Conflict and Its Accommodation: Omote-Ura and Uchi-Soto Relations

TAKESHI ISHIDA

There are two opposing views on conflict situ-ations in Japan. One characterizesJapanese society as harmonious; a lack of conflict is here of prime importance. The other, in contrast, stresses the extreme militancy of opposition parties and labor unions; judging from their pronouncements, they are dogmatic, inflexible, and unwilling to make any concessions to the existing system. Both views are partly correct; only their emphasis is different.

Paradigm for Conflict Accommodation

These seemingly contradictory depictions of the same society may be reconciled by using Takeo Doi's concepts of omote-ura and uchi-soto, which are related to his theory of amae. These concepts were originally formulated in his psychopathological analysis of Japanese behavior patterns. Omote-ura literally means "front-back" and uchi­ soto means "in-out." The tentative working hypothesis is shown in Figure 1.

The two opposing views of Japanese society mentioned above can easily be explained by this diagram. The first view, which emphasizes harmony within Japanese society, deals simply with the uchi-omote relationship; the second, which focuses on the militancy of the opposition parties and labor unions, pays attention only to the soto-omote relationship. An accurate description of Japanese society requires us to examine the level of ura together with that of omote and to recognize the actual interrelationship between the two. Of course, in the former case-the view which considersJapanese society as a harmonious one-the nation as a whole is treated as the in-group unit, where as in the latter case-the view which emphasizes the militancy of the opposition-the in-group unit is the opposition camp against the establishment.

Beyond this simple and fued paradigm, it is my contention that the flexibility of the boundaries along these two dimensions of uchi­ soto and omote-ura provides a valuable resource for conflict accommodation in Japan. Conflict accommodation includes three categories: conflict regulation, conflict resolution, and conflict avoidance. Conflict regulation means to manage conflicts in such a way that they do not create a violent clash, even though they cannot be resolved. The difference between conflict resolution and conflict avoidance lies in the fact that the former presupposes an awareness of the issue involved in the conflict whereas the latter tends to distract attention from the issue. Therefore, in the latter case conflict cannot be resolved, although it can temporarily be pacified. Conflict accommodation, as the broadest term to cover these three categories, becomes necessary when we try to deal with conflict avoidance in comparison with conflict resolution.

In applying this approach, one must be careful to avoid two difficulties. The first is that if we put too much emphasis on the uniqueness of political culture, we tend to fall into the trap of cultural determinism. If there is nothing in common between Japanese society and other societies, we cannot compare at all. The second is that by identifying a certain characteristic as a national trait, we tend to be ahistorical. The great change which took place after Japan's defeat in World War I1 cannot be ignored here.

To avoid the first difficulty, the trap of cultural determinism, we have to clarify to what extent the same scheme can be applied to other societies and to what extent there is a difference between Japanese society and others. This will be done in the course of explicating how the flexibility of these two dimensions is used for conflict accommodation in Japanese society. To avoid the second difficulty, the trap of ignoring historical change, we will trace the changing application of these two dimensions to conflict accommodation in both prewar and postwarJapan.

The Uchi-Soto Dimension

The distinction between in-group and out-group is not peculiar to Japan. As many sociologists have pointed out, behavior among in- group members tends to differ from behavior toward outsiders. Max Weber’s famous distinction between Binnenmoral and Aussenmoral is one such example.2 In the United States, the distinction has been widely accepted since W. G. Sumner published Folkways in 1907. In the case of Japan, however, the scope of the in-group depends on the situation; thus the area considered to be an in-group on different occasions tends to form concentric circles. In traditional Japanese society, the smallest in-group was the family; the next, the extended family. A hamlet, a village, a prefecture, and the nation could also successively be the in-group, depending on the situation. If two neighboring hamlets were in conflict with each other-say, on the issue of irrigation from the same river-each would form an in-group to fight the other. Oh the other hand, if their village was competing with other villages to obtain financial subsidies from the limited funds allocated to the prefecture-say, to construct a bridge or a school-the village became the in-group. In the same way, the prefecture could be a unit when it competed with other prefectures. In the end, if the necessity to compete with other nations was emphasized, the nation as a whole could form an in-group.

An attempt was made by the militarist leaders to expand the in- group beyond Japan’s national boundary to absorb neighboring Asian countries as, for example, when they established Manchukuo and proposed the idea of the so-called Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. By Japan’s Asian neighbors, however, this idea was simply considered to have been invented in order to justify invasion and to provide an ideological buttress forJapan’s hegemony in Asia.

Although the distinction between in-group and out-group is commonly found in all societies, this pattern of concentric circles cannot be observed in diversified societies where many functional groups overlap with each other. This concentric relationship was typically found in traditional Japanese society, a predominantly agrarian society with little diversification, but a similar situation often exists even today. One faction against another in the same party is one in-group against another, for instance, but on other occasions one party against an other forms the in-group.

