent how their neighbors use the past to badger and belittle Japan, and keep it
squirming uncomfortably on the hook of history despite numerous apologies and efforts at
restitution. However, others understand that Japan has handed the hammer of history to
victims of Japanese aggression precisely because of incomplete acknowledgement of
responsibility and comments by prominent politicians and pundits disparaging and
disavowing the numerous apologies made. To some extent Japan has tried to accept
responsibility and atone for its misdeeds, but conservatives like PM Abe have actively
repudiated such gestures of reconciliation and repeatedly voice views that reignite Japan’s
history problem. Reinterpreting this tragic history while seeking dignity in denial or
blurring war memory and responsibility tramples on the dignity of the nations that
suffered most from Japan’s depredations and remains a dead end for regional relations in
East Asia. Where are the extraordinary acts and sites of memory that have redeemed
Germany in the eyes of former adversaries and facilitated its reintegration in Europe?
Japan’s unequivocal acceptance by East Asian neighbors is unattainable, but this is no
excuse for avoiding a forthright reckoning and grand gestures of atonement. There are
possibilities and benefits of pursuing reconciliation that will remain unrealized in the
absence of a more remarkable remembering and sincere remorse.
Many Japanese people are often quite introspective and critical of national shortcomings.
While many also take pride in their society, they tend to be reticent about tooting their own
horn; the value of modesty and understatement is deeply ingrained and endearingly so.
However, perhaps this is also one reason Japan remains an enigmatic society: there are few
Japanese businessmen, politicians or public intellectuals who command attention on the
international stage and can influence knowledge and opinions about Japan.
Moreover, few non-specialists have the time to peel back the layers behind the
headlines or probe beneath prevailing stereotypes to understand what may seem puzzling
or inscrutable. Hence the purpose of this book, geared towards a broad audience of readers
with an interest in knowing more about a nation of consequence, a country both
fundamentally similar to and yet profoundly different from other advanced industrialized
nations, facing a litany of challenges familiar to us all. In this collection, we assume no
prior knowledge about Japan. Our aim is to challenge assumptions and facile impressions
while imparting the perceptions of experts about their subjects in a succinct and accessible
style. We do not presume to present a “Japanese” view of their world, but rather offer a
diverse range of critical analyses of key issues that take on prevailing monolithic
representations that are at odds with Japan’s evident diversity.
Everywhere one goes “the Japanese” is a frequent refrain, as if 126 million people all
march to the same beat and sing from the same hymnal. Japanese themselves frequently
 Introduction xvii
reinforce this homogenized image by relying on monolithic terms. We understand that
stereotyping and generalizations can be a convenient shorthand, but one that can be
misleading and reinforce dubious assumptions. Our aim is not to dismiss the cohesiveness
of Japanese society or to overstate how diverse it is or overlook pressures to conform, but
rather to suggest that readers bear in mind that Japan as a unifying and unvarying idea is
not consistently evident in reality.
While China grabs the most attention, Japan is a leading economic and military power
in Asia and boasts the region’s highest standard of living despite recent travails. Japan can
take pride in a robust democracy and relatively egalitarian society. Japan’s environmental
challenges are relatively mild compared to the rest of Asia’s problems of pollution and
urban congestion. Violent crimes are rare and random attacks targeting religious, ethnic or
sexual minorities are virtually unheard of. While the rapid aging of the population
certainly poses various policy challenges, it is a useful reminder that Japanese enjoy the
greatest longevity in Asia, owing much to good medical care and universal health
insurance. Japan’s varied and innovative policy responses to these problems represent an
important model and inspiration for other nations that are or will be facing similar
problems. Moreover, with the exception of South Korea, no other Asian nation comes
close to Japan in terms of soft power, from its huge anime, gaming, music and fashion
industries to its renowned cuisine, hospitality and resilient traditions. However, it is also
an archipelago vulnerable to natural disaster, regularly experiencing powerful earthquakes,
typhoons and, on occasion, massive tsunami.
In March 2011, as the world looked on in horror at the tsunami devastation wrought on
communities along the nation’s northeast coast, it saw what social cohesion looks like.
Japanese survivors demonstrated a dignity and gutsiness under duress that commanded our
admiration. People who lost everything valuable in their lives somehow managed to
persevere and set about restoring a semblance of normalcy to a world ripped asunder.
However, the slow recovery in the region means that the natural disaster has become a
symbol of government dysfunction and the failure of political leaders to put aside party
squabbles and prioritize the public interest. The ongoing problems besetting the deconta-
mination and decommissioning of Fukushima’s ruined reactors help explain lingering
grassroots anxieties about the safety of nuclear power even as the government is resuming
nuclear power generation and selling reactors abroad. Although there was considerable
speculation that 3/11 might be a watershed in modern Japanese history, these hopes have
faded as what initially seemed urgent was overtaken by other priorities, and policies
