Looking back at the path of modernization Japan has taken in the last hundred years, one finds the most serious failure to be the lack of development of democratic political theories. In our evaluations of the ‘modernization achievements’ of Japan, this is usually the focal point of disagreement between Western and Japanese scholars. Often in the name of ‘value-free’ political science, Western scholars try their best not to mix the issue of modernization with that of democratization. The failure of democracy in pre-War Japan is usually considered insignificant, though relevant, in the discussion of the success of her modernization. More often the failure is obscured by the presence of some democratic theories and movements during the Meiji and Taisho period. In contrast, Japanese scholars tend to consider modernization and democratization as inseparable. They refuse to accept the so-called ‘objective’ approach of Western scholars, not on the basis of the old Comintern formula of ‘modernization means development toward bourgeois democracy’, but because of their emphasis on the qualitative output of a political system.