BETWEEN FIVE WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN, LATIN AMERICA,
AND AUSTRALIA;
BETWEEN FIVE CAREERS: DIPLOMAT, ECONOMIST, JOURNALIST,
AMATEUR DEVELOPER AND JAPANOLOGIST;
BETWEEN FIVE LANGUAGES: ENGLISH, CHINESE, RUSSIAN, SPANISH
AND JAPANESE
Chapter
27 - Finale
(A)
POLITICAL INVOLVEMENTS
1. Past Politicians
2. Prime Ministers too - Miyazawa, Hosokawa, Obuchi, Mori,
3. The Koizumi Disaster
(B)
WINDING DOWN
4. Media Access Frustrations
5. A Book on Education Reform
6. Akita International University
7. Foreign Policy Problems - Northern Territories, Trade
etc.
8. The Rightwing Strikes - The North Korean Abductee Issue
9. More Rightwing Attacks - Sankei and Komori
10. Reviving Old Interests - China and Russia
11. Creating a New Interest - Latin America
(A)
POLITICAL INVOLVEMENTS
Looking back, one of my larger mistakes in Japan was not
doing more to get involved in the Japanese political scene
(another mistake was not working harder on the Japanese
language).
Japanese politicians are usually interesting people, even
when they are up to their necks in slush.
But other commitments - the lecture circuit, raising two
sons bilingually/biculturally, managing a farm in Boso,
looking after a Boso community of over fifty souls
(including even their garbage and toilet problems),
teaching, writing, and presiding over two universities -
meant I did not have much spare time. One waits for things
to happen to one, rather than go out and make them happen.
It is not the best way to organise one's life.
---
Similarly with my Japanese. I should have done more.
But when one already has adequate fluency, the extra effort
needed to acquire the clever phrases and vocab you need to
be a full-fledged commentator does not seem rewarding
enough. Particularly when you begin to run into problems
with a conservative establishment that would be happy to
see the back of you. Add in the usual collection of
rightwing abuse and the desire to relate to the culture
that creates these kinds of people tends to flag.
When even progressives such as the Asahi group begin to see
you as way out (mainly because you criticise their love
affair with the disastrous Koizumi policies), you know you
are in trouble.
No excuse for the idleness, perhaps, but the reality.
Sometimes one wishes one had found some other avenue - art,
history, nature - to relate to Japan, rather than the messy
business of economics and foreign affairs.
---
I should also have been writing the definitive version of
my ‘Japan is a Tribe' book. But there the constant
sniping from the anti-culturalists - the people who deny
that culture has anything to do with human behavior - can
be discouraging.
The implication from their attacks - that one only
emphasises culture (read values) to explain Japan to curry
favor with the Japanese who want to believe they are
different from everyone else - is even worse. Nor does the
fact that their own explanations - the 'rational choice'
people, for example, of whom we have seen much lately - get
them nowhere do much to ease their criticisms.
One is tempted simply to give it all up and go back to
growing kiwi fruit in Boso.
But I will do that book writing, sometime, when I get time,
even if only to satisfy myself.
1.
Politicians I Have Known
True, I had not been entirely reactive in dealings with
Japan.
If we are talking about politicians, the lecture circuit
inevitably brought me into contact with a wide range,
mainly regional, some also interesting.
And some Europeans, and Latinos, would bring me into their
political dealings with Japan.
I once got to debate Northern Territory issues with the LDP
politician, Nakagawa Shoichi, at the Swedish Embassy and
discovered how hard-nosed rightwing he could be (I saw also
how he liked his alcohol).
The Peru Embassy once got me somewhat involved in their
efforts to chase down their ex-president Alberto Fujimori
while he was on the run in Japan.
There I rediscovered how devious Japan's foreign ministry
could be (they were determined to protect him, despite his
various crimes).
The Australian Embassy was fairly useless, unless one of my
former Foreign Affairs mates happened to be running the
show, which was not often.
Otherwise they seemed to want to spend most of their time
worrying about Canberra or dealing with conservative,
right-wing types, even when Labor governments were in power
in Canberra.
Yokomichi, then of the Socialist Party, once sought me out
in his efforts to track down Australia's role in the US
global submarine detection Omega network.
A mid-level Komeito Diet member in 2001 arranged for me to
make a formal presentation on education reform to the Upper
House finance committee.
And there were the usual invitations to attend the lectures
or join the support groups organized by politicians, both
of the left and right.
I did get to see something of Miyazawa Kiichi in the Bubble
economy years (then finance minister, later prime
minister).
One of his supporters - an over-cashed Shizuoka paper
company - used to run dinner parties for him at a top Tokyo
restaurant, Kitcho, to which I was often invited.
Since he was a Keynesian - he had studied my father's books
in depth - we could agree on fiscal policies. But I found
him quite rigid on the Northern Territories dispute (more
on that shortly).
Koike
Yuriko
On her route to the top Koike Yuriko used to make
occasional contact. She seemed keen to revive our
friendship years earlier when she was a humble TV announcer
for the NTV Sesso Kodan program back in the
seventies/eighties.
