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February 1976. My one-year contract with Prime Ministers Department has ended. Technically,
I am unemployed
I may also be unemployable. No one is making me any job offers.
With more than 20 years of experience and education behind me, that says something
either about me, or about Australia.
But no matter. I have little desire to remain in Australia anyway. The bitchiness
and futility of both the bureaucracy and academia have left me exhausted.
All I want is to get back to the peace, sensible living and natural beauty of Japan.
My first move is to ask The Australian whether they still need a Tokyo correspondent
(while I was away, they relied on a stringer, Eddie Lachica).
They, in the form of Jim Hall, a former friend and sometime progressive and now editor,
said no thanks. They were trying to cut expenses, he said lamely.
I was not too surprised. They had already gone rightwing enough to realise they did
not need someone like myself. Hall had clearly gone with them.
(In fact, The Australian still did need someone in Tokyo, even if only to match Fairfax
and the Melbourne Herald. A year or so after they sent Allan Goodall, a journalist
with no Japan background, to work out of an office in the very rightwing Yomiuri.)
Besides, the idea of having to go back to writing about mistreated Australian racehorses
did not appeal greatly. I had contacted them mainly to ease my own conscience about
having suddenly left them in the lurch when I left Tokyo a year earlier.
But that meant I still had to find a way to get back to Japan.
Yasuko had a job waiting for her back at Ajiken – another reason for me wanting to
get back to Japan. But the Japanese government had, and still has, a fairly severe
visa system designed to keep stray foreigners at bay, even if they have Japanese
families.
And if I did get back to Japan, what would I do there?
I had long thought about setting up my own translation company. I liked the idea
of being able to sit at home, working at leisure, typing up in English the text of
an interesting Japanese manuscript which I would have wanted to read anyway - and
earning something like 10,000 yen a page while improving one’s Japanese in the process.
But to do that I needed a visa to get to Japan, and that could not happen till I
got myself established in the translation business in Japan – a Catch 22 situation
if ever there was one.
One answer was to try to get a position at a Japanese university. Here the mere promise
of a position might be enough to satisfy the visa people.
First move was to lean on Heinz Arndt, still a good friend, to let me call myself
a visiting research scholar (unpaid) in his ANU Department for a month or so. Heinz
obliged, and even gave me a room.
I did not get to use it much. Walking the lifeless corridors of the Coombs Building
and the John Crawford auditorium brought back too many unhappy memories (when did
Australians, the ANU especially, develop the Stalinist habit of naming buildings
after their alleged notables?)
In the ANU tea rooms I recalled the ugly debates I had had with our alleged intellectuals
as I tried to convince them of the atrocity in Vietnam.
In the seminar rooms where seven years earlier I had had to face down hard- faced,
know-it-all rightwingers in a vain effort to get them to see sense about China, I
now had to listen to trendy-mushy pro-Cultural Revolution academics denouncing Deng
Xiaoping as a capitalist roader.
Fitzgerald, back from China, had just put out a book through the ANU university press
(those nice people who had rejected my In Fear of China book as being too leftwing)
praising Chairman Mao as a great hero of the Chinese people and pinning hopes on
his very temporary successor Hua Guofeng (Hua who?).
Determination to get out of the place was even stronger than before.
Next move was to contact Father Robert Ballon, a Belgian professor of business at
Tokyo’s Sophia University. He had befriended me earlier while I was still a journalist
in Tokyo. Why not lean on him for some kind of position at Sophia?
Ballon obliged, even though he could promise no more than say I could be a visiting
lecturer in Sophia’s International Department, an adjunct operation where they taught
in English to mainly foreign students.
Visiting lecturer (hijokin-koshi) in Japan is even further down the academic food
chain than it is in the West. But no matter. If it gave me a visa and a slot back
in Japan, that was fine.
The final move was to lean on Hatakenaka Atsushi, then first secretary at the Japanese
Embassy in Canberra and a family/golfing friend, for a visa. (Later he was made ambassador
at the same Embassy.)
Normally being called a visiting lecturer is not enough to qualify for an academic
visa to Japan. But Hatakenaka found some way around the hurdle, and I will always
be very grateful to him for that.
(His employers would have been less grateful if they knew the trouble I would cause
them a few years later.)
How NOT to Win Friends and Influence in the ALP.
