BETWEEN
FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA;
BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS: DIPLOMAT, ECONOMIST, JOURNALIST AND
JAPANOLOGIST;
BETWEEN
FOUR LANGUAGES: ENGLISH, CHINESE, RUSSIAN AND JAPANESE
Chapter
8
MORE
JOURNALISM IN JAPAN – Tanaka-kakuei and daughter, the
Francis James scoop, the Whitlam connection
Returning from
China, I still had to keep on top of the Japan story.
The
Tanaka Kakuei Experience
1972 saw the drama of Tanaka Kakuei winning the LDP
presidency away from Fukuda Takeo, the conservative
old guard candidate. Fukuda was supported by the devious
Sato Eisaku
Tanaka’s main platform was building a network of new
highways and bullet train lines to formerly neglected
regions in northeast Japan and facing the Japan Sea. Later
he would be accused of wasting public funds on extravagant
projects. Yet no one suggests Japan would have been
better off without the projects — the highways and
bullet train lines to the north of Honshu especially.
At the time, Tanaka’s defeat of the LDP conservatives
and his ideas for improving transport links captured many
Japanese imaginations. The progressive Asahi Shimbun
was so excited that it even ran an editorial saying
‘Ganbaru (go to it) Kaku-chan” (Kaku-chan
is the cute diminutive of Kakuei).
(Today Asahi would probably prefer not to be reminded of
all this. Just two years later the mood was to turn
totally anti-Tanaka, thanks in part to an event in which I
had the dishonor to participate.)
(Soon after that the Lockheed affair guaranteed that
Tanaka’s name would become synonymous with
political corruption in Japan. )
Tanaka moved quickly to recognise Beijing as the sole
legitimate government of China. Today that
seems a very reasonable thing to have done. Even at
the time, in the wake of the pingpong diplomacy and
Beijing’s accession to the UN, it was hardly
revolutionary.
Even so, it was opposed by many in the LDP, the LDP’s
conservative and powerful Taiwan lobby especially.
Western commentators then, and even now to some extent,
have a romantic view that sees Japan and China as East
Asian cultural lookalikes, destined to come together
eventually, but kept apart only by US pressure.
The reality is very different., Wide cultural difference,
the virulent anti-communism of Japan’s conservatives
and right-wingers, fear of China’s size and
potential, resentment at China’s refusal to forgive
wartime atrocities, even a lingering belief that those
atrocities were forced on Japan by China’s
unreasonable behavior (the rightwing argument that Japan
never intended to attack China proper, that it planned to
go into the Soviet Union from Manchuria but was sucked in
by anti-Japanese Chinese behavior during and immediately
after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 deserves more
attention than it gets) ….. all combine to
create a rigid anti-China dislike, and even hatred,
that will probably never be cured.
Right through to the very end, in 1971, the Sato
administration was secretly lobbying, mainly among
the Latin Americans, in a vain effort to get the
votes to prevent Beijing from joining the UN.
Tanaka himself was no progressive. But on China he was a
realist and was prepared to follow the advice of his
progressive and humanistic foreign minister, Ohira
Masayoshi.
I was to get to know Ohira quite well. When he became
prime minister in 1978 he appointed me to a committee
to discuss his favorite project — the idea of
creating ‘garden cities’ all over Japan.
Anyone familiar with the unkempt, higgledy-piggledy,
unplanned nature of most Japanese cities would welcome any
idea for improvement.
I could not claim any expertise in ‘garden
cities’ or any other form of town planning (though
years later I was to try to set up my own ‘garden
village’ in the hills of the Boso Peninsula).
But on the principle that one never says no to any offer to
see Japan Inc. from the inside, I said yes.
And I did get one insight. Sitting next to me on the
committee was someone who knew even less about garden
cities than I did. He was the Kyoto University expert
on monkey colonies.
Presumably someone in Ohira’s brain trust felt monkey
colonies had something to tell us about garden cities.
The Japanese seem to believe that they can learn a lot from
monkey behavior. The strict rules of gender and seniority
are often noted. The lives and deaths of boss monkeys in
the larger zoos used to be regular news items.
But while I could do little to help Ohira and his
‘garden city’ idea, I can claim some of the
credit for Ohira’s agreement to introduce the very
successful working holiday scheme with Australia, allowing
young Australians to come freely to Japan to work - a
scheme later extended to some other nations.
I had sold the idea to then Australian ambassador to Japan,
John Menadue. He quickly realised how much this could do
for the relationship at the grassroots level. He then sold
it to Ohira.
Ohira’s untimely death due to the pressure of a
meaningless election forced on him by the unrepentant
Fukuda and the LDP conservatives was a great loss for
Japan.
Tanaka's
Asian Tour
I was also to get to know and see something of Tanaka.
In January 1974 he set off on a brave five nation tour of
South East Asia.
Four foreign correspondents were to be allowed to go with
him on this voyage into the unknown. I was one of
them.
The tour was a bid to repair some of the damage caused by
Japan’s former postwar prime ministers who had
refused to go into the area, fearing anti-Japan sentiments.
And resentments there were. Japanese visitors to the
area were notorious for their bad behavior. They still
seemed to want to look down on their fellow Asians as
backward and primitive.
Japanese trade and investment in the area was seen as
exploitative.
Worse, Japan had made little effort to apologise for
its former aggressions and atrocities. Indeed, it did not
even seem to want to admit atrocities had occurred.
Among the materials handed out to us in advance of
Tanaka’s tour was a Foreign Ministry advisory for
Japanese visitors to Singapore. It told them to avoid any
discussion with the natives about Japan’s wartime
behavior.
Such discussion would simply cause trouble and
misunderstanding, it was claimed.
One of those atrocities had been the deliberate selection
of progressive, Chinese-origin Singapore students and
English-speakers for execution, on the grounds that such
people by definition would be anti-Japan.
According to some reports, several tens of thousands from
the educated elite — the best part of an entire
generation— were shot and hacked to death at a
secluded beach on the north side of the island.
Another generation was needed before Singapore could
recover.
(One rumor has it that Lee Kwan Yew, then also an obvious
target for execution, was only spared because he was
willing to cooperate with the Japanese military in helping
to choose others for execution. Whatever.)
( But little wonder that even as late as 1974 there were
still a lot of South East Asians, those of Chinese origins
especially, who did not like Japan. It also helps explain
Lee’s deep and generally correct suspicions of the
Japanese psyche, through to the present day. )
On the plane, travelling with us, was a very demure
young lady who spoke good English. We discovered
later that she was Tanaka’s daughter, Makiko.
Makiko was to fill in for Tanaka’s wife, a very
plain, elderly lady of rural origins who would not have
been very suitable as Tanaka’s opposite number at
official banquets, of which there promised to be many.
On the plane trip, Makiko declined most of our less than
fully professional requests for interviews. But many
years later I was to be involved with her in a very
different capacity.
