Harvard East Asian Monographs 455

Remembering Ezra Vogel

Edited by Martin K. Whyte and Mary C. Brinton

This tribute volume compiles tributes and remembrances of Ezra F. Vogel’s life and works, available from Harvard University Press

China and Japan: Facing History (Harvard University Press, 2019)

From the sixth century, when the Japanese adopted core elements of Chinese civilization, to the late twentieth century, when China looked to Japan for a path to capitalism, Ezra Vogel’s China and Japan examines key turning points in Sino–Japanese history. Throughout much of their past, the two countries maintained deep cultural ties, but China, with its great civilization and resources, had the upper hand. Japan’s success in modernizing in the nineteenth century and its victory in the 1895 Sino–Japanese War changed the dynamic, putting Japan in the dominant position. The bitter legacy of World War II has made cooperation difficult, despite efforts to promote trade and, more recently, tourism.

Vogel underscores the need for Japan to offer a thorough apology for the war, but he also urges China to recognize Japan as a potential vital partner in the region. He argues that for the sake of a stable world order, these two Asian giants must reset their relationship, starting with their common interests in environmental protection, disaster relief, global economic development, and scientific research.

Co-editor. The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea (Harvard University Press, 2011)

This landmark volume examines South Korea’s era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea’s trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2011)

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize | National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist | An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year

Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist.

Is Japan Still Number One? (Pelanduk Publications, 2000)

Vogel’s new book Is Japan Still Number One? appears at a time the Japanese are experiencing a crisis of faith. The nation has been written off as a viable economic force by many observers. Now Vogel provides lessons for Japan.

— Andreas Hippin, 2002 Review in H-Net

Editor. Living with China: U.S.-China relations in the Twenty-First Century (W. W. Norton & Co, 1997)

China will achieve a position of paramount importance in the world economy and the global political order in years to come; yet, the United States holds to no consistent policy with regard to this rising superpower. In the ideological void left by the end of the cold war, media images and expediency seem more likely to guide U.S. actions toward China than any clearly stated agenda.

At this critical point in the history of U.S.-China relations, Living with China offers an essential historical assessment composed by leading scholars and political analysts. From Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet and the legacy of Tiananmen Square to trade, markets, and commercial diplomacy, these compelling essays address the complex web of issues that will shape future relations with China. This book offers important facts and insights for anyone interested in this most important and thorny of foreign policy issues.

The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (Harvard University Press, 1991)

Ezra F. Vogel, one of the most widely read scholars on Asian affairs, provides a comprehensive explanation of East Asia’s industrial breakthrough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel’s penetrating analysis illuminates how cultural background interacted with politics, strategy, and situational factors to ignite the greatest burst of sustained economic growth the world has yet seen.

Vogel describes how each of the four little dragons acquired the political stability needed to take advantage of the special opportunities available to would-be industrializers after World War II. He traces how each little dragon devised a structure and a strategy to hasten industrialization and how firms acquired the entrepreneurial skill, capital, and technology to produce internationally competitive goods. Vogel brings masterly insight to the underlying question of why Japan and the little dragons have been so extraordinarily successful in industrializing while other developing countries have not. No other work has pinpointed with such clarity how institutions and cultural practices rooted in the Confucian tradition were adapted to the needs of an industrial society, enabling East Asia to use its special situational advantages to respond to global opportunities.

This is a book that all scholars and lay readers with an interest in Asia will want to read and ponder.

Co-editor. Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen: The Impact of Reform (Harvard University Press, 1990)

By the late 1970s, state communism was everywhere in retreat. First in Eastern Europe, then in China and the Soviet Union, party leaders were compelled to devise fundamental departures from the economic procedures and structures they had confidently installed at the outset of their revolutionary victories. Perhaps no country departed more rapidly from communist economic structures than China.

Within five years of Mao Zedong’s death, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping had dismantled the people’s communes and created a range of markets that established the institutional foundations for a new form of socialism. But, unlike the Soviets and Eastern Europeans, the Chinese reformers refused to consider parallel changes in political institutions. The demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 made it clear that post-Mao economic policies had created unavoidable political consequences for the society and its leaders. In individual case studies, the twelve contributors to this volume document the uneven decollectivization and decentralization of China’s economy in the post-Mao years and the great diversity of the social and political consequences. They deal with the effects of the more materialistic and individualistic reward system on both public and private life in the countryside and in urban settings and the new expectations that economic changes engendered.

One Step Ahead in China; Guangdong Under Reform (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1989)

One Step Ahead in China is a groundbreaking book, unique in its detailed coverage of Guangdong, the first socialist dragon to follow in the path of South Korea and Taiwan. Vogel paints a vivid portrait of Guangdong’s accelerated development and surveys the special economic zones, the Pearl Delta, Guangzhou, and the more remote areas, including Hainan. He looks at the entrepreneurs and the role of the pervasive Chinese tradition of guanxi, in which friends and relatives of officials receive preferential treatment. He examines the problems of opening up a socialist system and places Guangdong in the context of the newly developing economies of East Asia.

The Impact of Japan on a Changing World, (Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1987)

Ezra Vogel eloquently discusses the major factors that contribute to Japan’s success as well as its impact on other countries of the world.