As hinted earlier, I do not see myself as particularly leftwing. I joined the ALP
back in 1966 purely over Vietnam, and left soon after when I discovered the extent
of ALP rightwing branch manipulation and skullduggery.
On many domestic issues I favor what some would call the rightwing approach. I believe
strongly in people being forced to look after their own destiny. State involvement
in the economy usually does more harm than good (though something has to be done
about the robber baron mentality in Australia’s business classes).
In particular I see most of the bleeding-heart aborigine, welfare and health policies
espoused by the leftwing as ideologically motivated disasters.
As I say at the end of my Quadrant article entitled 1975, the rightwing usually gets
it wrong in foreign policy while the leftwing usually gets it wrong in domestic policy.
The miracle of the Whitlam years was the ability of the leftwing to get it wrong
in both directions.
If I favor the Left it is for three reasons.
One is that my main area of interest is foreign policy, and that is where, apart
from Whitlam, the Left generally does get it right.
Two, is that in Australia at least leftwingers are usually more attractive as people
than rightwingers – more humanity, a nicer sense of humor, better-looking girlfriends
..
But the main factor is the hypocrisy and lack of conscience on the Right. Rightwingers
fret and fume over the imprisonment of a few dissidents by leftwing regimes. But
when did you ever hear a rightwinger complain about the far worse activities of US
supported death squads in Latin America?
Even diehard leftists admitted to dismay over Moscow’s interventions in Eastern Europe.
When did we get to hear any mea culpas from the Right over the far more brutal US-Australian
intervention in Indochina?
Even the mere mention of the word KGB sends rightwingers frothing. But when did they
ever object to the "KGB" in their very own midst and funded by the very
own tax funds.
I refer of course to ASIO/ASIS black information and other dirty tricks against the
Australia Left over many years. Somehow the rightwing conscience ducts dry up very
quickly when the target is people they do not like.
A final point is that thanks to Vietnam and China I had found my lot thrown in with
the Left in Australia. There were quite a few people on the Right whom I liked and
respected. But the laws of political tribalism meant that we had to consider ourselves
different people.
I mention all this as a preamble to what follows. In retrospect, it was one of the
more regretted things I have done over a long career.
March 1976. I am still simmering over my experiences of the previous year in PMC
– the shabby deal I had suffered over the wretched Vietnam Cables affair especially
– and looking for something to do while waiting to get back to Japan.
Max Suich, then editor of the National Times, has promised to run the occasional
article from me if and when I get back to Japan. To keep my hand in, I decide that
I should give him something about what I saw as the mistakes of the Whitlam administration
in the year I had been working for it.
By this time Whitlam has gone down to crushing defeat in the national election after
his November 1975 dismissal. Writing rude things about his policies could hardly
be seen as a stab in the back, or so I thought.
It might even be seen as a boost for those in the ALP like Hayden seeking to replace
him, or so I also thought.
In the copy I sent Suich, I had tried hard to restrain my feelings. But obviously
there were going to be some harsh remarks, even they were buried down in the body
of the article.
Suich, the newspaper person he always was, had no hesitation in dragging my harsh
remarks to the top of the article and making the amended piece the lead article for
that week’s edition. He hyped it up as the definitive expose of the Whitlam government’s
failures, written by none other than by a former ‘senior Whitlam adviser’ (which
I had never claimed to be).
A derogatory anti-Whitlam cartoon on the cover of the issue completed the damage.
Laborites have an instinctive hatred of anyone who seems to turn his back on their
cause. Given the damage and harassment ALP people had suffered from various ASIO/ASIS
spy and sabotage activities against them in the past, that was understandable (though
in the Vietnam Cables affair it was I who had been sabotaged by Labor, not vice-
versa).
As well, there was the paranoia over the way Whitlam had been dismissed a few months
earlier. Within the ALP he had become a revered icon, above criticism or attack.
So when the National Times beat-up of my original copy hit the streets, personal
hell broke loose. At the few Canberra parties to which I was still invited, the ALP
faithful did not even try to hide their loathing.
The fact that I had sacrificed so much for Labor over Vietnam and China counted for
nothing (to this day I am convinced that many in the ALP never began to understand
the full extent of the Vietnam atrocity, or the sincerity of those of us who opposed
it).
I had criticised the great Gough. I was a traitor to the cause. Maybe even I was
in the pay of the enemy.
I ran into Hayden at Parliament House soon after. He was the one ALP leader I had
respected and I had hoped to at least keep some connection with him.