She had been made Foreign Affairs minister in the Koizumi
cabinet. Fearing isolation in her highly conservative
ministry, she had formed a private advisory committee
on which I was asked to be a member, even though I had not
seen her or talked to her since that 1974 Asian tour.
As a result I had the rare privilege of being escorted
monthly to the main conference room in a building where
previously I had been very much persona non grata, to
discuss the policies of a Ministry which saw me as enemy
number one, mainly because of the damage I had done
to its efforts to propagate Japan’s bogus claims for
the so-called Northern Territories.
Tanaka, the father, had a deserved reputation for
intelligence, bluntness and action — the computerised
bulldozer, as he was called. (Makiko later in life came to
share some of that quality.)
His willingness to tread where others had feared to go in
Southeast Asia was typical, despite the anti-Japan
demonstrations that had been promised.
At first, in Manila, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, the
demonstrations were subdued. But when we reached
Thailand, the one nation that had not suffered Japanese
aggression, the students became violent.
They claimed they were against Japan’s alleged
economic exploitation. And to some extent they were right.
In Thailand especially, Japanese heavy brand-name
advertising had made life almost impossible for local
entrepreneurs trying to set up new businesses.
But the students were also looking for a stick to
attack their own oppressive, and later very
brutal, regime.
Ignoring the panicky advice of his Foreign Ministry aides
(those nice people responsible for the cowardly Singapore
advisory which had urged refusal to discuss war atrocities
in Singapore), Tanaka said he would meet and talk to the
student leaders. This he did, for over an hour, at
our hotel.
Overnight the demonstrations were defused.
In Jakarta it was not so easy. The mobs were out for
blood, even though they too were protesting more against
their own government than against Japan.
All Japanese cars in sight that night, Toyotas especially,
were torched. Why Toyota? Because the company
had put a large neon sign spelling out TOYOTA on the top
of Jakarta’s largest hotel, making it visible
in the nearby slums.
Many of the slum dwellers may have been illiterate. But
they did know how to spell TOYOTA.
Soon after Toyota wisely removed the sign.
Throughout the chaos Tanaka refused to be panicked. He went
ahead with his schedule. He scored some achievements.
But when he got back to Japan he ran headfirst into
the phenomenalist Japanese logic that says that you judge
things on the basis of the phenomenon you see before
you, without any consideration of causes or effects.
As far as the Japan’s excitable media were concerned,
the riots, protests and demonstations were all
Tanaka’s fault. Why? Because he had gone
to Southeast Asia and the mobs had rioted. Therefore he had
to be to blame. He had brought shame and disgrace to the
nation.
No one even thought of blaming the cowardly former Prime
Ministers who had refused to venture into the Southeast
Asia which their soldiers had raped and pillaged only a few
years earlier.
The fact that the mobs had rioted for reasons that had
little to do with Tanaka, and that Tanaka had defused some
of those reasons, was ignored.
The same shallow thinking cripples efforts in this
otherwise intelligent nation to tackle corruption. Few
thank the whistle-blower or courageous reformer who exposes
the evil or wrong-doing in an organisation.
As far as Japan is concerned that organisation was
operating quite peacefully until the exposer or reformer
came along. Like Tanaka in Southeast
Asia, that person is to blame — not the people
who for years previously had done nothing to prevent the
growth of evil or corruption in the organisation.
Ironically, Tanaka’s daughter, Makiko, was to run
into exactly the same phenomenon almost 40 years later.
One of her first moves on being made Foreign Minister was
to expose the long-standing corruption in the
Ministry’s administration. The ensuing uproar left
her vulnerable to every kind of media and political
attack.
She was forced to resign, in semi-disgrace, little more
than a year later.
Meanwhile the truly guilty men — the collection of
bland, humdrum politicians who had headed the Ministry in
previous years and who had lacked the courage to do
anything about the corruption going on right under their
noses — continued to be regarded as people most
worthy of representing Japan in foreign affairs.
The
Anti-Tanaka Mood Increases
True, in Makiko’s father’s case the media were
also indulging in another of their foibles — mood
creation. By alleging failure of the South East Asia tour
they could add fuel to the already developing anti-Tanaka
mood in Japan.
That mood had already got underway with the large oil shock
price increases of late 1973. Even before that the
economy was already somewhat over-extended, partly because
of Tanaka’s commitment to heavy spending on public
works.
The oil price rises had triggered a vicious inflation.
Housewives panicked. Photos of them clamoring to buy toilet
paper — a commodity rumored to about to go out of
stock — filled the media.
Tanaka was blamed, again, as if he could have done
something to stop the oil sheiks from raising prices, or as
if Japan really need not need those new roads and railways.
As well, some in the public and the media were getting
tired of his gruff, gravelly voice and his sometimes
unduly blunt approach to problems.
And the still-powerful LDP conservatives were still fuming
over the way he had beaten Fukuda for the leadership, and
had been willing to sideline Taiwan to recognise Beijing.
In short, the tom-toms were beating. The mood for
change was in the air. It would not be long before someone,
somewhere, would want to move against him
openly.
That someone was the maverick and highly disaffected
LDP politician, Ishihara Shintaro. The
somewhere was a May 1974 article in the widely read,
conservative magazine, Bungei Shunju.
In it, he launched a vicious attack on Tanaka’s
kinken seiji — money politics. Vivid images of Tanaka
henchmen scurrying around with shopping-bags full of money
to buy the votes needed to defeat Fukuda were drawn.
Heavy corruption in public works contracts were said to be
the main source of that shopping-bag money.
Much of what Ishihara said was true. But the same was
also true for a lot of other conservative politicians.
The Kishi-Sato-Fukuda LDP old guard, for example, were
worse. They got much of their money from
foreigners — the CIA, the banana trade with Taiwan,
kickbacks out of South Korea. Japan’s national
interests could easily have been sacrificed as a result.
Tanaka at least relied mainly on domestic sources for his
funds. If any interests were sacrificed they were
domestic.
The Ishihara article was widely noted. The stock market
fell heavily for a day or so. Some of the national
newspapers speculated over how Tanaka would react.
But there are natural limits to scandal damage in Japan,
and not just because people have become inured to political
corruption.
Everyone knew that Bungei Shunju had its own conservative
and rightwing agenda, especially over China. It would have
been very happy to print the Ishihara article.
And there was also the question of nawabari
—territorial turf. If a particular newspaper or TV
station digs up a scandal, it remains their property, for
them to follow up and exploit.
The rest of the media are happy to ignore it. It is not
within their ‘territory.’
Often, it is only when a foreign medium decides to pick the
story up and run with it that the Japanese media
collectively decide to be involved. Overnight an
otherwise less than momentous scandal can become the center
of national attention.
A good example of this strange phenomenon was provided by
the unfortunate Uno Sosuke, prime minister of Japan for
only two months, from July 1989 to August 1989. Uno’s
scandal was minor — having as a girlfriend a rather
pleasant lady in her early forties who was running a small
bar and eating place in Kagurazaka near central Tokyo.
