Status Updates From Planning for Empire: Reform...

Making! Progress!

as fundamentally insignificant. Parts of a whole. Cogs in a machine. And take pride in operating together as part of a ruthlessly efficient machine aimed squarely at state progress and growth. Indoctrinate pride and anger. That "we are owed something collectively."

...a common goal and this vague idea of a "Great Public," in return erecting institutions that at least have the interest of multiple people in mind rather than the enrichment of a few families?

I wonder if our curse (PH) is that we allowed family ties to be the primary organizing principle of our lives. Blood rather than sweat. To this end, what we can learn from this book is that we must learn to see ourselves...

Is it not better, even if "better" comes with its own "brutish" consequences, to at least organize the resources of the state around a clearly defined "common goal?" At least in the denial of self one can serve causes greater than the pursuit of profit and/or cronyism, no? At least those in public service can be conditioned to leave something behind that surpasses one's self — and one can be trained to serve...

And finally...is rule by calculated bureaucrat really so bad when democracy is slow, inefficient, and corrupt? I don't agree with all that the likes of Nobusuke Kishi stands for and does, BUT there is something to be said re: one's attempt to distill personal ties down to cold, hard, numerical relations. Where once there was only disorder...is it not better to have imperfect order vs. none at all?

...worship of authoritarian power vs. democracy. Good books that expound on this include Robert Caro's "The Power Broker."

At what point do we not allow "getting things done" to justify the suppression of one's personal rights and freedoms?

On the other hand, surely there comes a point where human rights and freedoms must make way for concrete action. We cannot dismiss the importance of the "nation builder."

This book is soooo boring — Enlightening! — but boring. Interesting though how there are so many left-wing economic principles that are grafted on to the Reform Bureaucrat's Total War state. If our race is superior then all within the race must be equal in ability...and thus resources allocated "according to need" instead i.e. the needs of the great Japanese nation.

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Some parallels here in terms of...

What's really scary is that sans the racism, there's a lot of passages and ideas here that could easily find a home in more left-wing economic and political texts...

...we can't learn anything from the decisive, productive means of governance and organization driven by reformists in Manchuria. For those allergic to right-wing ideas and thinking, a lot of their managerial and administrative theory is borrowed from Soviet-style central planning, mind.

Maybe a better term to use to come to terms with the ideas presented so far is...corporatist? Human rights abuses aside...

...don't seem at all evil in the slightest. I don't think a desire for more efficient planning and resource production/targets monitoring processes are evil. Nor I think is the desire to motivate production more positively through incentives rather than restrictions.

It's the guiding force behind such administrative drives that sets us on a path towards "evil", I suppose.

I don't think however that that means...

Scared that I find at least the middle chapter of the book which doesn't yet go into the ideologies of fascism at the heart of the reform bureaucrats' Manchukuo experiment very reasonable. Plans seem to be ambitious but measured. Intentions behind the need to do certain things e.g. invite private investment/ownership and streamline command structures and industrial centers around common/shared resource groups...

...modernity? Perhaps. But there is still much to reflect on esp. on the Japanese reform bureaucrats' own grim lack of imagination and empathy towards those around them that are not part of their "in-group."

...and the dominant rule of the day is military might (with Japan's own curtailed by the Great Powers, mind — see the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty), it is no small wonder that many angry, emerging scholars and professionals see the world around them as nothing more than the grounds for never-ending Great Conflicts.

Does such conclusively point towards the corrosive nature of capital and industrial revolution...

...future that a Western education and a modern, Westernized world is supposed to bring. "I sacrificed my identity for this promise of wealth and riches that isn't coming!" "I am made for greater things." "I am owed something better."

It is this insidious logic and desperation and collective internal turmoil that ferments such appeals towards fascism and this idea of a "total war economy." When all is suffering...

Suddenly, as in places like Germany, you end up with a proud, over-educated populace that is hungry and poor and searching desperately for meaning and order, and loathe as well to play second fiddle to more established imperial Western powers. Many young bureaucrats and professionals coming-of-age in this environment are understandably angsty and dismayed and feel robbed of this promising, technologically advanced...

Interesting to understand Japan's sociopolitical and socioeconomic context even if we know that fascism = bad and the general implications of a total war economy and government.

The 1920s economically in mainland Japan were a "wild west", the country undergoing an identity crisis sparked by the great changes and upheavals brought about both by the Meiji restoration and the Great Depression...

Chill reading after listening to the Behind the Bastards podcast on Nobusuke Kishi — more of getting/wanting the boring context that justified/provided justification for this guy's staying power in modern Japan despite all the war crimes he committed as a way to understand misalignments in what modern society values in leaders and individuals.