The flexibility of the border between uchiand soto often plays an important role in maintaining social integrity and avoiding conflict. Let me illustrate by a concrete example. When a village head is drinking sake on the occasion of a festival, he is one of the in-group members of the village. When he orders the heads of the hamlets in his village to do something, however, he is an outsider vis-a-vis the in-group (the hamlet). His behavior as a fellow villager in the former case may make his job easier in the latter case. Even in present-day urban life, a section chief in a private frrm or in the government bureaucracy will at least once or twice a year have a drinking party with the employees under his supervision. On such an occasion, he can be treated as a fellow member of the same group vis-a-vis the higher level-that is, the level of the bbreau. He may gossip about their superior in order to strengthen the sense of solidarity. This sort of drinking party is useful and even necessary for a section chief or for any other boss in order to gain spontaneous support from subordinates during routine business operation.

The flexibility of the border between uchiand soto sometimes creates problems. An in-group is composed of those who can share the feeling of “we” among themselves and among whom the behavior associated with amae (emotional dependency) is allowed; but since it is nothing but a matter of feeling, not all the members involved necessarily feel the same way. The employer of a company may try to absorb all employees into an in-group in order to compete with other companies; in an industrial dispute, however, the employees may feel that the employer is not a part of “we” but rather of “they.”

On the other hand, “dependent revolts” can often be found among employees in an enterprise union and also among students; the target of attack is, respectively, the company management and the university administration. By “dependent revolt” I mean a revolt motivated by the desire for amae-that is, a revolt to attract the attention of management or the administration in order to obtain more benevolent treatment.

A dependent revolt is an expression of ambivalent feelings: On the one hand, being rebellious, they consider management or the administration to be the target of attack and therefore exclude them from their in-group. On the other hand, in expecting better treatment by those attacked, they are by the same token dependent on the latter and therefore in a psychological sense trying to include them. The members of the enterprise union may say, “Our rival company increased wages by such-and-such. Why can’t we have the same?” Or the students may say, “Why did the administration let the police come on campus? Don’t we all belong to the same academic community with academic freedom?”

In general, despite this problem, the possibility of conflict can be avoided by enlarging the in-group or by absorbing the potentially opposing parties into the same in-group. Of course, the flexibility of the border between uchi and soto may also result in the entrenchment and shrinkage of the in-group. For instance, a serious factional conflict may appear within a political party. Depending on the situation, an organization may split into a number of factions. In this way factionalism, an important characteristic of Japanese society, is related to the flexibility of the border between in-groups and out-groups.

In order to absorb the potentially opposing parties into the same group, it is useful to have a common enemy against which the attention of the enlarged group can be directed. As Simmel put it, when the group as a whole enters into antagonistic relations with a power outside it, “the tightening of the relations among its members and the intensification of its unity, in consciousness and in action, occur. Or to use Coser’s expression: “Conflict with out-groups increases internal cohesion.”*

The Omote-Ura Dimension

Just as the boundary between uchiand soto is flexible, so too is the border line between omote and ura. Befote explaining this point further, however, we need to define the concepts of omote and ura. In the case of the distinction between uchi and soto, the difference approximates that between in-group and out-group. The concepts of omote and ura, however, have no equivalent expression in English. As an approximate expression, many may be reminded of the distinction between “front region” and “back region” proposed by Erving Goffman.5 Indeed the distinction between omote and uru does involve something similar to that between “front region” and “back region,” but there are some drfferences between the two.

In Goffman’susage, “front region,” which is exemplified by a performance in front of an audience at the theater, means the presentation of self in a functionally specified field; ornote, on the other hand, does not necessarily indicate the particular attitude to be adopted in such a functionally specified setting. Once a differentiation of function has taken place, the distinction between “front region” and “back region” becomes clear and no room remains for flexibility of the border between the two. Omote-ura can be defined only in relative terms; hence the border between the two remains flexible. Let me illustrate by giving a concrete example. When there is a gathering of the people in a hamlet, this means more omote compared with the personal discussions that take place between individual members of the hamlet, but more ura compared with the official discussions that take place in the village assembly.

Another difference between “front region-back region” and omote-ura is the latter’s implication of legitimacy. Goffman’s distinction between “front region” and “back region” does not indicate that the former has priority in terms of legitimacy. The two regions are functionally specified fields in each of which a particular form of appropriate behavior is required. But this is simply a matter of appropriateness and not of legitimacy. If I may be allowed to use an analogy, the distinction between “front region” and “back region” is similar to a,horizontal relationship with an inflexible border whereas the concepts of omote and aru imply a vertical relationship with a flexible border.

Omote and ura also imply two distinctive elements somewhat similar to what Walter Bagehot called the “dignified part” and the “efficient part .’I6 If we use these terms in a much broader sense than Bagehot did, a dramatizing element and a practical element are always necessary for all political activities in every country. But in the English constitution, as Bagehot correctly pointed out, there was a clear functional differentiation between the “dignified part ,’I represented by the crown, and the “efficient part,” represented by the parliament. In the case of prewar Japan, there was no such clear functional differentiation.