But he too was furious, though he himself was critical of Whitlam and was trying
to take Whitlam’s job as ALP leader (he was to be defeated by Hawke).
Any chance I ever had of keeping up an ALP connection, and possibly returning to
Australia if the ALP ever regained power, clearly had to be shelved.
Even progressive intellectuals began to give me a wide berth.
(But I did get one reaction in the National Times to my article. It was from Rockhampton,
of all places.
(As an example of Whitlam’s fickleness, I had written, rhetorically of course, that
given a choice between spending a weekend discussing the economy with his worried
advisers or giving a talk to the Rockhampton Rotary Club, he would happily choose
Rockhampton.
(The Rockhampton Rotarians wrote in sniffily insisting that they never had, and never
would, invite Whitlam to give them a talk.)
Thanks to Max Suich, my former bete noire in Japan and China, I now had no choice
but to get back to Japan and get re-established there.
Back to Japan
As I gathered up Yasuko and young Dan for the trip back, the prospects were still
bleak.
I had no contract or letter of appointment from Sophia. All I had was Ballon’s word
that some kind of job would be waiting for me.
Nor did I have anywhere to live. The Sophia people naturally felt no obligation to
look after me. Once again I was on my own, but this time with a family
Once again I would have to carve my path through the Japanese jungle. My future was
not bleak. But nor was it star-spangled.
I was not to know that buried in my belongings was something that would create for
me a future far more dramatic, rewarding and satisfying than any number of spangling
stars.
It was the rough manuscript for a book about Japan.
The BOOK.
The book had not been my idea. Back in 1974, while I was still working as a correspondent
in Japan, it was put to me by a colleague and ski friend, Muramatsu Masumi, or MM
as his friends called him.
MM was a skilled interpreter who had set up a very successful interpreting and translation
company, Simul. He had then expanded into book publishing. (Simul would later go
bankrupt, mainly because of the over-expansion into book publishing).
Initially the book-publishing division had concentrated on translations of well-known
Western books, including books from Australia, where MM had some good and sentimental
connections. But gradually it began to commission books in its own right.
One day MM suggested that since I had been in Japan so long ( all of four years)
and had had so many ‘interesting experiences,’ maybe I would like to write a book
about my impressions.
The ever-friendly and gregarious MM clearly liked the idea of getting one of his
mates to write a book, best- seller or not.
I said yes, and not just to keep him happy. I had wanted to write a book about Japan
anyway, for several reasons.
One was the fact that I had already sensed the strong differences between the Japanese
and Chinese. In particular I was surprised by the emotionalism of the Japanese –
their propensity to strange moods, booms, panics etc. How did they get to be that
way? And why the extraordinary economic success?
All that would be grist for a good book, I thought.
The Chinese had their cultural differences from the rest of us – language and philosophies
to begin with. Some of those cultural traits they shared in part with the Japanese.
But when it came to basic personality – the basic value system ie the way people
thing and act – they were really not all that different from us Westerners, or most
other members of the human race for that matter.
It was the Japanese who were different. Why?
The early 1970’s had already seen a spate of good-selling books by Japanese scholars
seeking to explain the Japanese to themselves. AS they emerged on the world stage,
the Japanese were intensely interested in finding out just who they were, and how
the world saw them.
Western scholars liked to dismiss this as national narcissism. But it clearly went
much deeper than that. The Japanese rightly sensed they were different from other
peoples. They too wanted to know how and why.
Prominent authors had included Nakane Chie (analyzing the peculiarities of Japan’s
groupist ‘vertical society’), and Doi Takeo who claimed to discover the Japanese
propensity for emotional indulgence – amae.
Then there was the extraordinary success of a rather shallow book called The Japanese
and The Jews written by a Japanese, Yamamoto Shichihei. He had used a Jewish pysudenom,
Isaih Ben- darsan,to spike Japanese curiosity. The book had sold in the millions.
Surely there was a market out there for a better book on the subject of the Japanese
and the foreigners, I thought. And this time it would be written by a genuine foreigner
- me.
I told MM that even though I would soon be going back to Australia I would try to
let him have his book. MM seemed satisfied.
Inspiration
I remember well the day it happened.
I had just settled into my Canberra house with its large garden backing on to the
Japanese embassy, and was sun- baking with a good friend, Patti Warne of the ALP,
on the lawn.