Then she had been politically neutral, as far as I could
make out. Later she turned strongly rightwing and
nationalistic, which no doubt helped her career in Japan's
increasingly rightwing and nationalistic political circles.
In this respect she resembled the ultra-nationalistic
commentator, Sakurai Yoshiko, whom I had also known many
years earlier.
Sakurai in her youth had worked out of the Foreign
Correspondents Club, reporting progressive news for a very
progressive Asian news agency.
There she had met and married an Australian journalist
acquaintance of mine, Rodney O'Brien (they later
separated/divorced, he has disappeared, and today she makes
no mention of him).
As she gradually established herself as a competent public
speaker I could see her move firmly to the right. On China
she now waxes close to hysterical.
----
Koike seems to have travelled much the same route. There
seems to be little future at the top in Japan for
progressive politicians or commentators.
Her natural coquettish charm - she had that ability to make
you feel her strongly feminine attention was focussed on
you even when she wanted to be doing other things - also
must have helped her.
As Koike gained political clout I regretted not taking up
her offer to have me join her support group. It would have
been a good chance to see politics from the inside, where
she very definitely has been in recent years (factions were
competing for her attention, and some were even predicting
she could be the next prime minister).
But I always found it hard to take her seriously, given the
way she switched party affiliations whenever the occasion
demanded. And the contrived rightwinger-ism turned me off.
2. Prime
Ministers Too
The
Hosokawa Connection
My one close political involvement began on a flight from
Kumamoto.
Next to me was the young Kumamoto prefecture governor,
Hosokawa Morihiro, making waves nationally with his calls
for greater regional autonomy.
With his boyish charm, and strong pedigree, he was already
on the escalator to national politics.
His regional autonomy pitch gained fame when he revealed
that Tokyo approval was needed not just for changes in the
bus timetables but even for shifting a bus stop several
meters on a remote country road.
Hosokawa was from Sophia University, which gave us
something in common. He was also a Christian, possibly
because of his Kumamoto origins.
(That was the area in Kyushu where the "hidden Christians"
had survived for centuries, avoiding Tokugawa repression.)
On my next lecture visit to Kumamoto he invited me to his
tasteful ancestral home for dinner with his wife, whom I
got to know later when she became a key organiser for the
Para-Olympics.
----
We saw more of each other after his successful launch into
national politics. When, following the 1993 political
shakeups he eventually became prime minister, he made me a
member of something he called his Action Committee.
But apart from the occasional drinks party, we never got to
see much action. He seemed to want to be generally
progressive in his fiscal and foreign policies. But we
never got round to discussing details, and his weakness in
economics left him vulnerable to the fiscal conservatives
around him on every side.
Bungei Shunju, that devious and diligent destroyer of
liberal, mid-road politicians with enough popularity to
threaten continued conservative/rightwing rule, ran an ugly
piece aimed at destroying his reputation.
(Bungei ignores leftwingers and communists, no doubt
regarding them as non-threatening to the conservative
mainstream.
(Bungei did a similar knife job on Kato Koichi - in foreign
affairs another reasonably progressive conservative whom I
knew quite well since he spoke good Chinese and we had had
very similar diplomatic careers with him being trained in
Taiwan and myself in Hongkong at roughly the same time.)
(But Kato knew little economics. And in his desire to show
he could be as pro-American as he was pro-China his
willingness to buy US supply-sider theories did great
damage during the Hashimto regime where he had much policy
power.).
Chastened, Hosokawa resigned rather than fight, and headed
for his Shizuoka-prefecture Yugawara hideout to practice
pottery.
Many regretted his fall. But from the beginning it was
clear he was not suited to the rough and tumble of national
politics.
Some years later we used to meet for golf occasionally,
where he told me with some pride that he was the only
ex-prime minister who had renounced special police
protection.
He had given up politics so completely, including even
political commentary, that he was sure no one would want
violently to attack him.
(He was also a rather neat golfer, and a potter of quality.
But I could not draw him much on politics during our rounds
of golf, other than an admission there was little future
for progressive politicians in Japan.)
Obuchi,
Mori
Later in 1999-2000 I got to see and deal with some LDP and
Komeito politicians while serving on the Obuchi education
reform commission.
As mentioned earlier, I was impressed by Machimura
Nobutaka's sharpness and intelligence, despite his
rightwing bias. I was also impressed by the commonsense and
balance of Ota Akihiro from the Komeito (soon to be their
leader).
And while I did not relate to them personally, I liked
Obuchi Keizo, for his gentle and intelligent moderation,
and respected Mori Yoshiro (prime minister after Obuchi's
sudden death) for his blunt directness (which eventually
was to cause his demise at the hands of Japan's ever
light-headed, scandal-hungry media).
3. The
Koizumi Disaster
With Koizumi replacing Mori in 2001, my largely peripheral
involvements with political insiders came to an abrupt end.
A new crowd, mainly rightwing and conservative, were
running the show and apart from Takenaka Heizo I did not
know them very well.