Keeping this explanation in mind, let me tentatively define omote and ura in the following way: omote means (1) publicly legitimate, (2) dramatized and dignified element, (3) with formality and rigidity; ura represents (1) privately allowed, (2) practical and efficient element, (3) with informality and flexibility. If we understand the terms omote and ura in this way, we can discover some unique characteristics of the relationship between the two in Japan.

First of all, omote and ura do not form a functionally differentiated dichotomy; rather, they represent two supplementary elements which appear according to the situation. In this respect they are similar to the Chinese concepts of yang and yin.7 Not only does the same person behave on the omote level in one situation and on the ura level in another situation, but sometimes even the same behavior may be considered ura from one angle and omote from another, as the example of the gathering of people in a hamlet indicates.

Secondly, in traditional Japanese society the publicly legitimate element represented by omote could only be found in the relationship between superiors and inferiors in the hierarchical ordering of the society, because legitimacy always came from above. It was ultimately the superior who decided how much ura could be permitted. In the army, for instance, noncommissioned officers sometimes drank with privates in the same barracks. One of them might say, “Let all formality be laid aside!” But then all of a sudden one of the noncommissioned officers might scold or even hit a private, saying the latter was too impolite.

Inferiors could not legitimately demand anything publicly; all they could do was ask a superior to do them a favor, to relax a rule so their wish could be realized. Sometimes their wish might simply be to be free from intervention from above. In this case, ura connoted tacit permission. During the war, for instance, almost all transactions of important goods were strictly controlled by the government but, depending on the! occasion, free transactions were possible with a yumi (black market) price on the ura level. Whether this act on the ura level was permitted or not depended entirely upon the will of the authority. In other words, the amount of ura allowed was determined solely by persons of superior authority.

The distinction between omote and ura and the proper use of these levels of interaction could also be found among those who held the same position in society. If two intellectuals who knew and trusted each other talked privately near the end of the last war, for example, they could express their pessimistic views about the future of the war. Thus the conversation was on the ura level. If they were talking with a few others, however, they had to modify their expression, and with more than ten persons they had to say that Japan would never be defeated.8 In the last case, they were behaving on the omote level. In this example, too, the omote phenomenon was indirectly related to a vertical relationship. The reason they used an omote expression was that they feared the conversation might become known to the police, who might punish them for their anti-Japanese pronouncement.

How to use either omote or ura appropriately is a burden to everyone, because all must carefully judge exactly which level is to be used on a particular occasion. On the other hand, this distinction between omote and ura can also be useful in relaxing the formalism imposed by strict rules and avoiding conflict. Such and such is strictly prohibited, one may say. But this is a matter of omote, and in reality the rule can be relaxed depending on the situation so that there is flexibility in its interpretation and application. In this way, during the war, ura relationships could work as a safety valve to ease tension in the society. To put it another way, by using the ura level the society could be flexible in avoiding conflict while at the same time maintaining basic principles on the omote level.

To sum up, then, uchi-soto and omote-ura relationships, both of which can be seen in other societies, appeared in traditional Japanese society in a peculiar way. The flexibility of the border between uchi and soto was characterized by the enlargement of concentric circles; and the omote-ura relationship was closely related to the vertical relationship that existed in the hierarchically ordered society. In such a society, conflict could be avoided or accommodated either by enlarging the in-group so that the two opposing parties could be absorbed by the larger in-group or by introducing an ura relationship to ease the tension and work out practical solutions.

Changing Social Structure and Conflict: Prewar

Now let me deal with the historical development of modern Japan by using the ideas of omote-ura and uchi-soto. In referring to traditional Japanese society, what I have in mind is the type of society established by the Meiji Constitution of 1889. The social structure under the Meiji Constitution can be described graphically with a picture of a cone topped by the emperor, as shown in Figure 2. Subcones were subordinated in this structure. The smallest cone was a hamlet, the continuation of the traditional rural community that developed in the premodern period. This hamlet was absorbed by another cone -the village, which was the smallest legal administrative unit. The village was a substructure of a prefecture headed by an appointed governor. The prefecture was a unit of national integration controlled by the national government or, more specifically, by the minister of home affairs. Thus a continuous line of delegation of power and authority existed: emperor -- prime minister - minister of home affairs - appointed governor - village head -- head of hamlet (although this was not a legally recognized position). The set of concentric cones depicted characterizes the emperor system established in the early Meiji period.

With modern development, however, social differentiation took place and, as a result, especially by the 1920s and 1930s, the modification of this prototype became necessary. Owing to the diversification of interests, the units of uchi were no longer necessarily concentric. Moreover, owing to the emergence of functionally differentiated agents for interest articulation, there was no longer a single line of authority running from the top of the political hierarchy to the bottom.