(I happened to have visited the place a few times.
And it is true that the rather mature madam did have a kind
of subdued sexiness.)
Uno’s crime was to treat her too casually, and to
forget to pay her what she thought was her worth.
Mainichi’s weekly magazine published the lady’s
story at length, dwelling in particular on Mr Uno’s
alleged stinginess.
The story made little impact; it is taken for granted that
most LDP politicians will have girlfriends. But when the
Washington Post correspondent in Tokyo picked up the
Mainichi story and ran with it, the unfortunate Uno came
under the klieg lights.
Interviewers descended on the lady in question. Uno was
forced to resign soon after.
Another victim of Japan’s sensitivity to the Western
media had been Sato Eisaku.
In 1968 Bungei Shunju had run an in-depth article about him
in which he had said what many other conservative and
chauvinistic Japanese males would say, namely that
occasionally he felt he had reason to slap his wife.
The statement was totally ignored in Japan. But a
bright UPI reporter, Ted Shimizu, picked it
up. Overnight Sato became known around the world, and
then in Japan, as a wife-beater.
It took him years to live the reputation down.
Tanaka too was soon to become a victim of this strange
sensitivity to what we foreigners have to say about their
leaders. But not because of the Ishihara article.
That article was in Japanese, and published in a magazine
which few foreigners have the time, inclination or ability
to read. So its existence remained unknown in the West.
(Actually it was not entirely unknown. I had run an
article in my newspaper, and the Far Eastern Economic
Review, about it. I realised even then that this
could be the harbinger of something bigger. And I was soon
to be proved right.)
Tanaka
and the Foreign Correspondents
The waves caused by the Ishihara article in Japan
quickly died. The stockmarket soon recovered. Japan
went about its business, unfazed.
But not Bungei Shunju. It was determined to see
Tanaka unseated. After a spell of several
months it seems to have decided to make another anti-Tanaka
jab.
This time the blow was to be delivered by a rather obscure
freelancer, Tachibana Takashi. He wrote a long article
outlining alleged wrongdoings by Tanaka in a public works
land deal in his (Tanaka’s) native Niigata
prefecture.
Once again Japan took due note. Tanaka was hit with one or
two questions about the article at his regular press
conference for that week. But he was able to deflect
them.
In short, the Tachibana story too seemed set to follow the
path of the Ishihara story. And would have, but for
one very accidental event.
The Newsweek correspondent in Tokyo at the time was one
Bernard Krisher (more about him later). Krisher did
not read Japanese, but he had an able assistant who brought
the Tachibana article to his notice.
The result was a small item in the Newsweek of early
October 1974, noting that Tanaka had been accused of land
deal corruption.
Even that item would have done little to stir the Japanese
media, but for another accidental event — a scheduled
luncheon for Tanaka at the Foreign Correspondents Club of
Japan (FCCJ) on October 22, 1974, just two weeks after the
Newsweek article.
It had been a Club tradition to invite the current prime
minister at least once during his term for a
luncheon, followed by a brief speech and some polite
questioning. It was done mainly as a mark of respect for
the current Japanese leadership, and not for newsgathering
But with Tanaka there was to be little respect.
An army of Japanese newspeople and cameras had been allowed
to take their places at the end of the dining room. Even
the foreign newspeople were beginning to realise that
something was underway, that the mood in Japan was turning
against Tanaka.
An Hungarian acting-chairman with a typically cynical
European-communist view of Japan did the rest.
In a biting introduction for Tanaka, he went out of his way
to mention the Newsweek article. That was all that was
needed to unleash a wave of antagonistic questions at
what was supposed to have been a polite after-lunch
discussion.
Tanaka behaved quite well under the strain. He said his
private affairs, such as the Niigata land deal, were
separate from public affairs, and appealed for
policy-related questions, of which there were none.
In Japanese it is called the kikkake. It is the
defining moment when a situation can and is allowed to
change.
Before that FCCJ lunch, the situation around Tanaka had not
evolved to the stage where there could be an open move
against him. But thanks to that lunch, the
questions, the TV cameras whirring in the background, and
most of all the fact that gaijin were involved, the kikkake
had been provided.
I knew already what the main TV news item would be
that night, and the main topic in the newspapers the
next morning. I bet a colleague (Ted Shimizu of UPI
whose expose of Sato should have told him how easy it was
for the foreign media to create scandals) a case of wine
that by the end of the year Tanaka would not be prime
minister.
I won that bet, with more than one month to spare.
But few of the foreign journalists present that day had any
idea of the background to what they were doing. Later I
found that not one of them had read either of the two
Bungei Shunju articles.
Few of them could even read Japanese. All that they had to
go on was the Newsweek piece by Krisher.
Even fewer, it seemed, had any idea of how their behavior
was crucial to creating the kikkake for a mass media move
against Tanaka.
(One of my memories of that fateful day is Sam Jamieson,
then of the Los Angeles Times and reasonably fluent in
Japanese rushing from the room saying he had to get hold of
the Tachibana article and read it.)
Then when Tanaka resigned in November 1974, the Club
hierarchy indulged in a welter of
self-congratulation. They told themselves, and the
rest of the world, how they, the foreign journalists,
had done what the Japanese media were afraid to do
They, and they alone, had had the courage to confront
a corrupt prime minister in his den, and force him to
be replaced.
Needless to say, not one of them knew that Japanese
journalists had in fact been questioning Tanaka about the
articles much earlier.
In the midst of this bragging, a small group of Club
members (headed by a Frenchman who also knew little about
Japan but who was imbued with Gallic courtesy) got together
to apologise to Tanaka for the luncheon impoliteness.
I was one of the group.
We were soon branded as traitors to our profession and the
Club, unwilling to join our elite colleagues in educating
Japan about the splendid values independent enquiry etc etc
that the Western media were bringing to Japan.
At no stage was there any hint of self-reflection about the
almost complete lack of the language ability needed to
monitor the publications of the nation these elite
journalists were supposed to be reporting. As for realising
the cultural quirks that would allow their crude behavior
to have the effect that it had, forget it.
Today Tanaka has come to be seen as one of Japan’s
better and more dynamic prime ministers. Yet the ignorant
correspondents responsible for his downfall still boast
about their role in having him deposed.
I have written about the Tanaka-FCCJ affair in some detail
both in my Japanese Tribe book and elsewhere. For me it was
a defining moment in getting to know Western media
attitudes to Japan — a clear proof of the arrogance
and ignorance which continues to plague Western reporting
on Japan.
Another proof was the refusal of subsequent Japanese prime
ministers to go near the Club that had behaved to crudely
towards Tanaka.
Incidentally, a good indication of the continued foreign
ignorance of Japan is the number of Japan-watchers who
write books and articles saying Tanaka lost his job because
of the Lockheed corruption affair. (That affair only broke
several months after Tanaka’s FCCJ-forced
resignation.)
