Eighty years ago, Japan was brought to its knees by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9, respectively. On August 15, Japan surrendered unconditionally, following the ultimatum set forth by the Allied powers in the Potsdam Declaration.
Since then, Japan has been a steadfast constitutional democracy. Although decimated by the war, it was already the world’s fifth economy by 1950, rising to the rank of second for about a decade in the 1990s, then falling to fifth today. Since the 1970s (the earliest year measured), Japan has consistently ranked among the “most free” countries in the Index of Economic Freedom.
To be sure, Japan was already a world power in the early twentieth century (it’s estimated to have ranked ninth by GDP in 1913). It also had a bout of constitutionalism, with the Meiji restoration in 1889.
But a post-1945 liberal democracy with strong economic growth was far from the most likely scenario. Indeed, most of Japan’s neighbors endured chaos or poverty in the second half of the twentieth century. The Philippines (which also adopted a new constitution after the war) enjoyed a mere 25 years of democracy before lapsing into brutal dictatorship from 1972 to 1986; it still faces problems of strongman rule, and is sputtering along with a GDP per capita of about $5,000 to Japan’s $33,000. South Korea now enjoys the same GDP per capita as Japan — but suffered through a brutal civil war and a military dictatorship that lasted until 1987. China and Vietnam fell to communism. Japan itself — while it had enjoyed an early taste of constitutional democracy from the 1890s to the 1930s — had lapsed into stratocracy, fascism, and war.
The history of constitutional adoption is paved with failure. We can look at most of Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with coups, military dictatorship, despite constitutions modeled on Madison’s document. In more modern times, Iraq and Afghanistan offer a cautionary tale in nation-building and constitutional adoption.
What, then, is the reason for Japan’s eight decades of democracy, constitutional constraint, political stability, and economic growth?
Western Roses and Eastern Soil: Choosing the Right Constitution
The simple answer to this question is wise constitutional choice in 1946. Many countries have blindly adopted the ‘correct’ paper constitution, which turned out to be the wrong constitution in practice. A vast literature can be summarized in two illustrative examples.
In 1853, Argentina adopted an almost-verbatim translation of the US constitution. Alas, Madison’s document, based on Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and a tradition of local self-governance, was a poor fit for Argentina’s infelicitous medley of Rousseauvian philosophy, caudillo rule, and the atavism of Spanish colonialism, with its top-down governance and lack of rule of law. After a brief civil war, Argentina enjoyed prosperity under oligarchy, between 1860 and 1930. Then came the first of a dozen military coups, Peronism, and a centurial economic decline that Javier Milei is just starting to reverse.
In 1946, the Philippines selected its first constitution (recall that it had been a Spanish colony from the 16th century until the Spanish-American war of 1898, then a US possession until Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945). Like other former Spanish colonies, the Philippines lacked a tradition of constitutionalism, democracy, or individual rights. Spanish colonial culture, the caudillo tradition, absence of a tradition of rule of law and local self-government, and a strong communitarian tradition, all clashed with the aspirations of a constitutional text — heavily influenced by the US constitution — that was supposed to jump-start the path towards constitutional democracy. The honeymoon lasted a mere 25 years.
By contrast, Japan did not seek to adopt the “perfect” constitution. As early as August 29, 1945 — before the formal instruments of surrender had been signed — the US government announced its broad-stroke, postwar objectives for Japan:
(a) To insure that Japan will not again become a menace to the United States or to the peace and security of the world.
(b) To bring about the eventual establishment of a peaceful and responsible government [which] should conform as closely as may be to principles of democratic self-government but it is not the responsibility of the Allied Powers to impose upon Japan any form of government not supported by the freely expressed will of the people.
The US insisted on basic principles (separation of powers, judicial review, civilian control of the military, popular sovereignty), but not the details or the language, which were left to the Japanese drafting committee.
American military authorities rejected the first draft in February 1946 because it left too much power to the Emperor. In turn, the Japanese constitutional committee expressed concern that the American counter-proposal wouldn’t work for Japan. It is worth quoting the Japanese worries at length, because they express the exact same reservations that constitutional scholars — in hindsight — describe as the causes of failure of so many other transplanted constitutions:
[The Japanese memorandum of rejection] reviewed the making of the Weimar Constitution after World War I and its ‘disastrous consequences’; the centuries-long development of the common law of England; the failure of presidential democracies in Latin America; the differences in the civil codes of France and Germany, notwithstanding that both were based on Roman law, and in their constitutions, notwithstanding that both were patterned on the English parliamentary system. [The memorandum] declared that the ‘arbitrary transplantation of a constitutional system unadapted to the condition and circumstance of the nation concerned’ was bound to fail, just as some ‘roses of the West, when cultivated in Japan, lose their fragrance totally.’… [It] expressed… fear that ‘the internal friction which may be brought on by an attempt at too sudden and a move…may beget reactionarism and in the end retard the smooth and wholesome progress of democracy.’
