Intro: A Japan that can say No

Site note: This is the introduction created by the group that originally distributed the translation on USENET.


This is the first of eleven messages that constitute, in their entirety, a translation of a best-selling Japanese book called "The Japan That Can Say No." If you read no further in this introductory note, please at least read this: the group that has typed in and posted this translation wishes to secure for it the widest possible distribution. Please collect these numbered essays and mail them, either in print or electronically, to colleagues, newspaper editors, members of the national and local government, academics, radio talk-show hosts, friends, and family; hand them out at work; leave piles of them by the coffee machine. Note that the book is rather short, and so can be conveniently Xerox-copied.

This book has been a best-seller in Japan, and has been the subject of some attention in the United States; members of Congress have read it, and some spoke of reading it into the Congressional Record, but none of them ever did that. It has been excerpted in newspaper articles and Usenet postings, but these excerpts are always the same, because nearly no one has available the full text of a translation.

This has not been an oversight on the part of the authors, Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara. Akio Morita is the chairman of Sony, the very large electronics conglomerate that has recently purchased Columbia Pictures. Shintaro Ishihara has been described in some news accounts as a right-wing extremist, and Morita's association with him has been described as a foolish mistake. These accounts are very misleading; so nearly as I can tell, Mr. Ishihara is no more an extremist in his country than, say, Bob Dole is in ours. He is a somewhat right-of-center, charismatic and powerful member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who placed third in the race to succeed Prime Minister Sosuke Uno this past August. Ishihara has served as the Minister of Transport, and is currently a member of the Diet, Japan's legislative body.

The writers of American news accounts that call Mr. Morita's co-authorship of the book with Mr. Ishihara a foolish mistake are making a basic error of a sort that has complicated our understanding of the relationship between the United States and Japan: they are imagining that the reception the book would be given in the United States should have played a major factor in Morita's decision. But this book was not written to be read in the United States (and, so far, it has not been); it was written to be read by a Japanese public that questions the nature of the post-war political relationship between the United States and Japan. It is a political instrument that has helped to define for the public the positions of its authors in much the same way that a popular book of political essays might do so for an up-and-coming politician in the United States, and more so, because the Japanese read such books more avidly than does the American public.

The book's publisher, Kobunsha Publishing Ltd., has said that it has no plans to publish the book in English and has authorized no translations. Ishihara and Morita have spoken of how the United States government has violated their copyright in distributing translations of the book to members of Congress, and Morita has gone on record as saying that he does not want to publish the book in the United States, as this might inflame relations between the two countries.

According to rumor, the translations available in Washington have been written by either DARPA or the CIA. We have no idea if this is true, or which translation this might be; however, it is one of those circulated in Washington. It was apparently done in haste (and perhaps by non-native speakers of English), as it contains numerous typographical errors, errors of grammar, and errors of diction, which we have made no attempt to rectify.

This translation has been entered and electronically distributed by a group that wishes to remain anonymous. This is because we have no wish to be bear-hugged in court by a powerful Japanese politician and the CEO of an immense Japanese conglomerate, all under the approving eye of the U.S. Department of State. However, we should like to explain why we wished to embark on a project whose success could only worsen the trade relationship, and even the political relationship between the United States and Japan.

We Americans live in a country controlled by a variety of interests. Over the past ten years we have repeatedly put into government a group of people who cannot even make up their minds as to whether public education should be funded; who are against the creation of a national industrial policy; and who do not believe that the government should take any steps to ensure that manufacturing jobs should continue to exist in the United States.

Like many Americans, those of us who have undertaken to distribute this book are able to make up our minds about all of these issues. We believe that public education should be one of the first national priorities and that the United States should have national industrial and trade policies to ensure the continued existence of domestic manufacturing. Our feelings about this are based on a simple desire to see the United States maintain a decent standard of living for its citizens. People who flip burgers are able to realize fewer of their dreams than are skilled laborers who build things, not least because people who flip burgers create less value for the economy and so make less money.

How does "The Japan That Can Say No" figure in this? Our country is obsessed with feeling good, to the exclusion of good sense. The popular conception of our time runs something like this: "Everything's great, just like the president says. Those crazy folks on Wall Street go up and down, but they do okay, and if some more factories close, if a few shiftless characters can't afford housing, what the hell, huh? And those clever Japanese, what will they think of next? They're always thinking of neat new toys to make for us."

The reality is much more grim. It seems very possible that in ten or twenty years there will be no sector in which American-made products are internationally competitive. Many American industrial concerns no longer establish domestic manufacturing plants because they are unable to find laborers sufficiently skilled to operate them efficiently. We educate fewer and fewer engineers each year. Much of American commerce is controlled by a managerial class that has been trained mostly in marketing, has trouble with simple technical concepts, and prefers the ease of marketing foreign products to the complexities of managing manufacturing and development. Meanwhile, many American citizens are unable to make ends meet, and their number is clearly increasing.

All of these points are made regularly by domestic policy analysts, to absolutely no significant effect. We were struck by the fact that they are also made repeatedly in "The Japan That Can Say No," although here they are often couched in racist and belligerent language. Ishihara and Morita wrote their book for domestic consumption, to promote themselves and particular Japanese national policies. We wish to use the book for an analogous purpose: we hope that reading "The Japan That Can Say No" will help to jolt Americans out of their complacency.

We believe that the urgency of our country's situation justifies our disregard for the wishes of the book's authors. Their interest in analyzing the United States' problems seems to be motivated at best by a penchant for self-congratulation and at worst by one for jingoistic sentiment and self-promotion. The fact that they are attempting to ensure that their audience remains exclusively Japanese reinforces our sense that they do not see our country's interests as theirs. Still, much of what they say is accurate, and we believe that reading it may help our country to act in its own interests.

Consider the analogy of a family who make their living by farming, and who are in domestic trouble. The head of the family (say the father) is a compulsive gambler, and, although some family members do their best to wake him up to the fact that he is destroying the family's livelihood, he pays no attention, selling off the tractor, the truck, the cows, mortgaging the house and the fields. He points out to his family that his good friends in town who run the bank, the general store, and the casino are still happy to do business with him. The bank still gives him mortgages, the general store still buys what's left of the farming equipment, and the casino always lets him in to play.

Perhaps if the farmer knew he was the laugh of the town, he'd pay some attention. If he heard his friends clucking their tongues and saying that it was an awful shame, what he was doing to his family and that they didn't think he'd ever again get back on his feet, even as they eagerly bought his tractor and his fields and continued taking his money at the casino, he might think twice. Maybe he'd even realize how far he'd fallen, and set about the difficult work of putting his farm back in order.

If this makes sense to you, please work to disseminate copies of this book as much as possible, especially to people outside of the Usenet community -- those of us with access to networks are, after all, a small minority of the national community. Please feel free to disseminate as well this introductory note.

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