Kristine Dennehy
The following excerpts are primarily from commentary by Ishihara Shintarō, the governor of Tokyo since 1999 and an outspoken critic of Japan’s economic and strategic relationship with the United States, particularly in the wake of “Japan bashing” by American politicians in the 1980s. In this dialogue with the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, the two leaders joined together to criticize the legacy of European and American hegemony in the modern age and proposed instead a greater role for Japan as a model for a “flexible” kind of leadership among Asian nations. The Japanese title of the book, “No” to Ieru Ajia, translated as The Asia That Can Say “No,” is reminiscent of Ishihara’s 1989 The Japan That Can Say “No,” a book that originally also included comments by Sony chairman Morita Akio, who shared Ishihara’s frustration with American complaints about Japan’s trade surplus and criticized Americans for their self-righteous attitude regarding human rights and fair trade practices. Like Hayashi Fusao (see II:34) before him, Ishihara is disheartened by the lack of pride and self-confidence among his compatriots, and he echoes Hayashi’s attacks on postwar progressives who, he argues, have blindly accepted the notion that Japanese people should be critical of their own country’s modern history and therefore fearful of the prospects for a future tied to Asia.
Ishihara originally gained fame as a novelist with the publication of Taiyō no Kisetsu (Season of the Sun, 1956; published in English as Season of Violence, 1966), which shocked readers with characters who rejected the values and proper demeanor of their elders. It sparked the “Taiyō-zoku” (sun tribe) phenomenon of postwar Japanese youth who emulated the fictional characters through their overtly sexual, violent, and antisocial behavior. The charismatic Ishihara subsequently joined the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and proved adept at tapping into and fostering the growing nationalist sentiments that accompanied Japan’s increasing economic prosperity.
Both Ishihara and Mahathir stress the dichotomy between Eastern values and Western technical skills and argue that Japan is uniquely suited to be a model for other Asian nations eager to improve their material standard of living without compromising local cultural and social traditions. Mahathir first went to Japan in 1961 when the country was preparing for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and was greatly impressed by the discipline and orderly nature of Japanese society. In the debates over so-called Asian values during the 1990s, Mahathir was critical of notions such as competition and individualism, which he associates with Western values, and argues that Asians need to work together to maintain and develop a distinct identity based on family-oriented social relations and social harmony (cf. Hashim 2000; Mahathir 2004). In the one section by Mahathir included here, he refers to the moral decline of Western families and society in general, represented by redefined notions of the family, including same-gender marriages. The other passages here highlight Ishihara’s central areas of concern in the realms of economics, politics, and culture and provide a vision for an alternative path for Japan as a world leader, aligned in all these respects with other Asian nations.
Source (English in the original)
Mahathir Mohamad and Shintarō Ishihara: The Voice of Asia: Two Leaders Discuss the Coming Century. Trans. Frank Baldwin. Kōdansha, 1995. Originally published as “No” to ieru Ajia (The Asia That Can Say “No”). Kōbunsha, 1994.
I. Economic/Political Ties:
We are at a historic juncture. As Prime Minister Mahathir has noted, East Asia’s rapid economic growth portends the future. The collapse of communism and the ebbing of the West mark the end of European modernism, long the dynamic force of global change. The Asian century is at hand.
Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918) prophesied what is now unfolding before our eyes: The West is reaping what it sowed. In the new era, East Asia, once so wantonly colonized and plundered, will sustain global prosperity.
Europe and the United States plainly hope, through the EU and NAFTA, respectively, to reassert their leadership of the global economy. Rejecting the Western brand of power politics—forcing concessions out of trading partners—East Asia seeks a shared prosperity through a flexible association. East Asia would not try to intimidate Europe or North America. But the United States is taking advantage of Asian tolerance and gradualism to block formation of a regional group here.
The end of the East-West ideological conflict has finally enabled Japan to start to disengage from the West. . . . Japanese are Asian, related to this region by blood and culture, and Japan is an Asian country. Again cognizant of the East, many Japanese sense the vitality of this region. Our interests lie more with Asia than with America.
Japan has come home to Asia, and our neighbors have gradually encouraged Tokyo to play a more active role, politically as well as economically. Although criticism continues that Tokyo’s foreign policy is too attuned to U.S. priorities, trade flows—the movement of goods and services—have changed.
Prepared by decades of steady economic growth and investment in physical infrastructure and human resources, East Asia seized the opportunity. No matter how Washington tries to thwart the EAEC, Japanese offshore manufacturing is a fact of life. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of World War II, backed as it was by the Imperial Army and Navy, had to be unwelcome. But now, though imperceptible to the untrained observer, Japan is building strong positive ties with East Asia.