Bearing in mind the US hardline conditions, the Japanese drafting committee proposed a constitution that was accepted by the US occupying forces in November 1946 and came into effect a few months later.
Like the US constitution, the Japanese constitution of 1947 established a constitutional democracy. It also established a Bill of Rights — but within Japanese cultural parameters. Indeed, the Japanese constitution juxtaposed citizen obligations with citizen rights, and balanced individual rights and collective rights within Japan’s communitarian tradition. Unlike the US constitution, the Japanese constitution kept an Emperor — but the new chrysanthemum throne was ceremonial. Japan borrowed a parliamentary system from the British tradition, with executive powers vested in a cabinet responsible to Parliament. But instead of the weaker constitutional council typically associated with parliamentary systems, it also established a US-style supreme court.
Back to the Roots
The genius of the 1947 constitution did not just lie in its balance. There were two other crucial elements. First, it built on earlier Japanese constitutional experience. Second, it completed the unfinished work of that earlier constitution.
Japan, unlike most of its neighbors, had already had a modern constitution in the late 1800s. That constitution blended several legal and political traditions: British constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary model; a cabinet based on the German model; executive independence inspired by the US; and a civil code based largely on France’s Napoleonic code. It also respected Japanese traditions, especially in its adoption of indigenous legal practices. The 1947 constitution retained the earlier parliamentary system, rather than imposing US-style presidentialism. It also preserved Japan’s centralized system, a Meiji-era antidote to warring feudal powers, rather than attempting to impose US-style federalism. Thus did Japan have the important advantage of returning to a constitutional tradition, rather than starting from scratch.
Second, the 1947 constitution resolved some unfinished — and lethal — problems in the Meiji experiment.
To understand these shortcoming, we turn to Douglass North (1993 Nobel laureate in economics) and his work on violence and social orders. In his last book, he and his co-authors classify human governance into three social orders: foraging, limited-access orders and open-access orders. Setting aside foraging as pre-civilization, they focus on the latter two.
Limited-access orders manage the problem of violence through elite coalitions. They typically lack generalized consent of the governed, and business is governed by personal relationships. As a consequence, they typically grow slowly, as entrepreneurship and capital accumulation are thwarted by the lack of general rules. Examples range from weak orders (Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan) to limited orders with a durable and stable organizational structure (Venezuela, Russia), all the way to mature limited-access orders (Mexico).
By contrast, open-access orders manage the problem of violence through impersonal rules and organizations. They have high levels of political and economic development, vibrant civil societies, and widespread impersonal relationships (anonymous commercial society, rule of law, property rights, contract law.) Examples include the US, United Kingdom, and France (which made the transition from limited to open in the early nineteenth century), or South Korea and Taiwan (which made the shift in the late twentieth century).
The big question proposed by North et al. involves the transition from limited- to open-access orders. Transition occurs when relations within the dominant coalition are transformed from personal into impersonal; the change must then extend to the larger population. North et al. identify three conditions for the transformation: (1) rule of law for elites; (2) impersonal organizations in both the public and private sphere; and (3) consolidated control of the military. Jedidah Pida-Reese, a young scholar (and former AIER summer graduate fellow), operationalizes these theoretical foundations in a series of working papers. His research shows that Japan, under the Meiji constitution, successfully fulfilled only the first two conditions for a transformation to an open-access order. He writes:
Despite broadening suffrage, an active press, and strong political parties, Japan never established firm civilian control of the military…. Japan satisfied the first two [conditions] but not the third (consolidated control over violence). The Constitution placed the armed forces directly under the emperor, effectively sidelining the [Parliament] and leaving the Army and Navy Ministries as veto players. Economic shocks and diplomatic crises in the 1930s further emboldened military officers, who toppled civilian cabinets and steered policy with limited resistance. Japan’s experience underscores that democratization hinges on bringing the means of violence under accountable civilian authority, lest partial gains be undone.
In a process of constitutional learning, Japan’s drafting committee recognized that the Meiji constitution had gone a long way towards establishing democracy, rule of law, and an impersonal order. It had, however, failed to place the military squarely under civilian control. This was the fatal flaw in the Meiji constitution — and one that was resolved in 1946.
What Does a Free Society Require?
As always, there are many other factors. One of them is, of course, dumb luck. Lack of communist invasion or revolution also helped. So did US economic and military aid. And, whereas Meiji Japan had invited Western military advisors, post-war Japan focused on commercial development. As early as 1950, management gurus Edward Deming and Peter Drucker coached Japanese industrialists in effective management techniques. (This was, incidentally, the same year that my French grandfather, then a 26 year-old chemical engineer, was sent to Japan on a one-year mission to rebuild factories near Osaka.)
But — beyond luck, geopolitics, and a desire to become a commercial society — Japan’s constitutional choice was key. Constitutional choices made in 1945 formed the basis for 80 years of rule of law, democracy, stability, economic freedom, and economic growth.
Once again, Adam Smith was right: “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”