I had seen Koizumi distantly at various gatherings, and
disliked what I saw intensely.
In the first place, how can anyone respect a man who on the
advice of his elder sister walks away from his intelligent
wife pregnant with his third child and refuse to see either
her or the child ever after?
Koizumi, I decided, was a flaky ignoramus with an
unbalanced personality, from a family and district with
strong gangster connections. It is to the eternal discredit
of the ignorant Western media that he was somehow seen as
Japan's savior simply because of his 'structural reform'
mantra repeated at every corner and juncture of the
political scene.
That he and George Bush admired each other says it all.
That he was also able to mesmerise the Japanese public with
his flinty gaze, thick mane of hair, reform mantra, and
'theatre politics' also said much about Japan - some of it
rather alarming.
His knowledge of, and interest in, foreign affairs was
close to zero. In economics he was also ignorant.
The damage he did to Japan was great, and not just because
he antagonised China and much of the rest of Asia by his
visits to the militaristic Yasukuni Shrine.
He promised to clean up the bureaucracy.
And some of the reforms - putting the knife into the
corrupt and wasteful HIghways Corporation for example -
made sense.
But its successor was only slightly better.
Japan's worst bureaucratic scandal - the pensions affair -
occurred when he was minister in charge of the Health and
Welfare ministry.
His efforts to centralise policy decisions away from
Japan's tribalistic, ever-competing ministries were also
interesting.
But centralisation does not help much if the decisions,
mainly on the economy, are wrong.
He claimed to want to reform the LDP old-boy faction
system.
But he seemed mainly concerned with settling old LDP and
bureaucratic scores.
That major bureaucratic evil – the amakudari system -
remained fairly intact during his long regime, as did quite
a few tokushu hojin – wasteful bureaucratic agencies.
His disastrous policy of cutting public works into a severe
economic recession seemed aimed mainly at castrating the
powerful Tanaka Kakuei faction in the LDP.
That faction probably needed to be cut down to size, but
not at the expense of an entire economy, and society.
His push for post-office privatisation was a meaningless,
but very successful, attempt to expand further his 'theatre
politics' for electoral and personal gains.
Some have suggested, and everything I know confirms, that
some powerful US financial firms, including Lehman, were
very happy to show him, and his acolyte, Takenaka Heizo,
gratitude for allowing them to get their grubby claws into
the 340 trillion yen's worth of privatised post office
savings and pensions.
Be that as it may, it is a fact that the semi-privatised
post office system ended up with heavy Lehman losses.
Later also we discovered that the revamped post office
corporation was paying Morgan Stanley 10 million yen a
month to advise it to sell off assets at rock-bottom
prices.
Other suspicious activities emerged when Hatoyama Kunio
(whom I had known in his younger days when he was secretary
to Tanaka Kakuei and had married the daughter of my
acquaintance, the Australian ex-sergeant, Jimmy Beard) as
Somu (General Affairs) minister tried to dismiss Nishikawa
Yoshifumi, the head of the semi-privatised corporation.
True, many in the LDP and media were eventually to react
against that piece of Koizumi theatre. But the fact they
went along with it at the beginning said much about the
mood-dominated giddiness and lack of consistency in
Japanese politics.
In any case, Koizumi negated whatever reformist credentials
he might have had by nominating his son to take his Diet
seat when he retired from politics.
During his period in office Japan's slump from being a
forward-looking, still fairly vibrant society into
something that in part of central Tokyo reminded me of
dirty, depressed London during bad periods of the sixties
and seventies, was palpable.
Opposition
to Koizumi
During the recession induced by Koizumi policies I did get
to see and advise some of the LDP people opposed to him.
As mentioned earlier (Chapter 23) Hiranuma Takeo had me
talk to several LDP policy committees. His views on the
need for expansionist fiscal policies matched mine, and for
the same reasons.
He did not seem to mind that I was not greatly in tune with
his strongly rightwing and nationalistic attitudes.
And he was at least logical with his rightwing views. For
example, he said that if Japan wanted to answer criticisms
over Yasukuni, it should first renounce the San Francisco
peace treaty clause obliging it to accept the Tokyo war
crimes tribunal verdicts.
(Visiting the LDP headquarters in Nagata-cho to give these
talks to the Hiranuma groupings was an experience. Only
about a half the audience would manage to sit still from
beginning to end. The rest would be constantly moving in
and out as they answered various calls.)
......
Kobayashi Koki, who was to lose to a Koike Yuriko sent to
'assassinate' him in the 2005 Lower House election based
almost entirely on Koizumi's phony post office
privatisation issue, once went out of his way to invite me
for a talk.
He struck me as just the kind of solid, sincere politician
(as sincere as any politician can be) that Japan needed.
Kobayashi, like several of the more intelligent LDP
politicians, had opposed the privatisation issue, partly
because of its suspicious origins and partly because it
simply did not make much sense.
