I would like to respond ot Professor Hiwatari's questions. I do not follow the Japanese Marxist literature closely. So if someone in the Forum finds problematic my characterization that follows, I shall be most grateful for his or her response.

(1) What is structural dependence meant by Japanese Marxists?

As far as postwar US-Japanese relations are concerned, Japanese Marxists' *traditional* core argument seems to be that the US capitalists are exploiting, with the cooperation of the Japanese capitalists, Japanese workers. Thus, from the Japanese workers' perspective, their struggle is two-fold: a domestic struggle against the Japanese capitalists and an international struggle against the US capitalists. As the state is seen as a virtual puppet of the capitalists, their struggle against the capitalists (big business) becomes synonymous with their struggle against the Japanese and US governments. Furthermore, the coalition of the US and Japanese capitalists is assumed to have been established between 1945 and 1952. In this line of argument, the US- Japanese security treaty is *the* symbol of the trans- national capitalist coalition. It is a policy tool for the US government to maintain and protect the US-led international capitalist system in which the Japanese government plays a junior partner role or a supporter role.

Japanese Marxists seem to think that the US-Japanese security treaty is only a part of a larger US-Japanese structure or system that was instituted in the early postwar period. The Japanese government is assumed to be serving the US government in maintaining the system. In this sense, Japan is said as structurally dependent on the United States. Thus, the Marxists' research program is to analyze such a system. Logically, there are two lines of research for such a research program. One is to analyze the mechanisms through which the Japanese workers are exploited by this system (I have not followed this line of research). The other is to analyze how the system is maintained and how the Japanese government is supporting the system.

In the second line of research, the role of the dollar has attracted the interests of Japanese Marxists. To put it very simply at the risk of oversimplification, the US government is assumed to enjoy seigniorage (authority to issue a currency), which the Japanese government has never challenged and has obediently honored. An analogy would be a person issuing his or her self-made checks (IOUs) and another person accepting such a practice and treating the checks as credits. The former person is enjoying an authority to generate wealth without producing something to be exchanged in the first place. (Of course, if he or she abuses the seigniorage, the relative value of his or her checks goes down against the value of other goods--in short, inflation takes place.) To the extent that the dollar is used and accepted as an international currency, this is what is essentially happening; and according to Japanese Marxists, the Japanese government (and sometimes Japanese capitalists) is supporting this so-called "dollar system." For recent writings, see Matsumura Fumitake, _Taisei Shiji Kin'yu no Sekai_ (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1993) and the works cited in it. He has two previous books: _Gendai Amerika Kokusai Shushi no Kenkyu_ (Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1985) and _Saimukoku Amerika no Kozo_ (Tokyo: Dobunkan, 1988).
Tomizuka Buntaro is another writer in this kind of research.

(2) What kind of dominance/dependence in US-Japanese relations?

Japanese Marxists would answer in the way outlined in the previous section.
Another interesting line of inquiry would be the line of Susan Strange's structural power argument, which essentially posits that beneath day-to-day international economic transactions, there are four underlying power structures (i.e., in the fields of security, production, finance, and ideas). According to her, this set of power structures is located at a deeper level than the level of regimes or international institutions (see, for example, her _States and Markets_ [London: Pinter, 1988]). We could hypothesize that the United States has such a structural power over Japan in security (the US-Japanese alliance), finance (the dollar system), production (persistent US dominance in high technology?), and ideas (moral authority of the United States in world affairs?). A challenge is to analyze the mechanism of such a bilateral system as opposed to describing it. Another challenge is to conduct a comparative analysis with another bilateral system (e.g., postwar US-West Germany relations and prewar UK-India relations). I am not aware of a good comparative analysis of bilateral relations in this context.

I shall be most grateful for insights and perspectives from other members of the Forum.

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki
Assistant Professor
Political Science Department
Simon Fraser University
E-mail: kawasaki[atx]sfu.ca