But ‘Unfair’ Tag Is Understandable, Japan’s Leader Says : Change Culture? Nakasone Rejects Idea

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said Thursday that he does not blame Americans for calling Japan “unfair” but said suggestions that Japan change its culture are “extremely arrogant.”

In an interview with The Times, he said he can understand why some aspects of the Japanese economy are criticized by Americans and other foreigners. He promised to try to correct them.

When viewed by foreigners, the prime minister said, points of unfairness do exist to a certain extent in the Japanese economic system. But charges of unfairness were clearly upsetting to him.

“There is nothing as shameful as being called unfair in international society. . . . In international relations, if we do not maintain manners of fair play, we have failed as internationalists. I am trying to implant that consciousness in Japanese minds,” he said.

Insisting that Japan “change its culture,” however, is another matter.

Asked about demands to that effect by Reagan Administration officials, Nakasone angrily responded: “That is meddling in our affairs. That is arrogance, . . . extremely arrogant.” Both Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige and former Undersecretary of Commerce Lionel H. Olmer have said publicly that Japan needs to change its culture to be more receptive to imports.

The interview with the prime minister ranged widely, from trade policy, to U.S.-Japanese relations, to Japan’s “fundamental mistake” in entering World War II, to his own personal feelings on the day 40 years ago when Japan surrendered to end the war, and to his nation’s limited defense efforts today.

As an example of what foreigners see as unfairness, he cited Japan’s standards and certifications of safety and quality of products, a major revision of which he announced Tuesday. “Japan set up those systems in a spirit of good will--with the government acting as a lord protector of the people,” he said. “But when viewed from an international viewpoint, (they constitute) excessive meddling by the government (in affairs that) should be left to the individual.

“In that sense, when viewed from foreign countries, it cannot be said there is nothing to be criticized as unfair. These points must be corrected,” he said.

Nakasone said that is exactly what he is trying to do now. “Japan must change itself to the international standard,” he said.

Asked if he thinks that Congress, after its summer recess, might enact protectionist legislation aimed at Japan, which last year enjoyed a $36.9-billion trade surplus with the United States, Nakasone said, “I hope that such a thing will not occur.

“If Congress examines in detail what we are doing, if they see our determination and what we are implementing, I think we can win sufficient understanding,” he added.

Nakasone said he believes that the United States now, 40 years after the end of World War II, fully accepts Japan as an ally. Japan, for its part, he added, considers its alliance with the United States to be its “life-line.” Both the government and the people hold that conviction, which “will not collapse,” he said.

In their mutual interest in maintaining peace in the Pacific and in the world, “Japan-U.S. relations are unchangeable,” he said.

Nakasone, who said Japan’s defeat 40 years ago left him with “very complicated feelings,” is a leader who looks both to the past and to the future.

On Aug. 15, 1945, the day of surrender, “personally, I felt it was very regrettable. It was unpardonable to the history of Japan--to carve the fact of defeat into history. After all, I was a navy officer at that time.

“But in another aspect, I felt relieved--that ‘with (defeat), the people have been saved--no longer will there be blackouts (during American bombing raids). Life will become bright again.’ ”

The moment of defeat also brought the memory of “the death of my younger brother surging up in my heart. It brought back that sadness,” Nakasone said.

The brother, Ryosuke Nakasone, 25, one of four children of a Gumma prefecture lumber dealer, died in a naval aircraft accident in February, 1945.

The prime minister himself entered the navy in April, 1941, as a logistics officer who had been commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade after graduation from Tokyo Imperial University. He recalls spending many evenings sitting on the deck of the cruiser Aoba, in the days before Pearl Harbor, debating the possibility of war against the United States with a lieutenant commander who was a graduate of Japan’s naval academy.

“I insisted that we must not go to war (with the United States). That career lieutenant commander argued that oil would run out (because of an American blockade). He often said that ‘from a gradual decline we will fall into a precipitous decline. . . .’ I thought we must not go into war consumed with such a feeling of despair.”

Japan’s fundamental mistake, he said in the interview, was believing “that Hitler and Germany would win” and deciding to go to war against the United States “counting on a German victory.”

“Prewar politics, under the strong pressure of the military, drifted, and the leaders lacked the insight to stop it,” he said.