Apart from anything else, the post offices operated a range
of financial services far more efficiently, and cheaply,
than Japan's stuffy, bureaucratic banks (one reason was
they employed intelligent high school graduates rather than
the pumped up products of low grade universities found in
the banks).
No wonder the banks wanted to get rid of that competition.
And with post office savings and pensions funds usually
committed to construction projects of national interest, no
wonder quite a few sticky fingers wanted to get rid of that
commitment.
Critics said construction projects were a source of
corruption and waste - true to some extent. But what
happened when the funds were freed up to seek higher
returns abroad and ended up in the Lehman and the US
sub-prime disasters?
For the 'crime' of opposing this dubious deal, with its
devastating implications for rural areas where post
offices, even if small and unprofitable, had served as
crucial community centers, Kobayashi and others were to be
expelled from Koizumi's LDP and subjected to
'assassination' attack in their electorates.
Quite a few other worthwhile politicians were to lose their
seats in the same election, and for the same reasons.
(One of the 'assassins' the Koizumi people tried to install
was the young, media-worshipped stock-market manipulator
and general fraudster, Horie Takafumi.
(Fortunately that stunt was stopped by his arrest, and
later conviction. And this was supposed to be the election
to reform Japan!)
(But that did not stop anyone who opposed this fraud or the
many other Koizumi eccentricities, from being labeled by
both domestic and foreign media as 'old-guard
reactionaries' - teiko seiryoku.)
That Japan's emotional electorate could so easily be won
over by Koizumi's grand-standing appeals on an issue of
such marginal importance or even harm to Japan was an
eye-opener, even for this jaded observer.
That the foreigners went along with was even more of a
surprise and disappointment.
WINDING
DOWN
4. Media
Problems
As readers may now understand, my distress over the way the
economic mistakes of the Hashimoto and Koizumi eras were
allowed to destroy Japan’s fine economy was large.
But how to get something published in a media besotted with
reform slogans?
My article in Voice back in the late nineties had been
virtually my last chance to say in detail what I thought
was needed to rescue the economy.
That article had had a good response. But as they say in
journalism, you are only as good as your last article.
Memories are short.
The Nikkei blacklist ban soon after kept me largely silent
for years as Japan went off on its course of economic
self-destruction.
Today, of course, many accept that Japan's economy suffers
severe lack of domestic demand and that former deflationary
fiscal policies were a mistake (just as almost everyone now
accepts that Japan's wars against China and in the Pacific
were a mistake too, thank you very much).
Even the obstinate Nikkei group are changing their tune.
But too late. The damage has already been done.
Later I was finally able to find a group that shared my
views on the economy and how to save it - the Association
for Japan Economic Reform, a group of rightwing Keynesians
who realised the need for fiscal stimulus, and that
government had the right to create its own funds if needed.
But it was not till the US sub-prime disaster that they
finally began to find voice in Japan, and by then too it
was too late.
---
True, my lecture circuit was continuing on and off. But it
too was clearly in decline, as both the economy weakened
and as Japan became less interested in what the foreigners
thought about them.
(Much of my earlier lecture circuit had come from companies
and other organisations flush with Bubble era funds and
looking for ways to use them.)
I would still be pulled in for the occasional TV talk show.
Enterprise management was a popular topic (the idea was
that Japan should move from its traditional style to
something more American - an idea that I did not greatly
want to endorse).
(Management styles depend on culture, and Japanese culture
clearly did not match the individualistic, every
man-for-himself, get-rich-quick US culture.)
(But the mood in Japan at the time said US management was
the key to seeming US relative prosperity at the time when
Japan was in trouble.
(No doubt that particular tune too is also changing as
conditions change)
---
Official life also continued, for the most part in the form
of visits to Tama university a few times a week to sign
documents, give classes and meet up with other teachers.
The other main diversion was continuing to attend the many
fairly irrelevant committees I had been appointed to years
earlier. (In Japan once they make you a member of a
committee often you stay there virtually for life.)
Few seemed to want to appoint me to any other committees;
maybe they knew about my distress over most of the policies
of the day.
So maybe it was time for me for me to turn to other
interests, away from foreign policy and the economy.
5. A Book
on Education Reform
When I finished at Tama I felt I had to publish something
about Japan's education system, from primary school through
to university.
Here I would be relying directly on my own very varied
experiences, not to mention those of my sons.
After all, very few foreigners could claim to have spent
the best part of thirty years in the system, not to mention
any number of official committees devoted to the topic.
I might not be able to influence thinking about Japan's
messed up economy. But maybe I could do something in the
education area.
Or so I thought, hopefully.
---
My key theme was the need to introduce motivation to the
classroom, and the various ways this could be one.
I had been very much influenced by the energy Japanese
students could show when they doing what they wanted to do
- school festivals, clubs, scientific experiments,
interesting research projects.
Also I had much on how to reform teaching of English.
But I rather foolishly relied on a personal connection to
link up with Toyo Keizai as publisher. (I knew they were
concerned mainly about economic and business issues, but
they did have a progressive reputation and had been good to
me in the past).