settled back into familiar ruts.
Whither Japan? This is a recurring question/theme that defies simple answers or firm
predictions, but it is a particularly pressing issue in twenty-first-century Japan and
constitutes a common thread in our chapters. We examine how citizens, parties, civic
organizations, social movements, business and bureaucratic institutions are contesting and
promoting competing agendas that are shaping emerging realities and future outcomes.
This is why our endeavour is a valuable resource for comprehending a Japan in flux,
where ongoing significant and sometimes sweeping transformations face significant
obstacles that may divert, dilute or otherwise stymie anticipated consequences. These
trajectories of change are not onward and upward, and in Japan are often gradual,
incremental and zigzagging.
Naturally we think that Japan matters for many reasons and we believe that scholarly
assessments of this complex society deserve more prominence in public discourse. Media
coverage is very useful to get a quick understanding of the new issue of the moment, but
xviii Introduction
often lacks the contextual perspective that helps promote deeper appreciation of what is
going on and what it portends. Journalists based in Japan are often exceptionally knowl-
edgeable, but editors back home need stories to which domestic audiences can relate and
prefer attention-grabbing headlines. Hence the tendency to hype the weird or whacky and
analyze Japan in terms of cultural stereotypes. Observed Japan often relies on tropes about
how the traditional shapes the contemporary world. Culture and tradition do matter, but
the nuances are not easily conveyed in the television sound bite or 600-word story
produced on a tight deadline. There are also far fewer international journalists based in
Japan compared to a decade ago, which means that in-depth knowledge is often lacking
and discussions of Japan are more prone to caricature.
The idea motivating this project was to assemble a group of scholars, both eminent and
rising, and ask them to write about their subject as succinctly and engagingly as possible, with
a minimum of the usual academic paraphernalia, targeting an audience of non-specialists and
students. We are not trying to provide simple answers to the complexities of contemporary
Japan, but to avoid the pitfalls of excessive problematizing and jargon in academic work that
inhibits clear writing and often leaves many readers in the dark and in despair. The 23 chapters
here deliver an encompassing and scrutinizing analysis of contemporary Japan that we believe
is imperative to understanding what is going on here in the early twenty-first century and
where it is going. Most of these have been revised and updated for this second edition. The
authors present fresh thinking about how to interpret Japan’s post-World War II trajectories
and simultaneous transformations while reminding us about elements of continuity and
persistence. We are a diverse group of scholars from eight countries, most resident in Japan,
representing an array of social science disciplines: political science (seven), history (four),
anthropology (three), sociology (three), law (two) and public policy (two). As such, our book
delivers an interdisciplinary and critical interpretation based on extensive and ongoing
research and working and living experiences in Japan.
The book is organized into five sections by thematic content: political environment; nuclear
and renewable energy; international dynamics; social dilemmas; and reforming Japan. These
subject areas help clarify what is indispensable to understanding the urgent issues with which
Japanese people and their government are grappling and what they bode for the future.
The first section, on political environment, includes five chapters that examine politics from
different angles: the party system, trade, the judiciary, civil society and the media. This is a story
mostly of party dysfunction and fragmentation, policy immobilism, ossified institutions, co-
optation and missed opportunities interrupted by spurts of concerted action and sweeping reform.
The second section, on nuclear and renewable energy, revisits and updates the con-
troversies, policy considerations and divisive perspectives about which the same four
authors wrote in Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan (Routledge, 2012); we still
have our disagreements.
The third section, on international dynamics, focuses on Japan’s international relations
and how they remain hostage to history. The chapters feature Japan’s troubled relations
with China, Korea and Russia, assessment of the historical context that underlies these
contemporary disputes and the problems involving the US military presence on Okinawa.
The fourth section, on social dilemmas, includes six chapters that evaluate salient issues
confronting Japanese society. It is difficult comprehensively to cover such a sprawling and
fascinating subject, but these probing essays cover a lot of ground and engage many of the
ongoing debates in Japan. We elucidate topics ranging from an aging and shrinking
population, immigration, minorities and the status of women to mental health care,
school violence and rural depopulation.
 Introduction xix
Finally, the last section presents four chapters, including a new additional chapter
assessing the impact of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, about reform discourse within Japan
and about Japan. Although popular perceptions focus on gridlock and missed opportu-
nities, Japan’s legal system has embarked on an ambitious agenda of reforms aimed at
transforming it from a nation featuring rule by law to a nation of the rule of law; this is a
work in progress. While Japan may not live up to the expectations and aspirations of
many observers, we conclude this volume by questioning some of the assumptions that
drive the heated discourse about what ails Japan.

