The national center union "Rengo" of Japan, which rejects the Communist Party, is approaching the ruling party, the LDP, and is blocking the election cooperation of the opposition camp, which is divided into small parties. A de facto one-party system is being formed in Japan. Starting with the upper house election this summer, the ruling party is ready to continue to win overwhelmingly in the future national elections. The current crisis in Ukraine and the instigation of threats to China and North Korea have created a "national consensus" to significantly increase defense costs and strengthen military ties with the United States and the United Kingdom, which has re-entered the western Pacific Ocean. It was the fascist constitution of the Japanese who abandoned the rights of democracy such as the right to vote, the right to organize workers and the right to strike, and to form a new wing support system. The victorious nations, the United States, Britain and Australia, are using it as a pioneer to confront China and Russia while promoting military cooperation with Japan and strictly controlling dangerous Japan. The Japanese replaced the devil American and British with the devil China and Russia while being danced in the palm of Anglo-Saxon.
■ Structure of the wing support system for non-exercise of rights
Was the total mobilization and wing support system formed in the course of the entry into World War II liquidated by the democratic system granted by the United States, which monopolized Japan in the wake of the defeat? The answer is "no." Contrary to the constant efforts to actively exercise the rights of democracy, the inaction of not exercising the rights to be done has brought Japan today as close as possible to the support system. The driving force behind this is the total mobilization system that has been hidden without being liquidated.
Born before the period of high economic miracle from 1946 to 1960, the first generation after the war was taught mainly in the classroom the importance of pacifism, sovereignty and democracy as stated in the Constitution of Japan. Everyone enjoyed good luck with no drafts, no war, and many enjoyed unprecedented financial wealth. The majority, if not clearly aware, perceived this as a gift of postwar democracy based on the Peace Constitution and a hard-working national character. Among those who experienced the war, there were many who said, "Gender equality has become a good world where people can speak freely." But this democracy was a passive benefit. Therefore, it was not deeply engraved in people's hearts.
Born in the first year of the 21st century, he became an adult, and his unprecedented post-war days of war and hardship sank far into history. With the advent of high economic growth and mass consumption society, and the disappearance of the war-experienced generation, the sorrow of defeat has been wiped out and the interest in politics has diminished. The economic prosperity of the 1980s, when Japan was once again regarded as a threat to the United States, came to an end with the collapse of the bubble economy in 1991, and the serious stagnation has continued for more than 20 years. The 20-year deflationary economy has stopped growing, and Japan has fallen from 2nd place in 2000 to 25th place in 2021 in the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) world ranking. Being overtaken by South Korea in 2018 shocked Japan.
Democracy is not complete with indirect political participation, which casts one vote in elections. However, perhaps due to the decline in the middle class due to the long-term economic stagnation, widening disparities and poverty, the motivation for political participation has declined significantly, and the turnout, which is a guideline for minimum political participation, has dropped significantly. The abstention of young people is remarkable, and it seems that it is only a matter of time before even the turnout of the general election falls below 50%. Voter turnout in the general election, which has exceeded 70% overall from 1946 to 1990, has continued to fall below 70% since the collapse of the bubble economy in 1991. It fell below 60% for the first time in 1996 and dropped to 52.66% in 2014. That of the Upper House election has already dropped to the 40% level. In the local elections, the voter turnout, which was 90% in 1951, dropped to the 40% level in both the governor / chief election and the prefectural, municipal, and council elections in 2019, and the fall to the 30% level became a matter of time. There is.
With the addition of a single-seat constituency system and the overwhelming majority of nonpartisan political apathy, a party with the support of a quarter of the total number of voters can take control. If the opposition splits, even one-fifth is possible. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is profit-guided and has a strong fixed support base, and the Komeito Party, which is based on a large-scale religious group, laid the foundation for an overwhelming election victory by taking advantage of the ongoing collapse of democracy. In recent years, the growth of right-wing forces such as the Nippon Ishin no Kai has been noticeable, but this can be seen as a LDP-complementary force. Behind them is the US neoconservative who handles Japanese power.