Yasuko, as ever, did her uncomplaining best to put the text
into good, readable Japanese.
But Toyo Keizai were simply looking for a short, sharp
quick-seller.
They wanted, they said, something the average salaryman
could skim through without too much effort.
When they insisted a cartoon was needed to introduce each
chapter I realised we were in trouble.
They did little in the way of publicity or courting book
reviews. It was typical Japanese publishing gangsterism -
rely on the name of the author simply to sell enough to
cover costs, with a small profit and a minimum of expense.
A lot of effort, and ideas, went into that book for
virtually no result, which was a pity since those who did
get to read the book were very positive about the ideas.
But I was writing at a time when Japan was already moving
away from wanting to hear the ideas of the foreigners
anyway, particularly if they are critical.
(And looking back maybe I was a bit too negative about
Japan's university system. It does have its occasional
merits - the close teacher-student relationship that can
develop in the zemi, or seminar, system for example - even
if they are hard to find.)
I decided it was time for me to give up on trying to reform
Japan's messed-up systems. I would begin to focus more on
other things.
6. Akita
International University
One hope, I thought, would be my involvement with the new
university in Akita (Kokusai Kyoyo Daigaku) I mentioned
earlier.
It promised a new approach to education. It would also be
developing a strong network of foreign relationships,
including China and Russia.
In particular I had hoped from the start to get involved
with the language teaching efforts there.
Maybe that would be an area where I really could do
something useful, since we were attracting good students,
many keen to master language, and not just English.
A book I had published in Japan many years earlier on the
processes and techniques for language acquisition had had a
good reception.
Here would be a chance to test out some of those
techniques, and maybe get enough material for another book,
or so I thought.
---
But once again frustration was waiting.
Those PhDs in linguistics employed to teach English (partly
at Education Ministry insistence; even the PE teachers have
to have PhDs nowadays it seems), were determined to do
things their own academic way.
Many of these people have yet to learn what every mother
knows - that language is sound and sentence repetition, not
print and grammar textbooks.
And with the invention of the tape recorder and the CD
machine the role of these over-qualified people is even
less.
Teachers of languages other than English also had their own
ideas. They were in any case bound by regulations that said
they had to concentrate on classroom teaching for students
who could better have spent the time listening closely and
meaningfully to tapes and CDs.
(Focussed listening was my word for it, and I was glad they
did at least create such a class for students learning
English, even if it was not run quite along the lines I
would have preferred.)
I had also hoped that for students who planned to enter the
real world later, whether in Japan or elsewhere, there
would be more emphasis on economics and current affairs.
(My idea of the ideal current affairs course is simply to
require students to read newspapers every day and examine
them on the contents at the end of term. No lectures or
classrooms needed.)
And for the many foreigners we had learning Japanese I
would dearly have liked to revive the kind of course that
had worked so well for my Sophia students.
But if I could do little to influence the teaching of
English there was even less I could do to influence the
teaching of Japanese.
The most I could do was to claim some of the credit for
having helped the university to get set up and running.
---
Meanwhile I could also look forward to spending more time
organising my Boso affairs.
There I could enjoy a life of seiko-udoku as they say in
Japanese (and Chinese). Cultivate in good weather; read
books when it rains.
However another and much larger cloud was developing on the
personal horizon - one from which I would not escape as
easily, if at all.
7.
Foreign Policy Problems
As mentioned earlier I had
always found Japan's conservative audiences surprisingly
open to my various criticisms of Japan's foreign policies,
provided I kept away from the delicate topic of China and
war guilt.
(But with the occasional progressive audience, mainly
school-teachers, even the topic of war guilt was not taboo.
(My suggested remedy was to admit bad things happened
prewar and wartime, but blame them on 'bad Japanese'. At
the same time give much praise to the 'good Japanese' - of
which there were some, mainly in the Navy, and hold them up
as role models.
(In so doing Japan would not only preserve some self-esteem
and gain some international understanding; it could also
begin to lay the foundation for a guilt rather than a
purely shame morality, at least among students.
(Three birds with one stone.)
(But that idea was too complicated for most. And it
conflicted with the concept of Japan as one, happy, unified
familial society.
(In a tightly-bound family can anyone admit they live in a
group where one of its members is evil and whose evils
should be exposed to the outside world?)
---
In short, I had tried to keep the criticisms of foreign
policy questions gentle, and in the context of cultural
difference.
I would say that while I could understand why the Japanese
acted as they did, their way of acting was bound to be
misunderstood by us more rationalistic foreigners - right
hand versus left hand, as I mentioned earlier in the
Nihonjin-ron discussion.
War guilt was one issue - and one far more important than
many Japanese realised, unless they had had actual
experience of living in the rest of Asia other than
Thailand.
Another issue was the territorial dispute with Moscow
(about which my JT articles carry much material, some of it
so far unknown in Japan even though much of it was taken
from Japanese sources).
Northern
Territories
Here too I had thought I could say something un-offensive
to Japanese ears.