ds
CHINA RUSSIA a n
Isl
uril
K
NORTHERN
TERRITORIES
Vladivoslok Sapporo

NORTH
KOREA Akita
Sea of
Pyongyang japan
Sendai

Seoul
Takeshima/
Dokdo Fukushima Dalchi
Kyoto
SOUTH Islands
Tokyo
Yellow KOREA Kobe
Sea Hiroshima Nagoye
Yokohama

Fukuoka Osaka

Nagasaki

Major regions of
Japan
East China
Sea Hokkaldō
Tōhoku
ds

Kantō
an
Isl

CHūbu
yū

kansai
ūk
Ry

Chūgoku
Shikoku
Senkaku/ OKINAWA
Kyūshū
Diaoyu
Islands

Map 1 Map of Japan

This page intentionally left blank
Part I

Political environment
This page intentionally left blank
1 Japanese politics
Mainstream or exotic?
Arthur Stockwin

Introduction
The politics of Japan is often regarded, particularly in Western media, as obscure and
radically difficult to understand, presenting conceptual difficulties far greater than those of
political systems closer to home. A young BBC journalist once told me that whenever
some aspect of Japanese politics came up, the newsroom entered a mode of collective
panic, and journalists would search frantically for a conceptual peg on which to hang a
coherent argument about the limited facts at their disposal. In my experience these pegs
would often turn out to be clichés of dubious value, such as that “Japan is a consensus
society,” or that “Politics in Japan is governed by questions of face.”
In contrast, many political scientists, taking their cue from economics, tend to shun
explanations dependent on essentialist reasoning or what are assumed to be “cultural”
characteristics of a given population. It is intriguing to compare two works in English on
the Japanese political system, published 18 years apart: J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances
McCall Rosenbluth, Japan’s Political Marketplace (Ramseyer and Rosenbluth 1993), and
Ellis Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP (Krauss and
Pekkanen 2011). The two books develop contrasting—even diametrically opposed—
arguments concerning the dynamics of Japanese party politics.
Ramseyer and Rosenbluth rest their analysis on a “principal-agent” variant of rational choice
theory, and maintain that reforming the Lower House electoral system from a single non-
transferable vote in multi-member districts to a mixed system based predominantly on single-
member districts would inevitably lead to a drastic upheaval in the way parties behaved, so that
factions (habatsu), personal support machines (kōenkai), the powerful Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) Policy Affairs Research Council (seimu chōsakai) and other elements would rapidly
decline once the particular set of incentives embodied in the old electoral system were removed.
Krauss and Pekkanen, by contrast, able to reflect on several years of experience under the
new system, and using historical institutionalism, argue on the basis of detailed research that
the effects of the electoral system reform in 1994 were far less drastic, and far slower to
appear, than had been predicted by Ramseyer and Rosenbluth, even though at the same time
they were curiously deferential to the writers of the earlier book (Stockwin 2012). On the
other hand, the course of events from December 2012 negates the expectation of Krauss and
Pekkanen that the LDP was headed for a fall in the long term.
A comparison of the two books, therefore, reveals a major theoretical and empirical
gulf between them, so that we find here a significant controversy in the English language
literature on Japanese politics. Yet on one issue it is impossible to insert a sheet of tracing
paper between their two respective arguments.
4 Arthur Stockwin
In the words of Ramseyer and Rosenbluth:

[n]ot so long ago, scholars began their accounts of Japanese politics by invoking the
peculiarities of Japanese culture . . . Scholars lavished praise on the [cultural] theories
and elaborated them in essays about Japan’s need for consensus, about its rejection of
individualism and open conflict, about its Confucian fascination with loyalty, and
about its patriarchal legacy. To their credit, many Japan specialists eventually
recognised the circularity of much of this work.
(Ramseyer and Rosenbluth 1993: 2)

Krauss and Pekkanen would presumably agree with this opinion. Writing of habatsu,
they express their scepticism about “culture” as an explanatory variable in the following
terms: “[c]ultural determinist explanations for the factions have often been made, but they
are not sustainable in the face of the transformation of the factions over the first postwar
decades . . . [T]he culturalist claims [are] trying to explain change with a constant”
(Krauss and Pekkanen 2011: 266).
Culture, however, is a highly contested area because the term attracts contrasting
definitions. On the one hand, many political scientists assume that “cultural” means
essentialist, unquantifiable and very slow to change. Given this definition, they reasonably
reject most “cultural” explanations as spurious at worst and only marginally useful at best.
Social anthropologists, however, favor a quite different type of definition based on the
view that culture is changeable and contingent. The following definition is by Brian
McVeigh: culture is “‘something learned,’ or more specifically the arts, beliefs, customs,
socio-political institutions, and all other products of human creation and thought devel-
oped by a group of people at a particular time that is learned” (McVeigh 1998: 16).
If we adopt a concept of culture along these lines, then we may be able to reintroduce
the factor of culture into political analysis. We shall return to this in the final section of
this chapter, but, meanwhile, we need to examine why “culturalist” explanations of
Japanese society and politics have acquired such a bad name.

The Nihonjinron controversies

Reluctance to take “culture” seriously owes much to the frontal attack launched in the
early 1980s by scholars based in Australia and elsewhere on the literary and (pseudo-?)
scholarly genre popular at that time in Japan known as Nihonjinron, which is roughly
translated as “what it means to be Japanese.” Prominent among these writers were
Sugimoto Yoshio and Ross Mouer, both Australia-based sociologists whose approach
was firmly rooted in American social science of that period. Their best-known work,
published in 1986, was Images of Japanese Society (Mouer and Sugimoto 1986).
Another anti-culturalist writer of the same period, once again Australian but resident in
Italy, was Peter Dale, whose 1986 book The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness achieved a
succès de scandale (Dale 1986). He shared similar perceptions of Japanese society to
those of Sugimoto and Mouer, but applied a quite different methodology, being a multi-
lingual literary scholar steeped in European and East Asian cultures, classical and modern.
He defined the Nihonjinron in a broad sense as:

works of cultural nationalism concerned with the ostensible “uniqueness” of Japan in

