Japan

by Edwin Reischauer

  Global leadership today is not possible for any one country but clearly depends on international cooperation among several. An attempt to win military supremacy would probably lead only to mutual annihilation. An effort at economic supremacy would be almost as dangerous, because world prosperity depends on relatively free trade and willing cooperation among many countries. In the world as it exists today, Japan as an economic giant is well suited to be one of the most influential leaders. This is the ideal that most Japanese have vaguely in mind in the late eighties, though it is difficult for them to free themselves from a narrowly Japanese frame of reference and think fully in international terms.

  The role Japan might play in an international world can best be envisioned by considering briefly some of the main problems that confront mankind today. The one that looms largest in the thinking of most people lies in the traditional area of military rivalry. The once-common dream of military domination of the world, however, has now become a bottomless morass of catastrophe. Modern military power is vastly expensive, the progress of costly technology rapid, and the task of controlling rebellious nationalism, especially in less developed countries, almost impossible. The larger a nation’s conquests become, the closer it approaches economic ruin. The Soviet Union, like the United States in Vietnam, discovered this in its eight-year war with seemingly indefensible Afghanistan and as a result withdrew from that country in 1989.

  The most a major country can hope for in the military field is security from other major military powers by balancing their strength and convincing them of their mutual nuclear destruction if serious conflict should break out between them and should this escalate, as it almost assuredly would, to full nuclear warfare. Some relief from the problem can be found in the sharing of military expenditures, as North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia already are doing, but this is merely a palliative. The only true solution to the problem is the development of a great deal more trust between the rival great powers and, on the basis of this, a cautious limitation and then reduction of their military weapons.

  There are signs of hope that this is at last beginning to take place. Close to half a century has already elapsed since the end of World War II—more than twice the length of time between the first two world wars—and the threat of a major war seems to be receding steadily rather than growing closer. Japan probably will remain a peripheral player in this great military drama, but through its strong support of peace, coupled with its firm cooperation with the United States and championing of international cooperation everywhere, it can help tip the world away from unproductive military expenditures and toward a better utilization of human resources.

  The second great problem area is that of economic cooperation, particularly among the industrialized democracies, commonly called the First World, or the West. A basic system of free trade must be maintained if the world is to retain and develop its present prosperity. A stable though flexible monetary system is also necessary, and a host of other difficulties must be faced. The economic problems of the world are huge and extremely complex, probably posing a much greater threat of global disaster than does the basically frozen military situation, which attracts so much more attention. If within the foreseeable future mankind is to come to catastrophe, a failure of the economic system in the First World would seem to be the most likely starting place. It may well be the keystone to the whole arch of modern civilization. If it falls out of place, poverty and political disorder might well follow in all the industrialized democracies, and this in turn might lead to economic conflict among them and greatly worsened conditions in the rest of the world. The situation then would be ripe for full-scale warfare, which could destroy world civilization as we know it. In this area, Japan’s role as an economic giant—the second-largest and fastest-growing industrial power in the world—is sure to be enormous and crucial. Japan simply cannot avoid being a world leader.

  Two other great global problems might be considered as subordinate elements of the problems of international economic cooperation among the First World countries. One is the desperate situation of the bulk of the world’s people, commonly called the Third World, or the “less developed countries.” The First World must provide the Third World with aid to live, technical assistance to permit it to develop, and, most important, a growing share of the world’s markets so that the currently less developed countries can progress and someday take their rightful place in a unitary world. In other words, the First World must provide the Third with vastly more aid, much better organized than now and better designed for substantial and lasting economic growth, rather than largely for military support, as is at present the situation. Unless these goals are achieved, the whole world, crammed with resentful and desperate people, may someday explode and destroy civilized life for everyone. Here again is an area in which Japan has no choice but to play a leading role.

  The other ancillary problem is the maintenance of a physically livable world for all people. There are signs everywhere of a dangerous deterioration of the global environment. Water and air are becoming seriously polluted. Toxic wastes are heaping up. A great increase of carbon dioxide and other gases and pollutants in the atmosphere has resulted from two centuries of industrial growth and a rapid reduction of forests, which help maintain a proper balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide. At the current rate atmospheric conditions could be changed sufficiently to overheat the world through the so-called greenhouse effect or produce dangerous holes in the ozone layer around the poles or blankets of ozone-filled smog over our cities. These are but a few samples, amateurishly stated, of a wide variety of environmental disasters that might threaten the well-being of mankind. The industrial development of the First World has been the chief reason for the environmental menace to mankind, and only the First World has the knowledge to try to avert the consequences and help the Third World avoid a repetition of these hazards. Obviously, crowded Japan has had much experience in the problems of maintaining a livable environment and, with its vast economic power, is particularly well suited to provide world leadership in solving these problems.

