搖尾乞憐與狐假虎威 日本悲劇的根源

In 2009, after half a century of nearly unbroken rule, the Liberal Democratic party was finally drummed out of office by a new force in Japanese politics. The Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, promised a new contract with the Japanese public and a new relationship between elected officials and the powerful bureaucracy. Yet when Hatoyama went to Washington the following April, he was shunned.

在幾乎未曾間斷地執政半個世紀後，自民黨(LDP)最終在2009年被日本政壇的新力量趕下臺。由鳩山由紀夫(Yukio Hatoyama)領導的日本民主黨(DPJ)，承諾與日本民衆簽訂新契約，並在民選官員和勢力強大的官僚體系之間建立新的關係。然而，當翌年4月鳩山訪問華盛頓時，他遭遇了冷遇。

The ostensible reason was that Hatoyama had displeased Washington by reneging on a deal to build a new US Marine base on Okinawa. However, according to R Taggart Murphy, professor of international political economy at Tokyo’s Tsukuba university, Hatoyama was attempting much more than that: he wanted to regain the sovereignty that Japan had lost when it became a virtual “protectorate” of the US after 1945. “Japan cannot be an ally of the United States — or anyone else — until it is first a sovereign state,” Taggart Murphy writes. In this view, one shared by many on both the Japanese right and the left, Japan remains essentially an occupied nation, subject to a US-written constitution and honeycombed by US military bases. Rather like Hatoyama, he recommends Japan taking responsibility for its own defence and seeking a new accommodation with China.

表面上的原因是，鳩山拒絕履行沖繩美國海軍基地新建協議，觸怒了華盛頓。然而，東京筑波大學(University of Tsukuba)國際政治經濟學教授塔R•塔格特•墨菲(R Taggart Murphy)認爲，鳩山想要的比這多得多：他想收回日本1945年後成爲美國事實上的“保護國”時所喪失的主權。墨菲寫到：“在首先成爲一個主權國家之前，日本無法做美國（或任何其他國家）的盟國。”這種觀點（得到日本右翼和左翼的很多人認同）認爲：日本本質上仍是一個被佔領國，要遵守一部由美國製定的憲法，本土遍佈美國軍事基地。跟鳩山的觀點相像，墨菲建議日本自己擔負國防責任，並尋求與中國取得新的和解。

Taggart Murphy knows his Japanese history. His theories about Japan’s political economy — of which more later — shed interesting light on the country. They can, however, be taken to extreme. In the case of Hatoyama, the author contends that he was brought down by Washington. Certainly, the US was disturbed by Hatoyama, who casually announced in an essay that he wanted to recast Japan’s relationship with the US and China, omitting to mention this sea-change in foreign policy to his allies in the US. But while US diplomats may have schemed against him, to lay his demise squarely at Washington’s door is too much. (To be fair, as well as the Pentagon and Japan-handlers in Washington, the author also blames the LDP, the Japanese bureaucracy, Beijing, Pyongyang and the 2011 earthquake. Only the kitchen sink, it seems, was not in on the conspiracy.)

墨菲瞭解日本歷史。他關於日本（當代）政治經濟史的理論提供了一些有意思的觀點，有助於我們瞭解這個國家。但是，有些觀點可能有些過頭。就鳩山來說，作者認爲他是被華盛頓搞下臺的。當然，美國被鳩山弄得心神不寧——他在一篇文章中漫不經心地地宣佈，要重塑日本與美國以及中國的關係，但卻沒有向他在美國的盟友事先提及這一外交政策突變。雖然美國外交官可能曾密謀對付鳩山，但把他的下臺完全歸咎於華盛頓有點太過了。（平心而論，除五角大樓以及華盛頓負責處理日本事務者之外，作者還指責自民黨、日本官僚體系、中國政府、朝鮮政府以及2011年那場地震應該爲鳩山下臺負責。看起來只有廚房裏的水槽沒有參與這場陰謀。）

The book’s intellectual foundations owe much to Karel van Wolferen, whose classic The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989) revolutionised the way people thought about Japan. In Taggart Murphy’s hands, the crux of the theory is that power relations have not properly evolved from the quasi-feudal system that operated for more than 250 years when Japan was an isolated shogunate. Then the nominal head of state was the emperor, though in reality he was little more than a figurehead. The Meiji Restoration of 1868, which overthrew the existing order in order to protect Japan from encroaching colonialism, supposedly restored the emperor to his rightful position. Unlike in Europe, this was not a bourgeois revolution mounted from below, but a putsch organised by a clique of samurai. Japan, in other words, has never properly destroyed the old order, a state of affairs perpetuated when the US occupation ducked its chance to topple the emperor.

