Home › Features › Essays › Living with the Real Japan

Living with the Real Japan

By George R. Packard III
October 1967
Article Summary and Author Biography

In the first century of our relations with Japan, both countries swung from extremes of high hope to despair, and back again to hope. Now, with greater opportunities to know each other and with a dialogue reopened between our intellectuals, there should be wiser calculations on both sides of the Pacific. Instead, we are again moving in different directions and, at least for the moment, there is the danger that high expectations will again founder on misunderstandings.

Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

In the first century of our relations with Japan, both countries swung from extremes of high hope to despair, and back again to hope. Now, with greater opportunities to know each other and with a dialogue reopened between our intellectuals, there should be wiser calculations on both sides of the Pacific. Instead, we are again moving in different directions and, at least for the moment, there is the danger that high expectations will again founder on misunderstandings.

It is not surprising that we are badly informed about Japan. Our press coverage of the major power in Asia and the fourth greatest industrial power in the world is absurdly inadequate. Only one of the regular American correspondents in Tokyo can speak and read Japanese usefully. American editors seem determined to limit all stories on Japan to the exotic, inscrutable or threatening. Scholarly works, with few exceptions, are becoming increasingly specialized. Despite new attention to East Asia in college and high school courses, it is still hard for the layman to find out what he needs to know about our most important and difficult Asian ally.

The Japanese, it should be added, have done little better. Members of their press corps in Washington speak English badly as a rule, and reach few important sources. Their editors favor critics of the Administration without giving equal space to majority views. Japanese visitors tend to be subjective and emotional when they record their impressions of the United States, and scholars are either specialized like our own or committed to a viewpoint before they arrive. Because of the Occupation and our continuing physical presence in Japan, it is easy for Japanese to feel they know us when often they are dealing in false images.

It may be that we can each survive our misapprehensions, letting the diplomats try to untangle the knots, but it would seem better to try to get the picture in focus now than to face a new round of frustrations later on.

II

This is a premium article

You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access.

Buy PDF

Buy a premium PDF reprint of this article.

Related

Essay, Jan 1967
Our Dialogue with Japan
Edwin O. Reischauer

The rioting crowds that clamored at the gates of the Japanese Diet building in May and June and the throngs of Zengakuren students who snake-danced wildly down the streets of Tokyo and swarmed over Hagerty's car at Haneda Airport have given pause to many persons in both the United States and Japan. . . . Never since the end of the war has the gap in understanding between Americans and Japanese been wider than over this incident. . . .

Read
Essay, Jan 1969
Japan: Eye on 1970
John K. Emmerson

The United States and Japan approach a changing relationship. Japan wants the continued nuclear guarantee of the United States but is restive at the protracted American control of Okinawa and the irksome problems arising from American military bases in Japan. The natural desire of a leading industrial nation for a more "independent" foreign policy, including what is vaguely expressed as "autonomous defense," appears to be steadily growing. At the same time, the United States, under a new Administration and in a post-Viet Nam period, can be expected to reassess its responsibilities overseas, particularly in Asia. The simultaneous meeting in Japan of these forces for change could, if the gears mesh smoothly, produce a healthy transition toward a sounder, more mutually responsive Japanese-American relationship. On the other hand, misunderstandings or misplaced expectations on either or both sides could block such a happy result and damage the interests of both countries.

Read
Essay, Oct 1964
Japanese Security and American Policy
George F. Kennan

The provisions of the Japanese Constitution barring the resort to war as an instrument of Japanese policy, and effectively committing Japan not to maintain armed forces on a major scale, has long raised the question how Japan's security is to be assured in a world still replete with sources of international conflict. As late as 1948 it was still General MacArthur's view, if the writer of these lines understood him correctly, that it would not be essential for the United States to maintain armed forces on the Japanese archipelago permanently or for a protracted time either for its own security or for that of Japan; in his view, the most suitable status for Japan would be one of permanent demilitarization and neutralization under such general protection as might be afforded by the United Nations and by the friendly interest of the United States. He appeared to believe, as did this writer, that if such a status could be arranged with the concurrence of the Soviet Government, the likelihood of a Soviet attack on Japan would be minimal; and it was not easy to see from what other quarter Japan could be seriously threatened. This concept assumed, of course, an eventual agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and other interested parties, on the terms of a Japanese peace settlement.

Read