The emperor system responded to this changing situation by permitting relative differentiation on the intermediary level while strictly maintaining integration at top and bottom. In other words, relative differentiation was allowed only within the largest framework- that is, in the national cone headed by the emperor-whereas, at the bottom, the hamlet continued to form the basic unit for various functional organizations of farmers, veterans, youth, women, and the like. Of course, increasing urbanization created more problems. Even in urban areas, however, a basic unit similar to the hamlet was established. This was the workshop, in which workers could feel a sense of solidarity and in-group consciousness similar to that in a hamlet.9

This modified form of social integration, however, faced difticulty again in two ways. On’the one hand, tenant disputes and labor disputes that occurred in the 1920s undermined conformity at the very bottom of society because these disputes split the basic units of hamlet and workshop.-On the other hand, the communist movement which emerged in the 1920s explicitly challenged the emperor system for the first time in Japanese history. The establishment’s response was drastic. The government severely suppressed communists and other Marxists by the application of the Peace Preservation Law promulgated together with the Universal (Manhood) Suffrage Law in 1925. There was no room for the defendants charged under the Peace Preservation Law to receive benevolent treatment even on the ura level, except for those who made tenko (recantation), in which case they were treated with special consideration.

A more positive attempt to remedy the difficulties existing in the basic units of Japanese society is represented by the five-year plan for the regeneration of rural communities to restructure the hamlet and by the establishment of the Sampo organization (Association for Service to the Nation through Industry) to rehabilitate the workshop, both of which started in the 1930s. In the former case, large land owners (particularly absentee landowners) were deprived of their influence and cultivating farmers were encouraged to reorganize the hamlet in order to avoid tenant disputes. In the latter case, the government tried to replace labor unions with the government-established Sampo and to abolish labor disputes, paying token attention to working conditions. These attempts were partly successful, but new problems emerged in this reorganized system.

After the severe suppression of leftists, the greatest danger came, ironically, from the extreme rightists. The threat from the right was not simply a matter of violence by a handful of fanatic radicals; it was related to the basic structure of the political system. As we have seen, authority ran in a continuous line from the top to the bottom of traditional Japanese society. No one in an inferior position in the social hierarchy had the right to invoke a principle on the omote level. Rightists, however, dared to challenge this system by invoking the omote-level principle of kokutai (national polity). Again it was a historical irony that, because of their success in disseminating kokutai ideology, the government and ruling elites now had to face an attack from rightists who advocated the very same ideology.

Originally, the question of how much room to allow for ura was a matter which only the superior could decide. But now rightist radicals were trying to abolish ura among ruling elites by invoking the kokutai orthodoxy on the omote level. One typical example was the 1935 Minobe Incident. Dr. Tatsukichi Minobe, a law professor at Tokyo Imperial University who advocated the legal theory which considered the emperor to be an organ of the state, was accused of being a heretic and forced to resign from all public positions. Despite the popular belief in the emperor’s divinity, a belief taught through the national education system, it was taken for granted among the highly educated that Minobe’s theory was a valid legal explanation of the emperor’s actual position. As a result of the success of national education in propagating the exoteric view (omote) of the emperor’s divinity, the esoteric legal interpretation (ura) of his position, which prevailed among the ruling elites, was attacked by the rightists.

This phenomenon of the lower dominating the upper was also related to the introduction of universal manhood suffrage. Because of the lack of mass-based organizations, the political parties had to appeal directly to voters. They found that the most effective emotional appeal was an attack on their rival party, accusing the latter of disloyalty to the emperor. As a result of this Competition for loyalty between the political parties, an extremely patriotic mood was created. At this point the parties were attacked by the people, who criticized them for not being sufficiently loyal to the emperor and for working merely for their own vested interests.

The rightists’ violent revolt ended in February 1936 when the attempted military coup was suppressed, but the nation’s move toward the right continued in a more institutionalized way. The establishment of the Imperial*RuleAssistance Association (IRAA) in 1940 was the final institutionalization of this tendency. Now a single cone, the IRAA, absorbed all subcones: political parties, labor organizations, agricultural organizations, business organizations, youth and women's organizations, and so forth.

In the context of this essay, the establishment of the IRAA has two important implications. First, in terms of the ucbi-mto relationship , it meant the reestablishment of the concentric relationship between various in-groups, reconfirming the hamlet and workshop as the basic units. Second, it meant the introduction of the Fuehrerprinzip (principle of leadership), a term coined in Nazi Germany. This was an attempt to restructure the chain for the delegation of authority. In this restructured system, an inferior could ask something of a superior but could never demand. The decision was entirely in the hands of the superior, including the decision of how much am inferiors could be allowed.

Once the IRAA was established, it began to suffer from various dysfunctions. First of all, the absorption of all functional groups into a completely monolithic organization meant that functional groups had lost their role, This was one reason for the establishment of the Imperial Rule Assistance Adult Group (Yokusa) as an auxiliary organization attached to the IRAA, the aim being to gain more spontaneous participation by encouraging people to participate in a voluntary movement. Once the institutionalization took place, however, it turned out to be the same as the IRAA. Secondly, the reestablishment of the unilineal chain by which the IRAA delegated authority resulted in bureaucratic formalism and inflexibility and thus created indifference or apathy among the masses. Even cases of unorganized sabotage emerged.

