It's a matter of selectivity. Japan experts are not necessarily as blind or worshipful as their writings may lead us to believe. Rather, as well-meaning introducers of Japanese culture abroad, they naturally end up in the role of editors and censors, choosing the striking and beautiful film clips and leaving the rest on the cutting-room floor. In any case, one thing is true: commentators on Japanese culture by and large are not dispassionate reporters; for better or for worse, they are in the position of «selling Japan.» I believe this goes a long way toward explaining why foreign writing on Japan tends to be so admiring and uncritical.
While the Chrysanthemum Club members' dedication to Japan is often genuinely felt, it is also true that many of them owe their livelihood to Japan. Overseas, propaganda can be extremely profitable, especially for Washington lobbyists and Ivy League academics. However, for those toiling in international departments within Japan, propaganda is rarely more than a low- to medium-wage job, a sad substitute for founding one's own business or rising to an executive position in a Japanese company. One needs to be a very committed Chrysanthemum Club member to stick around.
During the 1990s, there was an important shift in Japan's place in the world, and it had to do with the renaissance of China and Southeast Asia. For foreigners coming to Asia during the decades following the war, it was nearly impossible to live securely in China, and for decades Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos were completely closed. Since the late 1980s, all this has changed. Southeast Asia, though it suffers from severe boom-and-bust cycles, is the scene of frenzied economic activity. There is a wealth of new business opportunities in banking, manufacturing, writing, and other fields, and, unlike Japan, where foreigners are mostly restricted to low-level international-department positions, there are genuine opportunities to advance. In Bangkok, I know dozens of foreigners who own and operate their own businesses; in Japan, only a handful. Perhaps Japan is to be commended for keeping its arts and industry strictly to itself, and not allowing «neo-colonialists» a foothold. Whatever the right or wrong of it, the bottom line is that Japan is not an attractive location for outsiders (or at least individuals, as opposed to big corporations) to set up shop.
For forty years after the war, Japan was not only «Number One» in Asia – it was the «Only One.» Now, although its economy is still larger than all the other Asian nations combined (including China), the balance is rapidly shifting, and in the process Japan is becoming merely one of many. Foreigners interested in Asia – not only Westerners but Asians themselves – now have a much wider field in which to play out their ambitions.
That it is becoming «one of many» in a revitalized East Asia is a healthy development, and by no means a discredit to Japan. However, this does mean that there is competition for brains, for the people who make international culture spark: bright entrepreneurs, writers, designers, artists, and so forth. The nation will find it more and more difficult to draw the best and the brightest to its shores unless it makes being in Japan more attractive. At the moment, unfortunately, Japan is following the opposite tack. It's becoming harder, not easier, to find an independent position in a Japanese company; and nearly impossible, as before, to strike out on one's own.
Japan's shrinking international appeal is visible in many ways, not least in the sluggish growth of its foreign-exchange program. In 1983, the Nakasone administration announced a goal of increasing the number of foreign-exchange students to Japan to 100,000 by the end of the century. By 1999 there were only 56,000 (a number achieved after several years of decline in the 1990s), despite a steady increase in Japanese government scholarships. And many of the students are in Japan only as their second choice. A conversation with a Taiwanese student in Kobe gave me some insight into the lack of interest on the part of
Asians in coming to Japan. When he decided to pursue higher education in Japan, his family was bitterly opposed. «Japan is where poor and ignorant people go,» his parents said. This reminded me of my two groups of friends in Thailand. One consists of farmers in a poor village built on stilts in the rice paddies of northern Thailand, where I often travel on vacation. A surprising number have a sister in Japan or dream of going to work in Japan. My other group of friends are cosmopolitan Bangkok dwellers, affluent, and destined to lead Thailand's big businesses and banks. They travel to the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, or Australia. Japan is almost completely off their horizon.
Why is this? One reason is that Japan, while maintaining a competent standard in many industries, and intellectual or artistic pursuits, does not lead the way in any single field. Nobody would come to Japan to study the leading edge. This is especially true for university education, which, as we have seen, has not been a serious priority for Japan. All the effort went into grade school and high school. As a result, universities do not offer programs that can compete at an international level. When Asiaweek did a cover story in May 2000 on MBA schools, only five Japanese universities made it into the top fifty in Asia, and none into the top ten; they were outclassed by MBA schools in Australia and in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea. And this was in East Asia, where MBA schools are relatively new and still at a disadvantage to the West. On a world scale, Japan's graduate schools simply fall off the list.