They include some who should know better, such as Don
Oberdorfer formerly of the Washington Post, writing in
the house journal of the Kokusai Bunka Kaikan.
I once shared an NHK round-table discussion with
Oberdorfer where he was saying that the Japanese media
would never have the courage to do what his own paper was
doing in exposing Watergate scandal.
At the time Ishihara’s Bungei Shunbun article had
just appeared. Needless to say he had no idea of its
existence. And Oberdorfer was seen as one of the
better reporters on Japan.
Incidentally, there are suspicions that the
US-sourced information that triggered the Lockheed affair
came to the surface well after Tanaka had resigned owed
something to CIA hawks cooperating with LDP hawks.
Touble in
the Economy and in the Politics
Meanwhile my daily grind of political and economic
reporting continued. Japan was starting to be a big story
in the West, and not just because of Tanaka. Every
foible and failing of this exotic society was
news.
And in addition to The Australian, I was also filing for
The Far East Economic Review, mainly as a result of my
earlier dealings with the editor, Derek Davies.
The ‘Nixon shock’ forcing the Japanese yen to
go from 360 to the US dollar up to 240 yen sent Japan Inc
into a predictable panic. I recall doing an interview
for the London Financial Times in which I said Japan would
survive the upvaluation, that the yen had long been
chronically under-valued, and it would still be competitive
even if the yen went to 200.
Some years later it was to go to 80 to the US dollar.
Then as Japan’s trade surpluses with the US continued
to mount, we moved to almost daily reporting of trade
disputes, first textiles and then more important things
like cars and TVs.
Meanwhile the political scene in Japan began to shift
violently, with the clean and somewhat progressive
Miki Takeo being chosen to replace Tanaka, and then being
overthrown in an LDP palace coup by the waiting and
vengeful Fukuda Takeo.
As a background to all this we had the Red Army scares
— guerrilla camps in the hills outside Tokyo, plane
hijackings, occasional bombings. Japan’s
horrified reaction to each event — the Yodo-go JAL
plane hijacking to North Korea especially —
gave me my first understanding of Japan’s collective
psyche.
The entire nation would remain glued to the TV screens for
days on end, following every detail as if it was happening
to each and everyone of them personally.
Needless to say, there was never any hint of wanting to
know why these young people were prepared to endure such
hardships in their battle against what they saw as the evil
in the society around them.
That would be carrying the burden of trying to link cause
and effect much too far for the minds of our
phenomenalistic Japanese friends to grasp
True, today most Western minds today seem unable to grasp
the link between Islamic militancy today and Western
behavior in the Middle East over the past century or so.
But there the cause and effect link is not quite as
obvious.
Personal highlights of those four and a half years as a
correspondent in Japan were many. But among them two major
scoops loom large — the Francis James story,
and the pingpong trip to China.
The full and accurate James story I was only able
finally to recount in detail after his death (see website,
The Real Francis James Story). He had warned me, in
writing, how litigious he could be if I ever came out
with the story while he was alive.
Even so, it was as great scoop for me in the
professional sense. Not one of the many journalists waiting
in Hongkong to get the story realised that all they had to
do to get the story was go to the large hospital on The
Peak top which he had been transported by the British
authorities, and ask at the front desk for the number
of the room holding Francis James.
Meanwhile the unfortunate correspondent for The Age,
Michael Richardson, thinking his paper had already sewn up
exclusive rights to the story, was waiting in his hotel
room confident the UK authorities would prevent anyone else
from getting the story.
(Richardson had a career as a Singapore-based journalist
where he would pepper his usually hawkish articles with
constant references to insider information said to have
been gained from the local ‘authorities.’ )
The Australian was, naturally enough, very pleased with the
scoop. They ran it over much of the front page
and on to the second page.
But as I relate in the Real Story, they then stupidly
fouled everything up by telling the world I would, in
effect, produce out of thin air the full story that James
was selling exclusively to The Age.
They then compounded that damage by their refusal to fight
the injunction imposed by Perkin of The Age.
The decision not to fight was made by then manager John
Menadue, It was typical of his readiness to turn and
run when lawyers were involved.
As a result many believed (including Whitlam too I later
discovered) that I had indeed planned to do a rude deed by
retailing the entire Francis James story and so depriving
Francis of his hard earned royalties.
The true story, if published at the time, would have been a
lot more interesting that anything James could
produce. It would have been have taken the wind out
of the sails of the constant rightwing efforts over more
than three years to use the James incarceration as yet
another stick to beat Beijing.
But thanks to Perkin, and his thick chequebook, it was not
to see the light of day till many years later.
As for the pingpong China story, in many ways that was an
even better scoop than the James story — intrigue,
high politics, some sex, and, of course, my first chance to
get to the country I had long studied and been close
to.
I recount the main details in part six of this series.
Resourses
Diplomacy
Scoops aside, my main interest while in Tokyo had to be the
Australian resources story , coal and iron ore exports
especially. Major new contracts being announced almost
weekly, with both sides prone to get into disputes over
those contracts.
The 1973 oil shock had sent not just oil but almost all raw
materials and even food prices through the roof.
Prime Minister Tanaka had not helped with his proudly
announced policy of shigen gaiko, or resources diplomacy,
which said that since the world was running out of food and
raw materials, Japan had to embark on an active diplomacy
to secure longterm stable sources of raw materials and food
supplies.
For the narrow minds in Canberra shigen gaiko could only
mean that Australia would be the target of various and
devious Japanese schemes to grab hold of its resources.
Australia had to move quickly to guard its resources.
Even better, it had to try to exploit its resources
advantage against Japan to the maximum.
Whitlam had already tapped into a large vein of Australian
nationalism with promises that the foreigners would be kept
in their cages. His minerals and energy
minister, the notorious Rex Connor, set out to mine the
vein to the hilt.
Gruff warnings to the effect that the Japanese would have
to get down on their hands and knees if they wanted to buy
our precious raw materials became standard fare.
If possible he would also force them to process those
materials before they left Australian shores.
No one seemed to realise that Tanaka with his shigen gaiko
was engaging in typical Japanese alarmist exaggeration, or
that Canberra’s tough talk would do more harm than
good. Japan did not have to rely entirely on Australia for
its resources. It had many other and much more
compliant sources of possible supply.
It was also very much in Japan’s interests to
exaggerate future demand, and so encourage over-production
by suppliers. In any case, Japan was entering a
period of much slower growth. Demand for resources would
not continue to rise at past rates.
I tried to make a few of these points in my reports. As far
as I know, they made no impression back in Canberra, other
than to have myself listed as a pro-Japan sycophant.
(At the time Canberra’s officials in Tokyo were busy
making confident predictions that Japan’s future
demand for raw materials was unlimited. Steel production
would soon reach 200 million tons annually, they said,
doubling the level of coal and iron ore imports. In
fact it has stayed at around 100 million tons ever since,
ie for the next 30 years.)