The IRAA was an organization based solely upon the omote principle of kokutai orthodoxy; there was little allowance for the ura relationship. Paradoxically, or perhaps naturally, the ura relationship spread widely without any tacit permission from superiors. By establishing the IRAA, which emphasized national cohesion as the in- group, the government tried to abolish all sorts of conflicts within the country and to mobilize a feeling of hatred against foreign enemies. To a limited extent, and temporarily, it seemed to be successful, but only at the cost of diminished integrative functioning in the long run.

The breakdown of the system was not directly due to the internal situation, but rather to the predominant military power of the Allied Forces. By the final stages of the war, however, because of the difficulties inherent in the system itself, as described above, together with the influence of American bombing, the Japanese political system had already lost much of its integrative function.

In sum, then, the traditional social organization of concentric cones established in early Meiji times permitted full use of the flexibility of the uchi-soto and omote-ura dimensions to manage conflict. The increasing diversification at the middlle level, however, produced less manageable forms of conflict. The government permitted some differentiation in the middle, but it severely repressed attacks on the top level of centralization and then took deliberate steps to strengthen the integrity of the lowest-level units of hamlet and workshop. But the inability to control new forms of conflict in the fractured cones, along with increasing right-wing demands for conformity to omote-level ideology without the counterbalancing flexibility of ura permissiveness, led the government to attempt to reimpose a monolithic cone structure through the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. This effort failed because of internal weaknesses and Japan’s defeat in the war.

Why no internal forces existed to reform the political system from within is an interesting problem that needs careful analysis. At least in the context of this essay, we must note that the traditional method of avoiding conflict was not the same as resolving conflict. After the suppression of such rebellious elements as the communists, internal conflicts could be avoided temporarily by the traditional method mentioned above. But so long as the real reason for the conflict remained unsolved, there was still the potential for another conflict. If the conflict had become explicit, there would have been a movement for change in order to solve it. If a conflict is not fully recognized because of temporary avoidance, however, there is little awareness of the need for innovation or reform.

Social Structure and Conflict: Postwar Changes

As a result of Japan’s defeat and the postwar reforms ordered by the Occupation Authority, drastic changes occurred in Japanese society. One of the most important changes in the context of this essay was the abolition of the national cone headed by the emperor. With the dissolution of the IRAA, the organizational basis for integral nationalism was lost. But this does not necessarily mean that individuals became independent as a result of their emancipation from the emperor system. What happened in fact was the emancipation of various organizations which used to be integrated under the one umbrella of IRAA. Two typical examples ate the labor unions and the agricultural cooperatives.

The mushrooming of labor unions immediately after the defeat was of course due partly to the encouragement of occupation officials, but it was also due to the fact that the labor organizations which the IRAA established in every factory unintentionally prepared the way for the postwar emergence of labor unions. The particular pattern of Japanese labor unions, that is, the enterprise-based union, is also the legacy of the wartime situation in which branches of the IRAA were formed in every factory. Although the Labor Union Law of December 1945 stipulated that those who occupied supervisory positions were excluded from membership in labor unions, the majority of those who played an important role in the formation of labor unions were not rank-and-file workers; instead they were either white-collarworkers or foremen.10 Naturally, therefore, the organizational structure of
labor unions even today tends to be similar to that of management.

The newly established agricultural organization (the Agricultural Cooperative Union) was forced by the Occupation Authority to follow three ,principles: It had to be voluntary, democratic, and independent of the government. In reality, however, the agricultural co­ operatives were based on the hamlet unit and heavily dependent on the government, which controlled the rice and the chemical fertilizers necessary for agricultural production. Thus, despite the difference in basic principles, agricultural cooperatives turned out to be successors to the prewar agricultural organizations characterized by compulsory membership and government control.

In this way, the dissolution of the monolithic IRAA simply resulted in the fragmentation of the national cone. Each fragmented cone had the same structure as before, only the name was different. Uchi-soto and omote-ura relationships within each organization were not very different from before except that ascriptive status became less important as a result of the land reform and the dissolution of the zaibatsu.

Between the fragmented organizations, however, serious rivalries emerged unmediated by the superior agent which had previously guaranteed ultimate integration. Particdlarly noticeable in the period immediately after the defeat was the conflict between the government and labor unions. During the initial stage of the Occupation, authorities prohibited the formation of a national federation of employers’ organizations for fear that it might discourage the labor union movement. Thus major conflicts were not between labor and management but between labor and government. This was true, too, because the labor movement at the time was not only interested in increasing wages but also in promoting socialist revolution. Despite the absence of a single national integrative organization like the IRAA, or perhaps because of its sudden disappearance, the Japanese people had not yet grown accustomed to living in a nascent pluralist society. It was partly for this reason that many union leaders wanted to foment revolution, hoping to seize power from the conservative politicians. The conflict between labor and government became so intense that it resulted in the intervention of the Occupation Authorities at the time of the attempted general strike on 1February 1947.

