革新官僚の思想と行動

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From 1935 to 1945 reformist bureaucrats in Japan occupied virtually the center of policy making along with a group of politically and economically concerned military officers. These bureaucrats were not only able to exert influence in the complete bottom-up process of policy formation, but also, despite little formal powers, were also able to effect decision making to a far greater extent than in the era of the political party cabinets. These reformist bureaucrats belonged to a group of government officials who had received their formal university education in the 1920's in the Marxist tradition. They rose up through the ranks in the latter half of the 1930s from personal and professional relationships in the background of building a controlled economy. They philosophically refuted both Marxism and capitalism, which they viewed as degrading the human character by the strong emphasis on materialism. Focussing their views on success in Manchuria, they stressed domestic totalism (planned economy) according to political priorities (presuming of course the existence of the monarchical [Tenno] institution), and insisted on the "East Asian (toa) bloc" as the corresponding state of affairs on the foreign front. This way of thinking was based on German totalistic thought; however, we can also discern their Marxist educational background enabling them to adopt such an ideology. In terms of concrete goals, their totalism was commonly directed towards "reform" plans geared to increasing the military strength of the army. It was for this reason that these reformist bureaucrats joined hands with politically and economically concerned military officers in policy making and political action. The practical behavior of these reformist bureaucrats, being based generally on this kind of ideology, was geared towards carrying out within such integrative offices as the Cabinet Planning Board (Kikaku-in) a radical state reorganization effort (almost impossible in peacetime) as one link in the creation of a wartime system for supporting the war in China and the Pacific War. Their efforts meet with a fair amount of success. The true intentions of the whole "reformist faction", which included these bureaucrats and embraced totalism in the wake of the German victorids on the European front, came to light during the Konoe New Organization movement of 1940 and 1941. However, the "citizens organization" plan that they were most eager to put through was not realized fully due to resistance in the National Diet. In any case, these reformist bureaucrats, as a result of giving up on both Marxist and capitalist solutions, inevitably plunged Japan into the Pacific War and continued to hold this ideology even after the War was over. While we can say on the one hand that their criticism of both Marxism and capitalism was not completely irrelevant in that it can be linked in the end to Japan's postwar high economic growth, on the other hand, it was because of their hastiness in trying to reform the present situation that they brought a great many of human and material damages in the Pacific War. Furthermore, when looking at the problem in terms of comparative history and national system theory, in the sense that it was the army officers and reformist bureaucrats who exerted real political influence through their commitment to totalist ideology, but were able to realize only a part of their goals in very gradual steps, we could call this period in Japanese history "a wartime state regime tending gradually towards totalism".
財団法人史学会の論文
1990-04-20

革新官僚の思想と行動

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