differently. Under such circumstances, today in the intentional market, deregulation is admired everywhere in the world including Japan, South Korea and above all, the U.S. and bureaucrat bashing is seen worldwide. However, when we think again from the beginning, market itself is not in the least a pre-established harmony. It is still true that the stability of the market is not guaranteed. So, if we blame the bureaucrat graduated from the law school of Tokyo University and take away their power and instead, give such authority to the politicians graduated from Keio University in the name of deregulation, there is still no guarantee that they are more proficient, clear or fair. On the contrary, from the Hegelian point of view, I guess Japanese bureaucrats believe that civil society or market is less moralistic and tends to be separated by individual profit.
It is clear that this is not a perfect resolution. I think the fact that the Democratic party came into power in the U.S.; the labor party became government party instead of the conservative party; and social democracy is talked of in Europe as if it is the Renaissance has something to do with this phenomenon. In this regard, the weak point in Polannyi's theory is that society has to forever go back and forth between a nationalistic society and a market economy if we accept his theory. I think that nation and market represent in a sense, two sides of modernization, but there is another side, or face in modern society. This other face is called civil society.
Many political scientists and thinkers generally use the dichotomy of nation versus society, or nation versus civil society, and non-governmental bodies including the market is confused with such civil society in some arguments.
However, rethinking that point, I believe modern society should be discussed as a total body that has these three sides.
When we talk about the modern age, or think about modern nations, modern societies or modernization, each would be represented by one of the three sides mentioned above. One face of the image of a modern age is control by law, or control by objectiveness, and it is the control by a system, a rational system rather than discriminative system as Weber said. Taken to the extreme, like in Germany, the nation would be considered an embodiment of the rationality. That is also one face of the modern age. But another face of modern age is symbolized by the value of individuals, which is given the most importance in Anglo-Saxon society. These three faces constitute modern society together with the field of economics that was established independently of three faces.
With such an understanding, people in Asia modernized by learning that of Europe over time. Since we witnessed the modernization of Europe that had proceeded these three factors at the same time, people in Asia tried to establish strong nation to compete with modern nations in Europe that had overwhelming military strength. People in Asia tried very hard to establish such strong nation in the former half of the 20th century, in the post-war period. This effort to make a strong economy is the second aspect of a modern nation, or the second phase of Asia in learning modernization.
That is, in a sense, now is the turning point of creating civil society that makes the other phase of the modern society. I mean we finally recognized the fact that we did not actually build a civil society and now is the time to create it. This is the outline of my argument. I would like to advance my argument under such point of view, and I wrote the abstract of my speech with such an understanding, So please refer to the abstract while I am talking.
Now, I am going to talk a little about the international relationships of Asia, using points mentioned above as the framework of my argument to discuss the whole issue.
Intentional relations in Asia were not planned for discussion in today's session. However, since Dr. Shiraishi mentioned this subject in the first session, I would like to continue on the same theme. Dr. Shiraishi referred to many topics that I would like to discuss, however, it was from the Southeastern Asian viewpoint, I would like to add one or two characteristics of international relations in Asia, especially those of Eastern Asia, from the viewpoint of Northeastern Asian countries including South Korea.
In a seminar or symposium regarding international relations, it is much easier to talk about specific topics such as ARF, APEC, the quadripartite conference or the sexpartite conference because there are solid facts to present. This time, however, I would like to speak in general terms. When we look at Asia, especially Northeastern Asia where South Korea is located, the idea of a strong nation or obsession for nationalism is predominant. There are several historic and structural factors behind this tendency.
I would like to skip details due to the limited time schedule of this session. To put it directly, in Northeastern Asia or Asia in general, the most significant structural problem is that equal intentional relations have yet to be established.
In reality, several empires still exist in Asia, China and India, for example, as well as Russia, which is in the process of being pulled apart. In Europe, on the contrary, it took two or three hundred years to dismantle the empires. As a result,