Co-editor. Ideology and National Competitiveness: An Analysis of Nine Countries (Harvard Business School Press, 1986)

Ideology and National Competitiveness shows how and why ideology affects the power, role, and behavior of managers in nine countries: Japan, the United States, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Mexico. Effective managers must understand the ideological implications of their actions to gain a competitive advantage. A research colloquium book

Coauthor. Nichibei Tagai ni Nani o Manabu ka? (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1986)

Comeback Case By Case: Building the Resurgence of American Business (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1985)

Japan As Number One (Harvard University Press, 1979; Harper & Row, 1979)

At the same time it was developing into the most competitive industrial power, Japan was solving problems that the United States now faces. Isn’t it about time, Ezra Vogel asks in this wide-ranging work, that we learn something from the competitor overtaking us?

Based on the most up-to-date sources, as well as extensive research and direct observation, Japan as Number One analyzes the island nation’s development into the world’s most effective industrial power, not only in terms of economic productivity but also in its ability to govern efficiently, to educate its citizens, to control crime, to alleviate energy shortages, and to lessen pollution. Ezra Vogel employs criteria that America has traditionally used to measure success in his thoughtful demonstration of how and why Japanese institutions have coped far more effectively than their American counterparts.

Vogel is the first scholar-observer to bring together the wide variety of materials that forcefully explain Japan’s successes. He describes how, both late in the nineteenth century and after World War II, Japan determined to overhaul and to modernize its institutions. With careful attention to its history and cultural roots, the nation consciously transformed itself sector by sector—in government, education, business, the military, and law—to catch up with and surpass the West. Japan also placed great value on technical expertise, but placed specialists within a group setting so that cohesiveness was not destroyed by modernization.

Japan as Number One suggests that an understanding of the recent Japanese experience in modifying its institutions and solving its postindustrial problems can assist America in rethinking its own societal difficulties. Vogel avoids simplifications and forced parallels in this comparative study and does not argue that Americans must become like the Japanese. Rather he proposes that we look to and learn from Japan as we once did from Europe.

Editor. Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975)

This book continues the first attempt of its kind to probe the major features of modern Japanese organization that have played such a critical role in Japan’s extraordinarily rapid economic development. The contributors include prominent academic business consultants such a Peter Drucker of the United states and Kazuo Noda of Japan; Japanese government officials such as Yoshihisa Ojimi, former Administrative Vice-Minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and Taishiro Shirai, a member of the Central Labor Relations Commission; as well as outstanding Western experts on modern Japanese organization. The essays deal not only with Japanese government and business but also with the structures of a newspaper and a university and with the role of Japanese intellectuals in modern organization. The portrait of Japanese organization that emerges is much more dynamic and volatile than has been generally supposed. One finds business and government managers creatively using so-called “traditional practices” in novel ways and undertaking bold departures to achieve new purposes. The findings contradict the view that decision sten from below. Not only do executive have an important role in initiating action; but lower-level officials function within a context defined by their superiors. Far greater tensions and conflict exist within organizations than is commonly reported by outsiders, especially in institutions like the university where conflicts often paralyze the decision-making process. Similarly, there is far greater divergence of interest among different sectors of society than one might infer from the stereotypical view of “Japan, Inc.” And since the high level of consensus supporting the fundamental commitment to economic growth is now weakening increasing divergence may be anticipated in the future. This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1963)

This classic study on the sociology of Japan remains the only in-depth treatment of the Japanese middle class. Now in a fiftieth-anniversary edition that includes a new foreword by William W. Kelly, this seminal work paints a rich and complex picture of the life of the salaryman and his family. 

In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburb, living among and interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Tracing the rapid postwar economic growth that led to hiring large numbers of workers who were provided lifelong employment, the authors show how this phenomenon led to a new social class—the salaried men and their families. It was a well-educated group that prepared their children rigorously for the same successful corporate or government jobs they held. Secure employment and a rising standard of living enabled this new middle class to set the dominant pattern of social life that influenced even those who could not share it, a pattern that remains fundamental to Japanese society today.

Canton Under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, 1949-1968 (Harvard University Press, 1969)

Canton under Communism appeared in 1969 just as China was about to undertake a fundamental reorientation of external relations. It was the first broad-gauged regional study of Communist China. 

The upshot of this new research is that we can now speak with much more confidence about the consistency of basic approaches undertaken by the Chinese Communist government. In Kwangtung, regional resistances may have been stronger than in many other areas, and its closeness to Hong Kong and ties to overseas Chinese may have created special problems. Yet the basic approaches to establishing order, undertaking land reform, collectivization, and communization were the same everywhere. T h e large-scale cam- paigns—the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap Forward, the Cul- tural Revolution—occurred throughout the country, and my descrip- tions of these campaigns in Kwangtung can now be read with some confidence as guides to how these campaigns developed all over Communist China. In short, this book is not simply about local policy but about national policy. 

Those preparing to visit Canton should not expect this book to substitute for a tourist guidebook. I hope, however, that it will pro- vide visitors and non-visitors, as the research has provided me, with a broader understanding of how Canton, Kwangtung, and the rest of China have become what they are today. 

— Ezra Vogel, Preface to the 1980 Edition

Co-editor. A Modern Introduction to the Family (The Free Press, 1960)

This is the first book to present a coherent and scientific approach to the sociology of the family. The editors have selected material “without regard to the boundaries of academic disciplines” (p. v). In-corporated into a single pattern are economic, anthropological, political, and psychiatric, as well as sociological, articles. The 51 pieces include materials from 17 different periodicals and 18 separate books. Traditional American sociology journals contribute but ten of the items; whereas nine stem from psychiatric periodicals. All but five come from publications since 1945. Diverse materials, not previously featured in a sociology text, and many not readily available otherwise, are utilized. Most of the writings are those of younger scholars, publishing since World War II. Compared with preceding collections, this volume manifests changes in research leadership and features a new generation of scholars. 

— Donald P. Irish, 1961 Review in Social Forces