Severe suppression of communists at the time of the Korean War destroyed the dream of revolution, but the ideological conflict between labor and government continued to be more important in Japan than in other countries-partly because, in Japan, government employees’ unions were most active and played a major role in the labor movement. Beginning in 1955, the “spring offensive” became an annual event. Some may say that the spring offensive, which now includes several million workers and uses militant slogans, is an indication of ideologically radical and hence inflexible attitudes on the part of the labor unions. Empirical research demonstrates, however, that the beginning of the spring offensive signaled a shift in the labor unions’ focus from ideological issues to the practical problem of wages.’’

The spring offensive was first proposed by the Ohta faction in Sohyo (General Federation of Labor Unions). This faction criticized the mainstream led by the Takano faction for being too interested in political ideology. The original idea of the spring offensive’s planners was to focus the union’s attention on the most important goal of the labor movement: to increase wages. For this reason they proposed that many unions join forces at a particular time of year in order to exert a stronger influence than was possible when each union fought individually against management. 12 Often the slogans of the spring offensive have included various political issues such as the problem of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, but this is a matcer of omote. If we probe beneath the surface of the spring offensive, we find that labor leaders are less interested in political ideology than one may think from hearing their militant slogans.

When the spring offensive became an annual event and hence was ritualized, certain implicit rules were also established between the two parties concerned: the labor unions and the employers’ organizations (not the government, as was the case immediately after the defeat). These rules df the game are not known to the public. In fact. many deny the existence of such ground rules because, every year, depending on differences in the economic and social situation, each party uses different strategies and the results are also different. But prior to the spring offensive, many can predict quite accurately how much of an average wage increase will result from the spring offensive. This means that there is an established format in the spring offensive. At least we can safely say that there is a tacit agreement between the two parties that the spring offensive has its own raison d’etre.

Precisely because of this ritualization of the spring offensive, a cer­ tain amount of discontent has arisen among the rank-and-file union members. Some of them, in fact, have rebelled against their leaders and criticized them by invoking the omote-level leftist ideology they have been indoctrinated with by the leaders themselves. In the depressed economic conditions of today, however, many union members are well aware of their difficult position, particularly in regard to the problem of employment, and hence the influence of the small number of radicals, often called New Leftists, is still limited.

Parallel to the labor union, another important mass organization is the agriculrural cooperative. These cooperatives organize virtually all households engaged in agriculture. Although their internal structure is not very different from that of the prewar agricultural organizations, one conspicuous change in the postwar period can be noticed in the militant struggle between farmers and government over increases in the price of rice. On the omote level this “struggle” is indeed militant, but on the ura level the leaders easily make concessions via-a-vis the government, since they do not possess as much bargaining power as the labor unions. After all, it is the government which decides the amount of subsidies to be distributed in relation to the price of rice. The agricultural cooperatives’ militancy is nothing but a strategy to attract the government’s attention, although it also serves to impress their rank and file with the tough stand they have taken on the issue (and hence with the organization’s reason for existence).

Lacking the right to strike, the only bargaining power they have is the block vote they can control in the rura1 constituencies where the government (conservative) party has firm support. In order to impress the politicians with the number of votes they can control, thousands of farmers come up to Tokyo to hold a mass meeting which Diet members from the rural constituencies are expected to attend. The recent overproduction of rice and the increased fiscal burden borne by the government, which must buy rice at artificially high prices, have made it more difficult for farmers to succeed in their demand for higher rice prices, as Michael Donnelly describes elsewhere in this volume.

Similar to the situation within the labor unions, there is discontent among the cooperative members, who consider their leaders to be too close to the government. But it is even more difficult than in the case of the labor unions for them to articulate their discontent, because of the conservative mood prevailing in rural areas.

Economically weaker organizations such as those of small and medium-sized enterprises have similar difficulties in the competition among interest groups.13 In the late 1950s they were very active and vocal in supporting legislation favorable to them. During the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s, however, the difference in economic power between large enterprises and small ones became more pronounced than before. Corporate mergers between huge enterprises also accelerated this tendency.’* Moreover, the subcontractual relationship between large and small enterprises has made the latter subordinate to the former. Thus, under the present oligopolistic situation, a small number of huge enterprises actually control the market and also exert strong political influence even without engaging specificallyin pressure tactics.

Various problems, such as pollution,-have resulted from Japan’s rapid economic growth. Labor unions, which strongly demand increases in wages within the framework of the enterprise-based union, are not in favor of solving such problems as pollution because they fear that the cost may adversely affect their wages. In the widely publicized case of Minamata disease caused by mercury produced by a chemical factory, the union members of the factory, at least at the first stage, actually suppressed the protest movement of the fishermen who were suffering from the disease.15

Those who suffer from pollution but do not belong to a large organization are not strong enough to compete with the industry creating the trouble. Even so, quite a few citizens’ movements have emerged to tackle the problem of pollution. In fact, citizens’ movements existed even before the issue of pollution attracted” popular attention. The first embryo of a citizens’ movement not under the leadership of the labor unions can be traced back to 1960, when massive demonstrations emerged against the Kishi Cabinet’s undemocratic way of passing the revised U.S.-Japan security treaty in the Diet.16 Such tiny Organizations as the Koenaki Koe no Kai (Association of the Voiceless Voice) were organized among ordinary citizens to express their resentment at not being sufficiently represented by any of the huge established organizations.

