Japanese Impressions of America
BERGER, MICHAEL
A SMOTHERING EMBRACE Japanese Impressions of America BY MICHAEL BERGER Tokyo Twenty-five years after coming under direct American influence following the shock of military defeat, the Japanese...
...They are cold," said Takeshi Hidaka, who studied in the U.S...
...chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic party's education committee, complained: "Postwar education did not prepare females adequately for a modern society...
...Better than 800.000 will visit Europe...
...Ironically, although more Japanese than ever before--over 100,000--will visit the U.S...
...Is this progress...
...The present instability of U.S...
...I was called 'China boy' by some kid...
...Not that there is any talk these days of expansionism, or of a grand design for Asia...
...The unions counter that others cannot find jobs so easily, and again one hears the bitter accusation that Americans are "cold...
...Americans reply that the severance pay is generous and many Japanese companies quickly hire those skilled workers who are released...
...society, continued Nagai, has cast "a shadow over the American people's sentiments toward Japan...
...That's when I got nationalistic...
...bases here...
...Therefore, I become impotent if I go to bed with an American woman...
...That was my first taste of American violence...
...Nosaka, whose parents were killed in the War, wrote a highly emotional account of his mixed feelings toward Americans: "When I see their huge bodies, their healthy complexions, and hear them talking...
...hippies...
...And so are we Japanese...
...I do, too, but the Japanese way is not the same...
...Before I returned to Japan, some white friends asked me why I wanted to go home and leave that great country...
...Under a massive reform plan to take effect next spring, Japanese history texts will again include divine mythology in the story of the nation's origin...
...We have our own groups, but inside those groups we are very interdependent...
...for nearly six years...
...In a year and a half in Los Angeles, I made no close white friends, only Japanese-Americans...
...I am still convinced that when compared with Americans, Japanese are an inferior race...
...At the same time, many of them are attempting to disengage psychologically from what they feel has become a smothering embrace...
...Some Japanese, when asked for their impressions upon returning from the United States, speak superficially of the oneness of man, of how people in all parts of the world are "pretty much alike...
...The expression on the face of the wartime military leader, General Hideki Tojo, has changed from a frown to a smile in the textbooks, and instead of improving the poorly taught English in their schools, the Japanese have chosen to make it an optional subject...
...I feel uneasy and become emotionally upset...
...The answer: compulsory "home studies" for all Japanese girls, including cooking, sewing and instruction in the use of appliances...
...I think the violence which is tearing at America threatens the very existence of that free society," says Michio Nagai...
...The current mood, in fact, was perhaps best expressed by Akira Matsura, a newsman for the Japan Broadcasting Corporation: "Americans always judge things by their own standards...
...A SMOTHERING EMBRACE Japanese Impressions of America BY MICHAEL BERGER Tokyo Twenty-five years after coming under direct American influence following the shock of military defeat, the Japanese are still struggling to understand the United States...
...I felt I would go out of my mind if I did not keep drinking whiskey from morning to night...
...I lived and studied in Fresno, California for three years, had good times there, but also saw a black man shot right on the street for no apparent reason...
...It spoke of the United States as "frightening—a divided nation with no general will [but...
...The experience of America, although not this traumatic, is just as personal to other Japanese travelers...
...This is a key argument because its foundation lies in the growing Japanese belief that Americans are, after all, neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and that they may in fact be on the way down, or out...
...They make me act unnecessarily arrogant, or they make me smile at them servilely and flatteringly...
...Meanwhile Kazuo Tanikawa...
...The Japanese businessmen I meet are puzzled and anxious about America--many of them have sons studying there--but they seem to feel that as long as free enterprise survives, things will be all right...
...Another example of Japanese paranoia about Americans is the comment made last year by writer Akiyuki Nosaka in response to a survey showing a marked increase in the number of Japanese who felt themselves superior to foreigners...
...Michael Berger is on the stall of the Pacific Stars and Stripes...
...Then I saw the other side: workers in blue shirts with dirty hands...
...What I believe is more important," Nagai went on, "is that the United States is in danger of losing its free society...
...When cuts in personnel are made, Japanese unions complain, not enough is done to relocate workers...
...A revealing essay by Professor Yonosuke Nagai of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who has lived and studied in America, recently appeared in Japan's leading intellectual journal, Churo Koron...
...lit is progress, they say, not to be confused by what is going on in the West...
...In a Japanese company," notes a union official, "it is unthinkable for a worker to lose his job unless the company goes bankrupt...
...If I were to take my first trip, I'd go gladly, but if I had another chance now, I'd hesitate...
...There is doubt, anyway, that English is the international language," declares Professor Toru Yoshimura, a member of the government's special study commission on university reform...
...a former professor at Ohio State, Stanford and Tokyo universities, and now a chief editorial writer for A sahi, the nation's largest newspaper...
...We don't understand deeply, and then we overreact...
...in 1970, the projected tourist totals for other areas are far more impressive...
...It came deliberately close to us, knocking down several people...
...The kids I knew in college were friendly, but they went their own way...
...He forecast that the approach of the 1972 elections will overheat the political situation, bringing America's hidden emotions, prejudices and grudges to the surface: "America will become intent on finding scapegoats Tand] the fuse of mounting anti-Japanese moods may be touched off, quite accidentally...
...Americans are nice, but they are so naive...
...asked a Tokyo girl...
...another 700,000 will tour Asia, mostly Taiwan and Hong Kong...
...The emphasis is on reestablishing "Japanese values," particularly in the educational system...
...The bureaucrats, educators and politicians who are pushing these changes through, however, do not agree...
...not for solutions of modern problems, but their symptoms...
...Still, it is a fascinating place: a plural society, so unlike Japan...
...Japanese journals and newspapers dwell on American violence at home and in Vietnam, and the easy conclusion for their readers is that they should look to the U.S...
...Nevertheless, in the end the Japanese who have visited the U.S...
...That may be happening now...
...social conflict...
...remain ambivalent about America, questioning their own reactions to it...
...Before I went to Harvard," recalled Keni-chiro Hirano, now an assistant professor at Tokyo University, "I thought the streets were paved with gold there...
...I took part in an antiwar march across the Charles River in Boston one day, and a car drove by...
...they are also disturbed by what they see as an impersonal detachment in America's human relations...
...In business life, for example, this means the employer "takes care of his employes," and the difference in approach has been a great source of discord between Japanese workers and their American employers at U.S...
...Japan, of course, continues to search for its own model...
...a national climate which constantly contains the possibility of settling accounts with violence...
...I think we are going backward...
...American violence is not all that troubles the Japanese...
...When questioned in greater depth, though, a different image emerges--that of "violent Americans," of a nation immeasurably distant from Japan in terms of culture and outlook...
...my friend's car was shot at during the night...
...Japan's quest for a new identity has taken it, characteristically, along once-traveled paths...
Vol. 53 • October 1970 • No. 19
