"We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation"
About this Quote
The intent is less to relitigate Cold War history than to puncture a comforting narrative: that Japan’s postwar system is the natural endpoint of modernization. Ito signals that what emerged was functional enough to stabilize and grow, but not necessarily built for deep accountability. “More functional democracy” is doing heavy lifting here. It implies a democracy that could tolerate dissent, distribute power downward, and resist capture by bureaucracies and one-party dominance. The subtext is that anti-communism didn’t just target the left; it narrowed the entire political imagination, treating participation and labor organizing as risks to be managed.
Coming from a businessman and prominent tech-world figure, the context matters. Ito is gesturing at how institutional design shapes innovation, media ecosystems, and civil society: if your democracy is optimized for security alignment rather than responsiveness, you may get stability, but you also inherit fragility - a system good at continuity, bad at correction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ito, Joichi. (n.d.). We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-discussed-the-history-of-postwar-japan-and-how-146760/
Chicago Style
Ito, Joichi. "We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation." FixQuotes. Accessed February 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-discussed-the-history-of-postwar-japan-and-how-146760/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-discussed-the-history-of-postwar-japan-and-how-146760/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2026.