She was pushing me on my book-writing plan. Japan was a big topic in Australia. She
was sure there was a market for a book that explained the Japanese.
But for me more was involved than just writing a book that would simply describe
HOW the Japanese seemed different from other peoples. One also had to explain WHY.
The Japanese themselves were little help. Their explanations were hopelessly confused
- that they were as they were because they ate rice, battled typhoons and volcanos,
had a gentle climate, had a severe climate, spoke a unique language, were the lost
tribe of Israel, had distant connections with Tamil culture, and so on.
Even the more respectable theories seemed fairly weak – that Japan’s groupism was
the result of rice growing collectivity, that living in confined valleys explained
the narrowness of much Japanese thinking, that racial homogenity explained the propensity
for collectivist thinking, and so on.
A very popular theory to explain the lack of individualism was, and remains, Japan’s
alleged polytheism.
Western and Middle Eastern religions had only one God. This meant, the theory said,
that people there could define their identity individually in relation to that God.
Japanese were said to have been denied that opportunity.
To anyone born and raised in the West, the idea that our individualism has anything
to do with religion seems absurd. We know that it is a key part of our value system,
and we are educated into it from childhood.
But the Japanese remain determined to cling to this theory. Even the argument that
many Westerners had little firm interest in religion to begin with, and that the
very individualistic Indians also had multi- Gods makes little impact.
The idea that religious differences are all-deciding is very attractive to them,
for some reason.
(The religion-decides-all approach is also very attractive to Westerners determined
to find a reason why Protestant North Europe/America does better than Catholic South
Europe/America.)
(Few seem to realise that value systems create religions, and not vice versa.)
Collectively these various theories to explain the Japanese people are called Nihonjin-ron
(debate about the Japanese people). Among most Western scholarly Japan-watchers,
Nihonjin-ron has a very bad reputation.
Mere mention of the word sends many of them into spasms of political correctness.
They like to insist there is no need to explain the Japanese, that efforts to do
so just pander to Japanese narcissism and a racialistic desire to claim uniqueness.
But having blasted Nihonjin-ron, they usually end up trying to produce their own
theories to explain Japanese peculiarities.
A good example was a shoddy book called The Enigma of Japanese Power and written
by a Dutchman who had managed to spend 25 years in Japan without learning the language.
He too made the ritual denunciations of Nihonjin-ron scholarship. He then went on
to say that Japan’s alleged ‘enigma’ could only be explained by a nebulous Japanese
peculiarity called ‘the system.’
The fact that the Western Nihonjin-ron scholars he was criticising had for years,
long before he appeared on the scene, done much to define the system that he himself
could not define, had clearly gone over his head.
But this is simply par for the course in that bitchy and intellectually undeveloped
field called Japanology.
Reverse Logic
Anyway, I was lying on the lawn with Patti and thinking about it all when suddenly
it occurred. Why not try to just put everything in reverse?
To date the Nihonjin-ron people, including myself, had all assumed that if the Japanese
are so seemingly different from other peoples, then something must have happened
to them to make them that way. They, and I, had tried hard to find that something.
But if the Japanese were emotional, collectivist, non-ideological, narrowly focussed,
indulgent, mood-driven etc then why did they have to be explained? These were all
basic, natural aspects of the human psyche. Indeed, they were qualities that could
be found in any small-group society - the tribe, village or family for example.
So instead of looking for factors that had made the Japanese the way they were, maybe
we needed to look for factors that made the rest of us the way we were ie individualistic,
rationalistic etc.
We assumed that our individualism, rationalism etc were ‘normal,’ and that it was
the Japanese who needed to be explained. But maybe it was the other way round. How
and why had we got to be the way we were?
Simply assuming we were where we were because we were smarter or more advanced than
the Japanese did little to solve things, given the extent of Japan’s progress.
On the contrary. Many non-Japanese – the Chinese and Indians for example – may have
been more individualistic, rationalistic etc than the Japanese. , But that had clearly
not helped their past progress. .
The problem here, of course, was to find a causative factor common to all us non-Japanese.
And since ‘us’ included almost everyone from the British Isles and China, that factor
clearly had nothing to do with volcanoes, climate, diet or religion.
It was then that I realised Japan could give us the crucial clue, since the factor
that had caused individualism, rationalism etc. had to something that was not only
common to all us non- Japanese peoples, but also something not found in Japan.
