Japan Exercises Power Generously While Exercising PR Abominably

Japan has a serious communication problem. Every year, Japan’s image in the United States is getting worse and worse. Last April, when Japan’s Foreign Ministry and the Gallup Organization conducted opinion research among Americans, 61% responded that Japan was not playing a responsible role in the international community. A whopping 74% said that Japan should increase its defense spending. And 40% felt that Japan’s economic success has become a threat to the United States.

In 1984, only 21% of Americans thought the Japanese economy was a threat. In 1975 only 9% thought so.

Now, the majority of Americans seem to see Japan as an unfair country, spending almost nothing for its own defense while excluding American agricultural products and manufactured goods from its domestic market. Japan is viewed as both a master practitioner of dirty tricks in international trade and a cynical, selfish free-rider that doesn’t care about the concerns and necessities of other nations.

Is this perception right? Is Japan such a terrible country?

The quick answer is no. The truth is that there is an immense perception gap between the United States and Japan--mainly Japan’s fault--and yet Japan’s Foreign Ministry has been ineffective in closing it.

Many Japanese sincerely believe that they have been misunderstood by Americans. Yes, Japan spends only 1% of its gross national product on defense. But focusing on this figure is misleading because Japan’s official defense budget does not include spending for the coast guard, military pensions, certain administrative costs plus research and development expenditures on militarily applicable technologies.

If Japan includes these items in its defense budget, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries do, Japan’s real military spending is about 1.5% of GNP, amounting to nearly $45 billion a year--the world’s third largest amount, bigger than the military budgets of Britain, West Germany, France and China. But most Americans do not know the size of Japan’s real military spending; all they know is the 1% figure.

Japan’s domestic market is , in fact, open to American products. As much as half the food consumed by Japanese every day comes from overseas. Every year, the highest percentage of U.S. agricultural exports, including more than 70% of American beef exports, goes to Japan. Contrary to primary and presidential campaign rhetoric by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, Japan is already the world’s second largest purchaser of U.S. goods.

The average Japanese consumer spends more money on American products than the average European; indeed, only the average Canadian consumer buys more U.S. goods than the Japanese. Yet most Americans persist in believing that Europeans are much better customers of American goods than Japanese.

Japan is now the world’s largest donor of foreign economic aid as well. Between 1988 and 1992, Japan will give more than $50 billion to developing countries. Few Americans know that.

Japanese diplomats have worked hard to correct U.S. perceptions. They made, for example, 1,167 speeches all over America in 1987-88 to promote better understanding. They distributed newsletters, brochures and booklets to American bureaucrats, journalists and congressional staff. They have even tried to be friendly and persuasive with prickly, often hostile, U.S. journalists and growling American politicians. But the results have been meager, almost wretchedly so. Most of the speeches and publications have been remarkable only because they have been so unfailingly dull and painfully unimaginative.

Even well-disposed, pro-Japanese Americans complain about the absence of wit and humor. These speeches and publications also tend to lack intellectual courage; they say only nice things about Japan and the United States, careful not to discuss any controversial issue in a serious, frank manner.

One of the great weaknesses of Japanese diplomats, however well-educated, is that they don’t seem to understand what kinds of logic and rhetoric sound reasonable and appealing to Americans and what sound foolish and insensitive. While many Japanese diplomats are well-organized and hard-working, they often cannot use foreign languages skillfully and persuasively. High-ranking Foreign Ministry officials are aware of this and they frequently admonish younger diplomats to be more serious about acquiring better speaking and writing capacity in foreign languages.

Currently the Japanese Embassy in Washington hires more than 100 Americans for speech-writing, for editing of letters and various publications, for public-relations activities, for lobbying, research and analysis of American politics. Some help from Americans may be necessary and inevitable, but the embassies of France, Italy, West Germany, China and others do their work without hiring so many Americans. The fact that Japanese diplomats cannot edit one speech without relying on Americans is frustrating and discouraging.

In 1985, Ezra Vogel, a Harvard University Japanologist, wrote: “Elaborate Japanese efforts at public relations in the U.S., both through direct campaigns and through American PR firms, backfired, for the Japanese could not understand that arguments which seemed so persuasive in Japan only antagonized foreigners.” Now, four years later, Japan’s communication abilities seem as inept and clumsy as ever.

Perhaps it isn’t fair to criticize diplomats alone for Japan’s ineffective communication. Large numbers of Japanese businessmen, politicians and intellectuals also have this problem with Americans.

The real blame should go to Japan’s Education Ministry for having devoted itself to producing tens of millions of well-educated, disciplined Japanese who are also poorly equipped to understand how foreigners think and feel.

Both Japanese and American journalists have suggested that the greatest defect of the Japanese education system is the so-called “examination hell” problem, the rigors of the system. Not so. A certain amount of pressure on teen-age youngsters is good for them, as any experienced Jesuit educator knows. The major defect of Japanese education is its one-way teaching method. In Japan’s schoolrooms, information flows only from teachers to students, not from students to teachers. Young people are not required to form individual opinions. They simply have to listen.

Even at the best colleges, teachers and students almost never engage in a spirited, intellectually rigorous discussion. The product of this one-way teaching is people ill-equipped to participate in vigorous, open, productive policy debates with foreigners. As long as the Education Ministry does not change this approach, both Americans and Japanese are destined to suffer various communication gaps.

Every opinion poll in Japan indicates that, among the Japanese, Americans are the best-liked and most respected people on earth. American openness, big-heartedness, egalitarianism, courage and creativity are intensely admired. What a pity, then, that the two nations do not always understand each other.