TV Reviews : The Taking, Giving of Japan-U.S. Trade on PBS

Japan-bashing has been getting bashed itself lately, with charges that scapegoating and, worse, racism are substituting for any thoughtful appraisal of what has gone wrong in U.S.-Japan relations. But a close listen to Japanese author-commentator Shuichi Kato’s “Frontline” report, “Coming From Japan” (tonight at 9 on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15; 8 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24), reveals that both camps are missing the point.

At first, Kato himself appears to be a Japan-basher as he tracks the history of Matsushita Electric Co. to demonstrate how Japanese corporate practices are at loggerheads with Western approaches. Matsushita’s aggressive trajectory in the United States, from its 1974 purchase of Motorola’s failing Quasar TV line to its 1990 acquisition of MCA-Universal, is symbolic of Americans’ perhaps overwrought view of a new Japanese invasion. But Kato painstakingly observes that Matsushita’s buying spree didn’t come out of nowhere.

Company founder Konosuke Matsushita promised shortly after World War II that Japan would soon become an international power--through business, not war--and that his company would lead the way. Matsushita’s means to that end exemplifies Kato’s harshest argument: That what drives Japanese entities is not a set of values, but the Shinto ideal of perfectionism.

So, according to Kato and “Frontline” researchers, when Matsushita formed an illegal cartel with Sanyo, Toshiba, Hitachi and Sharp in the ‘50s and practiced “dumping” of consumer goods (overpricing them domestically so they could be underpriced abroad), it simply served the long-term goal of ending American dominance in the TV and stereo markets.

And it worked. But, Kato insists, don’t blame it all on the mendacity of foreigners.

The U.S. Treasury Department ignored the warnings--the lamentable cases of selective layoffs of American managers in U.S. firms bought by the Matsushita octopus, the massive fines for dumping that Japan still owed the United States in the 1970s--in return for Japan’s loyalty as an anti-Soviet partner with the West. It even extended, Kato claims, to deals cut between the Japanese government and Jimmy Carter’s trade chief (now U.S. ambassador to Russia) Robert Strauss. Blame can thus be spread around for the current trade imbalance fiasco; but, from Kato’s Japanese perspective, the problem of a lack of values in Japan’s corporate state may prove to be the biggest fiasco of all.