As I went through the list of possible causative factors, I realised that there was
only one that the rest of us shared but which had bypassed the Japanese. This was
a history of frequent conflict, contact, occupation or cultural domination by foreigners.
Maybe wars with foreigners did something to make people move away from their original
small-group, ‘tribal’ values.
What was that something?
The Role of Ideology
AS I went through the list of qualities that we non-Japanese had but which the Japanese
did not have I came back increasingly to the question of ideology.
Could this be the result of foreign wars? .
The Japanese have their religious and political ideologies. But many are imported
and ideological attachments are weak. When disputes occur they revolve much more
around group loyalties than genuine differences of principle.
Political ideologies remain largely undefined. Religious sects proliferate but lack
the rigid body of doctrine found in most religions elsewhere.
The average Japanese is born into a vaguely Confucianist society, has a choice of
a Shinto or Christian wedding (many choose both), and is buried under Buddhist rites.
The one uniquely Japanese religion – Shinto – is little more than a refined version
of animism. By definition almost, it is a ‘tribal’ religion.
True, many other observers, including many Japanese, also realise this lack of ideological
attachments. But they see it as yet another unusual element in the Japanese personality
needing to be explained.
. But why should it be seen as unusual and needing explanation? Surely it is our
non-Japanese determination to cling to some form of ideology that needs to be explained.
My own experience with Catholicism, the intensity of the Sino-Soviet ideological
debate and the cruelties caused by our rigid Western anti- communism had already
shown me there was something abnormal about our non- Japanese need for rigidly doctrinaire
religious and political ideologies to guide us.
So instead of looking for something that had pushed Japan in its non- ideological
direction, we should be looking for factors that had pushed us non-Japanese in the
ideological direction.
From there it was not hard to find the foreign war connection.
Foreign wars force peoples to unify in the face of the enemy, and to develop reasons
why they must oppose the enemy.
Strong ideologies are very useful for both purposes. They assist the formation of
strong central governments and bureaucracies (the alternative is a complex web of
personal connections similar to that of feudal Japan, and to present Japan to some
extent)
Ideologies also help greatly to explain why your side is superior and the other side
has to be defeated.
But having embraced ideology and its many uses, inevitably you have to de- embrace
the more personalist, ‘tribal’ values of your original society.
You cease to be ‘Japanese.’ You become more individualistic.
From Ideology to Rationalism
This left me with the problem of explaining our non-Japanese rationalism, including
its better aspects – the liking for principled and scientific debate.
And here too I could find an answer, as follows:
Initially we non-Japanese begin with rigid, dogmatic ideologies and their doctrines.
But for all their dogmatism, these doctrines do at least force people to argue and
think in terms of principles.
This encourages debate, and ultimately the logic and intellectuality needed for scientific
thinking.
The end result could well be to deny the dogmas underlying those original ideologies
(though the ability of some top scientific thinkers to embrace dogmatic religions
– my father was a good example – never ceases to surprise ).
This in turn helped greatly to explain the past scientific, philosophical and mathematical
achievements of the older civilizations - the Chinese,Indian, Middle Eastern and
southern European societies.
These were all societies that had seen constant conflict, competition and close contact
from foreigners and had been heavily ideologised as a result.
They were also societies with highly developed bureaucractic and legal systems –
the result of having to seek the principles on which to base the strong central governments
they needed.
Japan had missed out on this experience. Lack of ‘ideologisation’ meant that its
original village-tribal structure, and its value system, could remain.
True, that structure and value system could be refined and codified to allow the
creation of the sophisticated society we see today. And systems of bureaucracy, law,
science and economy could be imported, initially from China and then from the West.
On this basis non-rationalistic Japan had also been able to progress.
But in essence it had remained as it always had been. It was the tribe that had become
a nation.
Writing the BOOK
Having worked out my central theme, I could begin to write.
The words did not come easily. I was trying to write a book explaining not just Japan
but also how the rest of us thought and acted, and why.
I also had to do a crash course in sociology if I was to handle the concepts I was
trying to bandy around.
But the book also gave me a chance to write a lot about various incidents I had reported
on while in Japan before 1975 – the Tanaka Kakuei affair, the Red Army, policy to
China etc.
These were all events where I felt I had something useful to say, and which also
helped illustrate Japan’s continuing ‘tribalism.’