any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
or large quantities of butter or cream at a meal. When obstructions
are removed, Nature makes immediate effort to adjust her forces.
Those who object to eating meat should study carefully and know
that the proper proportion of protein is supplied with each day’s
rations. The legumes—peas, beans, nuts, and grains—must be
supplied with the vegetables. While the wheat kernel contains twelve
per cent of protein, the white flour does not contain as large a
percentage and it will be noted by reference to Tables II and III, that
the majority of fruits and vegetables contain little nitrogenous
substance.
Unless the whole of the grain and the legumes form a goodly
proportion of the diet the danger is in consuming too large a bulk of
waste and too much starch in a purely vegetable diet. In a vegetarian
diet, one is liable to eat too freely of cereals; as a result, the liver
becomes clogged and torpid and the stomach and intestines are
deranged and rendered incapable of full digestion and absorption.
The clogged system refuses to assimilate more food.
It follows, therefore, that, unless one is a thorough student of
dietetics, the mixed diet is by far the safest to follow. One can better
run short of starch or fat in one day’s rations than to be short of
protein, because if the two to four ounces daily requirement is not
provided the tissues are consumed and the blood is impoverished. It
is a rare condition in which a reserve of glycogen and fat is not
stored in the system. On the other hand an excess of nitrogenous
foods calls for a very active circulation and plenty of oxygen in the
system.
It has been held that the vegetarian has a clearer brain, and, if this
be true, it may be due to the fact that he is not eating too much and
thus his system is not overloaded.
Experience, however, does not prove that he has greater mental,
physical, and moral power and efficiency. One’s brain, in fasting, is at
first clear and forceful, but the reason is unbalanced if the fast be too
prolonged.
 A complete diet may be selected without animal flesh, but
including animal products of eggs, milk, cream, and butter, together
with vegetables, fruits, cereals, and nuts, yet if the vegetable diet be
selected the legumes, the whole of the grains, and nuts must be
given their share in each day’s rations.

FOOTNOTES:
[9] For table of weights see Appendix.
 MENUS
Before giving any menus, let me first of all impress upon the
reader the importance of eating slowly, of good cheer, of light
conversation during a meal, and of thoroughly masticating the food.
Remember it is the food assimilated, which nourishes.
The following menus allow sufficient food for average conditions,
when the vital organs are normal.
Fruit, as previously stated, contains a very small quantity of
nutrition. It is more valuable for its diuretic effect; and to stimulate the
appetite; for this reason it may well be eaten before a meal.
The citrous fruits tend to neutralize too strong acids of the blood,
increasing its alkalinity. For this reason, also, they are best before a
meal, particularly before breakfast; they have a more laxative and
cleansing effect if eaten before the other food. The custom has been,
however, to eat fruits after dinner for dessert and they are so given
on the following menus.

The following diet is for one who has attained full

Sedentary growth and who walks a few blocks a day. The diet
Occupation may seem light, but where one is sitting indoor
most of the time, and has little outdoor exercise,
less waste protein is oxidized and less starch, fat and sugar are
required for heat and energy. If too much carbonaceous food is
consumed, one will store up too much and become too large. If more
protein is consumed than is oxidized and eliminated one is liable to
neuralgic or rheumatic difficulties.
Every person at sedentary employment should, without fail,
exercise each day as suggested on pages 104 to 107.
 In nearly all of the following menus coffee and tea have been
omitted because, as before stated, they are not foods, but stimulants
and the caffein and thein may overstimulate the nerves and the
heart. They retard digestion. Some other warm drink should be
substituted where there is digestive disturbance, or where the
digestion is weak. They should never at any time be used strong.
They are used for their pleasing flavor and where one has difficulty in
governing the desire for them, sufficient may be used to flavor the
water.
The following is a suggestive diet for one who is not active:
BREAKFAST
Fruit,
Cereal or Toast Coffee,
Dry toast (two slices), or two muffins or two gems.
If one has taken brisk exercise, as suggested above, or is to take
a brisk walk of a mile or two, a dish of oatmeal or some other cereal
with cream and sugar, may be added.
LUNCH
Creamed soup, or pureé with crackers or dry toast.
Sandwich and fruit, or two slices of bread and butter with fruit.
Cup of custard or one piece of cake and milk or two cookies.
A glass of milk or buttermilk.
If pureé of peas or beans is used the sandwich may be omitted and
one slice of bread is sufficient.
DINNER
Meat, gravy, potatoes or rice.
One vegetable, green peas, green beans, cauliflower, greens, corn.
(Do not use dried baked beans or dried peas with lean meat.)
Salad or fruit.
Pudding, easily digested, such as bread, rice, tapioca, cornstarch or
chocolate.
 After one year, the child should be given solid
The Young food very gradually to develop his digestive
Child functions as well as his teeth. The ferment, which
enables him to digest starches is beginning to
form, and he needs some cereal. A piece of dry toast or a dry
cracker will do. The year old child may also begin to drink cow’s milk.
One or two glasses a day may be given, until the child is at least
thirteen or fourteen years old.
The child must build muscle, bone and sinew and more protein is
required as soon as he begins to walk. Milk, eggs and cereals will
furnish this. The heavier protein diet is best given at eighteen months
to two years, in eggs, cooked soft. These soft cooked eggs are best
when mixed with broken, dry toast or broken crackers, because if dry
food is served with them, they will be better masticated, hence more
saliva be mixed with them. The habit of thorough mastication should
be cultivated at this period.
Oatmeal, thoroughly cooked, and shredded wheat, with cream and
sugar, ripe fruit, bread and butter, milk, soft cooked eggs (poached,
baked or boiled) constitute a rational diet.
If the child is hungry between meals, he should be fed at a regular
period, midway between breakfast and luncheon and between
luncheon and the evening meal. The food should be dry (toast or a
dry cracker) to require thorough and slow mastication.
Many object to “piecing” between meals, but if this piecing be done
at hours as regular as his meal hour, and the food be dry and well
masticated, it will readily digest and will not interfere with his meals.
The growing child needs more frequent meals than the adult. His
stomach is not so large, he is active in out door exercise, and
eliminates waste freely. He also requires much heat and energy. The
active child at outdoor play uses almost as much energy as the
laboring man.
The growing child craves sweets.
 Candy should not be taken at any time during the day, because
the digestive system needs rest. It is quickly converted into heat and
is best eaten immediately following a meal. Sugar may be spread
upon bread for the four o’clock lunch or a little candy may be eaten
at this time. Two to three pieces of candy an inch square are
sufficient.

