Prof. Shelley Rigger Spring 1997

Chambers 324 Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15

ext. 2280 (email SHRIGGER) Office Hours: Tue, Thu 2:30-5:00; Wed 9:00-11:00

home phone 896-0569

The Course

When Japan surrendered to Allied troops fifty years ago, East Asia was in ruins. China had been at war against itself and Japan since the 1920s; its civil war would continue for four more years. Japanese invasion and Allied counter-invasion had destroyed cities, farms and factories across the South Pacific and Indochina. Allied bombers treated the Japanese colonies of Taiwan and Korea as enemy territory. And in Japan itself, devastation reigned. Because conventional bombing had flattened Tokyo and other industrial and military centers by August of 1945, US strategists were forced to demonstrate their new weapon at the largely civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Elsewhere, there were not enough structures left to do justice to the bombs' destructive potential.

In September of 1945, the prospects for Japan's recovery hardly could have seemed more remote. Conventional and atomic bombing took more than half a million lives on the Japanese mainland; military casualties numbered 1,140,000, with another quarter million missing. Millions of servicemen and colonists (some of them born and raised in Korea and Taiwan) flooded into Japan, joining millions more local refugees in a desparate search for food, housing and employment. Fourteen major cities , all targets of conventional bombing , were more than half destroyed.

Fifty years later, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are among the wealthiest societies on earth. Japan and Taiwan rank first and second in the world in foreign exchange reserves. All three societies enjoy an even distribution of wealth, although the gap betwen rich and poor is growing. Likewise, all three are governed by popularly-elected, democratic regimes.

How did Japan and its neighbors rise from the ashes of war to become the economic powerhouses they are today? How did these defeated dependencies overtake, and in some respects surpass, their military and economic mentors? And how did these two former colonies and their colonizer develop democratic political institutions to accompany their rise to economic power? These are some of the questions we will consider in Japan and the East Asian Dragons.

Requirements

Reading: This course is designed for students who are interested in East Asian politics, but you need not have a background in East Asian studies. I do not expect you to be an expert on Japan, South Korea or Taiwan before we begin. The purpose of the course is to help you acquire a familiarity with these countries so that you can evaluate intelligently the events that unfold there. That will mean absorbing a considerable amount of information. So the first requirement for this course is to read, carefully and ahead of class.

The basic text for the course is Introduction to Japanese Politics by Louis D. Hayes. It gives succinct overviews of each week's topic, and it will serve you well as an introduction and a reference. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor is a meditation on Japan's social and political life as the Showa emperor (Hirohito) lay dying in 1988. In it, Norma Field tells the stories of three Japanese citizens who resisted pressure to conform in order to tell the truth as they saw it. Bruce Sakaiya's What is Japan? is a Japanese scholar's attempt to explain Japan's economic and social institutions by looking at its history and culture. Looking at the Sun is a study of the business practices and government policies Japan and the East Asian Dragons used to become economic powerhouses.

At the end of the course we will turn to works on Taiwan and South Korea. We will use sections of Democracy and Development in East Asia: Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines to gain an understanding of the paths Taiwan and South Korea followed to economic development and democratization. Vogel's famous book The Four Little Dragons offers brief overviews of the economic systems of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. The book also suggests some factors which may help to explain their success.

Participation: The class will include discussion, and I expect everyone to contribute. Obviously, attendance is important (since you can't participate if you're not present), so I will take attendance at each class.

Essays: You will write two short (4-7 page) essays for this course. The first will be due on February 13; the second on April 10. I will distribute an assignment sheet suggesting topics for the essays at least a week before the due dates.

Reviews: There will be a mid-term review on March 13. There is an optional final examination (see next item).

Final Project: For your final assignment in this course you may choose either a cumulative final examination (emphasizing but not limited to material introduced after the mid-term) or a final research paper (15-25 pages). If you decide to write a paper, please consult with me about the topic.

Grading

Participation: 5% 93-100 = A

Essays: 30% 90-92 = A-

Mid-term Review: 30% 87-89 = B+

Final Project: 35% 84-86 = B

80-83 = B-, etc.

Please note: On your written work, please use a cover sheet with your name, the name of the course, the title of the paper and the honor pledge. Staple the title page to the rest of the essay. Please do not put your name on the other pages.

Anything you hand in is pledged work. But as a reminder of the honor code's importance, I would like you to write out the honor code in full on the cover sheet of any work you hand in. ("On my honor I pledge that I have neither given nor received help on this work, nor am I aware of any violation on the part of others.") If for some reason you do not write the honor code, that does not exempt the work from the honor code. Please make sure you understand the honor code, especially the definition of plagiarism. If you have any questions, doubts or concerns about any aspect of the honor code, please come and talk to me. If you are unsure of how you should cite material used in an essay, please feel free to discuss it with me.

Course Schedule

(assignments are due on the day under which they are listed)

Week 1

1/14: Introduction

1/16: Looking at Japan

Hayes, pp. 1-10

Fallows, 3-19

Field, 274-280

Sakaiya, 3-27

Week 2

1/21: Japan's Pre-war History

Hayes, 11-27

Fallows, 72-116

Sakaiya, 206-218

1/23: Coming to Terms with World War II

Field, 33-104

Week 3

1/28: The Occupation

Hayes, 31-44

Fallows, 117-176

1/30: Japanese Society

Hayes, 153-165 and 199-219

Sakaiya, 61-71 and 101-125

Week 4

2/4: Nationalism and Japanese Society

Sakaiya, 76-98

(you may want to begin reading for Thursday)

2/6: Nationalism

Field, 177-273

Week 5

2/11: The Legal System

Hayes, 64-68

Field, 107-174

2/13: State Structure

FIRST ESSAY DUE

Week 6

2/18: The "1955 System"

Hayes, 51-60, 73-94 and 99-112

2/20: Parliament and Parties Today

Hayes, 112-121

Week 7

2/25: Elections and Participation

Hayes, 126-145

2/27: Japan's Bureaucracy

Hayes, 60-64, 170-190

Week 8

3/11: Japanese Politics Today

supplementary reading

3/13: MID-TERM REVIEW

Week 9

3/18: Japan's Economic Success

Fallows, 21-71

3/20: Japan's Economic Failure

Sakaiya, 28-57

Week 10

3/25: Japan's Workforce

Sakaiya, 219-144

3/27: The Role of the State in Japan's Economy

Fallows, 177-240

Sakaiya, 245-265

Week 11

4/1: NO CLASS -- Easter Break

4/3: "The Asian System"

Fallows, 241-277

Vogel, 1-12

Week 12

4/8: Taiwan's Economy

Vogel, 13-41

Chapters 3 & 5, AEI reading

4/10: Taiwan's International Position

SECOND ESSAY DUE

Week 13

4/15: Political Change in Taiwan

Chapters 2 & 4, AEI reading

4/17: South Korea's Economy

Vogel, 42-65

Chapter 7, AEI reading

Week 14

4/22: Politics in South Korea

Chapters 6 & 8, AEI reading

4/24: Taiwan and South Korea in International Perspective

Vogel, 83-112

Chapter 9, AEI reading

Week 15

4/29: Concluding Thoughts

Fallows, 407-453

Sakaiya, 266-285