According to the NHK poll, at the end of the 1990s, the number of unsupported people exceeded 50% and became the overwhelming "first party". In the elections, the unsupported group has become more and more noticed as the one that influences the result, and it has come to be called the "non-partisan group" with a more positive meaning than simply having no supporting party.
According to the commentary, the nonpartisan group is "not a simple political apathy, but a political party or politician who is interested in politics but can meet their interests and expectations, and deepens the sense of powerlessness and distrust. People who are. " However, avoiding even the minimum political participation, that is, voting behavior, while witnessing the progress of the collapse of indirect democracy will eventually contribute to the promotion of the wing support system. It should be understood as the acquiescence and omission approval of the current system.
In Japan, street protests, such as the yellow jacket movement, which violently protests the Macron administration in France, and the Wall Street occupation movement in the United States, that is, direct large-scale political activities, have been hiding since the 2014 security legislation opposition movement. In Japan today, a new random wing system has been formed that refuses to even vote, which is the minimum political statement. It is the "Imperial Rule Assistance Association" brought about by the inaction of not doing what should be done. It can be said to be a seemingly soft "wing praise phenomenon" without explicit coercion by power.
When I picked up various explanations about the wing support system, "In short, neither the political parties nor the media criticized the people and organizations in military and political power, and just affirmed their actions. I tried to secure my physical existence by showing a positive attitude. "
It is possible to explain the new wing support system that is being born in modern Japan by simply changing this sentence as follows.
"In short, the Japanese political parties and the media, with a few exceptions, do not criticize the United States, which is in control of Japan's military and political power, and take a positive stance on the actions of the United States. I'm trying to show and secure my physical existence. "
There may be some opposition to the extremes, but unless you are a very right-wing nationalist, you have to generally admit that this is the current situation in Japan.
Similarly, "The" wing support system "in a narrow sense, centered on the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, which is a one-party, one-party organization under the Pacific War in Japan, uncritically confirms the military policy and puts the people into war. It is a system that has been totally mobilized. " Even if this is paraphrased as follows, there is no sense of discomfort.
"The wing support system of modern Japan is the division of the opposition into small parties and mutual conflict, the semi-permanent ruling of the Liberal Democratic Party, which was formed in 1955 by the intervention of Washington, and the approach of the LDP's government, which should be the supporter of the opposition. With a focus on a system close to one country and one party formed by the remarkable decline of opposition forces such as labor unions, civil movements and student movements, Washington's policy based on the Japan-US Security Treaty and Status Agreement is not participated in politics. It is a system that confirms the criticism and mobilizes the people to support the Cold War against China and Russia and the US proxy war including Ukraine. "
■ Psychology and behavior under the new wing support system
The structure of the new wing support system consists of a dual power state between the political and financial officers of Japan, a pseudo-sovereign state, and the ruler of the United States, who is the real ruler who rises above it and moves the Japanese power layer at will. This is a structural difference from the total mobilization and support system during the war. However, in a nutshell, the praise for the Emperor's commander nation has simply replaced that for the hegemonic United States.
In fact, the psychology and behavior of the Japanese who are responsible for it does not show any fundamental changes from those before and during the war. Japan is still a groupist society in which people basically suppress individuals, properly sense the will of the organization, synchronize with it, and form a cooperative system to guarantee their status and promotion within the group to which they belong. Although it can be said that the pre-war absolute obedience type, which peaked during the war, has changed to the "air reading (KY) type" that includes a certain degree of softness and personal respect after the war, it is still a sense of authoritative obedience and self-sacrifice. Is pervasive in society. The long-term economic downturn has become the "camphor agent" for this upsurge.
The postwar Japanese-style management system inherited the 1940 wartime total power system, which became the driving force for Japan's postwar reconstruction and high economic growth. I have repeatedly mentioned in this blog that the United States took this fashionable all-out system that was preserved as a threat and tried to dismantle it.
Lifetime employment, seniority rank, and cross-shareholding are "three kinds of sacred treasures", protected by a escort fleet system that protects each industry entirely under the initiative of bureaucrats, and a huge number of subcontracting affiliated companies are under the umbrella to gain overwhelming price competitiveness. However, it is a Japanese-style system composed of a huge group of cross-shareholdings centered on financial institutions (main banks). This has weakened as planned by the United States in the last three decades. But even with the proliferation of US capital into the top stockholders of leading companies and the penetration of non-regular employment, insidious and inhumane practices and systems remained in the workplace.
