ABSTRACT
The statist ideology that came to be known as “Asian values” had its trial run in postwar Japan. Any attempt to cast this illiberal growth model as “normal” for Japan will run aground on the nation’s labor history. Activistic unions staged more than 250 strikes per year in the 1920s. Even the military dictatorship that took over in 1938-disbanding all unions and funneling workers into Sanpo, the all-embracing Industrial Patriotic Society-could not extinguish the spirit of social democracy that drove unionization. Its robust survival was demonstrated by the tidal wave of reunionization that swept Japan after its surrender in September 1945. Within four months twelve hundred independent unions had enlisted nine hundred thousand members, and by the end of the 1940s that number had swelled to 6.7 million, or 56 percent of the workforce.1 Any political process that did not reflect this liberal-left voting bloc could hardly be called democratic.
