The Missing Leader: Japanese Youths' View of Political Authority

Before 1945 Japan was the epitome of a nation whose political regime was based on the presence of a “benevolent leader,†the Emperor. The postwar democratic regime, however, was founded in explicit repudiation of this central role of the Emperor in the political life of the nation. This study, based on two surveys of Japanese children and adolescents, investigates their images of political authority figures and the consequences of those images on support for the institutions of the present regime. The first part of the paper focuses on younger children's images of possible contenders for the role of benevolent leader. The data reveal indifference toward the emperor and strong negative affect toward the prime minister. Comparison of the images of prime minister and local leader suggests that the leader's personality and leadership style, characteristics of the institutional structure of politics, and children's conceptions of the meaning of “politics†combine to the detriment of the prime minister's image. The second part of the paper centers around the question of whether there occurs in later years a spill-over of negative affect from the prime minister's image onto the other major institutions of the regime. The data indicate that a selective political cynicism emerges in adolescence, in which negative feelings toward the authoritative, output institutions of government are coupled with support for those institutions which mediate popular participation in politics. The paper concludes with a consideration of the significance that the historical origins of a political regime have for popular images of national leaders.