I could say that Japan should make a principled demand for
a return of all the Kurile islands. That would be much more
effective than Japan's haphazard demand for just the two
disputed territories in the southern Kuriles (which
together with two Hokkaido-related islands and groups
constituted the so-called Northern Territories).
But demanding all the Kuriles would have required Japan to
admit some of the US skull-duggery at the 1951 San
Francisco peace treaty conference, where Tokyo had been
forced to renounce all of the Kuriles, including the
southern Kuriles.
The Foreign Ministry would also have had to admit its
mistake in concentrating only on the southern Kuriles and
claiming Japan had never renounced them (when it was clear
that it had, under duress).
Besides, Japan's past record of negotiations for the
territories simply did not make sense.
At first in 1954 it simply asked Moscow to return the two
Hokkaido-related territories (Shikotan and the Habomais) it
lost to the Soviet Union in 1945. But as soon as Moscow
said yes, in 1955, it immediately escalated its demand to
include the return of the two southern Kurile islands of
Etorufu and Kunashiri.
Clearly that was not going to impress Moscow, who said no.
Then soon after accepting in 1956 that its claim to Etorufu
and Kunashiri was weak and reverting to the Hokkaido pair
claim, it then revived the claim to all four when the US
said it would not need to return Okinawa if Japan backed
down from the all four island demand.
Clearly it served the US interest to force Japan to make
the four island demands it knew Moscow could not accept,
and in this way keep Japan firmly on the US side in the
Cold War. But no one in Japan seemed to realise this.
In short, Japan would end up losing all its territory,
semi-permanently, simply to serve the US interest while
sacrificing its own interest from better relations with
Moscow. Brilliant!.
Meanwhile Japan did not seem even to want to know the
original cause of the problem, since elaborated by
researcher, Hara Kimie, but mentioned by others decades
earlier - namely the secret pre-San Francisco deal between
Washington and Moscow whereby in the UN Security Council
the Soviets would accept US military use
of
the Northern Marianas - mainly
Saipan and Tinian, from which the atomic strikes on Japan
had originated - in exchange for the US later forcing
Japan to renounce all the Kuriles.
That an issue with such a murky background could be
presented as a clearcut case of Japanese virtue versus
Moscow evil staggered me.
Yet the issue was being raised constantly by Tokyo, and in
the media, on the bland, unargued assumption that
Japan’s case was 100 percent correct simply because
in the past Japan had owned the two southern Kurile islands
(koyu no ryodo - traditional territory - was the mantra)
whose ownership it had formally renounced in 1951.
In the face of such illogicality Moscow had no choice but
to continue to say nyet. To have agreed without good reason
would have done serious precedent damage inter alia to its
position in a number of other postwar territorial
settlements.
---
For a while I was marginally involved in efforts to find a
compromise agreement - the return of the Hokkaido pair plus
alpha (joint development of the other two etc.)
But that too was swiftly axed. All four territories or
nothing, was Tokyo's unyielding position. Somehow it had
convinced itself that by continuing to refuse to have a
serious economic and politicial relationship with Moscow it
would force the Russians to say yes.
It was a classic example of Japan’s dangerously
illogical, non-principled approach in handling foreign
policy problems.
---
Surprisingly, many in my audiences seemed to accept what I
had to say (though often audiences will often seem to want
to go along with you simply because they do not understand
you or do not want to offend you.)
As well, and as mentioned earlier, was the fact that the
anti-US rightwing (surprisingly vocal at times, Ishihara
Shintaro especially) were happy to have me blame the US for
the problem.
Trade
Frictions
On trade questions, I would say Japan should be more
assertive in blaming mistaken US policies for the
imbalances.
But it should also do something about the weak domestic
demand that was harming its economy and forcing expanded
exports.
That too got a reasonable response, as did articles along
the same line.
(One article entitled 'the enigma of Japan's trade
surpluses' seemed to have helped provide the title for a
much publicised book blaming everything on evil power and
policy rather than economics, a subject of which the author
seemed rather ignorant.
(But as ever with Japan in those days, conspiracy theories
played better in Peoria, and Europe, than boring economics)
.
And so on.
8. The
Rightwing Strikes
With time, however, I began to feel the audiences were not
reacting quite as sympathetically as before.
Maybe it was partly my fault; my irritations over Japan's
foolish economic, foreign policy and education policies
were beginning to permeate my lecture style.
Suffice it to say that one day I got a fairly blunt request
from my Jiji sponsors to keep away from the Northern
Territories question.
There was also a sharp reduction in their lecture requests.
----
The Jiji warning I could have lived with. They were a
fairly rightwing news-agency outfit, and their lecture
circuit was less than greatly rewarding or exciting.
(Kyodo, their more interesting, progressive but less
prolific rival, had dropped me years earlier when they knew
I was with Jiji.)
But it was not till I ventured into the Korean abductee
issue that the shutters really began to come down.
North
Korean Abductee Issue
I had badly under-estimated the degree to which national
sentiment - humanitarian concern for lost citizens to some
extent, but mainly a nationalistic dislike of North Korea -
had been stirred up by this issue, with Tokyo doing all it
could to inflame the dislike.