Officials sent by Canberra to preach the Rex
Connor-Whitlam doctrine on resources did little
better.
None of these people spoke any Japanese. None had any
idea how to negotiate with the Japanese. For most, a
trip to Japan was an excuse to carouse nightly in
Tokyo’s girly bars.
The mama-san of one of these establishments once showed me
the list of name-cards given her by satisfied Australian
clients. It included many of Canberra’s top
bureaucrats, and not a few politicians!
Australian resource firms represented in Tokyo were not
much better. Then, as now to some extent, they were staffed
with non-Japanese speakers who had to rely on their
Japanese staff for everything from advice on billion dollar
contracts to organising the wall-paper for their luxury
apartments .
CRA-Comalco once sent a team to look into a proposed
takeover of the struggling aluminium maker, Showa
Denko. One of the team was my brother Antony, a
numbers-cruncher and later in life, a computer expert.
He shared the Clark dislike for waste and conspicuous
entertainment
So while the rest of the team were touring the Ginza
hostess bars, courtesy of Showa Denko and its backers in
the Japanese-staff of the CRA Tokyo office, he stayed in
his hotel room working on the figures.
It did not take him long to realise the figures did not
make sense. But he was over-ridden by the rest of the happy
team from Melbourne and accused of lacking team
compatability.
The takeover turned out to be a flop, and not just because
of the collapse of the Japanese aluminium industry. The
company was in trouble from the start, and knew it.
That’s why it wanted a takeover.
The only ones who did not know it were the carousing team
from Melbourne.
(Ironically, another one of my brothers, Christopher,
trained in Japanese and the Chinese classics, and who had
served in the Tokyo Embassy back in the early
sixties, had had a similar experience. In his
case the run-in was with other Embassy officials over the
way they inflated cost of living expenses in order to get
higher allowances. As a result he moved from the then
External Affairs to Treasury).
Tongueless
in Tokyo
The lack of Japanese expertise and language ability among
the Australians in Tokyo was bad enough in itself. Even
worse was the way it inevitably led them to depend on
people of dubious reputation to help them bridge the
linguistic and understanding gap.
A constant visitor to the Australian Embassy at the time
was a strange Korean-Japanese we knew as Hiroshi. He
had spent time in Australia, and he could speak English
with an Australian accent.
This had made him very persona-grata in the Embassy —
a constant invitee to Embassy receptions and middle man in
some Embassy negotiations.
His role as Embassy fixer did not impress Japanese Foreign
Ministry officials involved with Australia. In addition to
any anti-Korean prejudices they might have had, they were
only too aware of the way naïve foreign embassies in Tokyo
could easily be manipulated by fixers with a foothold in
embassy doors.
Hiroshi was involved in a range of strange real estate
deals with Australia, many of them to the disadvantage of
Australians. But none of that seemed to worry the Embassy.
Many years later, when I had a chance to make a few
complaints about Hiroshi’s baleful presence to people
in charge, I was told confidentially that he was tolerated
because he had a direct pipeline to the rightwing ex-Kishi
faction in the LDP. Charming.
In the 30 or more years I have been involved with Japan, I
have tried often to make an issue of the Embassy’s
scandalous lack of Japanese expertise.
It was bad enough back in the seventies. But recently, with
the creation of a go-go, McKinsey style public service
where time spent learning languages or gaining cultural
background is a kiss of promotion depth, the situation has
become far worse.
In 2002 not a single senior official in the Embassy, from
the ambassador down, could speak Japanese. The
contrast with the British Embassy where almost all the top
posts are filled by language speakers, and where a
non-Japanese speaking ambassador is almost unthinkable, was
painful.
But whenever one points these things out in published
articles there is never any sign of hansei, or
self-reflection on the Australian side. All one gets is
pained attempts at denial. One can almost hear the sobs of
wounded pride.
True, a year or so earlier Canberra finally had sent an
ambassador with the language. But his accent was so
atrocious that he would have been better off relying on an
interpreter.
A favorite Canberra rebuttal device is to list as language
speakers everyone who can claim even a smattering of the
language. A recent Embassy gambit is to list the junior
staff with the language.
And it is true that in recent years, thanks to a range of
exchange and other schemes (the Working Holiday scheme is
one of them), a generation of young Australians with good
Japanese is finally emerging.
But with language ability still seen as some kind of quirk
rather than proof of superior ability, few are able to
break through to senior levels in the bureaucracy or the
Embassy.
Tribal
Sensitivities
The inability of the Australian psyche to handle criticisms
over this lack of Japanese expertise is curious.
In 1973 I had to cover a particularly boastful Whitlamesque
speech in Tokyo warning Japan Inc that henceforth Australia
would control its own minerals resources and decide its own
minerals policy. It would not be kowtowing to
Japan as it had done in the past.
The only problem with the speech was that the Embassy
official translating the speech did not know the world for
‘minerals.’ He kept on saying
‘metals.’
Since Australia was not producing very much in the way of
‘metals’ the audience was left rather bemused.
I wrote the story, and The Australian, which always enjoyed
making Whitlam look foolish, gave it a good run. All
I got were complaints about how cruel I had been to the
poor translator. The fact that an Australian Prime Minister
was made to look stupid before an audience of senior
Japanese was secondary.
It was a peculiarly Japanese-style reaction. The feelings
of the individual being criticised for mistakes are far
more important than the harm caused by those mistakes.
Then there is a Japanese ‘we versus they’
response. For an Australian to be criticising a
fellow Australian in front of foreigners is just not on.
You cease to be one of the mates.
As for trying to understand how educated Japanese might
feel being forced to listen to an incompetent interpreter
who did not know the difference between metals and
minerals, forget it. Much too distant and abstract.
Resources
Again
I was talking about Rex Connor, and the damage caused by
Australia’s efforts to run a reverse resources
diplomacy against Japan.
In particular great harm was being done at the time by
Connor’s permanent head, the abrasive and highly
ambitious Lennox Hewitt.
He had been demoted from a powerful public service position
under the previous regime. In effect, he would now try to
use his new department to set up his own independent public
service empire. Connor would be his tool for that ambition.
But while Connor generally got good reviews for his
tub-thumping nationalism (after an article criticizing
Connor’s resources nationalism, I once got an
angry rebuttal from a young and still obscure politician
called Paul Keating), the arrogant and reclusive Hewitt was
a favorite target for media attack.
Hewitt was no fool. He was a lot smarter than his
boss. His only problem is that he was working for
himself rather than for Australia.
Some years later I had occasion to ring Hewitt in
Canberra about some aspect of coal policy. To my surprise,
he treated me to a lengthy and quite sensible outline of
government moves at the time.
At the end of it all, I felt moved to semi-apologise for
past criticisms, saying that it must have been hard for him
over the years to endure the ‘occasional snipe’
from journalists. To which his memorable reply was:
”Mr Clark, it is not the occasional snipe. It
is whole buckets of shit.”