With an increased distrust in all established organizations, which because of their vested interests are not seriously concerned with the unorganized citizen, many citizens started their own organizations to promote civic movements. One typical example is Beheiren (“Peace in Vietnam” Citizens’ Committee), which protested the Vietnam War. Although Beheiren was dissolved when the war was over, its new type of organizational structure-a completely voluntary organization based upon individual commitment is an important legacy for the citizens’ movement. These examples are concerned with national or international issues, but with the increased interest in local autonomy, local issues have become more important, particularly those related to the problem of pollution.

The fact that there are now ni:rqerous citizens’ movements, although small in size, indicates a new phase in the organizational situation. The conflict between large industries, which create pollution, on the one hand, and citizens’ movements with a new pattern of organizational structure, on the other, is an unprecedented type of conflict that cannot be solved by the traditional methods of manipulating the boundaries of uchi-soto and omote-ura.

Sometimes citizens’ movements include individuals who belong to a huge organization. This is one indication of the recent weakening of group cohesion in big organizations. In the huge organizations of today, even among those people who do not participate in a citizens’ movement, there are quite a few who do not want to make a total commitment to their organization and try to preserve their freedom outside it. This is particularly true among young employees. Some may conclude from this fact that the uchi feeling in huge organizations will weaken in the future. At present, however, there is another element which is strengthening the uchi cohesion-that is, the depressed economic conditions which oblige employees to depend on the enterprise in order to maintain employment in rough times.

To sum up then, in the historical development of social organiza tions after the defeat of Japan, the first phase was characterized by the fragmentation of the national cone ind by competition or rivalry among the fragmented parts, which maintained almost the same internal structure as before. Then, in the second phase during the l960s, oligopoly developed. The stronger organizations, small in number and large in size, have been tightening their internal control and increasing their influence vis-a-vis the outside world. The third and present phase may be characterized by the emergence of citizens’ movements.

Current Applications of the Paradigm

Keeping this historical backgrovnd in mind, how can we apply the uchi-soto and omote-ura hypothesis to the present situation? The applicability of the traditional method of accommodating conflict in Japanese society, by the enlargement of the in-group in horizontal relationships and the proper use of omote and ura in vertical relationships, should be examined in three different kinds of relationships: within the established organizations, between large established organizations with equal power, and between large organizations and outsiders.

WITHIN ESTABLISHED ORGANIZATTONS

Here the traditional method can still be applied with some modification, because there is continuity between the prewar and postwar periods in terms of organizational structure. In the case of huge organizations, however, the use of the traditional method has become more difficult because of the contradictions inherent in this type of organizational structure. The difficulties within the big organizations of today may easily be compared with those of the IRAA described above. If the in-group becomes too large, the sense of natural solidarity diminishes and the sense of alienation among the rank and file tends to grow. Moreover, if monolithic integrity is overemphasized, it becomes more difficult for the organization to respond to the functional diversification occurring within it. On the other hand, if the organization relaxes its tight control by introducing the ura level, thereby tautly permitting a certain flexibility, cohesion may be in danger.

We are not simply talking about huge commercial enterprises but also about big labor organizations. In fact, the militancy of the labor unions (or similarly of agricultural cooperatives) is related to the problem of their internal structure. As in the national situation in the 1930s, the lower-rank members, indoctrinated by the leadership, tend to invoke militant principles on the omote level. The leaders themselves are now bound by the omote principle, which was originally used by them to manipulate the members. Moreover, when the leaders try to negotiate with management on the ura level, and at the same time to pacify the possible discontent caused by their entering into negotiations, they have to pay lip service to militancy on the omote level again.

BETWEEN LARGE ESTABLISHED ORGANIZATIONS WITH EQUAL POWER

The traditional method of conflict accommodation cannot be applied in this case because there is no superior organization which absorbs both of them. Nevertheless, certain ground rules can be established to avoid the destructive effects of conflict. A typical example can be found in the relationship between national federations of business organizations and those of labor unions. This relationship is not very different from that existing in other societies although, on the level of each enterprise, since unions are enterprise-based, in-group feeling can easily be established between the management and the union. Even in the relationship between such federated organizations, however, the particular internal structure of each organization has some influence. For instance, as mentioned above, they tend to be more militan 'on the omote level, as Thomas Rohlen describes in his study
of teachers in this volume.

BETWEEN HUGE ORGANIZATIONS AND OUTSIDERS

In the case of the relationship between large organizations and outsiders, such as that between large enterprises and the citizens' movements, the traditional method of conflict accommodation cannot work because there are few ways to absorb the outsiders into the existing enterprise in-group. Only in exceptional cases, as when a large enterprise together with its related industries has predominant influence in the locality, can the enterprise try to absorb local people into its in-group by saying that the prosperity of the enterprise benefits the community as a whole.

