ABSTRACT
The Kyochokai’s propagandizing was little more than an attempt at coercive social control. Successful programmes of ideological transvaluation and moral inculcation always involve some degree of mutuality between the assumptions and aspirations of the controller and the controlled. Japan’s leaders, both within the Kyochokai and outside of it, were consciously or unconsciously committed to a preindustrial model of social homogeneity and organic unity as the goal of their efforts. In the post-World War II period Japan’s bureaucratic and business leaders have never tired of pointing to the uniqueness of Japan’s industrial values or the importance of those values in fostering the nation’s economic success. Traditionalist notions of communitarianism and industrial harmony continue to be propagated and extolled as core values of a living history. The Kyochokai and earlier Meiji reformers, seeking to meet the new situational needs of an emerging industrial society, were the agents of its creation.
