Leadership in the Soviet Union & Japan INTRODUCTION The research examines and c

The research examines and compares political leadership patterns in the Soviet Union (a multinationality state) and Japan (for practical purposes, a uninationality state). The purpose of this research is to identify special political leadership problems faced by muntinationality states.

As indicated in the introductory remarks, the Soviet Union and Japan are the countries examined in this research. Brief descriptions of these states are provided in this section.

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).

2Adjusting 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 homegeneous large bloc of people in the . . . world, with the possible exception of the North Chinese" (Reischauer, 1981, 34), where the population is almost

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