This research examines the effective control of power in domestic politics in Japan since the 1940s. The thrust of the examination is that groups other than senior government bureau crats, major business firms, and leading politicians have fre quently demonstrated a capacity for effective political influ ence.
Japan is an Asian island nation, whose 122 million inhabi tants occupy four major islands and a number of smaller islands (Paxton, 1989). As a political entity, the country dates back to about 500 B.C. (Paxton, 1989).
The Japanese population is remarkably homogeneous in an ethnic context. Ethnic Japanese account for 99.5 percent of the country's citizens, while most of the remaining one half of one percent are ethnic Koreans. Approximately 885 thousand foreigners reside in Japan, while approximately 498 thousand Japanese citizens reside outside of the country (Paxton, 1989). Adjusting for these residence patterns still leaves the resi dent population of Japan 98.4 percent ethnically Japanese.
Japan, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, is "the most thoroughly unified and culturally homogeneous large
1 2bloc of people in the . . . world, with the possible exception of the North Chinese" (Reischauer, 1981, 34), where the popula tion is almost exclusively Han (Theroux, 1988). Any signifi cant infusion of new ethnic strains into the Japanese popula tion ceased in the eighth century, when the Ainu began to be absorbed into the country's dominant ethnic group (Reischauer, 1981). Out of an ethnic Japanese population of 121.7 million in the late 1980s, less than 20 thousand Ainu survive as a cul turally identifiable population group.
Japan is also highly unified in a religious context. Although the country has no official state religion, approxi mately 108 million Japanese are adherents of Shintoism (Paxton, 1989). Thus, approximately 88 percent of the Japanese popula tion share the same religious ori...