On Aug. 15, when Japan commemorates the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, Nakasone said he “will pray from my heart for the souls of those who died in the war. . . . It will be a day to pray that war will be purged forever from Japan and from the rest of the world”--and for “no more Hiroshimas.”

With an eye toward the future and “the high-level information society that will emerge in the 21st Century,” Nakasone said he is trying to get Japan to correct the “ill effects” of two different structures implanted in the country at two historical turning points.

Since taking office in November, 1982, the 67-year-old prime minister has often spoken of an “overall review of assets and liabilities of the postwar era,” with the intention of clearing the decks of liabilities.

But in the interview, he also spoke of his hope to move Japan away from its 100-year history as a nation run by bureaucrats.

“Now, I am building a base camp (for a new society),” he said.

On the asset side of the 1945-1952 American occupation, Nakasone said he evaluated “rather highly” the reforms that Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the American occupiers brought to Japan.

“Getting rid of the heavily ultranationalistic, militaristic tendencies that existed (in Japan) until then and launching a structure of a new democratic nation oriented toward peace (with) a society focused upon its citizens . . . was a big accomplishment,” he said.

But the postwar era also brought “ill effects.”

“Japanese became very materialistic-minded. . . . Japanese culture and Japanese identity were lost. (A feeling for the) nation has disappeared from the people’s minds. As a result, a very egotistic, irresponsible tendency has appeared, at least among some people.”

In effect, Japanese have abandoned the concept of “nation” as they have rejected the ultranationalism that the militarists created, Nakasone said.

A politician who, during a career of 38 years in Parliament made little secret of his ambition to lead his nation, Nakasone still holds high ambitions for Japan.

Japanese, he declared, have an “ambition to create a fusion of the material things and spirit of the cultures of the East and the West into a new . . . civilization.” But “to do that, we must take another look at our identity,” he said.

That is why “I am trying to establish Japanology studies” to conduct a “re-examination of (the essence of) Japan, . . . to create a scientific present-day (Japanology) based upon unique Japanese thinking,” he said.

Nakasone said he would like to find a new system of values in which the rights of the individual can coexist with a feeling for the value and needs of the nation--in essence, a new nationalism, what he called “a healthy democratic nation.”

The other set of problems--which have helped embroil Japan in trade friction with nearly all of its major trading partners--stems from the society Japan created in post-1868 reforms that followed its emergence from 250 years of isolation from the rest of the world, Nakasone said.

Seeking “to catch up with developed nations,” authority was centralized in Tokyo and bureaucrats’ powers strengthened, he said. “We set up a structure that strengthened regulations and control . . . (and) pulled the people forward.”

Now that Japan has become a nation of “very mature capitalism, the controls and regulations (that promoted growth) in the past, have now, to the contrary, become a detriment, hindering growth,” he said.

‘A Great Transformation’

Japan must, he said, end its reliance upon “the dogmatism of the bureaucracy,” lift controls and regulations and open its markets. “Otherwise, we cannot take the next step forward,” he said. “We are moving in this direction--in a great transformation.”

Nakasone said he hopes Congress will understand his attempt to transform Japan from “a closed social structure into an international nation.”

“As a country that has grown this large internationally, with this much international responsibility, we have reached the stage where we must change, or we will not be able to survive,” he declared.

On Japan’s defense efforts--a topic of growing sensitivity as the defense budget approaches the political limit of 1% of the gross national product that was fixed by the Cabinet in 1976--Nakasone said only that Japan will “replenish and carry out” the limited buildup spelled out in its 1976 National Defense Program Outline.

Asked if he had fears about the Soviet naval buildup in the Pacific, Nakasone said only that “compared with 10 years ago, international conditions surrounding Japan . . . have become very severe.”

By the end of the 20th Century, Nakasone predicted, Japan will be shouldering a heavier load of international responsibility. “Japanese are becoming aware of the need to assume more responsibility,” he said, “and this will increase further.”

“We have become (an economic) presence which has a great impact on the world whether we desire it or not. We are the country that received the greatest benefits of free trade in becoming a great economic power. That . . . means that we must exercise responsibility in line with that power and return the (favor of) the benefits we received to poor countries that are now in a developing stage.”

The Times next Tuesday will begin a three-part series on Japan marking Tokyo’s surrender that ended World War II.