這本書的知識基礎大大得益於卡雷爾•範沃爾夫倫(Karel Van Wolferen)，後者關於日本的經典著作《日本：權力結構之謎》(The Enigma of Japanese Power,1989）徹底改變了人們對日本的認識。在墨菲筆下，這一理論的核心是，權力關係還沒有真正超越半封建體制，這一體制在日本還是個孤立的幕府國家期間運轉了超過250年。那時，名義上的國家元首是天皇，儘管實際上他不過是一個傀儡。1868年的明治維新 (Meiji Restoration)爲保護日本免受殖民主義入侵而推翻了原有秩序，據信恢復了天皇應有的地位。與歐洲不同，這不是一場自下而上的資產階級革命，而是由武士集團組織的一場政變。換句話說，日本從來沒有完全摧毀其舊秩序，而美國在佔領期間放棄廢除天皇的機會，使這一狀態得以永久化。

There is much useful rumination here. The section on the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) is particularly well done, and there are also many colourful, often acerbic, observations about modern Japan — a foreigner working for a Japanese company, for example, is likened to a rap artist joining a string quartet. The tragedy of Japan, says the author, stems from the fact it merely grafted the trappings of a modern state on to its existing system. To this day, he contends, there continues to be a “yawning gap between the political reality in Japan and the fictions with which that reality” is understood.

本書中有很多有益的思考。關於德川幕府時代(Tokugawa shogunate,1600-1868)的章節寫得格外好，書中對現代日本也有許多生動（往往也很尖刻）的評論——例如，書中將一個效力於日本企業的外國人比作加入了絃樂四重奏的說唱歌手。作者說，日本的悲劇源於它只是把現代國家的外表嫁接到了原有的體制之上。他說，時至今日，“日本政治現實與人們對這種現實的臆想之間仍存在巨大差距”。

For the author, this gap explains more or less everything. It is why, for example, there are endless debates in parliament about matters that have long been decided upon behind closed doors. It is why it took a foreigner, unfamiliar with honour codes, to blow the whistle on the fictional accounts at Olympus. It is also why the salaryman can believe he is “a soldier for a cause” but can also recognise that ultimately he is an “exploited cog in a faceless, industrial machine”.

在作者看來，這種差距幾乎可以解釋一切。例如，它解釋了爲什麼議會要對早已祕密決定的事情進行無休止的辯論。它也解釋了爲什麼舉報奧林巴斯(Olympus)賬目造假的是一個不熟悉日本榮譽守則的外國人，以及爲什麼一個工薪族既可以相信自己是“獻身事業的士兵”，也可以承認自己最終是“千篇一律的工業機器上一顆被剝削的螺絲釘”。

This latter example reveals the author’s propensity to see in every facet of modern Japan the ghosts of an unreconstructed past. The alienation of labour he describes could apply equally to almost anywhere. Similarly, many other features of the country, from teenage fashion to sexual relations, are shoehorned into an overarching theory with sometimes illuminating or far-fetched consequences.

後面那個例子顯示出，作者傾向於認爲，那段未得到重建的歷史的幽靈存在於現代日本的方方面面。他所描述的勞動異化(alienation of labour)可能同樣適用於幾乎任何地方。類似地，這個國家的許多其他特徵（從青少年時尚到兩性關係）都被硬塞進一個包羅一切的理論中，得出的結論有時發人深省，有時有些牽強。

Shinzo Abe, the nationalist prime minister, becomes yet another throwback — one of the “vampires” from the darkest period of Japan’s history, in Taggart Murphy’s description. For this sorry state of affairs, the author concludes, Washington has only itself to blame. It “cavalierly” destroyed Japan’s best hope of revamping its political system and of repairing poisonous relations with China. Yet this is to credit the Democratic Party of Japan with a revolutionary agenda that it simply did not possess. It is also to depict modern Japan, for all its many faults, in too unrelentingly gloomy a light.

日本的民族主義首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)則成爲另一大倒退的象徵——用墨菲的話來說，他是來自日本歷史中最黑暗時期的“吸血鬼”之一。對於這種糟糕的狀態，作者認爲，華盛頓只能怪它自己：美國“傲慢地”摧毀了日本改造其政治體制以及修復糟糕的日中關係的最好機會。然而，作者這樣說相當於認爲日本民主黨有一份革命議程，但實際上它根本沒有。此外，儘管現代日本存在種種缺陷，但作者這樣說也未免過於無情和悲觀，沒有公允地反映現代日本的真實面貌。

Japan and the Shackles of the Past, by R Taggart, Murphy OUP USA RRP£20/RRP$29.95, 472 pages

《日本及其歷史枷鎖》(Japan and the Shackles of the Past)，R•塔格特•墨菲著，牛津大學出版社美國部(OUP USA)出版，建議零售價20英鎊或29.95美元，472頁

David Pilling is the FT’s Asia editor and author of ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’ (Allen Lane)

注：戴維•皮林(David Pilling)是英國《金融時報》亞洲版主編，著有《彎折逆境：日本與生存藝術》(Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival)，由艾倫萊恩出版社(Allen Lane)出版。