Two Countries, Intertwined
From Time February 10, 1992 by
Berry Hillenbrand.
2000
1
Sony, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nikon, Ricoh, Toshiba. There seems no escaping
Japan in the U. S. these days. But just try to escape America in Japan, especially if you are
young and yearn to be hip in Tokyo. America is an essential element of growing up urban in
Japan.
2
It starts with the clothes: a pair of Bass Weejuns baggy chinos, a Stanford sweatshirt, a
Washington Redskins hat. And it's also the food: Doritos tortilla chips bought from 7 -Eleven;
real American all beef frankfurters eaten under a Wigley Field mural in the Chicago Dog
restaurant; or ersatz American pizza ordered from Chicago Pizza, which promises home
delivery as speedy as archival Domino's.
3
America does not stop at food and clothing: it's entertainment too. The block- buster
movies are all American and require buying tickets days in advance. Hours after the box offices
opened, all 56,000 seats for M.C. Hammer's concert at the Tokyo Dome were spoken far.
Millions of dollars' worth of American CDs are bought at stores like Tower Records.
4
And what about sports? The national pastime is baseball, but among college students,
the latest craze is American football. The Super Bowl, as well as the World Series, is broadcast
live in Japan
5
America is also on Japan's mind and stays there even after a Japanese outgrows blue
jeans. American books can at times sell more in Japanese then back home in English. News is
often seen through an American prism. Trends and movements sweep across the Pacific from
America and take root. In Japan these days, many people prefer whale watching to whale eating:
environmentalism has arrived.
6
The puzzle is how two countries so intertwined can be so frequently at odds. Ever since
President George Bush showed up in Tokyo last month with a group of vituperative business
leaders in tow, the U. S. and Japan have once again been sniping at each other. And once again
the ambiguous mix of Japanese attitudes toward the U. S. has been brought to the fore. In the
mind of Japan, the superpower on the other side of the Pacific is both an object of respect and
envy, of emulation and repulsion, of gratitude and contempt. Despite the years of wrangling
between the two nations, Japan retains a large reservoir of good feeling towards the U. S. For the
Japanese, America is the foreign country, the one that is admired and imitated, the standard for
measuring national success.
7
What has changed is Japan's growing desire for respect. The unquestioning adulation of
the U. S. that once prevailed has been replaced by increasing self confidence. The Japanese
believe that social and economic problems have eroded America's strength at just the moment
when their own hard work has brought their country wealth and prosperity. While few officials
hope or expect that Japan will eclipse America as a great power, they firmly believe it is time for
Washington to treat Tokyo as its most important ally, and not like a junior partner.
8
In Japan, debts are neither readily forgotten nor easily repaid. The Japanese
acknowledge the enormous debt they owe America for the benevolence after the post World
War II occupation and for the nurturing and protection the U. S. has provided Japan ever since.
As Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa put it in a speech two weeks ego, "It is no exaggeration to
say that Japan could not have achieved its postwar prosperity had it not been for the goodhearted support of the U.S." Older Japanese in particular feel the need to repay that debt,
especially now that the U. S. is in the midst of its longest recession since the 1930's.
9
"We are sorry to see America in this trouble," says Tatsuro Toyoda, 63, executive vice
president of Toyota Motor Corp. "We must help America because we really would like to see
America strong once again".
10
But there are limits to how far the Japanese will go to help America. Opinion surveys
show that the majority of Japanese fears that a significant drop in the nation' trade surplus
would be bad for their domestic economy. This concern gives some bureaucrats reason to
delay reforms that would further open markets to American imports. During Bush's visit,
Japanese auto companies promised to double their purchase of American auto parts to $19
billion by 1994. But they are reluctant to extend assistance to U. S. markets trying to sell
American cars. "The Americans themselves have done little to penetrate our market," says
Nissan president Yutaka Kume. "They must try harder".
11
Lately some Japanese executives have begun to acknowledge that their country is
partly to blame for America's economic problems. A commentary in a recent issue of the
respected business weekly Toyo Keizai could have been written by Pat Buchanan: " Japan
can't merely criticize the decline of the U. S. economy by saying 'It serves you right.' If one
takes into consideration the abnormal situation where Japan's excessive competition, low profit
margins and long work hours served as a background to our earnings a $40 billion trade
surplus with the U. S we can say that Japan has a share in the responsibility for U. S. industrial
decline".
12
But most Japanese - like most Americans - place the responsibility for U. S. economic
troubles largely on Americans themselves. "Whatever happened to the good old Emersonian
credo that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door?" asks Masao
Kunihiro, an anthropologist who is also a member of the Diet's Upper House. "That is what
made America what it is today, economically and industrially powerful. But many of us, rightly or
wrongly, now feel that the U. S. is no longer turning out mousetraps which are better than ours.
Sadly, there's been an erosion of the puritan work ethic in America, a country which taught us
so much".
13
Unfortunately, not all analyses of America's problems are as sophisticated as
Kunihiro's. When Yoshio Sakurauchi, the Speaker of the Lower' House of the Diet, caused a
furor in the U. S. two weeks ago by saying that the "root of America's (trade) problem lies in the
inferior quality of American labor," he was reflecting a condescension toward Americans that
many Japanese share.