(Sadly, the one event where I really did have something to say and which proved conclusively
the emotional lack of principle in Japan’s foreign policies, namely Japan’s extraordinary
behaviour in negotiating its territorial dispute with Moscow, was excluded at MM’s
insistence.)
(He realised it was a sensitive issue for Japan, and did not want to upset the Foreign
Ministry bureaucrats with whom he did much of his interpreting work.)
(But a few years later I would have every chance to get my material into print, and
in ways that would upset those bureaucrats far more than anything I could have included
in the book.)
If there was any windiness in the book, then, in addition to my pop-sociology, it
involved my efforts to explain Japan’s economic success.
My original guess was that it had something to do with the extraordinary ‘informationalisation’
of Japanese society - its wealth of publications, gossip etc.,
This in turn I saw as due to the lack of individualistic barriers.
But since then I have come to realise that this is a quite minor factor. There are
quite a few other ‘tribal’ factors at work to explain Japan’s economic progress –
in particular, strong workplace identity, an addiction to making things (monozukuri),
and attention to detail. But that is another story.
Gradually a rough draft emerged. Being pushed increasingly to the outside of policy
affairs in PMC gave me time to concentrate on writing.
A loyal PMC secretary helped with the many manuscript re-types.
And so, with the heap of pages that would change my life, totally and very much for
the better, I set off for Tokyo. It was April 1976.
Back in Japan
They said it was the wettest and coldest spring on record. Looking out over the delayed
and drenched blossoms facing Tokyo’s Kokusai Bunka guesthouse where we had rented
a room, I had to agree.
But the weather was not my only problem.
I had contacted the office of my sponsor, Father Ballon at Sophia University. They
were friendly enough, but could do little more than confirm that there would be the
occasional request to give lectures.
They could do nothing to help me with housing.
After a week or so at the guesthouse we had to move. For a while I shuttled between
some small apartments in the Harajuku area loaned by former journalist friends, dragging
my family behind me.
That was hardly the grandest way to begin a new Tokyo career.
Worse, I had dislocated my shoulder lunging to grab a tree while climbing the crumbling
volcanic slope of Adatera-dake with young Dan strapped to my back. That meant I could
only type with one hand.
With the Vietnam War over and China in the spot-light, Lansdowne Press wanted to
reissue my In Fear of China book. With one hand bandaged up, I was trying to type
up a revised introduction.
There was a lot I wanted to write about. In particular, I wanted to flesh out my
original thesis that the Cultural Revolution was no more than a grubby power struggle,
with the Maoist faction using artificial ideological differences to humiliate and
destroy all opposition.
Foolishly I decided to abandon the rewrite project when Lansdowne asked me to put
up the money needed to cover reissue costs. It was only 5,000 dollars.
But for me at the time, out of a job, that was a lot of money.
In retrospect, I should have been happy to pay 50,000 dollars to get the book on
the streets again, having been proved so right over Vietnam.
That book was, and remains, one of the most important things I have done in my life.
But at the time I thought I had more important things to worry about.
I was living on savings. We had to get young Dan into a kindergarten so that Yasuko
and I could be free in the daytimes. We had to find somewhere to live when the short-term
apartments ran out. And so on...
In retrospect they were also happy days. They had a certain purity – our little group
of three trying our best to get ourselves organised in Japan’s complex society.
When you are down and out, even small events and triumphs have a clarity and meaning
they would never have otherwise.
The Yotsuya Pad
Eventually I pooled resources with Yasuko to buy a small apartment (‘mansion’ in
Japanese) in Suga-machi - a rather run-down, lower middle-class area in the still
unfashionable Yotsuya area.
But it was also close to Sophia University, where I was already giving some lectures.
It was also close to central Tokyo, where my new career would soon unfold.
In the meantime I would also try to make some money and contacts through bank translation
work, and editing a dialogue between Toynbee and Ikeda (the head of Sokka Gakkai
who had their headquarters nearby.
I also had an unlikely JETRO job - judging films commissioned by JETRO to explain
Japan to foreigners.
Most of this work came from former Japanese acquaintances. It was my first practical
lesson in the importance of the human nexus in Japan – a key point in the book I
was writing.
Finishing the BOOK
Meanwhile I was still struggling with the manuscript. MM had been patient during
the many delays in handing over the text.
But there were too many details I wanted to include. And my efforts to explain the
sociology of ‘tribalism’ were often half-baked.