Certainly, the Japanese-style employment system has changed. With the spread of dispatched labor, non-regular employment, which was about 20% of total employment in 1990, will increase to about 40% in 2020, 30 years later. Not only is employment unstable, but income is also shrinking. The average actual income of working households per month decreased from about 560,000 yen in 2000 to about 510,000 yen in 2011. The monthly average for the January-March period of 2022 is on the verge of falling below 500,000 yen. (Note: Numbers are statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
In addition, the existence of so-called black companies, regardless of size, that have exhausted workers due to long hours of overwork, illegal work, and power harassment, and forced them to leave their jobs one after another, has become a social problem. Most of them do not provide long-term employment security or generous corporate welfare in return for harsh labor, have strong command and order, management and senior management have great power, and employees exercise the right to organize. Refuses to form a labor union.
Leading Japanese companies are lined up at the top of the black companies that drive workers to death. Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi, Dentsu, etc. received the Black Enterprise Award from 2012 to 2019 by the "Black Enterprise Award Planning Committee," which was run by labor union officers, representatives of NPO corporations, writers, and lawyers. Well-known major companies such as Seven Eleven Japan, Taisei Corporation, Yamada Denki, and TEPCO were listed. In addition, many prominent large companies such as Toyota Motor, KDDI, Kansai Electric Power, Panasonic, Daiwa House Industry, Yamato Transport, Yoshimoto Kogyo, Nomura Real Estate Development, and Suruga Bank were nominated.
A large Japanese company that guarantees corporate welfare such as seniority wages, existence of health insurance association and enhancement of medical welfare system, participation in old-age pension after retirement, in-house deposit, etc. is certified as a black company. The reason why it is done is that the wartime total power system is inherited at the basis of corporate management. It is the corporate fascist spirit that succeeded the Senjinkun after the war, which weighs heavily on the psychology and behavior of employees. After the war, visible infringement of rights has decreased, but the corporate culture and unwritten rules of the workplace have covered the Japanese corporate society.
■ Ten demons and approval system
It has been regarded as a problem that the passage of the Senjinkun, which inherited the military rescript to "live and not be humiliated by prisoners," brought about not only the forced crushing of Japanese soldiers but also the collective self-determination of civilians in the Battle of Okinawa. rice field. According to veterans from the Pacific front and battlefields in China and Asia, killing an enemy and dying are struck by the same value, and the superior said, "Even if you die, the Yamato soul remains. If you die, kill the enemy with your soul." I was told.
"The field of business is the battlefield. If you lose, the company will collapse and we will die. If you don't want to die, you have to win the competition."
1971. A new corporate warrior who joined Hitachi, was assigned to the Public Demand Department of the Tokyo Headquarters, and was at the scene of an order battle over a bid for a sewage treatment plant ordered by Tokyo, was surprised by the director's instructions. To work for a Japanese company was to keep in mind that he was a "resident battlefield" facing death.
Corporal punishment is added when it comes to small and medium-sized enterprises. 1979. Parking lot in front of a small business hotel in a local city in Japan. The job type was unclear, but the leader of the business trip sales team forced five or six subordinates in the morning assembly.
"I won't let anyone who can't get a contract today eat supper. I see!"
The commander of the business trip was a veteran soldier, the regular employee was a recruit, and the company was an army. Perhaps the violence of hitting and kicking was a daily occurrence.
In general, these cases are often considered to have occurred by the 1970s, when the first generation of postwar fathers, who were educated, worked, and experienced the army under the emperor fascist system, were active at the core of society. Is. But things didn't improve when the post-war educated baby boomers and the first post-war generation played a central role in the enterprise. The long-term economic downturn after the collapse of the bubble economy increased the degree of harassment and persecution of non-regular employees, new employees, bosses and those who did not obey organizational instructions.
A typical example is the overworked suicide case of a new female employee of Dentsu, the largest advertising industry, that occurred at the end of 2015. After joining the company in April of the same year, the amount of work for this employee has increased sharply since October after the hiring. According to estimates by the bereaved family, overtime work per month reached about 130 hours, which greatly exceeds the 80 hours called the overtime death line.
