The Chrysanthemum and the Eagle. Ryuzo Sato
between countries, especially, emotional arguments often get the better of reason. In the conflict between the hawks and the Chrysanthemum Club, it cannot be assumed that rational arguments will win. Ninety-nine percent of the American people have never been to Japan and know nothing about the realities of life there. Logic is based upon knowledge, and emotional arguments thrive on ignorance. As the hawks’ propaganda penetrates grassroots America and emotional arguments dictate public opinion, the logic of a free-market economy is being overwhelmed by the Japan-is-different argument.
Is Japan Really Different?
Containing Japan. Just as many Americans overreacted to what they perceived as America-bashing in the pirated English version of The Japan That Can Say “No” by Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara (see chapter 2), many Japanese have overreacted to James Fallows’s article “Containing Japan,” which they regard as Japan-bashing. This trans-Pacific exchange of bad feelings seems to have been provoked by the titles of these two works rather than by their actual contents.
In English the nuances of the word contain are not nearly as strong as they are for the Japanese word fūjikome, which was used in the translation of Fallows’s article. Fūjikome has strong overtones—it would be used, for example, in describing the sealing off of a nuclear reactor where an accident has occurred. As a translation for the English word contain, it is a bit too strong. The meaning of contain is essentially defensive; the overtones of the word fūjikome are a hundred-percent offensive and imply a preemptive strike.
In one sense, America has already tried “containing Japan.” To counter the flood of Japanese imports in areas like textiles, steel, consumer electronics, and automobiles, it launched a containment policy that forced Japan to accept export controls and voluntary restraints. To counter a soaring trade deficit, it embarked on a containment policy that put pressure on Japan to open its markets and increase domestic demand. The 1985 Plaza Accord was yet another attempt at a containment policy. To redress the trade imbalance, the finance ministers of the five major industrialized countries (the United States, Japan, West Germany, Great Britain, and France) agreed to a currency realignment at a meeting held in September 1985 at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Despite a drastic downward revaluation, from 240 yen to 120 yen to the dollar between 1985 and 1988, the U.S. balance of trade with Japan improved a mere 15 percent, and Japan continues to maintain a healthy surplus.
Theoretically, if the value of the dollar decreases by half, prices of American goods destined for Japanese markets should also be halved, generating brisk sales that should lead to an increase in U.S. exports and a reduction in the trade deficit. Prices for Japanese goods, on the other hand, should double, causing a slowdown in sales. The resulting decline in Japanese exports should bring about a decline in Japan’s trade surplus. That, at least, is what the laws of economics dictate. And, in fact, this occurred in Europe, where a lower dollar led to an American-European trade balance. It did not happen in Japan, however. Foreign goods in Japan remained as expensive as ever, and Japanese goods sold abroad did not double in price. The annual trade deficit with Japan remained—and still remains—around $50 billion. Why? The answer must be that Japan is “different,” that structural differences are at work there that do not respond to economic laws.
This is the background against which the revisionists emerged with their call for a reexamination of U.S. premises about Japan. This is what set the stage in 1989 for the most recent round of U.S.–Japan trade negotiations, the Structural Impediments Initiative talks, which were haunted by the threat that Congress would invoke the Super 301 provision of the 1988 Trade Act and impose economic sanctions on Japan and other countries that engage in “unfair” trading practices. In this dangerous atmosphere the use of the word fūjikome in the title of the translation of “Containing Japan” was irresponsible. It evoked associations with the ABCD encirclement and the international isolation of Japan on the eve of World War II; it also angered and alarmed the Japanese people and stirred up nationalistic sentiments. No one could have been more surprised by this reaction than the article’s author, James Fallows himself.
The Mass Media in the United States and Japan. In November 1989 I had a discussion with James Fallows at the request of a Japanese magazine and television station. Before our talk began, he was very wary of me. His extreme mistrust of the Japanese media seemed quite understandable. The Japanese translation of his article had caused a furor far beyond his wildest expectations, and the Japanese media en masse had made him out to be an enemy of Japan. As he put it, somehow or other, he had become public enemy number one. As an example of the misrepresentations the media had indulged in, Fallows told me the following story.
Fallows had been asked by a television station to discuss his views on the Yellow Peril theory. In the course of that interview, he made the statement that he did not endorse the view that racial prejudice lay at the heart of current American criticisms of Japan. Regrettably, racism did exist in America, but he personally was firmly opposed to those who resorted to this sort of argument, as were America’s leading policymakers. He had accepted the television station’s invitation, he told me, because he thought it provided a good opportunity to convey the convictions of Americans like himself who regard racial prejudice as something to be ashamed of, and he talked animatedly for several minutes on the subject. Sometime later he heard from the television station that his comments had been cut because they did not fit in with its plans. To learn what these plans had been, he later watched the program with considerable interest. To Fallows’s dismay, he discovered the program was not about whether the Yellow Peril theory was valid. It took American racism for granted, and so quite naturally his comments did not fit in.
The program dramatically traced historical events such as the extermination of the aboriginal peoples of Central and South America by the Spanish and the mass slaughter of Native Americans in North America by later white settlers. Stressing the whites’ oppression of nonwhites, and relying on the tricks and special effects of television, it conveyed the message that recent American criticisms of Japan are an extension of white America’s historical racial prejudices. Where was the conscience of the Japanese mass media, Fallows asked. This program was inflammatory, an abuse of the power of television. Fallows was profoundly incensed.
I too am well aware of the propensity of the Japanese media to sensationalize, and for that reason I resist making comments about U.S.–Japan relations that might lend themselves to overdramatization. Extreme statements, even those made by people who know nothing of America, are prized by the Japanese media because they are easy to report. But the American media are just as bad. When Sony bought Columbia Pictures, Newsweek described it as “a piece of America’s soul.” Columbia had been a nearly bankrupt company nobody seemed much interested in until it was sold to the Japanese. The media then reported its purchase as if Sony had stolen the crown jewels. The same was true with the sale of Rockefeller Center. The media carried on as if the traditional Christmas tree were going to be replaced with a bonsai. When Konishiki, a Hawaiian, won a sumo tournament in November 1989, how did the New York Times caption its account of the victory? “An American Is Enthroned and Japan Is Shaken.” What nonsense! Far from being shaken, many Japanese were thrilled at Konishiki’s success.
In both the United States and Japan such media distortions are everyday occurrences. Driven only by profit-making and rapidly becoming morally bankrupt, the media constantly sensationalize.
After the Kerlin Wall, the Japanese Wall. James Fallows has argued that allowing Japan to expand indiscriminately and destructively is not in the best interest of Japan or the rest of the world. I agree with him. Whether these views are correct logically speaking, I cannot say, but I believe that now is not the time to think purely in terms of logic. Speaking from the logic of economics, certainly no one can claim that Japan is wrong. Working without a moment’s leisure, saving for the future, caring more about conservation than consumption, offering the world better products at cheaper prices, making money—these are all actions that live up to capitalist ideals.
Capitalism means competition; its dominant principle is that whoever wins, survives. That is the premise upon which neoclassical economic theory