Postwar Admiration of U.S. Fading in Japan : Popularity Victim of Economic Problems

For most of the post-World War II era, the United States was a country that the Japanese liked, admired, wished to emulate and trusted.

Today, envy of America’s broad expanses of land, its resources and its high standard of living remains. It is the No. 1 destination for Japan’s ever-growing number of overseas travelers. It also is the country that most Japanese cite in opinion polls as the foreign nation they like best.

America’s popularity ratings, however, are going down. More and more, the United States is being cited as an example to be avoided, not emulated. Admiration is being replaced by sympathy, sometimes pity. And trust in the United States is falling.

The new feeling arises partly from the decline of American economic strength in relation to Japan’s. But much of it is the fallout of rising economic frictions, repeated protectionist threats against Japan, and a perception that America is using Japan as a scapegoat for its own problems.

Crowning Blow

President Reagan’s imposition of punitive tariffs in retaliation for Japan’s alleged failure to uphold an agreement on trade in semiconductors was just the crowning blow to Japan’s growing frustrations with the United States.

As Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone prepares for talks with Reagan on the trade issue in Washington on Thursday, one highly placed Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, said:

“In Japan, for the first time, a danger is rising that the basic relationship with the United States is becoming blurred by the trade frictions.”

Through past disputes over textiles, steel, cars and the like, “always, the fabric of friendship was intact,” the official said. “But now, if we leave the situation as it is, we will get into danger. The boiling point of the Japanese public is getting high.”

Unprecedented Threat

Although Japan backed down from its own threat of retaliation against America’s semiconductor sanctions, the threat was unprecedented--and a measure of the anger growing in governmental circles.

A sense of victimization, ironically similar to American frustrations toward Japan, has developed. Just as many Americans believe that the Japanese intend to dominate industries that once were American strongholds, many Japanese believe that the United States is out to “get” them.

Typifying the “siege” mentality, Deputy Prime Minister Shin Kanemaru on April 10 compared Japan’s position today to conditions that it faced after the United States and three European countries imposed an economic blockade on it shortly before World War II.

Many politicians, businessmen and average Japanese believe the United States has promoted the yen’s appreciation to “punish” Japan, Kenichi Omae, a senior partner in the international business consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., said in an interview.

Popular Paperback

A new paperback entitled “Japan in Danger,” which argues that Japan is being made to pay the price for America’s economic troubles, has sold about 140,000 copies since it was published April 10. It was written by Hideo Itokawa, the father of modern Japanese rocket development.

At least a dozen works promoting a conspiracy theory that Jews control the world and are trying to bring Japan to its knees have come out in recent months. Two of them, written by Masami Uno, a Christian who is the founder and leader of the Middle East Problems Research Center in Osaka, have become best sellers.

Mitsuyoshi Tsuchiya, an instructor at Meiji University, said the significance of Uno’s books lay not in their anti-Jewish veneer--Uno himself insists that he is not anti-Jewish--but in “the identification of the Japanese people with the Jews as a people oppressed by the rest of the world.”

Last Sunday, Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, compared American tactics of threats, pressure and retaliation to “the second coming of the Black Ships”--the warships with which Commodore Matthew Perry in the mid-19th Century shocked Japan into ending 250 years of self-imposed isolation.

Resentment Growing

Growth of resentment toward the United States, Morita told a conference of 80 American and Japanese leaders, “is becoming alarmingly evident. It may erode mutual confidence.”

Japanese in all walks of life acknowledge that their nation has built up excessive surpluses in trade not only with the United States but with the entire world. A global surplus of about $100 billion, for example, is the estimate for fiscal 1986, which ended March 31.

But nearly everyone resents what is perceived as an increasingly highhanded attitude of Americans who, Japanese say, act as if they are blameless.

Opinion polls show that average Japanese blame almost equally their country’s own impediments to imports and American shortcomings for trade frictions. But most agree that removal of all Japanese obstacles would do little to reduce Japan’s surplus in trade with the United States.

Propaganda Cited

Omae said American charges of “unfair” Japanese trade practices “are interpreted in Japan as propaganda by the American government” to disguise America’s own responsibility for its trade imbalance.

“This is common sense in Japan. It’s discussed in all the teahouses. But Japanese don’t have the articulateness or the precision in language to communicate this feeling to the United States,” he said.

Kazuo Aichi, a member of Parliament who has gained a reputation as an “internationalist” in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said in an interview that most Japanese “don’t know what we have done to deserve retaliation” or threats.

Reagan’s semiconductor sanctions will probably swell their ranks, he added.

Hasn’t Reached Anger

“I fear feelings toward the United States will worsen,” he said.

Popular sentiment, however, hasn’t reached the point of anger, Aichi said. But people “feel the United States is being too one-sided. They feel the United States itself fails to make sufficient efforts to sell to Japan--in things like failing to equip cars with steering wheels on the right--and then complains that Japan’s markets are closed,” he said.

Ruling party members of Parliament, however, are “getting close to the point of anger. Their ranks are increasing bit by bit,” Aichi said.

“They are calling the United States insolent, especially on the issue of rice,” he said.