This period begins with a girl, usually near the

The Developing, thirteenth year, and with a boy about fourteen.
or the There is no time in life when a mother needs to be
Adolescent so watchful of the diet. Growth is very rapid and
Period
much easily digested protein is needed to build
tissue, particularly to build the tissue of red
corpuscles.
The red meats, eggs, spinach and all kinds of greens are
important articles of diet at this time, because of the iron which they
contain. They should be supplied freely, particularly for developing
girls, or they may otherwise be inclined to anaemia, at this time.
Butter and milk are valuable and regular exercises with deep
breathing are imperative.

BREAKFAST.
Fruit.
Oatmeal or some other cereal, well cooked, with cream and sugar.
One egg, boiled, poached or baked (cooked soft), or chipped beef in
cream gravy.
Cereal coffee, toast coffee or hot water with cream and sugar.
Buttered toast, shredded wheat biscuit or triscuit.
LUNCH
Cream soup, bean soup, or pureé with crackers or dry toast.
Bread and butter.
 Fruit and cake, or rice pudding, or bread, tapioca, cocoanut or cereal
pudding of any kind, or a cup of custard.
DINNER
An ample portion of meat, (preferably red meat).
Potatoes.
Vegetables, preferably spinach, or greens of some kinds, or beets
boiled with the tops.
Graham bread.
Fruit with triscuit, graham bread toasted or graham wafers.
Candy. (small quantity)

A growing child is usually hungry upon returning from school, and

it is well to take a little easily digested food regularly but not sufficient
to destroy the appetite for the evening meal. An egg lemonade is
easily digested and satisfying. If active and exercising freely, craving
for sweets should be gratified, to a limited extent.

The young man, active in athletics, needs the

The Athlete same food as given for the adolescent, yet more in
quantity. He needs to drink water before his
training and at rest periods during the game. If he is too fat, he
should train off the superfluous amount by exercise and by
judiciously abstaining from much sugars, starches and fats. Diets for
reductions must be governed by the condition of the kidneys and the
digestive organs.
Deep breathing habits are imperative and he must be careful not
to overtax lungs or heart.

The man engaged in muscular work requires plenty of food; he

can digest foods which the professional or business man, or the man
 of sedentary habits, cannot. He will probably be
The Laboring able to drink coffee and tea without any
Man disturbance to nerves or to digestion. In his
muscular work he liberates the waste freely and
needs fats, starches and sugars to supply the heat and energy. This
is especially true of men who work in the fresh air; the muscular
action liberates waste and heat and the full breathing freely oxidizes
the waste, putting it in condition to be excreted through lungs, skin,
kidneys and intestines.
He should have more meat, eggs and nitrogenous foods, and he
also needs more carbonaceous foods to supply heat and energy.
Three hearty meals a day are necessary.
His muscular movements of the trunk keeps the circulation forceful
and the vital organs strong so that his diet may be almost as heavy
as that of the football player. Meat or eggs, two or even three times a
day, with tea or coffee, and even pie may be eaten with impunity. He
needs a good nourishing breakfast of bacon and eggs or meat, also
potatoes, or a liberal allowance of bread and butter, corn bread,
muffins, etc.

The term aged is not governed entirely by years.

The Aged If one stops physical and mental activity, the vital
forces recede, muscles and vital organs become
weak and inactive, the waste of the system is not fully relieved and
such a man at fifty-five is physically and mentally older than the man
who is in active business or is taking daily vigorous exercise, at
seventy or eighty. The latter may follow the same diet which he
follows at fifty, while the former should follow the diet of the old man
who has stopped active work. It should be simple, easily digested
and nutritious, and should be reduced in quantity.
BREAKFAST
Cereal, well cooked, with cream or sugar. Oatmeal is preferred
because it is laxative.
 One egg, boiled, poached or baked (soft).
One slice of toast.
Cereal coffee.
DINNER
Bouillon or soup.
Meat—small portion.
Potato (preferably baked).
Vegetable.
Cup custard, or bread, rice or cornmeal pudding with lemon cream
sauce.
SUPPER
Soup.
Bread and butter.
Stewed fruit.
Tea.

