Reviews for The Mikado's Empire

The average rating for The Mikado's Empire based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-22 00:00:00 Oscar Prieto Castro A Time of Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural Restoration Kerry Smith, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001 Peter Magner "History 335: Modern Japan, 1600-Present" Fall 2011 Kerry Smith arrived in Japan as a Harvard graduate student planning to research the Great Depression and its effects on rural Japan. He was introduced to a wonderful tutor who first exposed him to the village of Sekishiba. In a turn of fortuitous events, he discovers that Sekishiba officials had kept meticulous records of their long history. With the availability of extensive primary sources, the author broadened the scope of his dissertation, producing a thoroughly comprehensive look at rural Japan in the 1930s through the eyes of a village. This time period in Japanese history reveals the tug of war between tradition and modernity, and it is most evident in the countryside. With the falling rice and raw silk prices, the emigration to the cities, environmental disaster, among other things, the farmers are presented with a host of difficulties related to the country's recent economic developments, transitioning demographic, and mobilizing war effort. As the author suggests, "by revealing some of the ways in which the state and communities provided alternatives to despair and violence, this study brings us closer to a grass-roots perspective on the meaning of Japan's time of crisis" (pg. 2). This book explores the deepening relationship among the government, the Japanese collective conscience and the rural people through the action of politicians, local leaders, activists, and farmers as they attempt to recover the countryside. The author argues that through debt arrangement, rural relief funding, and self-revitalization the countryside's attempts at recovery during the Great Depression drew it nearer to modernity, established a new relationship with the nation and its economy, and prepared it for drastic land reform. The first three chapters of Smith's book deal with introducing the reader to the underlying crisis in the countryside, describing in geographic detail the areas in question, and finally providing a thorough background to the economic crisis on the national scale. The author introduces his study by using Kagawa Toyohiko's novel The Land of Milk and Honey. This historical fiction is about one man's attempts to orchestrate change amid crisis during Japan's Great Depression. The main lesson learned by the protagonist in is one that reverberated in the hearts and minds of the farmers of the Depression and one that encapsulates the crisis in the countryside: "the village must change in order to survive, but strong leadership alone won't bring it about. Revitalization can truly succeed only when everyone in the community supports it" (pg. 7). The revitalization efforts placed a large degree of responsibility on the government's leadership and financing, but their involvement was only secured when the countryside collectively demonstrated need and only fulfilled when collective resolve was evident on the community level. Smith continues to expound in later chapters on this changing relationship between the state and the countryside; a relationship that brought the state down to the level of the people, but also produced a dependence of communities on the state for a means to their survival. Arriving at a consensus as to what provision would look like proved to be quite difficult. If the first three chapters describe the problems at hand, the next six are dedicated to finding solutions. During this period in Japanese political history, a tremendous degree of power rested in the hands of politicians to dictate policy with little avenue for solutions offered by the populace. Regardless, agricultural organizations did a noteworthy job at bringing the countryside's plight to light by gathering petitions, bringing in villagers to testify in Parliament, and by their radical denouncement of the state's inaction. This served to draw media attention as journalists and radio hosts preyed on extreme examples of the rural crisis, citing examples of starving children and daughters being sold into prostitution by their parents. Although these examples were clearly outliers, they roused the national conscience and put pressure on the state to develop a solution. Furthermore, the rise of militarism in the government resulted in a more vested interest in the countryside by the military for two reasons: first, many of the military had initially left the countryside to join the mobilization; secondly, they desired the approval of the nation regarding their leadership so supporting this new 'popular cause' served their agenda. The state was ready to address the rural crisis. The process is elaborated on by Smith in three tedious chapters of documentation and records detailing the competing views amongst politicians, local leaders, interest groups, radicals, and other parties regarding allocation of funds. Despite the lack of consensus regarding the amount of aid, the type of resources to be provided, and the degree to which the government should get involved, there was one fact everyone agreed upon'the countryside needed to address