Looking
Back
Despite the problems, those four and a half years in Tokyo
were good years. I often say they were the best years.
Being a journalist forces one to go out to find out what is
actually happening in the world, something that rarely
happens to diplomats, and certainly does not happen
to university people.
I got to meet a lot of people, many of whom were to help me
later. And as should be obvious, I got to like Japan and
its people.
I was also forced to try to learn how to write. Years spent
as a bureaucrat or academic do not help much in that
direction.
At the time I used to sum up my career like this:
First I learned Chinese. This made me feel fairly pleased
with myself since it gave me an asset and some
insights that few other people had.
Then I learned Russian and felt even more confident of my
ability to go out and face the world. Not too many
people can handle both Chinese and Russian.
Finally I learned Japanese. This time I knew I
really did have something very few others could hope to
have - three of the world’s most difficult languages
under my belt, and the understandings that go with them.
But then I became a correspondent. I soon discovered
that all the insights, understandings and information
one has from knowing these languages is useless unless one
can write English.
So I had to start out all over again and learn another
language — my own.
The ability to express oneself clearly and convincingly in
English is crucial for anyone who wants to move in the
world of ideas. My father had that skill, naturally, and it
served him well.
I have had to work a lot harder, and there is still some
doubt whether I have made it.
Discover
Japan
The years as Tokyo correspondent also saw me get my private
life into some sort of shape.
I began to see a lot of Yasuko. She still had her job with
the Ajiken. We spent many good weekends exploring the
very beautiful countryside around Tokyo.
For someone brought up in the monotony, solitude and
harshness of the Australian countryside, the lushness,
variety, seasonal changes and the wealth of human
interaction in Japanese nature was something wondrous.
We began with the mountain country to the west of
Tokyo - first the 1500-2000 meter ranges of Oku-Tama,
Oku-Chichbu, Tanzawa, and then gradually further away,
mainly into the deep and largely unknown 3,000 meter ranges
of the Southern Alps.
The Japanese are strange people. They happily spend
six-eight hours travelling to the well-known but distant
and often over-crowded Northern Alps, mainly because they
are well-known, distant and over-crowded.
But they ignore the equally challenging, deserted, and very
attractive Southern Alps just the other side of Mt Fuji and
almost within viewing distance from Tokyo.
Thursday afternoons would see me poring over hiking maps,
planning the route for that weekend. Friday evenings
we would set off on the overnight trains to the starting
point for our climb.
Sunday afternoons would be descending many miles
away, tired and happy, hopefully to a hot spring hideaway
before taking the train back to Tokyo.
One hangover from those years at Oxford studying geography
was learning something about maps and geology.
Studying the rocks, and seeing how the trails and the
contours on the maps matched the reality were added
pleasures.
One of my ‘Discover Japan’ techniques was to
take a map, look for an area with few villages or
roads, and the head off to find out what was there.
Inevitably one would find a Shangri-la hidden away in the
hills and forgotten by history.
One of our best finds was the island of Kakeroma down near
Okinawa.
I had been invited by the elderly Iwasaki, who was
being bitterly criticised by our greenies for trying to
build a honeymoon hotel in Queensland’s Yeppoon area,
to visit the island of Amami Oshima where he had made his
fortune prewar exporting hardwood sleepers for the
Manchurian railways.
While there I saw on the map a large island just to the
south with almost no roads or large settlements. No
one seemed able to tell me what went on there.
So we decided to go and find out. We discovered a paradise
of unspoiled semi-tropical hills and beaches surrounded by
coral reefs, inhabited by dear hearts and gentle people
clinging to the customs and crafts of another era.
The place was so untouched that hotels, taxis and even
vending machines did not exist. Yet it was only 30 minutes
by boat from Oshima.
Even now only a few diving fanatics know about Kakeroma,
though it has over 200 kilometers of coastline and a
population of around 4,000 (7.000 then).
The world has this image of Japan as a grossly over-crowded
nation. But there are also large areas of countryside where
people rarely venture.
Even ardent hikers rarely want to stray from the beaten
track.
In the Tanzawa hills just outside Tokyo it was thirty years
before someone came across the remains of downed wartime
plane. Yet the trails nearby are often crammed with weekend
hikers.
I never found any airplane wrecks. But in the remote
headwaters of the Mibu river on the western and rarely
visited side of the Southern Alps I once came across what I
am sure was a small Red Army camp.
About half a dozen of tough, good-looking youth were
camped out there. If they really were Red Army
fugitives, it was sad that their talents, energy and youth
were being wasted in an fruitless confrontation with a
society that had no idea of, or sympathy for, their
idealistic goals.
The
Female Factor
At first Yasuko only tolerated my expeditions into deserted
hills. Japanese women usually do not like to be made to
fight through scrub for hours looking for non-existent
trails.
But she never complained. Gradually she even seemed to
begin to enjoy it.
Some of those trips were wild.
Our first trip to the Southern Alps saw us setting off to
climb Kai Komagadake in the light gear and sandshoes we
used for strolls in the hills around Tokyo. Only
after hours toiling up steep, never-ending ridges with
thousand meter cliffs on either side, and snow at the top
even though it was still early September, did we
begin to realise that we were into some serious climbing.
But the exhilaration stayed with us, and dragged us back
again and again. It is said that
men reach a physical stamina peak in their early forties.
That seemed fairly true for me, particularly since I had
never been keen on physical fitness before coming to Japan.
In Moscow my main sports had been swimming the Bassein near
the Embassy and ski touring in the winter. In Canberra it
had been mainly squash.
But in Tokyo it became a hunger for vigorous mountain
climbing . The fitness that came as a result has stayed
with me through to today and kept me healthy. That,
together with the genes inherited from my parents, both of
whom lived through to very reasonable old age.
What impressed me about Yasuko was her mental stamina.
On one trip to the Southern Alps we had been caught in
heavy rain at the top of a 3000 meter ridge, just to the
south of Akaiishi-dake. We had to overnight in an
abandoned hut, wet and shivering,.
The prospect of even heavier rain the next day meant
we had to get off the ridge quickly, that morning, or
else. But the only way off was down a little-used
trail that traversed a 40-50 degree slope down to the 1500
meter level.
En route we had often to balance on slippery logs to cross
rushing side streams with sheer hundred meter rock slides
below us.
Yasuko hung on bravely. Late that evening when we finally
made it to safety and a hot bath, I knew I had found a
woman I wanted to be with.
Our son Dan was born in 1974. We celebrated with a
delightful Japanese custom — a ‘first
eating’ ceremony one hundred days after birth to
which we invited all our friends and in effect also
celebrated our coming together.
Young Dan performed well, going through the motions of
sipping champagne and eating a slice of fish in his cot.
Soon after we moved to Australia, and Canberra.
Goodbye
to Tokyo?
Working for The Australian out of Tokyo had never been
greatly satisfying, despite the occasional scoop.
