‘Japan Must Say Yes to Racism, War Atrocities’ : Cultural Relations: A Japanese book that riled Americans is full of inaccuracies and hypocrisy, says a Japanese journalist.

Few other Japanese books have angered Americans as much as “The Japan That Can Say No,” published in Japan by Kobunsha and circulated in the United States in an unauthorized translation. Written by Shintaro Ishihara, a member of Japan’s ruling party, and Akio Morita, chairman of Sony Corp., the book urges Japan to brake “American military expansion” by refusing to sell its microchips to the United States. Ishihara also accuses the United States of deep racial prejudice toward Japan, contending that such bias led to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The Japan That Can Say No” is certainly replete with statements likely to offend some Americans--especially those in the Establishment. This small book strikes me as problematic in too many respects.

In general, Akio Morita’s observations are enlightening. His belief, for example, that the United States and Japan should complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses is likely to persuade many Americans. Of course, the management approach he advocates--the corporation as “a community of people sharing the same fate”--represents one aspect of the Japanese-style “minnow society,” which hates individuality and detests diversity. But a number of Morita’s observations could provide starting points for debates and re-examinations.

Shintaro Ishihara’s assertions are a different matter. They are not only factually doubtful. His overall view is despicable.

First, there is the matter of the racial prejudice of Americans.

That culturally dominant WASPs have tended to have a strong racial prejudice is historically true. In the past 20 years, however, the American people have valiantly fought racial prejudice. Throughout the Vietnam War, they re-examined their attitudes toward Asians.

For a Japanese to speak about the deep-rooted racial prejudices in the United States may have had some meaning 20 years ago. But things have greatly changed since then. I would say “great progress” has been made.

I do not call Ishihara despicable because he says the United States is a country full of racial prejudices. I do so because he shows absolutely no awareness of the racial prejudice that exists in Japan. I would even say that racial prejudice in Japan may be worse than that in the United States. Ishihara’s attitude is despicable because he dares point his finger at racial prejudice in America while keeping mum about what Japan and the Japanese have done.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone drew ridicule from all over the world with his comment on the “low intelligence level” of Americans as a result of their multiracial composition. The remark he made in the same breath--that Japan is a homogeneous country--angered the Ainu and other peoples of different races in Japan. The Ainu, the early inhabitants of Japan, continue to suffer from egregious racial prejudice and discrimination. The racial prejudice of the Japanese against their fellow Asians is equally heinous.

Unless and until Ishihara is ready to admit it and say, “Yes, our racial prejudice is bad enough,” he or any other Japanese has no right to point his finger at what may be happening in some other country.

Nor can Ishihara come out and say that the Japanese army did some terrible things in Korea, China and other Asian countries. His inability to say “Yes, we committed atrocities” has changed little over the years.

But unless Japan is willing to admit its past wrongs and try to learn from them, it will not be able to defend itself against the foreign accusation that Japan has not changed from the days of its military aggressions. It is in this crucial point that Germany and Italy, Japan’s former allies, are differentiated from Japan. Even the United States has admitted and said, “Yes, it was unjust of us to put Japanese-Americans in the relocation camps.”

For some time, the word “internationalization” has been in vogue in Japan. True internationalization must begin by recognizing wrongs as wrongs. Those who eagerly learn foreign-language conversation, especially English conversation, without even thinking honestly and saying, “Yes, we did wrong; yes, we are doing wrong,” will turn themselves into “anti-internationalists who merely prattle in foreign languages.”

Ishihara is a prime example of an anti-internationalist. He is basically no different from the average narrow-minded, anti-internationalistic right-winger. Ishihara is contemptible because he pretends Japan has done no international wrong, while shouting “No!” to foreign criticisms of wrongs perpetrated in Japan.

He advocates terminating the U.S.-Japanese security treaty and creating in its place a “voluntary, protection-specializing defense system.” It would, in his words, “reveal tactics and stratagems with restraining powers, fully using efficient high technologies and capable of telling those who dared attack Japan that terrible things would happen to them.”

Oddly enough, Asia is scarcely touched on in “Let Japan Live With Asia,” Ishihara’s concluding chapter. His argument seems to rest on these paragraphs:

“Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where the economies are working well, are all countries which Japan ruled before the end of the war. To be sure, we must admit and regret that we did bad things, too, but I think we can’t deny that we also left good influences.

“Among the economic zones in the world which supply resources, only Southeast Asia is doing well socially, economically. I wouldn’t want to say they owe this to somebody, but it is partly a result of the efforts of us Japanese, who are also Asians. . . .

“The question henceforth is how Japan might combine its economic and political strengths to devise--to work out the details of--a political strategy for Southeast Asia in the positive sense of the term, so that while helping nurture Asia, Japan may coexist with it. Now that we have plunged into the New Pacific Age, Japan needs not so much America as Asia to grow.”

What Ishihara proposes in “Let Japan Live with Asia” is, in the end, the same as what the promoters of the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” during World War II intended to achieve, with the Japanese race at its center. Such irresponsible, anti-internationalistic statements as “Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where the economies are working well, are all countries which Japan ruled before the end of the war” are not only insults to the countries named; they are also factually wrong. This particular statement could be valid only if the reverse were also true, that is, that the countries where the economies are not working well are the countries which Japan did not rule. One could ask, for example, “What about the Philippines and Indonesia?”

Worse, his section on “coexistence with Asian nations” contains few words indicating guilt about Japanese aggressions. For Japan to propose to “coexist” with Asian nations without a sense of guilt about its past atrocities against them would be like slapping them with one hand while seeking to shake hands with them with the other.