its debt. The villages had accumulated debt for a variety of reasons. Global depression beginning in 1929 forced developed countries to turn an inward focus on domestic capability and implement austerity measures toward foreign markets. Japan's GNP was reduced by a fifth between 1929 and 1931, and exports were reduced by more than 40 percent. With the workforce cut in half, factory workers flooded back to the countryside putting additional pressure on villages already dealing with falling commodity prices, rising costs of fertilizer, and food shortages. Farmers were forced to take out loans at usurious rates in order to afford the cost of planting. Given the falling market prices, families were unable to pay back their loans'the accumulated effect of these snowballing loans was devastating. The exact amount was difficult to pinpoint, but a conservative estimate placed rural debt at 4.5 billion yen in 1932. This amount was "more than twice the value of all farm production that year, almost 2.5 times the size of the government's budget, and more than a third the size of the GNP" (pg. 64). Average family debt hovered around 1,500 yen, about two times the amount a typical farm family would earn in a given year. As communities fell deeper into debt each year, loans became necessary for food and survival. With rising levels of despair, social harmony was in jeopardy and debt became the focus of state and local actors. It became clear that eliminating debt altogether was not the short-term goal, but it was necessary to find a solution to its accruing devastation in order to realize necessary economic development in rural Japan. Managing debt became the focus given that "the burden of debt in many communities was so large that repayment of the principle had become impossible and interest payments alone were enough to consume whatever surplus a farm family might generate" (pg. 130). A debt arrangement package was finally agreed upon in March 1933 after months of debate. Its basic thrust was to provide the means to establish a union in each village that would work to mediate between creditors and lenders to mitigate the terms of each hamlet's debt. Low-interest loans would be provided by the unions to chip away at the preexisting debt. Although the solution seemed pragmatic it turned out to be too little and too late. Farmers found the unions to be ineffective. Not enough money was given for low-interest loans and the process of working with the union turned out to be complicated and time-consuming with little to show for it. In 1934 Ministry of Agriculture acknowledged that it had failed to offer an effective debt arrangement solution. The results of this policy had positive results in the mind of both villagers and state leaders, however. It was evidence of the state's willingness to get involved and their growing confidence in the communities to work at the local level for their own recovery. A new balance was being struck between the state and the countryside; with this concerted effort a new strategy was crafted. One reason so little was allocated for the debt arrangement package was simply because the state did not have the funding. More could have been offered however, but when the time came to craft a new proposal for rural relief they approached it with caution for they did not want the countryside completely dependent on the state. They chose to invest in a way that would subsidize development to help villagers to help themselves. The newly created Economic Revitalization Campaign worked aggressively to plan public works projects and provide local funding for specific village needs. The state designed projects that employed farmers on the side and provide them more income. The majority of the cost was covered by the state, and the rest was provided by a low-interest loan to the community. Some large-scale infrastructure projects were undertaken, but the majority of projects were small-scale. By focusing on smaller projects such as road repair, irrigation ditches, and building repair allowed the majority of the state's funding to land in the pockets of the workers and not dedicated to expensive materials large-scale projects demanded. The author closely examines Sekishiba's records and infers from their experience an estimate of how public works projects aided the countryside as a whole. It is clear that there was a large amount of involvement on behalf of the majority of families, rich and poor alike. There is evidence demonstrating that public works contributed to a more stable standard of living during the Great Depression by allowing families to cover their basic expenses without new loans. But in many ways, the public works served as a mere band-aid to the gaping wound that was the rural crisis. More needed to be done. Once again, it served as an indicator for change as the "willingness to pay directly for locally run relief projects is an important shift in the relationship between the central and local governments" (pg. 139). The countryside's remaining hope for renewal was Self-Revitalization. Self-Revitalization demanded that villages take extreme measures in evaluating their current economic standards, past records, and essentially plan for the future. Of course, in many respects, this was something that they had always done and was not new. What was new was the state playing