I enjoyed the challenge of having to go out and get
stories. But things like the Tanaka Kakuei FCCJ affair made
me realise that journalism was as fairly low level,
even if important, profession.
Earlier, while working in government and diplomacy I had
been on the inside and surrounded by people I could respect
to some extent. Journalism does not attract the same
quality of people.
True, I knew from experience that there is very little that
goes on in the inside that does not find its way into print
outside soon, and somewhere. But even so..
Then there was the constant problem of having to
second-guess second-rate editors. What seemed to me to be
an important or interesting story would leave them cold. ,
and vice versa. As well, quite serious stories would
often be rewritten or beaten up.
The Australian was still fighting for circulation
numbers, and relying on old journalistic tricks to do
so.
And by 1974 Rupert Murdoch was discovering the
profitability of popular, and gutter, journalism in
London. That inevitably had its backflow influence on
The Australian, even though the paper was supposed to
be Murdoch’s flagship of journalistic respectability.
Deamer had long ago been ousted for his determined and
liberal views. One of Murdoch’s hatchet editors from
London, Bruce Rothwell, had been put in charge.
The paper’s attractively progressive stance was being
watered down, despite the obvious failure of US policies in
Indochina. Trivia and rightwing rants had become standard
fare.
I was keen to find myself another profession.
Meanwhile the Whitlam government was getting itself
installed in Canberra. Many of the ALP people I had
known during the anti-Vietnam War days were getting good
slots in the new administration.
I could only watch on, in envy, from a very long
distance.
The
Whitlam Connection
I had never been close to Whitlam. I only got to know him,
and even then only superficially, on his trips to
Japan and China. He probably saw me as firmly in the rival
Cairns camp
But Whitlam seemed very aware of my existence. I too did
not escape the encyclopedic memory and fascination with
personalities that led him to try to categorise most people
he knew.
He was curious, I have been told, about how the son
of well-known conservative and DLP supporter, Colin
Clark, could have ended up as a Foreign Affairs rebel
.
He thought I had a father complex. I suppose that means I
was supposed to have had an urge to try and match my
father’s fame, and to rebel against his Catholic
conservatism.
I may have a few complexes, but I doubt if they have
much to do with my father. I had left home at age
20. I saw very little of him after that.
His conservative views had influenced me when I was young.
But I was hardly aware of them in the years when I was
working out my own ideological position.
The one thing that did upset me was his seeming lack of
interest in my ‘Fear of China’ book. He was
entitled to disagree with my politics (he shared the DLP
alarmist view of China and at one stage had even gone along
with the idea that it should be pre-emptively bombed to
halt its nuclear development).
But I felt it very wrong that a man whose own career
depended so much on writing books and getting them
published, should not want to encourage similar
effort by his son, whether he agreed with the contents or
not.
But I will always be grateful for the depth of his
intellectualism, and the influence it had on me.
His mistake was one I often see with conservative
intellectuals, namely the attempt to apply abstract
reasoning to social questions that can only be understood
on the basis of the direct practical experience. They
find it hard to see the other side of problems.
This is especially true in foreign affairs, where gaining
practical experience often involves having to learn foreign
languages and live among foreign peoples — something
that most intellectuals, conservatives and rightwingers
especially, are usually very reluctant to do.
They prefer to remain in the world of their own ideas,
theories, prejudices and intellectualism. That can do
a lot of damage, in foreign affairs especially.
Today, only a madman can believe that the world would have
been a better place if China had been pre-emptively bombed
back in the early sixties. Yet that is what a lot of
people, and not just my father, wanted to see then.
Embassy
Advisor?
But to come back to Whitlam. Either he or someone
around him, Peter Wilenski perhaps, seems to have felt that
something should be done to ease my exile in Tokyo.
After all, I had done much to help the ALP over Vietnam.
And my junior, Fitzgerald, had been given a good job in
Beijing.
During one of his trips to Tokyo he seems to have told the
ambassador in Tokyo, K.C.O. (Mick) Shann, to use me as a
kind of Embassy adviser.
I had always liked Shann for his sensitivity,
intelligence and activism, even if at times he could show
certain feline bitchiness.
But politically we were far apart. And he was very
jealous of his prerogatives. He was hardly likely to
want to go overboard to have someone like me wandering
around his Embassy.
We went through the motions of agreeing how the adviser
thing would be implemented. But both of us knew from the
start that little would come of it.
If I was to be effective I would have to be shown the
confidential cable traffic between Canberra and Tokyo, and
no one had bothered to arrange clearance for that.
In any case, Shann would hardly have wanted to accept
advice from someone he regarded both as his junior and
inferior.
Ambassador
to Japan?
Many years later my brother Nicholas was to tell me
something I still find hard to believe. But he is adamant
it occurred.
He says he was standing near Whitlam at the Sydney airport
baggage collection, when Whitlam approached him and said
cryptically “We wanted to appoint your brother,
Gregory, as an ambassador but we could not get
agrement.” (‘Agrement,’ is the French
word for formal agreement by the recipient government to
accept an ambassadorial appointment.)
Brother Nicholas says that Whitlam did not say to which
country I was to be sent. But if the story is true, I would
have to assume it was Japan.
Normally a government would not seek formal agrement
without first informing the person concerned. I knew
nothing about any appointment. It is also rare for
agrements to be refused.
If there is anything in the story, it could have been
Whitlam asking Foreign Affairs to make very informal
approach to Tokyo, probably via Shann . At that
level, neither Tokyo, or Shann, would have found it
very hard to manufacture a negative response.
Even so, my brother’s story does help to explain the
many hints I have had over the years about how I was
supposed to feel resentful about not being made ambassador,
particularly after Fitzgerald was made ambassador to
China.
All I can say is that I would hardly have felt
resentful, even if I had known what was going on at
the time. An ambassador’s life is fairly miserable
— endless receptions and dinner parties, almost no
private life, administering rebellious embassies, looking
after visiting notables, taking orders from home base etc.
In the case of Japan, there would have been the
problem of representing a government that basically was
ignorant of the country, and ready to believe any hint of
anti-Australian conspiracies.
If anything, a journalist abroad can do more than an
ambassador to change mistaken attitudes and policies.
One example was the way I was able to team up with
Max Suich of Fairfax in a newspaper campaign to overcome
some of Canberra’s resistance to Tokyo’s
long-standing desire for the same routine treaty of
friendship, trade and commerce it had with many other
nations.
Canberra’s policies towards Japan then, and even
today to some extent, seem constantly to vacillate between
deep suspicions of Tokyo’s alleged cunning, and
covert missions by sly spies and bone-headed military types
trying to link up with Japan in yet another
fat-headed plan to try to project military and diplomatic
clout into the rest of Asia.
If I wanted to be really effective, I had to try to
get back to home base, to a position in Canberra so I could
try to change attitudes there. But in 1973 the
chances of my being able to do that seemed remote.
Even the lowly position of honorary Embassy adviser seemed
beyond my grasp.
