Japanese Historical Experience and Japanese Modernity

  It has long been recognized that Japanese modern society, policy and economy exhibit some very distinct characteristics, a distinct mode of structuration of modern institutions and organizations which are structured in ways radically different from those which have developed in other —especially Western— societies. Such differences are not just local variations. They pertain to the very basic ways in which the various modern institutional arenas are regulated, defined, and the broader social and cultural contexts in which they operate. The common denominator of these characteristics is a very high level of structural differentiation. mobility, openness and dynamics grounded in conceptions of service to social contexts, ideally (as promulgated in the Meiji ideology) to the national community. Neither the emphasis on equality nor the strong emphasis on achievement were grounded in any conception of principled transcendentally oriented individuality or of transcendental legitimation of different functional (e.g. political or economic) activities. Such a rather strong structural similarity, together with a distinct institutional dynamics. can be identified in comparing Japan and Western Europe already in the premodern period, when there were only but minimal contacts between them. The analysis in a comparative framework of this unusual combination is of central importance for the understanding of Japanese modernity and in the following pages I would like to present some preliminary steps for such analysis.