an integral role by specifying measures for evaluation and planning. This was done on a grass-roots level beginning with surveying each individual family in each community across the country. Systems of accountability and detailed goals were established locally. The state encouraged families to determine exactly how they could cut back in expenses, produce greater yields, depend less on store-bought fertilizer, diversify crops, sell lumber, and practice animal husbandry among other things. Women were to practice a household life characterized by punctuality, austerity, bookkeeping, and the fostering of cottage industries. The state provided loans for storehouses and multi-purpose buildings to be built; these gave farmers a place to store crops so as to not flood the market and a space to work on side projects as a community. Social cohesion, the rise of local leaders, and a morale upturn became evident. Farming cooperatives that had always operated independently of each other began to work together which improved and streamlined coordination of farmers' activities and communication. Cooperation became key as revitalization efforts "linked the economic and personal behavior of each family to the village's own recovery, and thus, ultimately, to the nation's as well" (pg. 324). These changes were a welcomed and a sign of modernity in the countryside. When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, the country was mobilized and citizens were called to sacrifice and dedicate themselves to the effort. In the last three chapters Smith discusses the virtually seamless transition that took place as the demands of the Economic Revitalization Campaign and the National Spiritual Mobilization Campaign bore striking resemblance in their call to duty in daily life. This ties in nicely with the author's thesis of how the revitalization in the countryside had prepared it for the experience of war and ultimately the reforms brought about during Occupation. The revitalization efforts had forced families and communities to think on a national level by working together on a local level. By drawing the state into their plight they were able to get the help they needed for a better future, "one in which rural society was as modern and prosperous as the rest of the country" (pg. 334). The entire country was aware of the situation in the countryside, the state was increasingly invested in its future, and the farmers were dedicated to its recovery. All these factors moved the countryside along as it transitioned from tradition to modernity. One major roadblock had always stood in the way of true recovery; an issue that went largely ignored because of its deep roots in Japanese history. Of course, this was the issue of the landlord - tenant relationship. Smith accredits this to be a substantial roadblock: "In trying to solve agriculture's problems without dealing with the fundamental issues of landownership and the tenancy system…reform measures of the 1930s and early 1940s stopped short of providing a workable solution to the crisis of the countryside. Rather, they encouraged farmers to change some aspects of rural life while keeping others off limits…With tenancy and limits imposed by the scarcity of farmland outside the reach of reform, revitalization could only do so much" (pg. 353). Smith's argument is that the process of revitalization had brought about a series of changes that paved the way for successful land reform by the Occupation Forces. The author provides a lengthy discourse describing the nature of land reform and its initial and long-term benefits. He believes these reforms would have taken place in the long run without the interference of the Americans, but that they would have taken much longer. In reflection, I am pleased that I chose this book to read and review. The topic and the information the author presented would have usually been too dense and detailed for my interests, but in this case I felt that Smith did an excellent job of navigating the reader through the material in an engaging matter and providing relevance. I felt as though more attention could have been placed on the landlord - tenant relationship throughout the book for it was only mentioned near the beginning and at the end, but not much was said about it throughout the process of explaining the revitalization effort. The book taught me more about Japan's collective dedication and resolve as a nation. I learned a lot about the deeply rooted traditions of the countryside, the nature of rice production and sericulture, and a variety of other topics. I gained a richer understanding of platform on which Occupation reforms took hold, eventually paving the way for their economic miracle. It also gave me a better understanding of the Great Depression on an international level. It is fair to assume I grew in my understanding of economics as well.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-27 00:00:00 Richard Converse Five stars for an extremely detailed and well researched description of the implementation of fascism at the local rural level. Zero stars for arguing that this was a good thing. Ok, he hedges at the end, but in doing so, he tries to separate all the "modern" things brought by corporatism, mass state presence, and nationalistic ideology from the "backwards" and repressive wartime authoritarianism.