JAPANESE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE - THE PARADOX OF NONAXIAL MODERNITY

This article focuses on the major paradoxes that Japan presents for co mparative historical analysis. One is that this first and, at least un til recently, only fully successful non-Western modernization has been of a non-axial civilization - that is, one without the tension betwee n transcendental and mundane orders to which the great world religions tend to give rise. The second paradox is that Japan constitutes a cru cial, perhaps the crucial, illustration of the development of multiple cultural programmes and institutional formations of modernity. The st arting point for an explanation of these paradoxes is the fact that wh ile historical institutional development in Japan was very similar to that in Western Europe, at the same time the overall features and majo r institutional dynamics that have developed in Japan have greatly dif fered from their 'structural parallels' in Europe. The article attempt s to provide an explanation of these phenomena by analysing the ways i n which the major institutional areas have been defined in Japan, and how these were related to the interweaving of basic ontological concep ts with social processes. Special emphasis is laid on the patterns of interaction and exchange between the major social actors, and on the p rocesses of control exercised by the elites.