Must the Sun Set in the West?: Japan’s Stunted Democracy and the American Liberal Hegemony

How an elitist concept of democracy promoted by the American political and academic establishments constrained Japan’s political development Japan’s historic pursuit of a full membership in “the West” may finally be close to fruition-even as the value of such membership seems greatly diminished.In Must the Sun Set in the West?, Koichi Nakano argues that, despite the common understanding that postwar Japan became a democracy thanks to the benevolent patronage of the United States, American interference actually stunted Japanese democracy.Tracing the interplay between American liberal hegemonic projection in East Asia and Japan’s efforts to achieve full-fledged Western status, Nakano examines the racist (and sexist) roots of the elitist theory of democracy propagated by the American political and academic establishments and its impact on postwar Japan. Nakano traces the evolution of the elitist project through its various stages-liberal-internationalist “race development,” anticommunist/