This reissued essay examines the conditions under which global order shifts from the perspective of the turntable of civilization, beyond the limits of conventional hegemony theory.
It presents the truth that civilization turns not toward brute force or domination, but toward a beautiful nation in which intellect and freedom are fully realized.

Hegemonic Stability Theory

July 17, 2010
For details, refer to “Hegemonic Stability Theory.”

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◎ What Is Hegemonic Stability Theory?

Hegemonic stability theory is a framework first proposed by the economist Charles Kindleberger and later systematized by Robert Gilpin.
According to this theory, for the world to remain stable and achieve economic development under the hegemony of a single nation, the following conditions are required.

A single nation must possess overwhelming political and economic power—that is, hegemony.
The hegemonic nation must understand the principles of the free market and seek to construct an international system to realize those principles.
Other nations must be able to benefit from the international system maintained by the hegemonic power.

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◎ A Hegemonic State Is Sustained Not by “Domination,” but by the Provision of Benefits

International society does not become stable merely because a single nation holds overwhelming hegemonic power.
What truly matters is that the hegemonic nation constructs and maintains an international system capable of providing benefits to other countries.
As long as this system remains beneficial to participating nations, non-hegemonic states can conduct smooth economic activities without the burden of constructing their own international systems.
Judged against these criteria, it is indeed true that the United States today qualifies as a genuine hegemonic power.
Twenty-five years ago, I found myself continually asking why hegemonic states exist in the world at all.

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◎ The Civilizational Turntable and Japan’s Turn

During eight days spent in Rome for professional reasons, while observing the world from there, I realized something important.
Half of the world is still poor, unable even to secure sufficient food.
That is precisely why a single nation must flourish overwhelmingly.
Only then can money somehow flow, for example, into Africa.
Seen from the perspective of history since the Common Era, the sequence becomes clear: Italy, then Portugal and Spain, then France, then Britain, then the United States, and finally the United States and Japan.
This, I realized, is what the civilizational turntable truly is.

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◎ Fifty Years of American Hegemonic Fatigue and Japan’s Latent Position

Thirty years ago, the United States, having become a hegemonic power, began to falter after only fifty years.
Its consumption-driven economic model—an inevitable consequence of its role in uplifting poorer nations—expanded fiscal deficits to the point where the world itself was put at risk.
A free nation capable of standing alongside the United States, or complementing it, became necessary.
There was only one candidate: Japan.
At that time, we were in the process of creating something unprecedented in human history—a civilization without rigid class structure, ideology, or religion—if one assumes the United States to be a Christian nation, a condition achieved, even if only briefly at the end of the war, at the cost of four million lives.
It is no exaggeration to say that, in essence, Japan has historically been a nation without rigid class structure, ideology, or religion.
Now I think as follows.
Fifty years after hegemony shifted from Britain to the United States, the world’s population had doubled to 6.5 billion.
The United States alone could no longer save the world—and even now it is crying out in distress.
“Europe, Japan, China—expand domestic demand,” it urges.
Yet last year, figures in Japan’s stock market were saying, “From now on, we should distance ourselves from the United States and rely on China.”
This tragedy stems from failing to recognize that the civilizational turntable had already rotated toward Japan more than thirty years ago.
The responsibility borne by the mass media, which failed to grasp this truth and instead wielded a misguided sense of justice, thereby creating Japan’s so-called ‘lost twenty years,’ is indeed grave.
Hegemonic states traditionally endure for two hundred years.
To claim that Japan’s era has ended is absurd.
Japan must continue to prosper for another 170 years as a super economic power that stands alongside—or complements—the United States.
Because Japan has renounced all military force beyond self-defense in its constitution, it should leave military matters to the United States and continue to flourish economically.
This view, at the time, was expressed with a measure of irony.

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◎ Why Did Japan Stagnate for Twenty Years?

Why did Japan experience such prolonged stagnation over the past two decades?
Put bluntly, the mass media and political leadership, stuck at a mental age of thirteen, were to blame.
Japanese companies, constantly exposed to innovation and competition, honing world-class technologies across multiple fields and capturing significant global market share, are internationally recognized for their excellence.
Combined with diligence, meticulous attention to detail, and a high level of education, Japan became an industrial nation holding the world’s largest pool of personal financial assets, amounting to 1,500 trillion yen.
However, the money generated by this society and market was never reinvested into the market itself.
Instead, driven by petty egoism—such as claims that compound interest was higher than bank rates—more than 500 trillion yen stagnated in postal savings accounts.
[Omitted section.]
It is no exaggeration to say that virtually none of it was returned to the market.
Japan’s mobile phones are truly remarkable, yet Japanese people self-deprecatingly describe them as a technological Galapagos.
China, on the other hand, is itself a Galapagos nation, but by leveraging its population of 1.3 billion and maintaining a weak currency policy—regardless of global norms—it has become the world’s savior.
Japan should do the same.
Even now, it can make use of its world-leading personal financial assets totaling between 1,000 and 1,500 trillion yen.
Money generated by society—the fruits of diligent and capable workers who supported Japan as an industrial nation—must be returned to society.
The true underlying cause of Japan’s long stagnation over the past thirty years lies in the fact that a capitalist nation continued to despise its own stock market, the very foundation of capitalism.
That is why Japan was taken advantage of.
Among my classmates, not a single one entered the securities industry.
Stocks were dismissed with contempt—“stock traders,” “stocks, stocks…”
In the United States, top graduates of Harvard join firms like Goldman Sachs and later become Secretaries of the Treasury.
The yen functions as a safe-haven currency and appreciates whenever uncertainty arises because over 95 percent of Japanese government bonds are financed by domestic personal assets—a rarity in the world.

This article will continue.