I had thought that since Koizumi (or rather his handlers)
had done so well with the initial 2002 request to North
Korea to release some abductees, one could safely criticise
the nationalists who came later, Abe Shinzo especially, and
who in effect were undermining the Koizumi success by
angrily demanding release of more people, including some
whose very existence in North Korea was doubtful.
In the process they had happily broken all the promises
Koizumi had made to North Korea over the initial batch of
returnees, while insisting that the bad faith was coming
from North Korea.
I tried to point out how keeping faith with the Koizumi
2002 promises and opening relations with Pyongyang would
have made it that much easier to get more abductees
released - if indeed they existed and were both able and
willing to go to Japan.
I had also pointed how two leading Western scientific
magazines - Nature and Science - had claimed it was very
likely Tokyo's DNA data had been faked to prove the
continued existence of at least one claimed abductee - a
Yokota Meguni - who almost certainly had died many years
ago.
But even as I spoke I could feel the audiences freeze. They
did not want to hear such details.
Before long the rightwing, whose existence and power I had
always felt but from which I had felt immune because of the
way Japan Inc. had liked my theories about Japanese culture
and success, began to move.
The First
Attack
The first move came with a vicious attack on something I
had written for a conservative business magazine,
Zaikai-jin (business circle people).
In the context of the abductee question I had pointed out
that Japan had also abducted Chinese and Koreans to work in
Japan in the war years, and their work had been a lot more
strenuous than acting as language teachers.
The deathrate among forced Chinese laborers working in
Japanese mines and factories had been as high as 50 percent
in places, and that was just in two years.
(Japan used to complain bitterly about the ten percent
death rate for its prisoners made to work in Siberia for
years, and they were soldiers whose job was to kill other
people, not innocent farmers press-ganged from the fields
and families.)
(But then the Japanese never saw the Chinese as humans
deserving treatment equal to themselves or Westerners. Some
rightwingers such as Sakurai and the Sankei stable still
seem to think along those lines.)
A powerful rightwinger deep into construction industry
corruption wrote to the magazine demanding a retraction and
apology.
He said the Koreans had simply been conscripted for labor
in Japan (yes, but not for the brutal labor imposed on them
and without right of return) and that the Chinese had come
willingly seeking higher wages.
(In fact the press-ganged Chinese had been put into camps
in China and then onto boats to Japan where the death rate
was almost as high as in the places where later they had to
work.)
My column with the magazine was cancelled. They clearly did
not want to give offense to their rightwing sponsors.
But I could live with that. I should not have been with
them to begin with (my initial contact came from them
wanting me to get Rupert Murdoch to accept their award for
top international businessman of the year).
What I had not expected was the flood of hate mail sent to
my university and Akita prefecture, asking why this
anti-Japan type was being allowed to pollute the minds of
young Japanese.
---
Overnight all lecture and interview requests began to
cease.
My university was good enough not to bow to the pressure,
but it was clear that for them too I was damaged goods.
Around the same time an approach to have me offered a
palace award for services to education and to understanding
Japan was also vetoed.
(Talking of awards, I did however get a cultural award
years earlier from Tokyo Metropolis.)
9. More
Right-wing Attacks - Sankei and Komori
The ugliest cut of all came in year 2008, at the hands of
the rightist Sankei Shimbun and its favorite hatchet man,
Komori Yoshihisa.
Fresh from destroying the reputation of an eminent scholar,
Tamamoto Masaru, who had dared to suggest there were
problems with Japan's Yasukuni Shrine 'cult,' Komori picked
up some purely personal comments I had made in an Internet
discussion forum.
The comments were based on the way Tokyo had almost
certainly faked the DNA evidence over Yokota Megumi's
remains, in its bid to prove that the woman still existed
and that North Korea was addicted to lying on all and every
abductee question.
My remarks were lifted from the discussion forum and
distorted by both Komori and his paper, to make it look as
if I, as the vice-president of Akita International
University, had come out publicly to denounce the entire
abductee issue as faked (dechiage).
The paper refused a retraction, in the charming way that
rightwing publications like to behave generally, but
especially in Japan.
Being rightwing is never having to say sorry, it seems, at
least until someone runs a court action against you.
Deep in their hearts they know that they, the rightwing,
are pure (even when they are wrong), and we
non-rightwingers are wrong (even when we are right).
------
Komori's blog completed the damage.
Hundreds of blog posts backed up his demand to know how and
why this heretic and diehard leftist, Clark, was allowed
into Japan in the first place, and then employed by a
publicly funded university.
Once again, my university supported me. But this time the
damage had really been done.
The final proof that I was in trouble came when an offer to
join the board of one of Japan's top and best-known
companies as an outside director for two years was suddenly
withdrawn.
The company was quite happy to admit they were under
right-wing and other pressure to do this.
They offered me instead a well-paid titular position
elsewhere in their domain (they at least had some kind of
conscience).