Eventually, almost a year later, I was able to hand something over, and to begin
thinking about a title for it.
I was in luck.
Simul’s book section was headed by one Tamura Katsuo. A mecurical man, he had little
patience with others, and the bad habit of abusing his staff. But he also had publishing
talents.
He listened briefly to what I had to say about the planned book’s contents (he rarely
wasted time reading manuscripts, especially when they were in English).
I had suggested a title along the lines of Japan and the rest of the world (to match
the title of the very successful The Japanese and the Jews book mentioned above).
Tamura interrupted to say that what I was really writing about was the ‘uniqueness’
of the Japanese people.
That, he said grandly, would be the title: Nihonjin: Yuunikusa no Gensen. "The
Japanese: Origins of Uniqueness."
I flinched. A title like that would fly straight in the face of the anti- Nihonjin-ron
scholars. ‘Uniqueness’ was at the top of their list of taboo words.
But Tamura had a point. I was indeed saying that the Japanese were different from
everyone else. I was saying Japan was unique.
Even so, I was reluctant to use a word like ‘unique’ with its implications of racism
and academic charlatanism.
The title also sounded far too audacious, with me claiming, after all of five years
experience, to be the final authority on state of the Japanese nation.
(As it turned out, it was to preempt the title of a book on Japan by the far more
eminent Japan scholar, Edwin Reischauer, and also called "The Japanese."
His publisher ended up having to use a kakakana title – za japanezu )
But publishers are supposed to know how to make books sell. And Simul was doing me
the favor of publishing my already over-long and over-detailed book in the first
place.
So I went along with what Tamura wanted.
And in so doing the book was to succeed in ways that even Tamura could not have imagined,
as I was soon to discover.
Publishing the BOOK.
Simul initially wanted to put the book out in Japanese first, with the original English
to follow later. An excellent translator was found – Asano Atsushi (he went on to
head the Japanese version of Newsweek and died prematurely from what many saw as
conscientious overwork).
The result was a book that read better in Japanese than it did in the original English.
(Which was just as well, because the English version was never to appear.)
(Following publication of the Japanese version, I suffered a problem common to writers
– putting the manuscript away for a while and then wondering on rereading how one
could have produced such badly written and appalling nonsense.)
(Not writer’s block, but writer’s remorse. Or writer’s tristesse, to relate to the
feeling of let-down one is supposed to have after a climactic experience of a more
sexual nature.)
(As well there was a rather bruising argument with MM over royalties for the English
edition, with him insisting on the Japanese approach of a fixed percentage regardless
of volume of sales.)
One final incident, ironically, helped prove the topic of my book.
As author I had had to check the translation for mistakes (inevitably there are some,
even with the best translation). But various delays meant I had only 24 hours to
check the final version before it went to the printer.
I had no choice but to stay in the Simul office all night going through the galley
proofs.
Around eight AM the next day the hard- working and much-abused staff began to arrive
(many of them would be working through to mid-night to satisfy the vile-tempered
Tamura.)
As they saw me hunched over the table with a pile of galleys I could literally feel
their attitudes to me change.
Till then I had been an outsider, someone to be treated with respect but not much
more.
But overnight, literally, I had become an insider. I had sacrificed a night’s sleep
so that they could get my book out in time. I had become an honorary member of their
tight little work group.
Years later they would talk of their surprise and joy at seeing me that morning,
bent over a desk and still wearing clothes of the day before, working on their behalf
to help meet the deadline.
It helped prove my basic thesis about Japan’s intense group ethic, and right on the
eve of publication.
I was not unused to the excitement of seeing one’s book finally in print. "In
Fear of China" had given me my first taste.
But there was something different about this book. I was still trying to make it
in Japan. But this little parcel of 307 pages with its audacious title meant in a
sense that I had made it in Japan.
What’s more, it said things I very much wanted to say. Not only did it try to explain
the causes of the wretched Western ideological biases that had made my life so difficult
in the past.
In the process it had also come up with a revolutionary theory , not just of Japan’s
development but also of social development worldwide.
All I had to do was wait till the ads appeared and the world might begin to beat
a path to my door. My life would begin to be very different.
Or so I thought. True, my life did become very different. But that was not because
the world liked or understood my theory.
Rather it was because of the incredibly freakish way my efforts to publicise the
book unfolded.
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