U.S. Talk, Fear, Bluster Won’t Cut It : America: A Japanese book forces us to conclude that in terms of authority in the world, the U.S. has fallen into a power vacuum.

Washington has found provocation in a book written by Sony Corp. Chairman Akio Morita in collaboration with a rightist publicist, Shintaro Ishihara. Called “A Japan That Can Say No,” it was issued a year ago, and Morita chose not to have it translated. It came to the attention of a Japanese-speaking American businessman in Tokyo and was privately translated into English and circulated.

The book says openly what Japanese have been saying privately about the United States for some time. There are few surprises:

-Americans in their foreign policy are more likely to “behave like mad dogs” than like “watchdogs.” The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan instead of Nazi Germany because Americans are racists. You have only to look at the place of blacks in American society to see this racism, the authors say.

-The American nation and economy are mismanaged, drained of substance. American business makes money, not products for people to use. It is driven by greed and makes no provisions for the future. Workers are abused and exploited while managers pay themselves “astounding” salaries. Poverty in America is appalling, the gap between rich and poor “outrageous.”

-Americans “want to steal Japanese know-how” because they have wasted their own technological lead. The defense of the United States now depends on foreign manufacturers. “If Japan sold its semiconductor chips to the Soviet Union and stopped selling them to the United States this would upset the entire military balance.”

-Americans demand that Japanese invest to offset U.S. deficits, but when the Japanese do invest, the public and Congress are overcome “by fear and anxiety” and attack the Japanese investors. The U.S. trade deficit exists because Americans make virtually nothing Japanese would want to buy. The things it makes are shoddy and unreliable. “When we complain, the answer is: Japan is the only country that is complaining, nobody else has any complaints.”

-Americans don’t trust Japanese. “It seems, in their minds, even the Soviets are more trustworthy than the Japanese.” The authors conclude that there seems “no hope for the United States.”

The reaction of the intelligent American reader must be that it is nearly all true--and Americans have been the first to say it. Americans might even, someday, do something about it--although it may be that we will not. In that case we will deserve what we get.

There is an important general consideration here, which Washington might reflect upon in the midst of its bitterness about the ungrateful Japanese. Morita and Ishihara are demonstrating the consequences of a power vacuum and teaching a lesson about the nature of power.

Power vacuums are ordinarily talked about in purely military terms. This one concerns another kind of power, better called authority. The United States played an enormously important role in the postwar years because it was a military superpower and possessed a productive and innovative industrial economy, certainly, but most of all because it assumed political responsibility and acted in creative ways, radiating authority. It reconstructed its enemies, reordered ruined Europe and assumed the military burdens of checking Soviet power in Central Europe and the Far East. It was not always right or wise in what it did, but it was serious. It acted with resolution and intelligence. It accepted the consequences of its actions.

Today it is no longer serious. For some time now--under the last Democratic Administration as well as in the Reagan and Bush years--the United States has substituted talk, sentiment, bluff or irrelevant violence for serious action. It has based actions on culpable ignorance, ideology and lazy fantasies about the world. It has not paid its way. The result is that its power has shrunk and its authority has vanished.

Morita and Ishihara said this to their fellow Japanese because the decline of American authority and seriousness makes a fundamental change in Japan’s situation. There is nothing wrong in the Japanese saying this to their countrymen. It is their duty to do so, if they believe what they say to be true, and if they try to be responsible in what they say.

Equally, it is the duty of Americans to face facts. We may be beginning to do so. But we have altered our political system during the last 40 years in ways that make it extremely difficult to carry out fundamental change and reform. The seeming paralysis of the American system, private as well as public, confronted with today’s deficits, poverty, public dilapidation, de-industrialization and our manifest need for new investment in infrastructure, education and industrial research, is very sinister. The system is not working. If we have to be told the truth by the Japanese, so be it.