The female employee who committed suicide left a surprising note that 60% of the employees went to work on holidays after the hiring, and after that, just before the suicide, "the amount of labor that can not sleep for days is too strange", "Saturday and Sunday I decided that I had to go to work again, and I really want to die. "," When I'm at work for 20 hours a day, I don't know what I'm living for anymore and I laugh. " rice field. In addition to her overwork, power harassment and sexual harassment by her boss are said to have continued. The following June, 2016, the Labor Standards Inspection Office recognized it as an industrial accident as "caused by the onset of depression due to long working hours."
Dentsu employees have been certified as overworked suicides in the past, and when the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's special measures group conducted an unannounced investigation of the head office and local branch offices, illegal long working hours, forced underreporting of working hours, and former work hours Cases such as death from overwork were found one after another. Illegal overtime work has become a norm company-wide, and the Tokyo Labor Bureau special investigation team has switched to a forced investigation, and the Dentsu head office and three branch offices nationwide are suspected of violating the Labor Standards Act. The Tokyo District Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment after sending his boss on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Act. The president of Dentsu at that time was forced to resign.
At this time, the problem was "Dentsu's Oni Ten-Kun." The fifth of the ten instructions, "Don't let go if you work, don't let go even if you're killed, until the goal is achieved," was particularly controversial, and Dentsu took this incident as an opportunity to delete ten lessons from the employee notebook. The ten lessons that created Dentsu's corporate culture are Hideo Yoshida (1903-1963), the fourth president of the wartime sect. Many business owners highly value this and use it as an inscription.
Certainly, other instructions, "work is not something you do passively by working with the first move", "work on big jobs, small jobs make you smaller", "aim for difficult jobs, and that" There is progress in achieving this, "and" If you have a plan and a long-term plan, you will have patience and ingenuity, and correct efforts and hopes. " It is a phrase that seems to be preferred and quoted when giving instructions to employees.
However, companies are not a place for education. These values are cultivated by each individual in their private lives, and it is the act of over-righting that the top executives impose on their employees. The ten lessons described at the beginning of the employee notebook can be said to be a means of group brainwashing for the top-down. This kind of "post-war version of the Senjinkun" has spread all over Japanese companies, and has even entered the educational arena beyond the corporate organization and has become a social climate. "Don't let go of the work you worked on even if you are killed" overlaps with the battlefield instruction that "Kill the enemy with your soul even if you are killed."
The spirit of the war continues to live in this way, providing instructions to corporate warriors that "cocooning is out of the question" and "forget about sleeping and eating". In the 1980s, even executives of major manufacturing companies ridiculed "busy without profit", and the catch phrase "Can you work 24 hours a day?" Became popular. Social dumping (extremely low wage levels and poor wage levels) was touted by US and European companies in the 1930s for the exclusion of Japanese products. It was feared that unfair bargaining (social dumping) using various working conditions would return.
In Japan, the approval system is an irresponsible system that brings about long working hours regardless of the public or private sector, creates authoritative oppression of the command hierarchy, and makes the organization irresponsible.
In Japanese administrative organizations and corporate management, decision-making has been made since the Meiji era by sequentially circulating draft documents (approval documents) by end staff to relevant officials (persons) for their seals, and sending them to superiors for final approval. The approval system has been adopted. Approval documents drafted by end-level staff who do not have the right to make decisions or leadership are individually deliberated and accumulated by the person in charge of the relevant departments, and after a long process, they are raised to the head of the organization (minister or president) who has the authority to approve. .. The approval process takes a long time, and the ultimate responsibility lies with the head of the organization, but since the head does not give instructions for drafting one by one, it is easy to press the "blind judgment" as it is. The decision-making power is deprived of both the end and the highest rank. This is why it is called an "irresponsible system".
