Liberalism in Japan

WE who live in democratic states find it hard to understand why it is that people in authoritarian states have in the last decade given up their liberties with so very little struggle. We generally like to believe that they have been tricked into surrender and that, given some help and encouragement from outside, when the time is ripe they will strive to regain the freedom they have lost, will work and fight if need be for a kind of government comparable to our own. In extreme cases we suppose that the economic difficulties and political repression prevalent in these