An old person needs little meat. The food should be masticated to

a pulp. Tea and coffee are best omitted, but if used to tea, one small
cup, prepared by turning boiling water on the leaves and served
immediately, may be included. The tea should not be strong and, for
reasons given on page 183, should never be allowed to steep.
If inclined to constipation, or if the kidneys are inactive, grapes or
an apple, or some fruit may be eaten just before retiring.
 MENUS FOR ABNORMAL
CONDITIONS.
Where the body is not in normal condition, because elements are
lacking in the blood, these elements must be supplied in larger
proportions with the food, and the case is one for a food chemist, or
for one who has made food conditions a study. When medical
colleges broaden their curriculum, or physicians employ methods
other than medicine and the knife, for correction of physical ailments,
the relief will be with this profession. If they do not, professional
schools for the education of the physical culturist and food
specialists, for the correction of deranged conditions of the system,
due to poor circulation and abnormal blood conditions, which have
so long been controlled entirely through medicine, will spring up and
replace much of the correction previously left entirely to the medical
fraternity.
In case of an abnormal condition, the food must be regulated
according to the case. This also applies to a diet where one carries
an abnormal amount of fat.
In the early stage of various diseases, where toxins are hoarded in
the system, it is often advisable to abstain from food for from one to
three days, according to conditions. As previously stated, where the
system is not properly eliminating the waste, it is wise to abstain
from food, to take brisk exercise, breathe deeply and drink freely of
water, until the waste is eliminated. A laxative is also desirable.
The above suggestions are for abnormal conditions. To keep the
body in health, eat at regular periods.
It is the purpose here to give diets for chronic cases, which the
average person attempts to regulate without a physician in regular
attendance.
 The foundation education in regard to foods, belongs in the public
schools. How many lives are lost on account of the lack of
knowledge of food values will never be known.
The system readily excretes an excess of vegetable products,
and, as a rule, no acute difficulties result; however, such chronic
difficulties, as Constipation, Torpid Liver and Indigestion, frequently
result from an excess of starch, over that consumed in energy. On
account of the readiness to putrefaction of protein products, care
should be taken not to consume these in too great proportion.
Broadly speaking, a diet largely of protein, which is digested in the
stomach, rests the intestines, and a diet largely of carbohydrates,
rests the stomach, because the gastric juice is not active in starch
digestion. In case sufficient saliva is not swallowed with the food to
digest the starches and sugars in the stomach they are passed into
the intestines for digestion. In the absence of sufficient saliva, water
with the food is desirable to dissolve the starches, that they may
more readily pass the pylorus.
A study of the habitual taste for foods, in connection with the
physical ailments of eighteen thousand women, shows that by the
constituents in the blood, and the condition of the different organs of
the digestive system, one can usually determine which food the
individual has formed a habit of eating, because the blood will show
a lack of the elements which that patient has denied himself on
account of his likes and dislikes.
It is necessary to change the mental attitude toward certain foods
before the system will assimilate them; thus a taste for the foods
which the body requires should be cultivated.
Every mother, with growing children, should be a thorough student
of the chemistry of food. If the child’s bones do not grow to sufficient
size and strength, care in the selection of foods, rich in proteins,
lime, magnesium and phosphates, may correct it. Such a child
should have meat, whole wheat bread and eggs.
Where the child stores up too much fat, care in the amount of
exercise, and of oxygen consumed, as well as the regulation of diet,
are of vital importance. If one is thin and undernourished, chemical
analysis of the contents of stomach, intestines and kidneys should
be made, the nerves be rested and proper food, exercise and
breathing should accompany medical treatment, if medicine is
needed.

Regular exercise and deep breathing are fully as

Anaemia important as the regulation of diet for the anaemic.
In anaemia the red blood corpuscles are lacking,
or there is not sufficient blood. The red corpuscles not being
sufficient in number to carry the necessary quantity of oxygen to the
tissues to oxidize the waste, the system becomes clogged with
waste, which affects the nerves and brain cells. The patient is tired
and disinclined to exercise, thus the decreased number of red
corpuscles are not kept in forceful circulation and the carbonic acid
gas is not freely thrown off by the lungs; this further aggravates the
condition.
Pus formation, in abscesses, are frequent in anaemic cases.
There is little desire for food when the system is clogged, and
there is little use in forcing food.
The red corpuscles are made in the red marrow of the bones and
free action of the joints is desirable.
The initial work, therefore in the correction of anaemia, lies in
brisk, every day exercise and deep breathing of fresh air. Such
exercise should be intelligently directed to the joints and to the vital
organs, particularly to the liver, that it may be kept in normal
condition to break down the protein waste. The windows at night
should admit of a good circulation of air through the sleeping room.
These habits being established, the diet should consist of foods
containing iron, such as red meat, eggs and the green leaves of
vegetables. Milk sipped slowly and a free use of butter are desirable.
 It will usually be found that the anaemic individual has no taste for
vegetables containing iron, or for meats rich in albuminoids,—or, that
these foods have been denied because of their scarcity; therefore,
the elements necessary for red blood corpuscles have been
deficient.
The following is a suggestive diet:
BREAKFAST
Fruit, in plenty.
Two eggs, soft boiled, poached or baked.
Cereal coffee or cambric tea.
Toast, graham bread or graham or corn muffins.
MIDDLE OF THE FORENOON
Lemonade with spoonful of beef juice (not beef extract) or with a beaten egg.
LUNCH
Split pea or bean soup with dry toast.
Fruit and nut salad (no vinegar).
Fruit, fresh or stewed.
Cake.
Glass of milk.
MIDDLE OF AFTERNOON
Egg lemonade or eggnog.
DINNER
Bouillon.
Tenderloin steak or lamb chops.
Baked potato.
Spinach, beet or dandelion greens.
Custard, fruit gelatin, or cornstarch pudding, or rice with lemon cream sauce.
Glass milk.
If the patient still has no appetite, more exercise, deep breathing
and abstinence from all food for a day or two are desirable. This will
give the system a chance to clear itself of waste and when the waste
is relieved through exercise and diet the desire for food will assert
itself.

