Nakasone Denies U.S. Racial Slur : Explains He Meant Ethnic Mix Makes Education Difficult

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said Wednesday that he did not mean “to slander any country or to engage in racial discrimination” when he suggested that the large numbers of blacks and Hispanics in the United States pull down the U.S. educational level.

Nakasone told reporters that he had not chosen his words carefully Monday when he said that the “level of Japan’s society is considerably higher than that of the United States.”

In his remarks to junior members of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Nakasone also said “there are many blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in the United States, and their level is on the average extremely low.”

What he really meant to say, Nakasone told reporters Wednesday, was that “the United States has made great achievements in the Apollo (manned-space) program and in SDI (President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative), but that there are things the Americans have not been able to achieve because (of the existence) of multiple nationalities.”

He said Japan has it easier because its society is homogeneous.

Multiracial ‘Difficulties’

“In no sense whatsoever did I imply any racial discrimination,” Nakasone said Wednesday. “I said to the effect that America’s multiracial society, while it usually serves as an advantage, poses unique difficulties at times, for instance in such areas as education.”

It was unclear from the Japanese-language accounts whether Nakasone was talking about intelligence or literacy levels. Two newspapers, Yomiuri Shimbun and Tokyo Shimbun, said he was referring to intelligence levels. An official of Nakasone’s party said he apparently meant literacy levels.

There was strong American reaction to Nakasone’s remarks, including threats by black politicians to call for a boycott of Japanese goods. Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he was “appalled at the insensitivity, at best, and racism, at worst” of Nakasone’s remarks. Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) called on Nakasone to “publicly repudiate and completely disassociate himself from any form of bigotry.”

The American criticism is an embarrassment to Nakasone, who has achieved unprecedented popularity as a leader sensitive to international issues.

Called Out of Context

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the prime minister’s comments had been taken out of context. The chief Cabinet secretary, Masaharu Gotoda, told reporters Wednesday that the Japanese government explained the contents of Nakasone’s speech to the U.S. Embassy here and that the embassy expressed its understanding of the Japanese position.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the U.S. government has accepted Japan’s explanation that Nakasone’s remarks were taken out of context and were not intended as a racial slur.

“Prime Minister Nakasone has repeatedly expressed to the President and to others his personal admiration for the vitality and accomplishments of American society without qualification,” Redman said. “Given that record, we take the government of Japan’s clarification at face value.”

Several of Japan’s major newspapers attacked the prime minister, nevertheless, and a number took advantage of the controversy to question the extent of Nakasone’s commitment to internationalism. The mass-circulation Asahi Shimbun accused Nakasone of being arrogant and failing to understand a society different from his own.

The affair could have far-reaching consequences for Nakasone, who until this incident had been basking in the glory of having led his party to a landslide election victory in July.

Embarrassing for Premier

The criticism from abroad has been particularly embarrassing for Nakasone because he dismissed his minister of education earlier this month for making remarks that offended China and South Korea.

“It is simple to make a wound in another person’s heart but it is not so simple for that wound to heal,” Asahi said, quoting what Nakasone said in dismissing Masayuki Fujio. “A Cabinet minister is different from a scholar or a journalist. It is important that he have sensitivity in international affairs.”

The paper suggested that Nakasone has displayed little of this quality and accused him of failing to understand that “America’s intellectual energy comes from the very fact that it has opened its doors to people of different races.” It cited statistics indicating that a greater percentage of Americans than Japanese go on to higher education.

Only 1% Foreigners

Fewer than 1% of Japan’s 120 million people are foreigners. The largest minority consists of about 700,000 Koreans, many of whom are descendants of laborers forcibly brought to Japan during World War II. There are about 50,000 Chinese and smaller numbers of various Western nationalities.

Laws are being changed to eliminate official discrimination against minorities, but foreigners complain that Japanese society remains largely closed to foreigners and that discrimination is rampant in employment, marriage and housing.

A number of newspapers have seen American accusations of racism as a chance to point to the narrow nationalism many Japanese critics see as a driving force in Nakasone’s career.

“We would like to believe the prime minister when he says he was not engaging in racial discrimination,” the Tokyo Shimbun said in an editorial, “but his simplistic comparison of intelligence levels, ignoring American history and concentrating only on the presence of nonwhite minorities, strikes us as brash and makes us doubt just what the prime minister means when he says he wants to turn Japan into an international country.”

In a recent speech in Parliament, Nakasone said he wants Japan to become a country that contributes to the world. Poking fun at that promise and recalling Nakasone’s attempts to revamp Japan’s educational system, the daily Mainichi said that “maybe this ‘intelligent’ prime minister is truly concerned about the declining level of knowledge in the United States. Maybe he wants to put himself at the head of an international educational committee.”