Fortunately, however, other areas of interest were to open
up - some of them more than enough to make up for
disillusion and the loss of interest in Japan.
10.
Reviving Old Interests - China and Russia
Reviving my Chinese and Russian connection was one option.
My Akita university was quite happy to have me visit China
to sign up universities there for exchange agreements.
That helped greatly to revive my interest in China and the
language.
I also got to deal with the Chinese exchange students, and
found them very worthwhile.
Similarly with Taiwan and its students.
Chinese study harder and have wider interests that their
Japanese equivalents.
I was also delighted to find that much of my Chinese was
intact - that language, once it enters the subconscious,
can survive in almost pristine condition provided one has
occasional chances to use it in later years, in my case
more than forty years later.
Languages learned properly are like songs. Does anyone
forget the songs they learned as children?
Russia
I had never been very close to the former Soviet embassy
people in Tokyo, which did not worry me too much since they
probably had my KGB dossier.
But I would have liked to revive my Russian, and my liking
for Russian people.
With the Soviet breakup I got a commission from my old
Tokyo journalist rival, Max Suich, to visit Yeltsin's
Moscow for a week or so to write something for his new
magazine.
The Australian Embassy in Moscow, under an old friend,
Cavan Hogue, helped me greatly with introductions.
I was appalled by the chaos and hopelessness in the streets
outside. But I did manage to do some worthwhile interviews
and dig up some very interesting opinions.
The educated Russian can be devastatingly frank at times.
If I say so myself, the article I produced was quality
(this website has a copy) considering I had less than a
week for the legwork.
----
More recently, and via an old contact - Togo Takehiro,
third secretary in the Japanese Embassy in Moscow when I
was there in the sixties, and later ambassador there - I
have been invited regularly to conferences, mainly in
Greece, organised by a richly-financed Russian outfit
trying to rival the World Economic Forum, but using World
Civilisation rather than economy as the catchword.
There I met up with the former Russian ambassador in Tokyo,
Alexander Panov, now head of the Moscow Diplomatic Academy.
He had been very close to the affair I mentioned earlier -
the activities of the small group of Japanese bureaucrats
and politicians trying to work for the two islands plus
alpha solution to the Northern Territories dispute, but who
later under Koizumi had been rounded up, transferred to
other duties, dismissed, or even put in jail on rather
flimsy misspending charges.
Their leader, Togo Kazuhiko, had gone into semi-exile
abroad.
Because they wanted some softening of Tokyo's rigid
southern Kuriles demand, they had become traitors to the
nation, we were told.
Panov, it was clear, had given up on the issue. But he did
invite me to give a talk to his Academy and stay for a week
or so in Moscow.
This in turn gave me an excuse to brush up my Russian.
There too the subconscious worked its magic, with words and
expressions I had not used for decades being rediscovered.
I spent as much time as I could traveling around Moscow.
The vitality and progress of the new Russia was impressive,
even if it had corrupt underpinnings. So too was the anger
over the way the West had distorted the recently-ended
Ossetia affair.
11. A New
Interest - Latin America
During the boom years of the eighties and early nineties
Japan had taken a more relaxed attitude to foreign workers
entering on tourist visas and then over-staying to work in
farms and factories.
We saw many of these people in Boso, where the fish
factories and electrical assembly plants were constantly
short of staff willing to work the long hours in poor
conditions.
Among them were a number of Peruvians, many well educated
and middle-class. They had come to escape the poverty and
disorder sweeping their country at the time.
I got to know some of them. Even in distant Japan they had
preserved their Latino zest for life and love of music.
They would come to my Nakadaki outfit for parties and
dances.
For this stiff-backed gringo it was a glimpse of a very
different way of life and living.
---
When Tokyo at the turn of the century began to clamp down
on visa overstayers I found myself on the Justice Ministry
committee discussing visa policy.
While we not able to stop Japan's sudden move to expelling
all visa overstayers, we were able to do something about
moderating the previously harsh punishments imposed on
them.
As a result I was able to tell some of my Boso Peruvian
friends that if they could lie low for another year or so
the law would be changed to allow them to return home
without fines or imprisonment, and apply for visas to come
back to Japan a year later, provided they admitted to the
authorities that they had over-stayed.
In gratitude, the two sisters of one family I had helped
were to invite me to visit Peru after their return.
I was to get to know Peru well, visiting several times.
Later I was to visit some other Latin American countries,
Mexico especially.
And so began the glimmerings of a new interest, and with it
the study of an exciting new language, using and testing
the techniques I had learned from other languages.
At this moment of writing I am not sure where it will all
take me eventually - maybe not just the cultural
differences but also the seasonal differences between
northern hemisphere Japan and southern hemisphere Latin
America, Peru especially, will lure me into a nomadic
lifestyle.
I wish I could do the same with Australia, the country I
still call my home. But too many bad memories linger.
But wherever it is, it will be a change from the ugliness
of Japan's increasingly powerful rightwing, and the
difficulty in dealing with Japan's lack of logic in
handling issues of vital importance to its future.
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