14
At times, criticism of America borders on racism. Young people who have grown up
enjoying succession of ingenious Japanese-made consumer products have developed a
contempt for anything made by lesser mortals. In addition many Japanese contend that
America is handicapped because it does not mirror Japan's cultural and racial homogeneity,
which they believe is largely responsible for the country's high degree of national harmony. The
virtues of this harmony are probably overrated, and the disadvantages repression, numbing
conformity are widely ignored. But the myth that racial homogeneity endangers unity is the root
of discrimination against anyone who is not Japanese. Accustomed to the efficiency and
uniformity of their own country, the Japanese are frightened and shocked by the seemingly
chaotic nature of American society. They tend to believe that America's racial diversity and
cultural pluralism are weaknesses, not strengths.
15
Since the end of World War II, Japanese racism has had no formal guiding ideology.
Books with bigoted themes appear occasionally and sell well to a curious public. The books are
often the source of ignorant racist remarks by Japanese politicians. But with one or two minor
exceptions, no notable Japanese has taken up racism as a political or social platform.
16
The same is true of anti-Americanism. Shintaro Ishihara, a Diet member and author of
The Japan That Can Say No, struck a resonant chord with some when he argued that the country
should become more assertive on the world stage because it now holds technological supremacy
over the U. S. But Ishihara has no role in setting Japan's political agenda.
17
Last fall some Tokyo-based foreign journalists discovered and wrote about kembei,
which means "resentment of America. "Their stories unleashed fears that a new strain of antiAmericanism was emerging. But the word was never in wide spread use and has since virtually
disappeared. Writer Yoshimi Ishikawa, who claims credit for coining the word, asserts that it was
misunderstood from the beginning. Kembei, says Ishikawa, was meant to describe Japan's
sense of impotence when faced with America's demands for assistance during the gulf war.
Ishikawa points out that U. S. - bashing demonstrations, a regular and often-violent feature of
student life in Tokyo during the 1960s, are practically unknown these days. And while marginal
politicians, assorted TV news anchors and intellectuals are taking noisy potshots at the U. S., no
important cultural figures in Japan have been heard uttering such sentiments. Says Ishikawa:
"Everyone is saying, 'Apparently, there is a growing dislike of America,' but where is it? Who's
doing the disliking"?
18
Certainly there is no indication that Japanese are shunning the icons of popular
American culture or of America itself. While it is true that the Japanese - like many Americans think twice about buying an American car, they consume more than a billion dollars' worth of
McDonald's fast food each year and another billion in soft drinks from Coca-Cola.
19
Not content with merely experiencing a bit of America at home, more than 3 million
Japanese visited the U. S. last year and spent $10 billion. Nearly 1.5 million of them journeyed
to Hawaii, while the other half traveled on the mainland. Some Japanese tourists are even
paying $1,600 for a five-day trip to Snoqualmie, Washington, where the TV series Twin Peaks
(a big hit in Japan) was shot.
20
On the other hand, the Japanese are bombarded with the same negative images of the
U. S. that have deepened America's mood of depression and self-doubt. People watch CNN
reporting on the American homeless. They flock to see the gratuitous violence of Die Hard 2.
Japanese playboy, which for years projected an image of the U. S. as a sexual playground, now
runs stories about the AIDS epidemic. Japanese newspapers, cribbing from the U. S. press,
detail the decline in American education and the rising murder rate.
21
These images contribute to a vision of America as a country spinning out of control. In
Japanese eyes, the picture of the U. S. as a faltering giant has weakened America's authority to
lead the free world, a leadership that Tokyo used to accept without question. These days, says
a foreign Ministry official, Japan is weary of being treated like a mindless "cash register" to be
rung up when problems arise but not consulted or taken seriously by Washington. Miyarzwa
wanted to make that the focus of his talks with Bush during his recent visit, but the subject was
mostly drowned out by the flap over trade.
22
Of all Japanese, young people are the most ambivalent about America. Unlike their
elders, they are not burdened by the debt of gratitude from the postwar occupation, and they do
not remember the days when the U. S. was viewed with undiluted reverence. Because they
have traveled more widely, young Japanese understand America better than their parents did.
They are both fascinated and repelled by what they see. Says Donald Richie, an American critic
who writes on contemporary Japanese culture: "Young people view America as a dangerous
wilderness filled with freedom and adventure. Embracing America is a way of rebelling against
the strict paternalistic society home".
23
In the process, young Japanese are dabbling in American culture and lifestyles in ways
that baffle their elders. Like the thousands of American students residing in Japan, the 30,000
young Japanese living and studying in the U. S. are beginning to build bridges between the two
countries. Some Americans persist in their hope that Japan will become more like the U. S. when
these young people come to power, but that is unlikely. The more realistic prospect is that over
time, through increased understanding, the Japanese will develop more tolerance for societies
different from their own. What they will never abandon is the qualities that make them uniquely
Japanese.