THE PACIFIC SUMMIT : Japan : A Reluctant Giant Shies Away From Leadership : Tokyo’s ‘low-profile’ diplomacy is partly a response to memories of its former aggression. But some observers say that it simply lacks a global vision.

According to Yoshiji Nogami, deputy director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s foreign policy bureau, it “doesn’t matter” that his country will make no major proposals nor even attract much attention when Asian and Pacific leaders gather in Seattle on Friday.

“There is no need (for Japan) to take initiatives,” he said. “In whatever is proposed, in the end, Japan cannot help but play a major role” if the proposal is to succeed.

“If you exclude Japan from Asia, what do you have left? Excluding the United States, its GNP alone is bigger than that of all the other countries in Asia and the Pacific that are going to the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum,” Nogami said.

The official’s comments, made in an interview, summed up not only the approach Japan will be taking toward President Clinton’s extravaganza in Seattle but also the passivity that pervades Japan’s Asian diplomacy--and is likely to continue to do so.

In a word, Japan, a reluctant giant, wants to be in on the decision-making but does not want to be the leader.

Asian memories of Japanese aggression and colonialism that ended 48 years ago are behind Tokyo’s “low-profile” approach: remaining in the diplomatic shadows of a region that it now dominates economically with aid, trade and investment.

Through the peace treaty it signed with the United States and 47 other nations in San Francisco in 1951, as well as bilateral treaties, Japan has disposed of its legal obligations to all of the countries that were its victims in World War II, Nogami said.

But it has not disposed of “moral” responsibilities to individuals, he added.

Now, under a new prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, Japan plans to try to resolve those obligations as well, Nogami said.

In addition to the well-publicized cases of Asian women recruited to provide sex for Japanese soldiers, he cited several other examples of such issues: the Chinese of Taiwan (a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945) who fought for Japan but were never repaid money held in their savings accounts; Korean laborers taken to Sakhalin but left behind when the southern part of the island reverted to the former Soviet Union’s control, and atomic bomb victims now living in Korea.

“Hosokawa has put the (moral) problem on the table for solution,” he said. “Morally, as well as legally, we want to do something in a form that can be seen.”

Diplomats, Nogami said, are now debating “how far can we go?”

But even if Japan can come up with its own answer, he added, “some people in foreign countries will consider the answer sufficient; others will not. That means Japan’s diplomacy will continue to be constrained in Asia.”

But the problem of the reluctant giant runs deeper than just the war memories.

Although American leaders for nearly two decades have urged that Japan assume greater leadership in Asia--and American scholars have been predicting for almost as long that it would do so--it is becoming clear that Japan does not want to assume leadership.

Some critics, such as Yukio Matsuyama, professor at Kyoritsu Women’s University and former chief of the Asahi newspaper’s editorial board, even assert that Japan is incapable of leadership.

In its diplomacy, Japan acts like “a fire department,” Matsuyama said. “It disposes of problems only after they occur. . . . It has been passive for so long that it has no strategy or grand design of its own, or is afraid of advocating one. We have become a country of merchants.

“Before the war,” he added, “Japan was very active. And it completely failed.”

To the Kyoritsu professor, the problem lies in the lack of universality in Japan’s culture. “Sushi, name cards and oshibori (hot finger towels) have been accepted in international society,” but the basic culture lacks any values--like the ideas of Western democracy--that have appeal outside Japan, he said.

Also, “Japanese culture doesn’t create leaders who, on their own power without the backing of institutions, are capable of becoming leaders outside Japanese society,” Matsuyama declared. “Japanese businessmen in gray suits don’t have much appeal . . . and you can’t become a leader by just dispensing money.”

Under the protection of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and its nuclear umbrella, Japan’s foreign policy has been based upon “What does the United States say?” Matsuyama added.

“Japan has not developed a vision of what kind of world it would like and what Japan’s role in it should be,” added Hugh T. Patrick, a Columbia University professor. “Wait and see, delay and follow” are its standards for fixing policy, he complained.

Even in the Uruguay Round of multinational trade negotiations--in which the interests of Japan as a trading nation are at stake--”Japan has not been a leader,” Patrick said.

“The real question is whether the Japanese want to exercise leadership. You have to go back 300 years to find a man on a white horse in Japanese history,” said James C. Abegglen, a noted Tokyo management consultant.

Japan’s diplomats flinch at even using the word leadership in describing their Asian policy.

Yoshio Okawara, former ambassador to Washington and now a Foreign Ministry adviser, for example, insisted that the question should be “not leadership but rather what Japan can do to cooperate with Asia.” The same goes for Japan’s association with APEC, he said. The 15-member APEC was established on the initiative of Australia, but from the beginning Japan was an enthusiastic supporter of the economic forum.

Japan has been carrying out a more active foreign policy, particularly since the widespread condemnation it suffered for “checkbook diplomacy” in contributing $13 billion in cash but no personnel to the Gulf War. Now, “international contributions” has become a catchword here.

But instead of seeking leadership, Japan is more concerned with having a voice in decision-making, such as a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Japanese, Okawara said, are disgruntled with the fact that “Japan, with its economic power, is being forced to give money but is not allowed to raise its voice.”

Japan has also started offering ideas behind the scenes, and increasingly it is acting as an organizer of forums designed to produce ideas and policies. And instead of its habitual avoidance of involvement in international political disputes, it is plunging into a wider range of issues--even to the point of dispatching 600 noncombat troops to Cambodia for one year as part of the U.N. peacekeeping operation there.

A proposal Japan made to the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations to launch informal discussions on security concerns was initially scorned but finally accepted.

Recently, it assumed the role of chief sponsor of international economic aid to Mongolia. It has also proposed a potentially significant Indochina reconstruction conference to approve a blueprint for development of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

But in each of the moves, Japan has restricted its role to that of a facilitator.

Indeed, Japan remains so reticent to make proposals of its own that Australia’s foreign minister, Gareth Evans, volunteered Australia’s services as an alter ego during a visit to Tokyo earlier this month.

Australia can offer a clear voice on regional and multinational policy issues on which Japan would like to speak out but feels too inhibited to do so, he said.

“To wait for others to propose an initiative that Japan will then support--it is one way of carrying out diplomacy,” Nogami commented nonchalantly. “There is always the fear (among other Asian countries) of being swallowed up if Japan takes the initiative.” So wary of Japan are Asian countries that many of them are prone to reject proposals if they come from Tokyo, Okawara said.

The upshot leaves Japan holding the door open to Asian leadership by America.

As Takakazu Kuriyama, Japan’s ambassador to the United States, put it, his nation does not wish “to play any dominant role.” Rather, Japan is “willing to play a . . . modest, yet useful secondary role,” working closely with the United States to “contribute to an international community that would be more peaceful, more stable, more human, more livable: a down-to-earth world more beneficial to everyone.”

And, as an unspoken bonus, with America in the lead pushing policies such as free trade, Japan benefits directly.

As another Japanese diplomat put it: “When you’re crossing a street against a red light, it’s always safer to do it in a group--particularly if the United States is at the front.”