Nor does Japan's supposedly advanced lifestyle appeal much to middle- or upper-class Asians. «To many Southeast Asians living here, Japan is the poorest country in the world – in terms of lifestyle,» saysYau-hua Lim, an Indonesian of Chinese ancestry living in Tokyo. «The Japanese have such pathetic lives. They may think Indonesia is a poor country, but we have larger houses, we can afford a car and a maid. It's easy to go to the beach on weekends. After living in Tokyo, my concept of rich and poor has really changed.»
Who comes to Japan from Asia? Menial laborers, less qualified or poorer students dependent on Ministry of Education handouts, and low- to mid-level employees of Japanese multinationals sent there to study for a short time. The most promising students usually do not come to Japan, or if they do they soon leave; over time, this will surely have an effect on Japan's international role.
Meanwhile, in the place of real internationalization, Japan abounds with Dogs and Demons-type events and programs designed to give the appearance that admiring foreigners are flocking there. Towns and organizations spend huge amounts to host conventions in Japan, and the speeches at these conferences are given prominent space in the media. Japanese magazines regularly feature earnest advice from overseas experts. Living here, one sees token Japanese-speaking foreigners on almost every variety show. Most famous of such programs is the wildly popular TV show Strange Things About the Japanese, hosted by comedian Beat Takeshi, in which a panel of foreigners, fluent in Japanese, debates a Japanese audience and one another with a great deal of sound and fury. The program has a positive side in that it introduces citizens from many countries conversant in Japanese – something new to most viewers. On the other hand, the program is essentially comedy, tending to underscore the position of foreigners as freaks within the society: there is no moderation, and the debate consists mostly of vociferous sound bites shouted by people with plaques around their necks reading «South Korea,» «France,» «Benin,» etc. Reporter Howard French points out, «Although it may open windows on other worlds for its viewers, for some the zoolike aspect of the program, with its raucous, inconclusive debates, might almost seem to advertise Japan's conservative virtues. For all the giddy freedom of foreigners, the disorder subtly recommends the tranquillity of a uniform society governed firmly by rules understood by all.» The speeches, advice, and television debates look and feel exotic, but they have little to do with real involvement by foreigners in Japanese business or culture. It's the voice of Hal again, reassuring everyone that Japan is indeed international.
Considering Japan's stalled internationalization, we come back to the principle of Wakon Yosai, « Japanese spirit, Western technology,» the rallying cry of the Meiji Restoration from which Japan has never deviated. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a pioneer early traveler to Europe in the 1850s, wrote a widely read book about his experiences, in which he described his puzzlement upon discovering that foreigners were free to buy land in the Netherlands. «If a foreigner buys land, doesn't that mean that he could build a castle or a military fort on it?» he asked. That thought hadn't occurred to his Dutch friends, but something like it has never faded from the minds of the Japanese public. There is a fear that allowing foreigners entry into the nation's life would give them terrifying power. And so they have been kept at arm's length.
As we have seen in Japanese education, an attitude of wariness, if not fear, toward foreigners is imparted in the schools. Hence the refusal of many people to rent homes or apartments to foreigners, or the appearance of signs on bathhouses warning them to stay out. The Japanese are so cut off from meaningful contact with people from other countries that they are unaware of ethnic or national sensitivities, as may be seen in the stream of racial slurs made by leading politicians. In May 2000, Ishihara Shintaro, the mayor of Tokyo, publicly attacked Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese living in Japan, saying, «Atrocious crimes have been committed again and again by sangokujin [a derogatory term for foreigners] who have illegally entered Japan. We can expect them to riot in an earthquake.» He was referring to the notorious aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, when in fact the opposite happened: angry Japanese mobs rounded up and murdered thousands of Koreans. The important thing to note about this slur was that Ishihara refused to retract it, and that Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's major daily newspapers, criticized not the governor but the outcry in the media. Ishihara remained more popular than ever, with more than 70 percent of the callers to the city office supporting him.
The lack of foreigners in Japan is not accidental; it results from laws and social frameworks especially designed to keep them out, or, if they are allowed in, to hold them on a very short leash. Bureaucrats restrict the import of goods from overseas, the media (newspapers, cinema, and television) portray Japan as the victim of dangerous foreigners, and business cartels raise high barriers to prevent outsiders from gaining a foothold. Internationalization in Japan is a concept at war with itself, for no matter how much lip service is paid to internationalization, the country's basic policies have been to keep Japan closed.