Japan has returned to the East and we identify first and foremost with Asia. Of course, we cannot ignore our ties with the United States; the bilateral relationship is vital to both parties. Nevertheless, the time is approaching when the East should be our top foreign policy priority. To ignore the course of history and cling to the West would soon leave us excluded from East and West.
Global commerce—the spread of trade and reduction of tariffs—is an outgrowth of Western modernism. Yet in the nineteenth century free trade meant European merchants were free to sell things to the “natives.” If the local people balked at opening ports or signing treaties of commerce, gunships and marines backed up the demand. Threats and force were integral to gaining market access. What Asians mean by freedom is very different from the way Europeans and Americans use the concept.
Americans have to understand that Asia is different from the West, has ancient traditions, especially compared with the United States, which did not even exist three centuries ago, and is enormously diverse.
To put it provocatively, we may have to form an Asian united front against Americanization. A vocal group of journalists and academics in the United States, dubbed the “revisionists,” vilify Asia for having norms that were not made in the U.S.A. Japan’s business practice and customs, for example, are dismissed as different and therefore wrong. We have to turn that argument against them by saying: “That’s right. We’re different. Why should Asians be the same as you?” It will take an Asian crusade to change Western attitudes into acceptance of cultural pluralism.
I am convinced the Asian era will be a time of peaceful coexistence. We are no threat to Europe or North America. We will not do what the West did to us. Unlike the colonial overlords who tried to convert indigenous peoples to Christianity, regardless of how powerful Asia becomes, we will never force our beliefs on others. It is not our way.
Now that Asians are working together to create a new economic co-prosperity sphere, it is far more useful to address what Japan’s role should be and how we can accomplish it.
I use the word “co-prosperity” advisedly. Some people will associate it with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the wartime term used to rationalize aggression, or the propaganda slogan “eight corners of the world under one roof.” I do not want to get bogged down in a sterile debate, accused of being an unreconstructed ultranationalist and so forth. What counts today is GNP, not the number of ballistic missiles a country has in hardened shelters.
The paramount reality of the mid-1990s—the retreat of the West and the increasing dynamism of Asia—presages a period of unprecedented prosperity for this region. By pouring as much investment and technology as possible into the region, Japanese can atone for the Pacific War and give substance to the Pan-Asian idealism of the 1930s. We would not be the board of directors for Asia, Inc., but pull our weight in solidarity with our Asian colleagues.
II. Cultural Affinities:
On my trips to Southeast Asia since the mid-1980s I have noticed many signs of the spread of Japanese popular culture. The year-long public television drama, “Oshin,” a story about a young woman who personifies the traditional feminine virtues of selfless service and dedication, was broadcast in China and watched by 200 million people. The program was also very popular in Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Our pop culture strikes a sympathetic chord across Asia. No hard sell is necessary; the audience is receptive. Underlying the empathy for Oshin, for instance, is an Asian work ethic very different from that of the West. Most Europeans and Americans would prefer a life of leisure, while Asians thrive on work. Westerners simultaneously hate and envy the idle rich. Not Asians. We feel sorry for a well-off man who has no calling. People say, “What a shame he hasn’t got something worthwhile to do.”
Many Western societies . . . are morally decadent. There is diminishing respect for the institutions of the family and marriage, and some even permit same-gender marriages. To us, that is not development. You must maintain cultural and moral values. We do not want to be just a rich country. (Mahathir)
The family is the spiritual foundation of Asia. Some Westerners retort that this was also true in the good old days in Europe but individualism weakened the family and that is already happening in Asia too. The skeptics even call Asian familism cultural backwardness. It sounds to me like an admission that they lost their core value, part of the Protestant ethic, in the course of modernization.
Family values are still paramount to most Asians. It is not that we are less individualistic or egotistical than Westerners, just that we assume a priori there must be an equilibrium between the individual and the larger society. We live in a social context. If Western societies are like an edifice made of bricks, each component separate and distinguishable, Asian societies are like nearly seamless concrete structures. We see ourselves as indivisible parts of the whole.
We are an Asian people, ethnically and culturally. Japan is not a unique, homogeneous country, as some argue. That is obvious from a glance at the faces in a crowded room. . . . Japanese are a heterogeneous people, shaped millennia ago by immigrants from Mongolia, the Korean peninsula, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The earliest Japanese were the Ainu, who still survive as a distinct ethnic group. . . . As this century draws to a close, we should come home to Asia, our heritage and our future.
From the temples of Kyoto to the Confucian veneration of family and learning, Japanese belong to Asia. Much of the time that identity goes unrewarded; we instinctively respond like other Asians. Mindful of our ancestry, we should deepen our ties with this region. We can accomplish far more with other Asians than in a “partnership” with Americans.