The Social Bases of Politics in Japan

The Japan Sociological Association decided to hold a symposium with “The Social Bases of Politics in Japan” as its general theme this year. Its important aims were that the social bases which sustain politics in Japan at present must be made clear, and the channels which lead from local self-governmental politics to the national government. If their mechanism is made clear, we could know more evidently about the political situations in Japan. To answer these subjects we selected four dimensions : (A) Town-assembly maintained chiefly by old-middle class. (B) Rural community composed chiefly of farmers. (C) Trade-union (D) New middle class We tried to investigate how these people are connected with the local self-government and how their political processes have a connection with the national government. Schematically speaking we can conjecture in general as follows : 1. Both (A) -group and (B) -group maintain the conservative local politics and their political activities form the social bases of the conservative parties. 2. (C) -group assumes a conservative attitude to the local politics, but connected with progressive parties on the level of the national politics. 3. (D) -group isolates itself from both the local- and national politics. The real political conditions in Japan, as we know, are not so simple as this Therefore this schema must be corrected naturally. To solve these difficult problems we must study at the same time from the total vision, i.e. we must first find the approach from the level of the political power, and we must second make the most of the results which the other social sciences have accomplished.