Figure 7. Japanese pessimism about their international role and influence.

The post-bubble crisis, which was followed by a long period of stagnation, led to much heart-searching and a deep sense of gloom. Some even went so far as to suggest that Japan had suffered two defeats: one in 1945 and another in the 1990s. [172] The pessimism that engulfed the country revealed the underlying fragility of the contemporary Japanese psyche. Having finally achieved their goal, they were filled with doubt as to what to do next. As the United States regained its dynamism and Japan was becalmed, there was a widespread sense that its achievement was little more than a chimera, that it was always destined to live in the shadow of the West. [173] Japan’s psychological fragility in the face of the post-bubble crisis is a stark reminder of how difficult the process of catch-up — in all its many aspects — is for non-Western countries. Here was a country whose historical achievement was remarkable by any standards; which had equalled or pulled ahead of the West by most measures and comfortably outstripped the great majority of European countries that it had originally sought to emulate; which had built world-class institutions, most obviously its major corporations, and become the second wealthiest country in the world — and yet, in its moment of glory, was consumed by self-doubt.

In this context, it is important to understand the nature of Japan’s self-perception. Unlike the European or American desire to be, and to imagine themselves as, universal, the Japanese have had a particularistic view of their country’s role, long defining themselves to be on the periphery of those major civilizations which, in their eyes, have established the universal norm. As we have seen, China and the West constituted the two significant others from which Japan has borrowed and adapted, and against which the Japanese have persistently affirmed their identity. ‘For the Japanese,’ argues Kosaku Yoshino, ‘learning from China and the West has been experienced as acquiring the “universal” civilization. The Japanese have thus had to stress their difference in order to differentiate themselves from the universal Chinese and Westerners.’ [174] This characteristic not only distinguishes Japan from the West, which has been the universalizing civilization of the last two centuries, but also from the Chinese, who have seen their own civilization, as we shall explore later, in universalistic terms for the best part of two millennia.

Japan ’s post-1868 orientation towards the West was only one aspect of its new coordinates. The other was its attitude towards its own continent. Japan combined its embrace of the West with a rejection of Asia. The turn to the West saw the rise of many new popular writers, the most famous of whom was Fukuzawa Yukichi, who argued, in an essay entitled ‘On Leaving Asia’, published in 1885:

We do not have time to wait for the enlightenment of our neighbours so that we can work together towards the development of Asia. It is better for us to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with civilized nations of the West. As for the way of dealing with China and Korea, no special treatment is necessary just because they happen to be our neighbours. We simply follow the manner of the Westerners in knowing how to treat them. Any person who cherishes a bad friend cannot escape his notoriety. We simply erase from our mind our bad friends in Asia. [175]

The Japanese did not wait long to put this new attitude into practice. In 1894-5 they defeated China, gaining control of Taiwan and effectively also Korea. In 1910 they annexed Korea. In 1931 they annexed north-west China, from 1936 occupied central parts of China, and between 1941 and 1945 took much of South-East Asia. Between 1868 and 1945, a period of seventy-seven years, Japan engaged in ten major wars, lasting thirty years in total, the great majority at the expense of its Asian neighbours. [176] In contrast, Japan had not engaged in a single foreign war throughout the entire 250-year Tokugawa era. [177] Meiji Japan was thus intent not only on economic modernization and the emulation of the West, but also on territorial expansion, as the national slogan ‘rich country, strong army’ ( fukoku kyôhei), which was adopted at the beginning of the Meiji period, implied. [178] Although Japan presented its proposal for the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere during the 1930s as a way of promoting Asian interests at the expense of the West, in reality it was an attempt to subjugate Asia in the interests of an imperial Japan. [179]

Map 4. Japan’s Colonies in East Asia

Figure 8. Japanese responses to the question, ‘How do you feel about you or a member of your family marrying a foreigner?’

Japan, unsurprisingly, saw the world in essentially similar terms to the deeply hierarchical nature of its own society. [180] While looking up to the West, it looked down on Asia as backward and inferior, seeking to subjugate its own continent for the purpose of its enrichment and aggrandizement. Where once it had seen Chinese civilization as its superior, it now regarded the Chinese as an inferior race. [181] The idea of a racial hierarchy has been intrinsic to the Japanese view of the world. Even today it continues to persist, as its relations with its East Asian neighbours demonstrate. Whites are still held in the highest esteem while fellow Asians are regarded as of lesser stock. [182] Racialized ways of thinking are intrinsic to mainstream Japanese culture, [183] in particular the insistence on the ‘homogeneity of the Japanese people’ (even though there are significant ethnic minorities), the idea of a ‘Japanese race’ (even though the Japanese were the product of diverse migratory movements), and the widely held belief that the Japanese ‘blood type’ is associated with specific patterns of cultural behaviour. [184] Racial, ethnic and national categories overlap in Japanese conceptions of both themselves and, by implication, others also. [185] This is illustrated by former prime minister Nakasone’s infamous remark in 1986 that the mental level in the United States was lower than in Japan because of the presence of racial minorities — specifically, ‘blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans’. [186] Even today there is no law against racial discrimination. [187]

Over the course of the last half-century, however, East Asia has been transformed from a state of backwardness into the most dynamic region in the world: Japan is no longer alone. [188] And yet its attitudes towards East Asia remain, in large part, fixed in a Meiji time-warp. Japan would still prefer to see itself as Western rather than Asian: I vividly recall a conference on Europe and Japan in Tokyo in 1999 at which it was seriously suggested that Japan might consider applying to join the European Union. Japan’s failure to rethink its relationship with East Asia in the context of the latter’s transformation adds another important dimension to the crisis that Japan faces today, an issue that I explore more fully in Chapter 9.