  A final great problem area lies in the need to make the social adjustments forced by rapidly evolving technological changes in the world. New problems and attitudes are constantly arising. There is no country that is not undergoing puzzling moral and intellectual challenges. Those in the lead have the duty to help find new patterns for the future. Japan, which has changed over the past two centuries more than most countries and at a decidedly brisker rate but has achieved these changes in recent years without great disorder or confusion, perhaps has an especially important leadership role to play in this field too. The fact that it is the only major country in the First World that, like most of the Third World countries, does not have a Western cultural background makes its experience and successes all the more valuable. Here again is an area in which Japan’s vast economic strength combined with its special cultural and historical background inevitably place it in an important position of leadership.

  The need to solve or at least ameliorate the problems facing mankind has never been greater. Fortunately in the late eighties the conditions for dealing with these problems appear to be better than in the past. The communist countries of the Second World have come to realize that their brand of faith will not sweep the world in revolution and that their attempt to force their own economies into a rigidly planned system has stifled their economic growth, particularly in agriculture. They have learned that, however noble the ideals of communism may sound, its rigid practices have impoverished their countries and thus undermined their political stability and military strength. First China under Deng Xiaoping and then the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev have moved toward freer economies in their respective countries, and this in turn has produced some relaxation of society and thought. Both countries also seem to have become more aware of the significance of the long period of peace with the First World since World War II and a
s a result appear to have become somewhat less paranoid in their fears of the outside world. They seem to desire to reduce their external military adventures and build up their trade and technological contacts with the First World as rapidly as possible. One consequence of these trends has been a slight limiting and even reduction of nuclear weapons in step with the United States and a surge of popular demands for greater personal freedom and progress toward democracy.

  The relaxing of tensions between the great powers may have helped to quiet some of the many conflicts between the smaller powers. The protracted war between Iran and Iraq, which brought serious turmoil to the vitally important export of oil from the Persian Gulf, came to a halt in 1988, and we may even be witnessing the passing of the peak of frustration with modern life expressed in the frenzy of Islamic fundamentalism that has inflamed the Moslem world in recent years. In 1987 and 1988 South Korea took some important and perhaps lasting steps away from military dictatorship and toward democracy and stability. It and the heavily armed and violently hostile communist state of North Korea, which earlier fought a terribly destructive war involving the United States, China, and other nations besides themselves, have made a few steps toward each other that may signify the beginning of a drift toward peaceful coexistence.

  Many crises and conflicts remain in the Third World, and the course of events is unpredictable in countries like the Soviet Union and China, where a self-appointed handful of men contend in secret with each other for control over their millions of compatriots. But at no time in the past four decades have relations between the First and Second worlds looked more hopeful and the chances for true world peace seemed more promising. The late eighties and early nineties may be a key moment in history, opening great possibilities for Japan if it is ready.

  If mankind is to avoid self-destruction, certain basic measures are necessary, not the least of which is the full-hearted participation of Japan. This is the true meaning of being an economic giant. The First World must remain firm in its democratic system and successful in its close-knit economic relations. On this basis, it then must make it possible for the Third World to develop and eventually join it in a prosperous worldwide community. And finally, peace must be preserved with the Second World and mutual trade expanded with it so that it too can someday become a part of a unified and prosperous trading world.

  Since these goals are ardently desired by most Japanese, one might wonder why Japan does not plunge into the job of achieving them. It has already once played a very significant role in shaping the modern world when it demonstrated that modern technology and prosperity were not just Western traits, but could belong to all people. Why then should Japan hang back now from using its great potential influence in achieving these basic objectives, which are so necessary for its own existence and for the well-being of the whole world?

  There are several problems that hold it up. The chief one is probably Japan’s long history as an isolated, inward-looking country. When Japan mastered modern technology and economic skills, it did so for its own national survival. But to achieve these other broader goals, Japan must now think of the interests of the whole world as well as its own specific objectives. The Japanese are not accustomed to doing this. To be a leader in the world today requires the ability to see the globe as a whole and not just one’s own small corner of it and one’s particular self-interests. It calls for a sense of internationalism—a feeling of being a citizen of the world as well as of a particular country—and few Japanese have this capacity. It is almost unimaginable to most of them.

  The problem is complicated by two specific fears. Many Japanese, feeling sharply their cultural and racial differences from the members of the other First World countries, wonder if they will be accepted by the others as true equals. Deep prejudices do linger on. World War II, when the Japanese were so violently hated, and even the nineteenth century, when the West was maddeningly arrogant to all “lesser breeds,” were historically not long ago. Westerners share responsibility for the attitude of Japanese and should do their best to help them overcome it.