In relationships with outsiders, it is also difficult to use the omote-ura strategy, which was originally useful in vertical relationships within a hierarchically structured organitation. So far, no established method of conflict resolution has been found. Probably this is why many conflicts in this category continue for such a long time. In fact, even after many patients of Minamata disease were confirmed and the movement to tackle this problem emerged, it took almost twenty years before a judicial decision declared the manager of the factory responsible for the disease. Even today, many victims are still struggling to be registered as legally recognized Minamata patients.

While the outsiders mentioned above are making efforts to find a democratic way of conflict resolution, a few others are rejecting the democratic system as a whole. The Red Army and those who set bombs in a building belonging to the Mitsubishi Company are examples. Those who engage in such violent activities are nevertheless few. More important is the existence of a greater number of people who are not directly violent but believe that neither the traditional method of conflict accommodation nor the democratic way of conflict resolution can work in the present situation.

One special case should be added here. In the depressed economic conditions of the 1980s, huge enterprises are trying to adjust to the situation by reducing the production of their subcontractors (small and medium-sized enterprises). Thus the burden is shifted to these subordinate enterprises which thereby naturally face serious difficulty and are often forced to dismiss their employees as a result. In this case, those who are fired no longer belong to the factory in-group because the uchi feeling can be shared only among those who are working together with the expectation that they will continue to be coworkers until retirement. In fact, this custom of “lifetime employment” and the pattern of enterprise-based unions are the two major conditions allowing members of the enterprise to have the uchi feeling. Once an employee is fired, his expectation of lifetime employment is lost along with his union membership. Thus he becomes an outsider of both the enterprise and the union. It is usually very difficult because of the lack of in-group consciousness between those fired and those not fired and partly because of management’s economic position.

As for the relationship between organizations with unequal power, one of the three basic categories can be applied. If the weaker organization is subordinate to the larger one by a subcontract, for instance, the relationship is close to the first category. if the difference is not very large between the two organizations, the relationship fits the second category. If the difference is extremely large and there is no common interest between the two, the relationship may belong in the third category.

EVALUATING THE RELATIONSHIPS

Now let us compire the three relationships. In the first type (within large organizations) we find the strongest continuity from the prewar days, and hence uchi-soto and omote-ura relationships are almost the same as before. As oligopoly emerged, the importance of this area became even greater; but at the same time inherent difficulties also increased. The second relationship (between large organizations) emerged in the postwar period but -has almost become customary. The third relationship (between large organizations and outsiders) did not attract much attention until recently because the powerless outsiders who were the victims of large organizations used to bear their situation in silence. Since the conflict in this relationship is very new, no one can accurately forecast the future.

In terms of their relative importance in present-dayJapanese society, the first relationship is still the most important. The second is supplementary to the first, but it is increasing in importance. The third relationship is not important at this moment, but it may increase in significance’.If this evaluation is correct, then we can say that the traditional uchi-soto and omote-ura relationships have not lost their importance for avoiding conflict even today. At the same time, as this historical analysis of modern developments since Meiji times indicates, the traditional method of conflict accommodation has its own inherent difficulties. To the extent that an organization depends on the traditional method of conflict accommodation, the process of strengthening its integrity is inevitably accompanied by increased potential tensions, as exemplified by the case of the IRAA.

In this sense, it is too early to tell how long the traditional method of conflict accommodation can continue to work. As we have seen, the traditional method of conflict accommodation is not the same as conflict resolution. It simply means the temporary avoidance of conflict without solving the basic problem. As a result of this accommodation, tensions may accumulate. Consequently, the real conflict may emerge in the future. Even if there is no explicit conflict, the problem between huge organizations and outsiders, particularly underprivileged outsiders such as the victims of pollution, should be solved in a democratic way; otherwise, the democratic system itself cannot operate in the long run, because of the possibility of sporadic explosion of the accumulated resentment of the underprivileged.

What is of urgent need is creative political leadership that has the courage not to conceal or avoid conflict but to tackle and solve it, while remaining sensitive to discontent that may evolve into serious conflict. Such leadership may then help solve the problems of modern Japanese society.

NOTES

1. Takeo Doi, Omote and Ura: Concepts Derived from theJapanese 2-fold Structure of Consciousness,”Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 157 (4)(1972): 258 261. For the concept of amae, see Doi, “Amae-A Key Concept for Understanding Japanese Personality Structure, in R. J. Smith and R. K. Beardsley, eds.,Japanese
Culture: Its Development and Characteristics (Chicago: Aldine, 1962).
2. Max Weber, Wirtschaftrgeschichte (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1924), p. 304.
3. Georg Simmel, Conflict and The Web of Group-Afiliations, trans. Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix (New York: Free Press, 1955), p. 91.
4. Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956), p. ai.
5. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Double- day Anchor, 1959). p. l06f.
6. Walter Bagehot, The EngfiJh Constitution, 1867, Gth ed. (London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1891).
7. Derk Bodde, “Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy,” in A. E Wright, ed., Studies in Chinese Thought (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1953).

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