Importance of Rice

If the United States presses demands for Japan to open its markets to imported rice, even more members of Parliament will take an anti-U.S. position, he predicted. “What happens on rice will be very important.”

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng and Trade Representative Clayton K. Yuetter raised the issue of the ban on American rice when they met with Japanese officials in Tokyo last week. The Japanese argue that cheaper imports would kill Japanese rice farming, making the nation dependent on foreign supplies that might fail in a political or other crisis. Besides, they say, as Japan’s staple food, rice has a cultural or symbolic significance.

Politicians viewed Reagan’s semiconductor sanctions as a sign that “the United States is getting a little bit hysterical,” he added.

Japan has restrained exports to the United States in one industry after another in response to American complaints, Aichi noted. But, “Japanese know of few examples of an American industry recovering competitiveness as a result. A feeling of ‘What’s the use?’ has been accumulating,” he said.

If U.S. high-pressure tactics continue, Aichi said, “it may not be long until an emotional explosion occurs.”

New Approach Suggested

Aichi said American charges of Japanese “dumping” or “unfairness” or condemnations of Japan only stir up resentment. Far better, he said, would be for the United States to come right out and defend the need to maintain certain industries in the United States, semiconductors among them.

“Japan would understand that approach,” he said.

In a panel discussion of leaders of Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations), Isamu Yamashita, adviser to the Mitsui Shipbuilding Co., said that the high value of the yen, which makes American goods less expensive to Japanese and Japanese goods more expensive to Americans, has failed to strengthen American competitive power.

“The United States remains unmindful of efforts to promote rationalization of manufacturing or to strengthen sales. . . . I feel that the United States is trying to shift its responsibility as a key currency nation to Japan,” Yamashita said.

‘Not All Our Fault’

Ordinary Japanese feel maligned.

“What’s wrong with working hard and producing good products?” said a salesman for a major electronics company, who asked not to be identified by name.

“Japanese products were accepted by the Americans. This trade friction is not all our fault,” said a steelworker whose firm’s exports have been hit hard by the rising yen, which eats into profits.

A second, younger Foreign Ministry diplomat complained that the “United States is attacking Japan unilaterally all the time.”

Frustration Cited

“But what are you doing domestically to cope with the trade imbalance? You have trade imbalances with everyone. This is the frustration we have in Japan. But if we enunciate it publicly, then you will attack us again,” he said.

McKinsey & Co.’s Omae said that the Japanese are acting in line with a proverb, “Speaking makes the lips cold,” in dealing with the United States. The reticence, he said, arises from Japan’s dependence upon the United States for its military security.

So far, no eruption has occurred.

Omae noted that Japanese, living in a land of earthquakes, thunderstorms and typhoons, historically “expect occasional turbulence.”

“As a result, the Japanese can take this kind of hardship reasonably well,” he said.

Poll Findings

No nationwide polls have been conducted on attitudes toward the United States since last October. But in a poll that month by the prime minister’s office, two-thirds of Japanese polled said they feel basically “friendly” toward the United States. A Yomiuri Newspaper-Gallup Poll conducted last September and October found that 52.7% of Japanese rate the United States as “trustworthy.”

The “friendly” feeling, however, had dropped 7.4 points, while the “trustworthy” rating had declined 4.7 points in the last two years. In addition, those who did not feel friendly reached an all-time high of 28.1%, up 8.3 points.

The Yomiuri-Gallup poll found Japanese more pessimistic than Americans about both present and future relations with the United States.

Only 42% of the Japanese felt relations were going “very well” or “well,” contrasted with 50% of the Americans. Moreover, 70% of the Japanese predicted that economic relations would either show no improvement or worsen in the future, contrasted with only 43% of the Americans.

Example Avoided

Both Japanese and Americans who viewed the relationship as going smoothly, however, dropped 9% from 1984.

More and more, the United States is being held up as a country whose example Japan wishes to avoid. Employers, for example, pointed to the specter of American-style de-industrialization as a threat that Japan would face if workers failed to accept minimal pay increases this year.

A striking tone of pity fills even the comments of Japanese urging their country to rectify the trade imbalance with the United States.

The Japan Times, in an editorial April 15, for example, lambasted the Japanese government for inaction on trade issues. But it added that “the roots of the present trade wrangle” lie in “the refusal of Japan to recognize America’s apparently irreversible economic decline, a phenomenon dramatically manifested in the United States’ net international debtor status, in the weakness of its currency, and in the decline of its industrial competitiveness.”

The new weakness of the United States, it added, is a “reality . . . which we are all going to have to live with.”

‘Longstanding Ties’

Japanese firms, in their business dealings at home, Aichi noted, often continue to buy products from old suppliers even if the price and quality of goods is not on a par with the products that they could obtain from other firms because of “longstanding ties” and expectations of being able to count on future favors when the need arises.

“Companies now complain that American prices are too high and quality is inferior. But I have been advocating that they should apply the same feeling of ‘longstanding ties’ to the United States too, and (go out of their way to) buy American products,” the ruling party politician said.

Indeed, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has turned such an appeal into a national policy by ordering 302 major firms to increase imports beyond normal transactions.