Indigestion or Dyspepsia is the broad term

Indigestion and commonly applied to most chronic stomach and
Dyspepsia intestinal difficulties—due, not to structural
disease, but to their being incapable of normally
performing their functions in digesting ordinary foods. The term
includes troubles arising from so many different causes that the
cause must be determined and remedied before definite results can
be attained through diet.
Most chronic cases are due to improper hygiene,—such as
irregular meals; over eating; insufficient mastication; wrong choice of
foods; or to a general run down condition, with a weakness of
muscles of the stomach, due to insufficient blood supply; or to a
weakened or over-strenuous condition of nerves controlling the
stomach.
Indigestion is usually accompanied by constipation, or by irregular
action of the intestines.
Plenty of fresh air, and exercise, directed definitely to muscles and
nerves of the stomach, that it may be strengthened by a better blood
supply, as well as exercises and deep breathing to build up the
general health, should be systematically followed.
Easily digested food, well masticated, and regular meals served
daintily, with following of above directions, will gradually regulate
digestion.
Without doubt, the intelligent medical treatment of stomach
difficulties in the future will be directed by a chemical analysis of the
stomach contents. If the stomach is not secreting normal proportions
of pepsin or hydrochloric acid, the deficiency can be regulated. The
chemical analysis of the gastric secretions will alone determine what
elements are lacking. As stated above, the permanent relief must lie
in gaining a good circulation of blood through the entire body and
through the stomach, that it may be strengthened and thus enabled
to secrete these elements in proper proportions.
Many cases of stomach difficulty are due to the condition of the
nerves.

Nervous Indigestion is due to the general nerve condition. In

such cases the entire nervous system should be regulated through
exercise, breathing, relaxation and a change of thought. Physicians
usually recommend change of scene to direct change of thought.
The diet should be light and laxative and low in protein. Cream
soup, bread and milk, crackers and milk, custards, egg lemonade,
and gruels, furnish an easily digested list. No tea, coffee, very little
meat and no fried food. Where the walls of the stomach are weak
and distended, light food six times a day is preferable to a hearty
meal, which distends the stomach walls.
Where a loss of weight occurs, it usually indicates a failure to
assimilate a sufficient amount of food, rather than a failure to eat
sufficient. A good circulation, particularly through the vital organs,
deep full breathing of fresh air, and regular and complete rest
periods, should be observed. Usually a dietitian, or a physician, is
not called in chronic cases until the condition has prevailed for so
long that other complications have set in and the patient has lost
much flesh. It takes months to pull the system down and it takes
months of following of proper hygiene to build it up.

Gastritis or Catarrh of the Stomach involving an inflammation of

the mucous lining of the stomach, is a most common phase of
indigestion. In acute cases the physician is called at once. He can
treat the case in its initial stages and bring about a much more rapid
recovery.

Acute Gastritis is accompanied by nausea and vomiting and the

patient should rest from all food and drink for two days. If the mouth
is dry, water or ice may be given frequently and held in the mouth,
but not swallowed.
After two days rest, begin the nourishment with water and a small
portion of liquid food (not over two ounces) every two hours. Toast
tea, made by pouring hot water over toast, oatmeal, or barley gruel
(thoroughly strained so that no coarse matter may irritate the
stomach), limewater and milk, and egg lemonade are easily digested
foods to begin to eat. Increase the quantity the fourth day and
lengthen the time between feedings to three hours. Gradually
increase the diet by semi-liquid food, soft boiled eggs, moistened
toast, raw oysters, etc., slowly returning to the regular bill of fare.
Avoid, as you do so, any food difficult of digestion and any
vegetable containing coarse fibre. Tea, coffee, pickles, and alcoholic
drinks should be avoided.