Then suddenly, towards the end of 1974, all this was
to change, thanks almost entirely to an accidental
relationship with a very accidental person — one John
Menadue, then largely in charge of Murdoch’s Sydney
empire.
The
Menadue Connection
John Menadue AO today is a man with what many would see as
a very distinguished career.
After rising to head the Murdoch operation Sydney, in 1974
he went on to head the Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet (PMC) through the Whitlam years. After that he
became ambassador to Japan in the Malcolm Fraser years,
then head of the Department of Immigration and Customs
followed by a turbulent spell as Qantas chief executive.
He has also been prominent in a number of advisory,
charitable and voluntary organisations.
But few know that this rise to fame was largely due to a
very unusual Japanese happening.
In the sixties he had left Whitlam’s office to
contest the Hume electorate for Labour. He had failed
badly. As he himself admits, he lacked political
talent and charisma.
And lacking also any remarkable academic or workplace
qualifications, he was threatened with serious
unemployment. Certainly neither Whiltam or the ALP were
rushing to give him another job.
However, on the basis of his former Whitlam connection he
had just managed to persuade Murdoch to give him a job as
manager for The Australian, then small and struggling.
In those days, a major income source for Australian
newspapers were the annual supplements on Japan, then a
rising power and of some interest to Australian
readers. Japanese companies keen to get Australian
footholds would spend good money buying advertisements in
the 40-50 pages devoted to these supplements.
(As correspondent in Tokyo I would later have to provide
much of the copy to go on the back of the ads, an annual
and somewhat degrading chore took up far more time than I
liked. )
Lacking any advertising foothold in Japan, The Australian
had entrusted ad sales to a dubious American there.
Said American had absconded with the sales revenue of
90,000 dollars. Murdoch had then sent Menadue to
Tokyo on a do or die mission to collect the missing funds.
According to what Menadue later told me (in his memoirs
“Things You Learn along the Way” he gives
a rather different version) he arrived in Tokyo with few
contacts to help him and was getting nowhere very fast.
One night at a foreigners bar he began to pour out
his sorrows to someone sitting next to him. He said how
Murdoch planned legal action against the offender.
By chance, the offending American was sitting next to him
on the other side of the conversation. The American had
some visa and business problems of his own. The last
thing he needed was legal action against him. He introduced
himself, together with a promise of early payment provided
the lawyers were kept away .
Murdoch was so impressed with this unlikely victory that he
soon began to promote Menadue to high posts in his Sydney
empire.
That at least is Menadue’s story to me, and I have
little reason to disbelieve him.
I first began to know Menadue personally while doing my
journalist ‘apprenticeship’ in Sydney in
mid-1969. He was interested in Japan for some reason,
and often invited me to his house to meet his then very
young family.
While I was working in Tokyo he visited several times,
twice with his family. We would all set off, with Yasuko,
to discover the Japanese countryside, travelling once as
far as Hokkaido.
He and his wife, Cynthia, quickly developed a genuine
liking for Japan, in part through the stays we had small
local minshuku — household-inns. Later she was to
write a book on the subject and to organise minshuku tours
for interested Australians.
In the book I get a small mention, with my name spelt
incorrectly.
I think I also introduced John to the joys of middle-aged
physical fitness through mountain hiking. He kept me
briefed on the political situation in Australia. I
think I also taught him a few things about world affairs.
In October 1974 I had to go to Canberra to cover a visit by
Tanaka.
It was the usual hectic run-around, trying to chase up
contacts and to cover press briefings from both
sides.
(I had long ago discovered that the briefings for the
Japanese press, to which I was allowed entry, were often
much franker and more honest that the Australian
briefings.)
(Once in 1973 I had used this technique to get a neat scoop
about how Tokyo had rejected Rex Connor’s request for
Japanese money to fund his grand plans for uranium
enrichment in Australia.)
( The large contingent of top Australian journalists
covering the Whitlam/Connor visit had meekly gone along
with a briefing by Foreign Affairs’
‘tricky’ Dick Woolcott who, on Cornnor’s
instructions, had claimed the Japanese were seriously
considering the plan.)
(All I had to do to get the true story was simply to walk
into the Japanese briefing in the adjacent room and
discover the exact opposite. Even Woolcott’s
subsequent fast talking did little to recover the
situation.)
During the Tanaka visit, where the Japanese leader had
shown once again that he knew more about Australian
minerals development than Whitlam and his aides, I got to
see Menadue.
Whitlam had made him head of the Department of the Prime
Minister and Cabinet, previously headed by Sir John
Bunting.
Many in the Labour government believed that the Canberra
bureaucrats, Bunting especially, had been working against
them. Eric Walsh, then Whitlam’s press secretary, had
persuaded Whitlam to replace Bunting with Menadue.
Menadue accepted the job, but feared confrontations and
sabotage from the conservative bureaucrats under him.
He wanted to bring in a few of his mates, me
included, to form a kind of secretariat in PMC
— a Policy Coordination Unit — which would back
him up.
We would help both in policy formation and in making
sure that the government’s policies were being
implemented. We would ride herd on the bureaucracy
generally.
I was not averse to the proposal, though I had little idea
to what it would mean in practice. I had been out of the
Canberra loop for too long. And I would be working in
domestic policy areas where, apart from minerals, I had
little experience.
But I was keen to get back to Canberra to see how policy
was being handled by the Whitlam administration. I said I
was interested.
The
Prodigal Returns
Back in Tokyo after the Tanaka visit, and hit with another
trivia request from Rothwell, I was also not averse
to the idea of ceasing to work for The Australian.
This time it was a Rothwell request to confirm
stories about Australian racehorses being mistreated in
Japan.
There were also suggestions that I should begin filing for
the London Sun. I countered with a suggestion that
they should find a replacement for me in Tokyo.
And so, with little regret and much anticipation I closed
The Australian office in Tokyo (my bosses were on yet
another money-saving campaign and did not plan to send a
replacement for me), packed my bags, departed the cold and
gathering darkness of a Tokyo winter and arrived less than
24 hours later into the hot, dry sunshine of a
Canberra summer.
It was quite a contrast. But it was not the only one
I would face.
I had been invited to go straight from the airport to
Menadue’s office for Friday afternoon drinks.
Gathered there were Brian Johns, Eric Walsh and a few of
the other Menadue mates . Overnight I had been thrown not
just into a Canberra summer, but also into the center of
Canberra power and patronage.
A few moments later Menadue arrived.
He had just been to a meeting with Connor and the Prime
Minister. Conner had unveiled a plan for Canberra to
borrow billions from an unknown Pakistani broker called
Khemlani.
The scandal that was to undermine the Whitlam government
had already started….. and I still had not unpacked
my bags.
PS, From here on, please allow me to use derogatives
like ‘rightwing ratbags.’
The right takes it for granted they can talk of leftwing
loonies. It is time they got some of their own
medicine back.)
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