Control of Power in Japan

Japan is an Asian island nation, whose 122 million inhabitants 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 onehalf of onepercent 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 resident population of Japan 98.4 percent ethnically Japanese.

Japan, in the lastquarter 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 population is almost exclusively Han (Theroux, 1988). Any significant infusion of new ethnic strains into the Japanese population ceased in the eighth century, when the Ainu began t

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4decisions are often much longer in coming than they are in western societies; however, they also typically enjoy a much broader base of support than that found for most political decisions in western societies (Keyfitz, 1988). Political leaders, regardless of the conditions within a specific country, and regardless of the preferences of thatcountry's population with respect to the approach to government, must find ways to unify a country's population, if government is to be effective, and if a country is to survive as a political entity in a particular form. Thus, a country such as Japan, with a highly ethnically homogeneous population, without any significant language or cultural differences, poses political leadership problems which are distinctly different from those extant in most other major countries. POWER IN JAPANESE DOMESTIC POLITICS Among its homogenous population, Japanese political leaders have for centuries focused on the office and the person of the Emperor as a unifying force in the country (Thomas, 1979). The role of the Emperor suffered during the Shogun period of Japanese history, until the Emperor Meiji recovered imperial power (Reischauer, 1981). The Tokugawa governments opposed the opening of Ja
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Approximate Word count = 1694
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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