Chronic Gastritis is accompanied with a thickening of the

mucous lining of the stomach. It is usually caused by prolonged use
of irritating foods and the regulation of the diet is of utmost
importance. Alcohol is a common cause. The difficulty begins
gradually and the relief must likewise be gradual.
The stomach needs water. If the drinking of water causes nausea
it is well to wash it out with a stomach pump each morning before
breakfast.
If not convenient to use the stomach pump the washing may be
accomplished by drinking two glasses of water at least an hour
before breakfast, followed by stomach exercises, to cause a
regurgitation of the water through the stomach. This will be
uncomfortable at first, with a very full feeling and one may begin by
drinking one glass, followed by stomach exercises, gradually taking
another glass within a half hour of the first. This, with the exercises,
will wash out the mucus. In many cases as much as a pint of slimy
mucus collects in the stomach during the night. Where the stomach
cleansing is impossible, in above manner, the stomach tube should
be used.
Chronic gastritis, in any of its phases, is frequently accompanied
by constipation, and the diet should be so selected as to be as
laxative as possible, without irritating the lining of the stomach. The
liquid diet assists the intestines, to a certain extent, particularly if the
stomach be cleansed by the water in the morning, as indicated under
Mucous Gastritis below.
Fruit in the morning and just before retiring aid the intestines. Two
prunes chopped up with one fig or a bunch of grapes or an apple just
before retiring assist the action of the intestines and the kidneys.
Almost all fruits contain acid, which increases peristalsis, and the
resultant flow of gastric juice. Cooked pears, stewed or baked
apples, prunes and dates are mild fruits which may be used if they
agree with the patient. The juice of an orange upon first arising may
be used, except in case of a diminution, or absence, of hydrochloric
acid.
Peptonized milk is an excellent food both for chronic and acute
cases especially in severe cases. This is prepared by putting
“pancreatin,” a pancreatic ferment, (trypsin), into fresh milk.
Preparations of “pancreatin” are sold in the drug stores. The
peptonized milk does not form curds and readily passes through the
stomach for digestion in the intestine. This may be given for a few
days, followed by milk and limewater, barley and toast water,
kumyss, oatmeal gruel, meat juices, scraped meat (raw, boiled or
roasted), broths thickened with thoroughly cooked cereals, ice
cream, egg lemonade, gelatins and whipped cream, custards, raw
oysters.
 After one week gradually assume the regular diet of easily
digested foods. All cereals should be thoroughly cooked. The white
meat of chicken is readily digested. As the solid food diet is
assumed, regularity of food, in small amounts, and thorough
mastication are important. If the patient imagines he is chewing it will
help him to keep chewing until the food is reduced to a pulp.
Avoid meat with tough fibre, too fat meat (pork), sausage, lobster,
salmon, chicken salads, mayonnaise, cucumbers, pickles, cabbage,
tea, coffee and alcohol.
Four or five light meals a day are preferable to three heavy meals.
The regulation of the flow of gastric juices is constitutional. The
general circulation must be forceful, the habit of deep breathing and
of regular periods of complete rest of body and mind established.
Since one with chronic gastritis is liable to have many
idiosyncracies, he should not be urged to eat foods for which he has
a dislike. The easily digested foods should be prepared in various
ways and served in an appetizing, dainty manner.
There are four special phases of chronic gastritis, Mucous
Gastritis, Hyperchlorhydria, Hypochlorhydria and Achlorhydria.
In Mucous Gastritis there is a profuse secretion of mucus into the
stomach. In this case it is always well to wash out the stomach
before introducing food, as suggested above.
The same general diet, suggested above for acute gastritis, should
be followed.
Hyperchlorhydria. The condition known as Hyperchlorhydria
shows a liberal excess of hydrochloric acid. The condition is
common, and is brought on by worry, nervous excitement, eating
when overtired, irregularity of food, imperfect mastication and
excessive use of alcohol. The diet should be a mixed one, in about
normal proportions. If anything, it should incline more to proteins
than to starches. The hydrochloric acid is necessary for the digestion
of proteins. It reduces the protein to acid albumin, which is less
irritating to the stomach. However the proteins are stimulating to the
stomach and the protein proportion should not be carried to excess.
 The juice of one-fourth of a lemon taken one half hour before the
meal will decrease the secretion of hydrochloric acid into the
stomach.
Limewater and milk may constitute the diet for two days; alkaline,
effervescing mineral water may be used and then the diet should
follow the general principles for chronic gastritis. Avoid all irritating
foods.
Hypochlorhydria is a diminution in the amount of hydrochloric acid.
Physicians often administer hydrochloric acid about one half hour to
an hour after the meal.
Many advocate a diet omitting protein, but since protein foods
stimulate the flow of gastric juices, they should not be omitted, but
used a little less freely.
Achlorhydria. Where there is an entire absence of hydrochloric
acid, as in Achlorhydria, the stomach, of course, cannot digest
proteins and this digestion must be done entirely by the trypsin of the
pancreatic juice. The presence of liquified protein as beef juice in the
stomach, however, acts as a stimulus to the gastric juice and is an
agency in again starting its flow.
The foods should be liquid, so as to pass through the stomach
without irritation. Clear milk must be excluded, because of the action
of the rennin in coagulating the casein. This would irritate the
stomach.
Peptonized milk, described on page 245 may be used as an article
of diet,—also milk with limewater, gelatin, cream, olive oil, gruels,
and any foods which would pass through the stomach in a liquid
state. Any cereals must exclude the bran and must be masticated to
a pulp, so that they may readily pass into the small intestine.

Dilation of the Stomach results from continued overeating,

(especially when the nerves are weak), or eating when over tired.
The muscular walls become so weak that they fail to contract.
Peristalsis is likewise weak and the food, failing to digest promptly,
ferments and forms gas. A dilated stomach is larger and its weight
and weakness cause it to prolapse.
In the prolapsed condition the pyloric, or lower orifice of the
stomach, is often nearly closed, partly by reason of its position and
partly by the weakened folds of the stomach walls. Because of this
obstruction to the free emptying of the contents into the duodenum, it
is imperative that the food be masticated to a pulp and thus mixed
with saliva, that the salivary digestion of starches may be complete
in the stomach; or, at least, that all foods be reduced to a liquid state
in the stomach. A chunk of food could not easily pass through the
pylorus. All liquid or semi-liquid food should be held in the mouth
until it, also, is mixed with saliva. The stomach should not be
overloaded with either food or water and for this reason six meals a
day, of light feeding, is best.
A dilated stomach does not necessarily indicate that the digestive
juices are not secreted in normal proportions and easily digested
proteins need not be avoided. It is desirable to furnish the proteins in
concentrated form, as in meats, so as to get the most nutrition with
the least bulk. Milk may be used, with limewater, if sipped slowly and
held in the mouth until mixed with saliva.
Sugar should be used very sparingly, because it ferments readily
and aggravates the distension. If it is evident that fermented
products are in the stomach, it should be washed out with a stomach
pump.
A tumor near the pylorus, or constriction of the pyloric orifice, will
also cause dilation of the stomach.
Beef juice, any of the better grades of meats, well masticated and
containing no gristle, limewater and milk, soft cooked eggs, and well
cooked cereals should constitute the diet.
Avoid vegetables containing coarse fibre, fried foods, and bread
baked on the same day.
Liquid with the meal should be avoided, on account of the
tendency to overload the stomach.