Preface Postwar Japan is the home of one of the most beautiful cultures in the world and also of one of the most successful civilizations. But its domestic scene is dominated by class struggle. Politics, unlike art, is seen in black and white instead of in shades of gray. Right-wing and left-wing people hardly speak to one another. Though relationships among different social classes are characterized by a conventional politeness, members of any particular social status remain rigidly distant

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... m members of any other. Business employers and trade unions continually eye each other like sumo wrestlers jockeying for position. Long-established and successful people have much to lose from a social war. Trade union members have little to lose now but, if they continue to press successfully for more advantages, they will soon acquire things which it is painful to lose. At the end of the present social struggle in Japan there does exist the possibility of social peace, but, for that to happen, the black and the white of political controversies must be replaced by a spectrum of colors, infinite in variety.