  The other and actually greater fear is that Japan, in developing the needed spirit of internationalism, will lose its own identity. By historical chance, modern technology and social and political organization came to Japan from the West, dressed, as it were, in Western clothes. The costume, of course, was a superficial matter, but the feeling in Japan is strong that modernization somehow is not Japanese but Western. Comparable attitudes are common throughout the world, but they fit Japan especially poorly. The rest of the modernized world has changed vastly too. An American of the 1980s is virtually as far from being an American of the 1880s as a Japanese of the 1980s is unlike one of the 1880s. Tenth-century Europeans had as far to go to become twentieth-century Europeans as tenth-century Japanese to being twentieth-century ones. But Europeans and Americans, unaware of or indifferent to foreign influence, felt no loss of a sense of identity.

  It is unfortunate that the Japanese, who may have changed less because of the self-consciousness of an isolated people, should have so strong a fear of losing their Japaneseness. The fear is completely misplaced. Most non-Japanese feel that the danger is that the Japanese may have too strong a sense of self-identity. If Japanese instead saw themselves more as world citizens and had a greater sense of self-confidence, they would be in an excellent position to play a major role in shaping the world during these last few crucial years of the twentieth century. It is up to the Japanese to act, not react. In a sense, the future of the world is to a large extent in Japan’s hands, depending much on what Japanese think and what they are willing to do.

  If the Japanese are able to put aside their fears and take a creative, positive role in the world, there are several specific things they should attempt to do for the world and themselves. Japan should take a major role in bringing world trade back into balance. This it can help do in several ways, all beneficial to Japan itself. For one thing, it should spend a great deal more of its trade surpluses for the benefit of its own consumers. They have a great need to expand housing, living space, roadways, sewerage, and other living facilities. They require much more room for public use and amusement. They need a plan to reshape Japan extensively into a sort of technology and production park surrounded by adequate living space. To do this, the area devoted to agriculture would undoubtedly have to be reduced, but this would help balance trade and benefit Japanese consumers by cutting the horrendous prices they pay for food.

  A second area in which Japan could take a major role of leadership would be in helping to create a strong and sound world monetary system, which is much needed. A third major area would be to contribute much more aid than Japan now does to the less developed nations of the Third World. More constructive investment in the Third World and much larger importation of goods from it would help balance world trade, contribute to the development of the Third World as a future trading partner for Japan, and benefit Japanese consumers, all at the same time. Increased economic relations with China, and in time with the Soviet Union, would do the same for Second World relations with the First, increasing world prosperity and making the dangers of a catastrophic war more remote.

  AP/Wide World

  Rice fields, the Shinkansen, and Mount Fuji in late summer without its crown of snow.

  The question remains of whether Japan will find itself psychologically able to abandon its traditional reactive attitude and take a more dynamic approach to world problems. The preference of the Japanese for group leadership and decisions by consensus makes this a particularly difficult change for them to make, but it is virtually a necessity for a world superpower. Japan as an economic giant has brought the problem on itself and can no longer be simply a reactor to initiatives of others.

  Fortunately, there is reason to believe that Japan will begin to move more positively. Its leaders are intellectually well aware of the problem, and the last few years of the eighties have witnesse
d many stirrings in the right direction. Business leaders have joined the government in making generous gifts to American universities and other centers for the study of Japanese culture throughout the world; the powerful Keidanren (Federation of Economic Enterprises) promises a “Marshall Plan” for East and Southeast Asia in 1989; the new emperor, Akihito, spoke of working for “improved welfare of the human race” in his first public statement on January 9, 1989; aid money has been spectacularly increased, especially for Asian countries; Japanese investment and trade with China have been greatly expanded; investment and other contacts with South Korea have been much increased; efforts have been made to establish relations with North Korea; economic ties are being formed at breathtaking speed with many First World countries, especially the United States; younger Japanese look upon close relations with the West as a matter of course; this younger generation seems unconcerned by any reputed loss of Japanese identity, recognizing that culturally the rest of the world is being as Japanized as Japan is being Westernized; the old concern about the adverse effects of internationalization on Japan are becoming a problem of the past. In particular, the fear of Japan losing its identity through Westernization seems to be increasingly a problem of the old, who are really thinking of an age in history fast fading away. Young Japanese continue to be very Japanese and proud of it, eager to teach others about their country and not afraid to learn from others in return. The question is more not whether the Japanese will retain their identity, but whether they will be able to become sufficiently international to play the role in the world they are capable of and the world so badly needs.