Furthermore, the problem was rejected at each stage where the draft document was forwarded in sequence, that is, at the administrative level such as section chief, department manager, bureau chief, minister's secretariat (executive officer), and vice minister (vice president), and was ordered to rewrite and correct, and drafted many times. To come back to the person. This tendency is particularly noticeable at government offices, and documents are endlessly exchanged between the drafter, the section chief (assistant section chief), the section chief (deputy chief), and the bureau chief (deputy chief). The subway station in Kasumigaseki government office is flooded with a large number of professional staff (non-carry) on the last train before dawn. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry officials, once called the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, ridiculed themselves as " the Ministry of Usual Overtime."
■ Quiet praise: life conservativism and suppression of anger
Postwar reconstruction, high economic growth, and Japan's economic power, which peaked in the 1980s, have entered a marked decline since 2000. The total power system was replaced by the total mobilization of Apathy due to the new defeat of long-term economic decline. Anger towards politics and society has been curbed, and collective depression has developed throughout society.
There, the Worker Dispatch Law of 1986, the birth of a "coalition" named the privatization of public enterprises such as the Japanese National Railways and the Denden Corporation and the unification of the labor front, which led to the dismantling of the Socialist Party, the introduction of a discretionary labor system, and the labor union. There was the introduction of a neoliberal policy in preparation for a new support system, such as a decline in the organization rate and a sharp decrease in strikes. The "total settlement of postwar politics" advocated by the Nakasone Cabinet was an amalgam (mixture) of returning to retro-conservatism and introducing neoliberalism from the United States, aiming to dismantle the 1955 system of its two major political parties. ..
It is fresh in my memory that the number of suicides in Japan has exceeded 30,000 for 12 consecutive years since 1998. Both the suicide rate and the real number are outstanding among the seven developed countries. Statistics from the end of the 19th century also show that the figures for this period stand out, indicating that the prosperous society that was allegedly achieved after the war never made people happy.
As mentioned above, while the total power system continues to live in the company, many people who are divided as a reaction to it in private life are mobilized to apathy, mood disorder / depression, and in the worst case, suicide. People have lost the ability to systematically repel oppression and anguish in the workplace. Even in the Dentsu case, the company constantly instructed to underreport working hours so as not to exceed the upper limit of overtime hours set by the labor-management agreement (36 agreement). However, the unionization rate was too low for the judicial decision to find the violation of the 36 Agreement illegal.
Instead of the forced wing support system during the war, a quiet wing support system that avoids political participation is being born. Trade unions of large corporations have effectively waived their right to strike. The national center "Union" is heading toward the "Industrial Bulletin National Assembly" with the flag of anti-communism and united with the Liberal Democratic Party.
Many workers have abandoned their right to organize, and the unionization rate peaked at 55.8% in 1948 and reached 16.7% in 2019. Further development of the in-house union system and labor-management union peculiar to Japan is promoted by the life conservative principle that "the intensification of the labor union and its involvement jeopardize the position and promotion in the company". Japanese traditional sympathy seems to be advancing to "national corporatism", which was born by fascists such as Benito Mussolini who organized representatives of managers and workers in national organizations.
■ Japan is still a threat to Washington
The US rulers who reign over Japanese power are paying close attention to prevent people's anger from turning to the United States. In addition to China, the creation of a sense of threat that Russia is about to invade has been successful in promoting the Ukrainian crisis. Fear instigating propaganda to foreign enemies such as China, Russia, and North Korea, as well as arousing hatred for South Korea, and the kind of eccentric nationalism uplifting work such as "Wow, Japan" is carried out day by day through the IT industry. There is.
What Washington is most afraid of is the explosion of anti-American consciousness in the world's fifth-largest military and self-defense forces, although it is said to be the "minimum necessary force organization" that it created. When the Self-Defense Forces were established, many former Army and Navy field officers were employed in the executive posts, and the bloodline of the former Japanese Army is still alive.
The integration of the Self-Defense Forces with the U.S. Forces in the last 20 years, that is, the establishment of the U.S.-Japan Army Integrated Command Headquarters at the U.S. Forces Japan base, Yokota, made the SDF a complementary unit, in other words, the movement is being monitored one by one. It can also be said to prevent the runaway.
The consciousness of all-out war and the view of imperial history hidden in the Japanese and Japanese society are the most feared by the American rulers, along with Germany, Russia and China. It is as threatening as Communist China.
These issues will be discussed again in the manuscript.