Nakasone Remark on U.S. Minorities Stirs Criticism

Japanese newspapers Tuesday quoted Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone as saying that blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans have pulled down the level of learning in the United States.

However, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yoshio Hatano, said Nakasone was quoted “completely out of context.”

“The prime minister said, in effect, that the United States was a multiracial society and had been making great progress as a democracy, overcoming educational, social and other issues associated with such a background,” Hatano said in a formal statement. “In no sense has he ever implied that the level of intelligence is low in the United States.”

Nakasone’s reported remarks seem certain to prove an embarrassment to a man who claims special abilities in understanding and dealing with foreigners.

Meaning Unclear

His precise meaning, however, remains unclear, because in the Japanese language, sentence subjects are often left unstated. The listener mentally fills in the hole based on the general drift of the conversation.

Newspaper accounts varied on the wording of Nakasone’s remarks, delivered in a speech Monday to a meeting of junior party officials that focused primarily on political strategy.

Most press accounts quoted him along the lines that “in the United States there is a rather large number of blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and (it) is lower.”

Since this came after a comment that Japan is an information-oriented and highly educated society, reporters concluded that the unsaid “it” referred to those characteristics. One newspaper inserted the subject as “intellectual level,” while another said “knowledge level.”

Remarks on Women

Newspapers also noted a remark that Nakasone made about women voters. Again, precise wording varied in the accounts, but it was something like: “I pay attention to my necktie when I appear on television. When women watch, it seems that they remember the color of my tie but not what I said.”

The Foreign Ministry considers Nakasone’s remarks and the way they are reported in the United States to be capable of seriously damaging relations, an official said. Due to often tense negotiations over trade and Japan’s $50-billion trade surplus with the United States, Japan is anxious not to give Americans cause for offense in other fields.

(In Washington, the Congressional Black Caucus asked the Japanese Embassy for an immediate clarification of Nakasone’s remarks. California Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said that whether Nakasone “was referring to the intelligence level or the literacy level of blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans . . . either way he should retract the statement.”)

Foreign Criticism

That the government is reacting at all seems due primarily to foreign criticism. Japanese newspapers did not consider Nakasone’s words a big story. Some of those that carried them put them in light, humorously written “Reporter’s Notebook” columns.

Nakasone’s potential embarrassment is compounded by the fact that eight days ago, he took the highly unusual step of firing a Cabinet minister for publicly questioning whether Japan was really a blatant aggressor during and before World War II.

The statements infuriated China and South Korea. Japan occupied both countries in that period and is today anxious to improve relations with them. Some political analysts, however, feel that many Japanese agree with those views on the war, though they rarely express them directly.

Japan is one of the world’s most culturally and racially homogenous countries. The largest minority, Koreans, number about 700,000 in a population of 120 million. Many Japanese are proud of this sameness and count it as a strong plus in the country’s economic success. Though calls to “internationalize” are heard constantly here, the country is, at the same time, wary of anything that might dilute its cultural unity.